Part V: Queenside Castling
(1)
When Anomen Delryn, on the day when he had passed his Trials and the eve of his solitary vigil in the main hall of the Athkatlan headquarters of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart, learnt of Sarevok Anchev’s escape from the Trademeet city arrest not five days after the man’s capture—he was not surprised.
Instead, he smiled, sadly; after all, he had known this particular news beforehand. The Lady Imoen had as much as told him this would happen as she had left her familiar with her brother.
He should have informed his superiors of what she had not told him; and of what he knew about the cat— He did not. Instead, he tried to approach a snarling, furious prisoner.
“I swore to the Lady Imoen that I would protect Anchev, Sir Ryan—” “Keep your man away from me, Trawl, lest you lose him completely.”
The prisoner had been bound; but the prisoner was a cunning, powerful and aggressive man and a Bhaalspawn; the prisoner certainly needed no protection, and if the prisoner set his mind on killing the one instrumental to his capture, he could just manage it, Sir Ryan Trawl decided, and forbid his disconsolate subordinate all contact with the prisoner.
There were… questions, instead: then, on the road, and later, in Athkatla, before the praise of the superiors and the admiration of the equals came. They were very specific questions, questions which must perhaps be asked before the Trials, when the gods looked into one’s mind, one’s heart and one’s soul to find one worthy; or not. The paladins of the Order of Most Radiant Heart believed in their gods, truly; but they also believed in their job. And that one should not bother the gods without a good reason.
And so, on the day after he returned to Athkatla, Anomen Delryn was called in to present a very thorough report of all he had done in the company of a murderer and his Bhaalspawn sister. He had not murdered; he had not gone against his creed; he had sought divine counsel in the business, and had been granted the permission to cooperate; he had been chaste, and obedient, and faithful; he was clean; he was clean; he was clean… He could be admitted before the face of the gods, and the detailed tale left his distant relative the Prelate Wessalen and his immediate commander Sir Ryan Trawl all the more impressed—
But he wanted Sarevok Anchev.
With each question asked, with each recollection remembered, with each tale told, the want, the need, the… emptiness, grew. Amongst praise, admiration, and not a little bit of envy; that, and a barony, and a sword, and wealth, and fame, and even his father’s appreciation—even if more of his wealth and fame than of himself—in short, among everything he had ever wanted, Anomen Delryn lacked this sole thing; and this, he was discovering, was the one necessary thing.
There was a gap in his life—throbbing and painful, so abysmal and empty, he had even, cautiously, in a desperate attempt to forget, to forego, considered an accusation once thrown in his face by his sneering father; and found it utterly disgusting— But he wanted the man, who, like all, had first accepted him into his company, and then had rejected him, in the end; but, perhaps, from his own perspective, had had a very good reason for the rejection; better than everyone else in his life thus far, Anomen found himself thinking rebelliously.
He was being found good enough for the gods and the people, at last; but he was finding he wanted neither the gods nor the people. There were things more important in life than duty, he was discovering; or, at least, things more important in his life. There were some things in life worth fighting for, and duty was not the most important of them, not by a long shot. It is a terrible thing to discover when one’s entire life, one had wanted peace, law and order, and one had tried to follow and fulfil one’s duty; but his duty had been to tell that the familiar had not been the brother’ familiar; and his duty had been to learn what the sister had been planning, and report it afterwards; there was no escaping that he had not fulfilled it, that he felt good with it, and that he wanted more. Perhaps, while he had been constantly refusing to follow his father’s path, he had done nothing but follow his mother’s tales, he caught himself thinking—
He was now alone, in the main hall of the Radiant Heart, eyeing the giant sword Carsomyr which had, mayhap, become a symbol to him; it had been when they had first found it that Sarevok had told him that, when the two of them met, and Anomen was a paladin, they would fight. Which— ‘Twas unthinkable.
The Bhaalspawn had vanished; no one knew where he had gone; Anomen was one of the first to learn of it in Athkatla, because he was called to report once again: perhaps he could recall something? Perhaps he had heard anything, anything at all about whither the outlaw had intended to go next to spread his noxious influence? Nay; and so, only a small, rudimentary force would be dispatched to follow, because the Order had few people and a multitude of tasks; and, sooner or later, the outlaw would resurface, somewhere, and be reported. He was not an inconspicuous man.
Privately, Anomen Delryn did not know whither Sarevok Anchev was now headed; but he knew where he could be found one day.
He smiled, stood up from his knees, picking in passing his simple mace and his family shield; and then, walked away, closing the gilt door and leaving the grand sword and the Radiant Heart behind.
-----
On the eventide of the sixteenth day of Mirtul of the year 1369 of the Dalereckoning, Imoen of Candlekeep, thief, wizard, adventuress and Bhaalspawn, entered the city of Trademeet, alone.
Her sister-in-law, Gudrun Anchev, known also by her human name of Kriemhild, she had left outside the town, with the druid envoys. The newly elected chieftain of the druid tribe, Cernd, who had once been a city man himself, decided, in view of the recent misfortunes which had affected his people, to establish a semi-permanent embassy in Trademeet, for the purpose of preventing any such similar quarrels for as long as prevented they could be. In the end, the world would turn and change and either Trademeet or the druid tribes would perish, and something new would come in their place; but that did not justify not making an effort at present, for now.
And since the High Merchant Lord Logan Coprith was a reasonable man, an embassy was established in a forest on the fringes of the city; therein, now, the druid envoys resided, occasionally selling herbal remedies to the city populace; therein, now, the Lady Anchev would lodge, having, for company, her husband’s hunting bird, called an-Nasr at-Taïr; Altair, for short. The druids offered little protest; the Lady’s sister-in-law had been Cernd’s friend, once.
Given the half-orc’s reaction to any larger crowd of humans she encountered, Imoen found this a vastly preferable option to forcing the woman to enter the city for no important reason. Kriemhild was not a witless beast; her brother had chosen his bride with care; but— Not everything at once, Imoen thought; and sighed, privately, eyeing the green skin, and the thick, coarse, black body hair, and the black, hard eyes, and the boar-like tusks, and the indelicate muscles, and the fire-hardened bones lacing the leather armour, and the heavy boots, and the dragon helmet and the dragon shield; and, finally, the bone club in the scarlet, royal sheath under the scarlet, royal cloak which had once been a dragon’s. There were elves, and half-elves; and there were orcs, and half-orcs.
But, though her looks were not Kriemhild’s fault, the woman was uncivilised, untaught and homicidal. Sarevok had ordered her to follow Imoen, a command which his wife had accepted with her usual obedient, terrified calm; but, once the half-orc’s nerves were strained enough, and her wild, untamed anger burst out, there was no telling what she might do. And Imoen’s mission in Trademeet was a particularly delicate one.
She met the Lady Itona, the chief overseer of the Shadow Thieves’ operations in Trademeet who had not liked Imoen since she had first laid her eyes on Sarevok Anchev’s sister; but, since Sarevok Anchev was her superior Aran Linvail’s own current favourite, and also, in possession of information regarding the majority of the Thieves’ recent operations, within and without Amn—the Lady sent forth a laconic missive to Athkatla. Then, she ordered all of Anchev’s possessions in her house: his clothes and his weapons, his gems, and jewels, and cameos, and favourite, costly fragrances—to be delivered together with his sister’s to the sister’s lodgings. Imoen was to return on the morrow for her answer; for now, she went shopping.
A half-orc washed, combed and dressed in human clothes would look, hopefully, half-human, to some, if not to all; and Imoen needed scrolls. If she had learnt one thing during her recent outing with her brother, it was this one: magic.
-----
On the midday of the seventeenth day of Mirtul of the year 1369 of the Dalereckoning, Sarevok Anchev, warrior, mage, murderer and Bhaalspawn, entered the city of Trademeet in the escort of some ten or twenty true paladin knights, a squire, and a cat.
Two hours later, his sister received the reply of Athkatla’s Shadowmaster. Aran Linvail was very pleased and extremely interested in hearing again from the charming young woman in whose company Sarevok had re-entered his life and had left Athkatla; and he was sending to Trademeet some of his best hands: Mitsu, and Arkanis, and Pelanna, forthwith; them, and also his best solicitors. They would all be in Trademeet—not on the morrow; but within two days, for the trial’s start.
The majority of the knights hied on that day to Athkatla; and, with them, Anomen Delryn. He and Imoen did not meet.
-----
On the morning of the eighteenth day of Mirtul of the year 1369 of the Dalereckoning, a cat by the name of Pangur found a dead grasshopper.
This is, by now, a fairly important event in the life of one Sarevok Anchev, imprisoned for half a day and a night in what, as far as he is concerned, might as well be an oubliette, and what is a cell in the dungeons of the Trademeet council building.
He has been to more interesting prisons; one of those was that of the wizard Joneleth Irenicus. But to a mind used to action, forced repose is another torture; and he has already taken the prisoner’s usual recourse: in the uterine, silent penumbra of the solitary cell, Sarevok Anchev slept, and dreamt—
—Falling; falling impossibly fast down a shaft of light; down an impossibly deep well, surrounded on all sides by tiers upon tiers of an impossibly high tower; and on each tier, the statues.
Siblings. Family.
He had been falling impossibly fast; but, feather-light in a place where gravity is a matter of naught but convention and habit, when he landed, he landed effortlessly, on his feet, and with neither sound nor harm.
He looks around: a wind, now chill, now dry and scalding hot, sweeps across the empty void, screaming in his ears its hearty welcome. Glittering dust of emerald ichor swirl and dance over ivory bowls set in the shadows of opaque nothingness; all pools are nearly empty, but none will remain so much longer. Space itself is alien and inhuman.
Home.
There is a figure in the distance, combing through the ichor in one of the less empty basins; he sets towards it. There is no use delaying the meeting, he had learnt long ago.
He starts, for a moment, when he is halfway through the expanse and when he can finally discern the figure’s features; but, promptly, he snarls, strides to it and backhands it, viciously.
“You forgot the scars, Father,” he tells his sister’s face. “Again.”
“So, which one will it be tonight?” he demands as the broken face looks back at him with pure loathing, “Threaten or cajole? I did not overlook the surreptitious lack of blood in my eyes the last time we met— What was it that you wanted me to see so clearly, Father? Torm’s paladins, arriving to take out your rubbish in accordance with your deathbed wish?”
The figure, who is not Imoen, and Imoen is still alive, coughs out the blood and snorts. “Scars. Who needs them?”
Sarevok considers; in the end, he shrugs. “Imoen would, I believe, say that they remind her that she is half a human.”
“And you, my son?”
“They are hers. I respect her opinion.”
“Do not attempt to misconstrue me, son. That pitiful excuse of a wizard left his mark on you as well.”
There is a longer silence; at the end of which, the man says, calmly, “My man says that he does not abhor them.”
“And you respect his opinion. But your scars are—as you so aptly put it a moment ago, son—yours to decide what to do with them.”
Sarevok laughs, and says, “They exist, Father. And some fools even say that they lend character to my features.”
As he dies, again, this time to his dwarven sister’s bone dagger, he wonders just what Imoen has done that would warrant this particular overture of peace.
-----
The cat found a dead grasshopper in a remote corner of the cell, and brought it to him. It must be one of those sent to Trademeet by Faldorn, Sarevok thinks as he smiles at the dirty cobwebs on Pangur’s whiskers.
Grasshoppers turn into locusts when there are too many of them, he thinks as he studies curiously the insect’s dried, desiccated corpse. They are normal, completely normal, and then, one day, if there are too many of them in one place, one of the crowd grows mad; that first one infects the others, one by one; they all transform, and there is a plague. Perhaps it will be like that with the kin; perhaps, one day, when enough siblings fulfil their destiny and answer Father’s call—the rest will awaken to a murder-drenched, blood-soaked day; and will blindly, swarm-like, follow; and that will be the day when the rivers of the Sword Coast will run with blood— Perhaps he has been nothing but a premature grasshopper.
Or, perhaps, that first, that mad one, the one which infects the others and will be the one to have set off the plague; starting from Imoen, scarred on her mind, her soul and her body.
He leans against the cold wall, considering: the kin has to perish. This is the one part of the prophecy which is clear. And there have been evil gods and evil symbols, invoked apotropaically, for defence, in history: a plague god appealed to to ward off plague. An eye painted on a ship to avoid the evil eye. There is a nugget of an idea there, somewhere: wherefore should not a god of murder ascend his throne by murdering the murderers?
Wine would, perhaps, help find the answer; in wine, after all, lies the truth. Wine relaxes and releases, like desire, or, better yet, murder; but wine is wine. With due care and consideration, it is possible to apply just enough and exactly enough of it to make the leap from methodical, inductive conjecture and inference into oracle and prophecy, and divine glimpses of the presence and the future without letting Father hurt the human self; humans have used wine for prophecy for centuries.
But too much wine, and all else follows; in wine lies the truth, but in wine lies also the anger. Angry drunks. Pathetic murderers. Rieltar ordering her death. What had been her name? He cannot recall. Irenicus has it, and her face, and her touch, and the sound of her voice. There had been once a woman, who had been my foster father Rieltar’s concubine, and she had lived, and she died, because he ordered her death, because he thought that she was cheating on him, with me, and I remember that I had called her my mother, and I do not remember her face, or her name, or her voice, or her touch, or anything of her. She had existed; she died; and I had Rieltar killed, in the end.
“I believe,” Sarevok tells the cat, who is looking at him with his clear blue eyes, “that it might be a profitable endeavour to attempt and establish a simple means of at least fundamental communication. What says you?”
The cat crooks his head, and appears to be considering the problem; and so, the man, quite amused at his own folly, continues, “I am aware that you understand me, cat; the task, therefore, lies in making me understand you. While I do appreciate the ample repertoire of purrs, hisses, chirps and meows, I would welcome something more unequivocal. I suggest a single lick of the right forepaw for yes, of the left forepaw for no. We can take it from there. Are we in agreement?”
The cat purrs, and licks the right forepaw.
“Has my sister established contact with you?”
The cat, thoughtfully, licks his right forepaw; then, his left, biting each and every of his claws; and then, he jumps into the man’s lap, and demands to be scratched.
Sarevok laughs at this impudence; then, he complies, and, as he does, he dives into the maelstrom of thought again.
Imoen is there, with all her scars, again— Imoen has left the cat as hostage, but the cat is a gift from him; as far as he is aware, she does not back off on her word; but from saying that one wants one to live to going against all for an enemy’s and a kinsman’s sake, the road is long. He weighs the two sides of the balance. They weigh the same.
He seeks Altair; but Altair is not there. She exists; or a throbbing, distant feeling of her does; but no more; nothing else. He cannot see through her sharp, far-seeing eyes; he can see no further than the limits of his silent cell.
The cat nudges him with his head, because the man stopped scratching him for a moment; the man smirks, scoops the cat with the palm of his hand, so that Pangur is spread flatly on it, and his four paws and his tail are dangling around it; and lifts him to look into his eyes. They are almost like—no, not like Irenicus’; like Aran’s.
Aran will certainly not leave him behind, if only to send his assassins after him. He misses the Shadowmaster of Athkatla, painfully so, and extremely physically; that one is not an unsophisticated man, is an intelligent man, a man to be respected; a man who understood the hunger of a mind and the weakness of a body freshly out of prison and utter impotence. Aran settles his debts; casts his geas; and then, offers one people to command, a task to prove that one’s mind still functions, and enough eager, impatient patience to uncoil that tightly wound worm of doubt and worry deep within, and find out that one is still a man if one chooses to, that Irenicus did not affect the body lastingly—
Aran— Sarevok smiles; Aran… understands. He has his own people, and his own goals, and his own life, and enough ruthlessness, and cruelty, and cunning, to be as much of an uninvolved, casual, equal partner as one can have in a casual partnership of equals when one is anything more than a petty merchant selling vegetables at a market stall. It is good that Aran exists, and that they have, for now, a common goal; and that the paladins destroyed their enemies, if not their enemy— Yet, though Aran exists, so does the geas. None will stand in the path of the Bhaalspawn’s destiny; not Aran Linvail; not Tamoko; not Anomen Delryn.
The cat, fairly offended by the kitten-like treatment, scrambles to stand on top of the palm; then, he swishes his tail, and, looking at the man irately, jumps off to the cell’s floor and, sulkily, retreats far away.
Sarevok adjusts himself more comfortably on the cold stone, as well as his large bulk permits him; and thinks further—
The trouble with Anomen Delryn has been that it has been love; or, at least, its short-term, unfulfilled part, which is desire…
…to kiss him senseless; to bed him senseless; to spoil him senseless, and to make him one’s own, and to make him worship oneself, as man and as god; to give him everything he may want and to ruffle his rough, unsmooth hair— Unwanted and immature; not at all like the easy, amiable camaraderie of two accomplices. Frustrating enough to warrant the pre-emptive application of a lofty, exaggerated, disproportionate code term, just in case, just to activate all the emergency procedures, not to be caught unguarded again; not like that first time. Frustrating for its offensive crudeness; vulgar tales of unrequited love earn the daily bread of the cheapest bards, and to find oneself the pining hero of one has been degrading, at best.
The only cure for love, the mocking bards sing, is to have it returned. Either that, or time; with time, everything passes, thankfully, and even the memory of his squire’s sharp, male, acrid odour at dawn, as the two of them fight and Anomen sweats—
Sarevok smiles yet again, this time utterly, completely amused: Like a cur in rut, he remembers Rieltar Anchev’s saying.
He stands up, goes to the furthest corner of the cell, and relieves himself.
Wiping his hands, watching the quickly disappearing consequences of his humanity, he thinks, furiously, as yet another thought comes to him, Now, that one mistake of yours, I will not repeat, Father. Not even if I force myself to rape my so-called wife; not even then. Murderers should never have children. The son of a murderer can only grow up to be a murderous bastard himself.
Then, he sleeps.
-----
He wakes up when the cat leaps onto his chest and scratches him on the neck; soon, there is Imoen opening his cell—
She is wearing an ankle-length, almost prim dove-grey dress with black trimmings; there is a black lace mantilla on her shoulders and a string of black pearls on her neck; her hair is done up and hidden under a little, smart black hat with crow’s wing, garnets and rubies, and her scars are hidden under a layer of discreet, unpretentious make-up—
—in a word, as far as Sarevok is concerned, his sister went to great, fashionable, and extremely expensive, lengths to make herself ten to fifteen years older, and ten to fifteen times less attractive than she really is; if he saw her on a street, he would devote a moment to estimate her worth: forty to fifty thousand, at the lower end—and then would not give her a second look.
The last lock won’t budge; she sighs, pulls something from her sleeve, and starts to cast an incantation. When finally the door lets go, she marches into the cell, and nods to him coolly. “Little brother.”
“Little sister,” he replies, level, indolent and unconcerned as Imoen smiles at her cat and scratches him behind the ear. Then, she takes off the hat, unpins her hairdo and shakes her head; she has dyed her hair carrot orange, and put many more small braids in it than the two or three to which he is accustomed. Then, she starts to take the dress off, with that vague sort of discomfort that is less in her face than in her moves; and so, he looks away, that his sister might decide that she does not mind, not really, undressing in her brutal brother’s presence.
The dress has one of their bags of holding sewn under its lining.
“Shave cleanly,” Imoen orders, pulling out and passing to him a flask of water, small scissors, a razor, a mirror and a bar of soap. “Your clothes,” she adds; they are made of roughly woven wool and hide toughened into a dark armour, stink as if they belonged to some relative of Kriemhild’s, and will be minimally too small for him. “And your charm,” she finishes, unclasping Aran’s golden keepsake from her neck.
“The guards downstairs are all knocked out,” she says calmly as she quickly starts to put on her own change of clothes: a far less prudish affair in azure and gold, and precisely too large for her to be her own. She must have stolen it.
“We’ll make ourselves invisible until we’ll charm those two upstairs,” she adds as she starts to apply the make-up which makes her face thinner, longer and completely unlike her own. She does not do it well; he had never seen her paint herself before, not even the last time they were here, in Trademeet.
For that matter, I have never seen her in three-inch-high heels before, either, he thinks, amused, as Imoen buttons up the kidskin ankle boots, saying, “Then, we’ll walk out. You’ll have to be silent, pretend that you have stomach-ache, and keep your eyes closed, brother, until I will tell you you can open them. You’ll use a wizard eye instead.”
“Why won’t we stay invisible instead, sister?” he asks as he finishes shaving and starts to change into the clothes whose odour of unwashed body is just strong enough to hide his own.
“Because there are paladins in the building, and because the main doors are guarded on both sides, brother,” Imoen replies, putting on a short cape which matches the dress in colour and which, conveniently enough, blurs her features lightly. “And because we’re not killing anyone tonight if we’re found out. That’s the condition, brother. We’re just… walking out. Most people should be upstairs, watching the auction.”
“Auction, sister?”
“Long story, brother. Ready? Now, come here—” He feels the cold touch of ink on his face as she paints something on top of his eyelids. Fake eyes, perhaps; just enough to show faintly under the helmet which he will put on. Then, there is another touch on his cheek and his forehead; and then, as she presents the simple helmet to him, Imoen says, “Let’s go.”
He freezes; she frowns. “What of my sword, sister?”
“We have the rukh’s scimitar… It’s not enough, is it?” his sister asks, with that small twist of the mouth which means that she does not enjoy the direction his thoughts are taking, and which looks out of place on the unfamiliar face she is wearing now.
“No,” he says curtly. “It is not.” He will not mind if he loses the Burning Earth, or, overly, the old druid’s staff; but the Edge of Chaos is his. As simple as that.
His sister smiles at last. “And I’d better refrain from any dirty jokes, hadn’t I, brother? They put you right next to the treasury, you know… Let’s really go.”
-----
The stack of scrolls of the knock spell assures him that his sister knows him well enough to have suspected where one of the few uncomfortable limits of his pragmatism lie. And when they find both his sword and his knife amidst the piles of the Trademeet city treasure, Imoen does not even insist on putting the sword into the bag of holding; instead, without a word, she pulls out of it a very rough sheath for him to use in place of the usual one, and a bit of hide to tie around the hilt.
The blade, therefore, has been a part of the disguise from the beginning, and his sister simply checked whether she could force him into openly admitting one of his weak points to her; as, indeed, she could and as, indeed, she did. He wonders why she found the particular play and the particular timing fitting; and if he still has the right to resent it and retaliate in kind, or if it would make him, somehow, a bad loser who did not get a joke; but it was not a joke. She was testing him, again, as he used to test her, and as they used to test each other.
There is some vague… bitter disappointment more than anger, somewhere; but he is currently being rescued.
“The sack, too, brother,” his sister is telling him now, eyeing him critically as she is sitting on top of a stack of gold ingots, dangling her short legs in her short azure skirt. “Pangur, into the bag. Don’t peek out.”
Later, invisible, they leave the treasury, go past all the other cells in the dank, torch-lit stone dungeon, where the other prisoners, those who can be kept together, and not in solitary confinement, are limply sitting; and then, past the guards’ room, where the four men are all asleep over their cards and wine. (“A stinking cloud and some sleeping darts,” Imoen stated laconically before they set off.)
Their invisibility dispels when they dominate the two guards at the top of the stairs and order the sentries to think that they will see them not ascending the rough, stone stairs leading out of the prison, but rather descending the nearby wide, marble, carpeted stairs leading to the first floor. Imoen, apparently, discarded her earlier impractical objections to charming their supposedly fellow humans; her brother finds this intriguing as he summons his wizard eye. The eye peeks out; and, once the only other person in the almost empty lobby leaves, they enter.
Halfway through the hall, they sense and see two paladins coming out of a side corridor. The pair is without armour, but definitely armed; and, on seeing the two people, one of whom is pretending to have stomach-ache, they move straight towards them.
“What happened, my child?” the middle-aged woman asks with interested worry.
“It is nothing, Madam Paladin,” Imoen says in a slightly hesitant, awed voice whose accent corresponds with the quality of her dress. “I think that the local food didn’t go well with my big friend here. We’re going outside for a walk in fresh air.”
“Perhaps we may help?” the young man supplies. “If we laid hands on thy comrade—”
“No, really, it’s not necessary,” Imoen interrupts quickly as Sarevok silently curses all do-gooders and their untimely offers of help. “To tell the truth, I don’t think—I don’t think that he is much used to being inside,” she finishes in a conspiratorial, operatic whisper seasoned with a fair measure of an almost aristocratic scandal. “Aerie said—” she adds, slightly louder, as he groans in mock pain, and doubles lightly, “—Oh. Excuse me. We’d better get going.”
“Aye,” the woman says as the man is beginning to frown; something alerted him to some incongruence in the scene. Possibly, the unexplained darkness in his interlocutors’ souls; or possibly, Sarevok’s invisible wizard eye, hovering impertinently not five steps in front of his righteous head.
“Pass to Mazzy the best regards from Elanor Argrim, will you, girl?” the woman says, with a smile. “I’m not sure if I manage to catch her today, and we fought once together.”
“I will,” Imoen promises; and the siblings move on, as, behind them, the male paladin starts, almost inaudibly, to chant a prayer.
They are passing another pair of guards and opening the building’s entrance door when Sarevok’s spell goes its way and the wizard eye disappears, leaving him in darkness and almost, by reflex, opening his real eyes to see and be discovered. He manages to overcome the impulse, and thus does not see the perplexed paladin’s face as the man finishes his chant, discovers no invisible creature around, and is promptly smacked over the head by his partner Elanor; but Imoen does. She takes her brother lightly by the arm; together, the siblings walk out through the massive ebony door, down the fifteen low stairs, past the last pair of guards, straight about a hundred steps, and round a corner to the right.
“You can open your eyes now, brother,” Imoen says, not sounding at all relieved.
-----
It is night; they are now several streets away from the magistrate; and Kriemhild is waiting for them with the horses when they shed their invisibility again. She hands him Deneb’s and Grasshopper’s reins.
“Halarn narrgh-shr’ha?” he growls at her in orcish. Are you coming, bondswoman?
“This one, esteemed husband, begs to be excused for not accompanying him in his travel. The—” a brief hesitation; a sister is a female, but his wife knows that his sister is not treated like an orcish female; eventually, she settles on, “The Imoen will hopefully be perhaps kind enough to be pressed upon to explain why, as soon as possible,” she finishes, and disappears behind a corner as he weighs up in his mind that Kriemhild is wearing decent, human clothes under her scarlet cloak; and that, apart from her father’s bone club and the scimitar he gave her, she also has a crossbow; and Imoen’s archer’s bracers.
Imoen and Kriemhild understand each other adequately, then, he thinks as he follows his sister and her cat out of the city through the open southern gates; soon, they are on the dark Athkatlan road, lit only by the light of the gibbous moon; following an eagle who has joined them, silently and with barely a word of greeting, just outside the town.
There appears to exist a female conspiracy to keep him uninformed, he smirks; and considers. The Mazzy mentioned must be that halfling whose party Imoen once planned to join, Mazzy—
“Mazzy Fentan, brother,” Imoen says quietly, slowing to a canter in the middle of the dark forest which stretches south to the druid lands which are barred to him; the uneven road here is barely visible in the weak light she summoned. “She was the one who organised the charity auction to fund the local school. I—”
Suddenly, she sighs, halts her mare altogether, and asks, “Have you ever considered asking me to undo the geas cast on you, brother?”
The question is sudden enough, and unexpected enough, that he also halts Grasshopper. “More than once,” he admits, truthfully, hoping that the truth will set him free. “Why do you ask, sister?”
“When we were leaving Athkatla, too?” she demands, and he finds himself scowling here, in this darkness, this windless forest, these sounds of woods and Altair’s wings and the neighing and the dancing of horses; in this weak light which, if there is any pursuit organised after them, will tell the pursuers that someone is here. It is not the best of moments for heart-to-heart chats, he should tell the little sister, who already knows it; instead, he says, “Perhaps. I do not remember. I do not believe so. Why do you ask?” he repeats as he begins to understand why; and then, he adds, with almost uncontained anger, “I told you to leave this matter alone, sister.”
“Why?” she demands. “So that I would not learn what the geas is about? I did, you know,” she says; accuses him more than says, and he refuses to let himself be accused. “By the way,” she digresses suddenly, “Aran offered me to take your place as his Bhaalspawn pet when his assassins would kill you tomorrow.”
“I remember, you know: when you were taking me from Athkatla, you said there was a reason. That you would let me figure it out on my own,” she speaks as, slowly, they motion their horses back into a canter and he thinks about Aran Linvail and Imoen, and how he wants his man to stay his man, and his sister, his sister. “That it would be eating me— It was, you know. But even when you finally told me, when we were telling each other stuff, here, in Trademeet, you didn’t say a word about a geas. Not a word.”
“It did not appear particularly relevant at that point, sister,” he says, calmly, because he cannot really say how he feels; hot and cold and bitter— He tries to fit words to the feelings he had learnt in Irenicus’ palace: disappointed. Frightened. Angry— None of them fits; and so, he adds, “We were parting, as I recollect.”
“And since then?” Imoen demands. She is angry: frowning and scowling; with her, it is easy to tell what she thinks, even in the weak light, even under that alien, carrot-haired face, even as she’s riding Deneb and he’s riding Grasshopper.
“How do you imagine I should break it to you, sister?” Now, he does know, exactly, what he feels: he feels desperate, feels like laughing. “Once, you were a Shadow Thief, and, unless Aran Linvail allows me to, I cannot kill a known Shadow Thief without dying myself? That is, incidentally, part of why we are sitting here together, drinking wine as you accost me to ask whether my intentions towards Delryn are honourable? Perhaps you should consider whether this omission was, indeed, inauspicious,” he almost barks at her, resentfully, as he spurs Grasshopper on. “But for it, you wouldn’t have a brother.”
“I wouldn’t—? You wouldn’t have a sister to pull you out of prison, Sarevok,” she fires back as she spurs Deneb to follow him.
“I wouldn’t have a sister to put me in one,” he retorts easily, because the retort is obvious.
Imoen is cold now, very cold, almost as cold as she is when she is her other self; she holds back Deneb, forcing him to hold back Grasshopper, and, looking at him, says, “Fine. You are going to Athkatla now, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?” he rejoins just before he remembers a name: Mazzy Fentan. Then, he answers his own question. “No. You aren’t. You are going to join that merry halfling’s do-gooders’ troupe, are you not, sister?” He laughs. “Do they know who you are? Did you find it in yourself to tell them?”
“They know who you are, brother,” Imoen snaps back at him. “They just came from Baldur’s Gate, you know.”
He freezes then; then, unfreezing, strikes back, “Yet they took pity on a murderer… and I should be grateful to them for their folly, should I not? Is that it, sister?”
“No, brother,” Imoen interrupts him, with the viciousness of sudden fatigue. “It’s not. Do what you wish. I don’t think I care. Deneb is still mine, isn’t she?”
He looks at his sister, and thinks that, if he returns to Athkatla, free, Aran, Aran the thief and the politician, Aran will take him back; that in Athkatla is Bodhi, who escaped the paladins—or, at least, it is there that he should start searching for her, because it is there that the vampire was last seen; that Aran’s underlings must have found their way back to Irenicus’ laboratory under Waukeen’s Promenade already; that that way is power, and revenge, and patricide, and a throne.
“Yes,” he replies curtly. “She is.”
They ride on, in silence, at leisure, through the darkness, through the forest, following Altair; until, unable to bear his curiosity any longer, he asks, without feeling, without looking at Imoen, “What will you be doing with the halfling, sister?”
“You mean, brother, what do merry do-gooders do when they are not busy breaking outlaws out of prisons on the one condition that nobody dies in the process?” Imoen asks in turn, and she is still angry, and tired, and sad, and not in any small measure disappointed. “A courier came to Trademeet today from one of the villages nearby… Imnesvale, I think, it’s called. In the Umar Hills. They have some problems, they wouldn’t explain what with, precisely, and we’re going there to help them. And there won’t be much in the way of payment, either, I don’t think— These are not mercenaries, brother. They cleared out Durlag’s Tower, if you know where that is, and then went on a sea trip and found Balduran’s ship, but mostly, they don’t do adventuring for fun or money, but to help people. To help people they don’t know,” she repeats, highly, loudly, enunciating—driving each word like a white-hot nail into his mind; she wants to make a point.
“I know,” he replies, as conciliatorily as he can, “I heard the stories, too, sister. Fentan can be difficult, they say.”
Imoen shrugs, and now, she is definitely more disappointed than angry. “No more than you, brother, I think. If someone challenges her. And she can’t exactly count on your physical assets.”
Curious, he ignores the barb. “How did you convince her?”
“I told her, brother, that there is a chance that one day, you would be a good man,” Imoen states flatly, with lethal calm, and there is a mutual silence as she must be waiting for his ridicule, and he does not want to ridicule her, not now. They should not part in anger, and she already knows what he is thinking. That is why she is silent.
“I thought so,” she picks up, morosely, a moment later, “for a moment, you know, when I was leaving you with Trawl— It’s been ten days today, brother,” she digresses, suddenly. “I even looked into my diary, because it feels like so much longer… But it’s been ten days. We left Athkatla ten days ago. So, I thought— They are not silly people. They just want— like— prefer to help other people,” she changes the topic again, and because she does, and is shaken, he replies, carefully maintaining a level tone of voice, “Are you implying that you believed that I might want to join them, sister?”
“I’m saying that they said they would take you, brother,” Imoen replies curtly, and now, the laughter almost breaks out again; apparently, he has been found to be good enough for a troupe of adventurers.
He does not; and for a moment, there is only the pit-a-pat of the horses’ hooves. What is a tenday of humanity next to an eternity of divinity?
“It’s like chess, really,” his sister says, meanwhile, now blatant in her attempt to manipulate him. “You can castle on the kingside, or on the queenside— The kingside is more secure, of course, but… Aren’t you even curious what it’s like, brother?”
Now, he is extremely, genuinely surprised: it all lies in the hidden, unconscious semantics of the wording— For there to be a queenside and a kingside, there first has to be a side; apparently, they are one. Even if the little sister, he smirks, ascribed to herself the more powerful role… But the king, my fair sibling, is more important.
“It’s one of those places where people either live all life or go to lose themselves. Imnesvale. No one cares for it, as long as they pay their taxes. That’s why Mazzy and us have to go help them. Because no one else will— But I don’t want to spoil this, either,” the little sister dithers again, as if slightly embarrassed; but she simply must mention the matter aloud. It is important to her. “I want to stay with them, for a bit, you know.”
This is the one important question he, in turn, must ask. “Hence, sister, you intend to hold me accountable for every single one of my moves? Question my motives at each and every turn? Treat me as if I were still a prisoner, if on a parole?”
Imoen, extremely, genuinely surprised, delivers the earnest, honest, candid killing blow. “I didn’t know that my trust is so important for you, brother.”
Sarevok finally laughs, wildly, with release; and asks, “Where is your rook, sister?”
-----
Afterwards, there is a long, silent ride in the darkness, following the sound of an eagle’s wings: first, west, to the border of the forest; then, north, on the forest’s edge; then, north-east, through fields and meadows and small copses of trees, keeping away from any houses and circling the city of Trademeet from afar.
Then, they find a road; a path rather than a road, unpaved and easy to miss; they ride north up it, for a moment, until Altair and Imoen notice some landmark he does not; for then, they all leave the road—
There is a grove, a dell, a stream; and, finally, a fire, and voices, and faces, and the clatter of drawn weapons.
“Who goes?” a commanding female voice demands.
“Murder,” Imoen answers briefly, with relief; he can not read her face, with its spoilt, smeared make-up, well enough to see how much heart there is in the jest, or if it is a jest at all.
They halt and dismount; there are six faces around the fire. He is not surprised to see Kriemhild here, and the unarmed, ugly boy, more likely than not, is the courier sent to Trademeet for help; the rest—
“Little brother…”
This is important to me. Do not spoil it, brother.
“Meet the Fentan Knights: Mazzy…”
A halfling woman, stern, attractive and not yet middle-aged; she has auburn hair, unsmiling eyes, golden armour of a clearly dwarven make, a bow on her back and a sword by her side. She is almost already that age when the decent halfling woman does nothing but smoke a pipe with her husband on the porch of their hut, watching over a crowd of their pea-sized, pea-brained children— Or, possibly, like Mitsu, whose thirst for danger did not quench in youth, either, she is a hard-hearted assassin; or, if not assassin, then a burglar, or thief.
Mazzy is neither: she neither wants children nor wants to keep close to the shadows and the ground; she would be a paladin, if she could; she could not find herself a halfling husband, and she had to satisfy herself with a human, her sister told his sister with bitter resentment intriguing in one who was kin to the heroine of Trademeet.
—If he reads Mazzy’s mirthless eyes correctly, which he does, Mazzy’s human is dead. This, if anything, makes her even more fascinating; for fascinating she is, every bit as fascinating as the tales about her. They measure each other for several heartbeats, and, though she barely reaches to his waist, hostile, suspicious and unfriendly, she withstands the full force of his intent, focused gaze. Not many humans are capable of that.
“Anchev,” she says dryly; so, this is how Mazzy Fentan wants it— “Lady Fentan,” he replies agreeably, avoiding the confrontation, for now.
“Nalia…”
Nalia, Imoen says, and he sees the original to his sister’s facsimile: fine legs. Finer breasts. Carrot, braided hair, brown eyes, regular features, slight softness of the body which adds to all the right curves; a hooded azure-and-or wizard robe which accentuates them; tactful make-up, a signet ring and a very aristocratic scandal in her eyes as she catches his own, vulgarly wandering and vulgarly appreciating the view, and arcs a carefully tended eyebrow. The scandal promptly turns into intrigue when he bows his head lightly, smirking in unapologetic acknowledgment of his, again, temporary, defeat; and when she hears him speak as he says, “Nalia.”
“Sarevok,” Nalia replies, unsure, perhaps, of how to address him.
There is a story behind Nalia, too, and he is as intrigued as she is, though he hides it better. But Imoen moves on already, watching him with mixed curiosity and laughter; and, promptly, he understands why.
“Aerie…”
After Mazzy and Nalia— Aerie, for one thing, is an elf.
Aerie is small, fine-boned and delicate, shorter even than Imoen herself is, even when his sister is not wearing high-heeled boots to make herself almost three inches shorter than Nalia. Aerie is also, it is impossible not to notice, a blue-eyed blonde; and, from a certain point of view, that is enough. She, and Nalia, and Mazzy… A part of him is on the verge of sharing in his sister’s hilarity. Why, with Kriemhild—
It does not do, however, to start a professional relationship with cheap advances; or, at least, he corrects smiling as he recalls certain incidents from his past, it does not do to do so unless cheap advances are expected— And Aerie, who in her loose, white and gold robe has a certain quiet god-given aura around herself, is, very obviously, painfully obviously, pregnant.
“H-hello,” she says, blushing lightly, reminding him slightly of Anomen Delryn; Anomen Delryn in Aran Linvail’s colouring.
“Hello, Aerie,” he growls softly, and watches, amused, how Aerie’s large eyes grow even larger. She looks ready to run, that very moment and her condition notwithstanding; and, at the same time, rooted by fear to her spot.
But, again, he is the newcomer and the client here, and Imoen is watching; and there is no challenge in terrifying little, pretty Aerie—now, Nalia and Mazzy; especially Mazzy— He thus takes his eyes off the blushing elf; and now, he knows where his malodorous clothes had come from; for Imoen concludes:
“…and Minsc.”
And there is a hamster.
