“Sh-she is beautiful,” the elf said. Then, she sighed. “Oh, to be able to fly again!”
Imoen frowned. “Again?”
They were sitting in the enchanted herbal garden, all three of them: Kriemhild, in her new, brown, linen dress, and she, and the elf, whose name was Aerie, and who had come that morning from the city to visit the druids. It was hot—there would be a storm later that day—and the herbs, barely grown as they were, were surrounded by a cloud of smells. There was parsley, and sage, and rosemary, and thyme; and many other herbs, the smell of some of which brought up a small smile to Imoen’s face.
The elf and she would return to Trademeet together, and then, Imoen would learn what Aran Linvail’s reply to her message would be. But the elf was pregnant, and the walk in the hot day had tired her. “I-I have an enchanted belt to help me,” she had said, modestly, “but I do not like to use it unless I have to.” That was why they were sitting, drinking the bitter herbal tea and talking as Imoen waited for Aerie to rest; and the conversation turned to Altair, who was perched nearby, with her head under her wing, asleep.
Imoen looked at Kriemhild, who was eyeing the elf with open distrust and jealousy; for a good reason, perhaps, because Aerie was everything Kriemhild was not: delicate, elven, and beautiful, with porcelain skin, large, blue eyes, and long, fair hair. It took just Aerie’s presence in the room for Kriemhild to instantly become a half-beast again— Aerie was also, unfortunately, not a bad person, and it was hard not to like her. Even in spite of her childlike looks which just… begged men to take care of her.
Imoen, sipping her tea, smiled, thinking of what her brother’s reaction to the elf would be. Either he would resolve that she is a weakling, unworthy of one glimmer of His Brilliance’s golden eyes, she decided, or he would be the first to fall under the expectant mother’s wide-eyed, innocent charm—
Or both. It, too, was possible. The mind was a miraculous thing this way; for now, though, it was Aerie—who, though large-eyed and rather terrified, had wavered only for the shortest moment before greeting Kriemhild exactly as she had greeted Imoen—Aerie who was marvelling over Sarevok’s hunting bird.
“Yes,” she was saying. “I— I had w-wings, once— M-my people belong to a race of w-winged elves called the avariel… But m-my wings had to be c-cut off when I w-was captured— I still m-miss them, s-sometimes… The f-feel of the w-wind in my feathers and in my hair… I— I’m sorry,” she said, blushing and lowering her eyes. Kriemhild laughed, hoarsely, with malice in her hard black eyes; and, not for the first time, Imoen wondered how much her intelligent sister-in-law actually understood from what was being said. More than she was letting out, she suspected.
Aerie seemed genuinely hurt; she twitched lightly, casting a surprised look in the half-orc’s direction. “Don’t mind her, please,” Imoen said, feeling the need to apologise. “She— I don’t want to talk about this, because I don’t think she would want me to, but please don’t mind her. You know,” she smiled, trying to smooth out the bad impression, “I think that my brother would understand you better than I do. He flies Altair— I mean. She’s his familiar, so he feels what she feels when she’s flying, sort of. And he’s ridden a dragon.”
It was perhaps only now, in this cosy, languid atmosphere of a mid-morning tea, that the full impact of what this meant struck her. He had ridden a dragon. Sarevok had actually… ridden a dragon. And survived to be scolded by her. She smiled, suddenly proud of her dragon-riding brother.
Aerie, meanwhile, was frowning. “He has?”
“Yes, he has,” Imoen nodded. “We were fighting the dragon, and he jumped on his back—” She broke off, because, if Aerie’s eyes were to be any indication, the elf was already very much impressed. “You f-fought a dragon?” she asked.
Imoen laughed. “Yes. Kriemhild was there, too—”
-----
“And where is your brother now?” Aerie asked when the tale, carefully edited and thus full of laughs—even Kriemhild animated lightly during its telling, and, once, accepted the barley sweetmeats from the plate Aerie offered to her—was finished.
“He’s—” Imoen stopped, suddenly at a loss of words; then, she looked at the sun and at the hour. “Actually, he should be in Trademeet by now,” she said, in the end, “And I ought to be there, too. Can you walk now?”
Aerie nodded. “Yes. I-I think so.”
“Good. Kriemhild, do you want to go with us to the city?” The half-orc’s face was unreadable, and so, she tried again. “Kriemhild. Imoen—” pointing to herself, “—go—” several steps, “—Trademeet,” pointing in the city’s direction; finally, “Kriemhild?” Rising intonation; she remembered that Sarevok used it in orcish when he asked questions. “Go?” A brief walk again. “Stay?” A categorical halt. Her sister-in-law must be having a fine laugh at her expense now, she thought darkly.
If Kriemhild did, she gave no hint of it; instead, she scratched her head, and said, slowly, probing, “Shtay.” Imoen silently thanked both Oghma and Ilmater for this small miracle.
Aerie, now afoot, was watching the pantomime with a lightly perplexed frown; “I’m sorry. But it is really up to her to decide how much of her story she’ll want to have told, I think,” Imoen said.
“I— I think I understand,” Aerie said, with the kind of small smile which was rather genuine than polite. “We can go, I t-think. Bye, Kriemhild!”
The half-orc grunted something not too civil in response.
-----
Kriemhild, at least, has the excuse of being a half-orc raised among orcs, Imoen thought furiously after she received Aran Linvail’s message, which, in very polite, circumspect and uncertain terms, meant that Imoen had to break Sarevok out of prison by herself, if she absolutely insisted on doing it; if she did not, she was always welcome to take her brother’s place by the Shadowmaster’s side—and after she suffered the Lady Itona’s reception. The woman enjoyed her small grudges so much that Imoen sincerely wondered how the Trademeet guild could function at all with such a mistress.
A small crowd gathered in the marketplace, near the sausage-inna-bun peddler she meant to carefully circle in a wide arc as she would search for something to eat.
“What’s going on?” she asked a nearby gnome.
“Oh, it’s jus’em philosophers, goin’ at it again,” she replied; Imoen sighed and, taking care not to lose her purse to some brother or sister in trade, elbowed her way through the commotion. Philosophical discussions in Trademeet could turn nasty. She still remembered the brawl incited by Parmenides’ imprudent, unconsidered claim that ‘anything exists, and nothingness does not exist’—Sarevok had been in a particularly amused mood afterwards—
“RRRAAAGH!” she heard suddenly. “Minsc and Boo will save the little man!”
Imoen halted, blinked, and— Dare I? she thought. Perhaps I dare.
The man inside the circle of onlookers was very, very tall—but my brother is taller, she thought smugly—bald, and dressed in rough skins and wool, and in tall boots with fur sticking out of them, which he must be far too warm in in this hot day. He was carrying on his back a large, heavy, two-handed sword—but Sarevok’s was much sharper and better enchanted, she could bet—and a long bow and a quiver. He looked almost as much out of place in Trademeet as Kriemhild would; and he was charging—no: tripping a man who had attacked… Diogenes, by the looks of it. Imoen wondered what the old cynic had said this time, and to infuriate whom.
Now, the old, almost naked, long-bearded and rake-thin thinker was berating the man who had come to his defence, hitting him lightly on the shin with his cane. “…you tried to disprove my argument, you bad, bad man! Violence is never the solution to a conflict!”
His much better dressed opponent—Aristippus, perhaps: Diogenes and he were ancient enemies—pshaw-ed. “It appears I won the debate,” he stated haughtily. “We’re leaving, Huntley.”
His bodyguard, still hissing, got himself up from the ground, and the pair left the scene; Diogenes took one last jab at his defender, and, casting suspicious looks at the winner’s back, departed in the precisely opposite direction; the crowd, seeing that the show was over, also scattered. Only the unwitting hero of the performance remained on the ground, clearly confused by the lack of gratitude and the philosophical resolution of the incident.
Imoen saw him closer and up front then: he had tattoos on his face which looked like some tribal markings, and which corresponded well with his barbarian garb—but which also managed to look a lot as if some child had played with face paint and had painted his face while the man had been asleep… There was a wide purple ring over his right eye, his right temple and his right cheek; to her other eyes—
The man carefully cupped his palms by the opening of his bag; a moment later, he brought them close to his ear. “What says you, Boo?” he asked, in a voice which carried such a thick, heavy accent Imoen could barely understand it now that the sentence had not been bellowed out at top voice. “Ah.”
Suddenly, the man—who must be the Minsc of the Minsc-and-Boo gig, then—turned to Imoen and, after displaying an impressive complement of white teeth in a wide smile, said, “Boo says that heroes are heroes, and do the butt-kicking, and the little men argue later that they must not. But without the butt-kicking, there would be no little men to argue. Ergo, Boo says, Minsc and Boo did the right thing.” He frowned. “Though Minsc does not know what ‘ergo’ means.”
The man was possessed, insane, or otherwise not in his right mind; Imoen, aware of her weapons, did not run away. “Er. Boo is right, I think,” she said weakly.
Minsc smiled again. “He is. Boo is never wrong! Do you want to see him?”
“Er,” Imoen said, in spite of her weapons backing off a step. “It’s not necessary, really…”
However, Minsc already put out one giant palm, and bid her, invitingly, “Look!”
She did; and, to her relief, saw that it was only a hamster. Well, fine, she thought. He thinks that his hamster is speaking to him. And perhaps he’s even right. I think I once talked to a chicken.
“Very… Er, nice,” she said, politely; then, as the hamster was retrieved, she sighed; and then, smiling through her teeth—no one else remained, of course, now that the brawl was over—she said, “I must go, Minsc. It looks like it’s about to rain. Which way are you going? Perhaps we’ll go together part of the way?” Did no one really care that a heavily armed hamster-talking giant was on the loose in a place with children?
Suddenly, the wide smile disappeared: Minsc grew, in a way, as sad as Aerie had been that morning when Kriemhild had laughed at her. “Boo says,” he said, “that the little girl is scared, and that she does not really want Minsc to go with her—”
Boo was, apparently, an amazingly perspicacious hamster. Even though the little girl in question was furious rather than scared.
“—so Minsc and Boo will go home now,” the man finished, standing up from the ground, and Imoen immediately felt bad for feeling relief.
“It’s been nice meeting you, in that case, Minsc,” she lied. “And Boo really is right,” she added, because that much, at least, was true. “You did do the right thing.”
The man was not to be deceived by her belated politeness. “Minsc and Boo will go now,” he repeated, sadly, and went away, leaving her feeling rather rotten.
She left, too, hoping that the man really had someone to take care of him; he appeared to mean no harm, but, with his sheer physical strength, he might harm someone without even meaning it— Then, again, someone had given him his sword and his bow; though whether this meant that Minsc could be trusted with them, or simply that his guardian was a very, very reckless person, was beyond her reckoning.
Hamsters! She shook her head; but she had not lied to Minsc about one thing: it was, indeed, about to rain. Fortunately, she was near Vyatri’s pub and inn, the most expensive and her and her brother’s favourite haunt in Trademeet; and, as she had just remembered, she was hungry.
She would not find peace in the cool, thick walls of the tavern, though; as soon as she was seated, and as soon as she ordered—pork chops and dumplings, with a side dish of vegetables and a glass of red wine, nothing special—someone approached her. She looked up: it was a carrot-haired young woman, about her own age, but taller than her, in a blue dress, and on it, an azure cloak which Imoen remembered contemplating buying herself; and, all in all, beyond the cloak’s visage-deforming illusion, rather attractive. She also had a dagger and a purse which just might hide spell components.
“Excuse me,” she said, “But I can’t help wondering— Might I join you?”
“That depends,” Imoen replied, smiling. “I don’t think that you are an assassin, unless you are a very polite one. All the same, I must ask you to keep your hands where I can see them, after you take the cloak off. Also, if you’re looking for company, I’m not in the mood right now. And, if you’re not, this leaves the question what it is you’re looking for.”
Apparently, she managed to utterly scandalise the redhead; because, as she seated herself, carefully keeping her hands on top of the table, the woman asked, “Are you always this—this direct—or is it just with me?”
“Let’s just say that you found me on a bad day,” Imoen replied. “My brother is in prison,” I have to figure out how to pull him out myself, because his boyfriend’s threatening to kill him, “and I’ve just talked to a man with a hamster—”
The redhead frowned. “You talked to Minsc?”
Imoen started. “You know him? Doesn’t matter, really— Who are you, and what do you want? Thank you for not killing me so far, by the way.”
A frozen smile. “I’m feeling more like it every second. Aerie told me—”
“Oh, and so you know Aerie, too,” Imoen interrupted, casually re-evaluating her interlocutor over the dish the waitress had just brought.
“Yes, I do,” the woman replied curtly; then, to the waitress, “Only a glass of wine, thank you.” She turned back to Imoen. “Aerie told me that you have a pair of horses. A golden, heavyset stallion called Grasshopper, and a rose grey jennet mare.”
“Deneb,” Imoen nodded over her dumplings. “Yes, I do. What of it?”
“How much would you want for the pair of them?”
Imoen started. “They are not for sale. Money’s not an issue,” she added, anticipating the next question. “Aerie might have mentioned to you that I raided a red dragon’s lair recently… after killing its inhabitant,” she added, in case the veiled threat was not clear enough.
The redhead sighed. “I really caught you on a bad day, didn’t I? Can’t I, at least, convince you to think about it?” she added when Imoen offered no reply; then, squeezing together her lips, evidently coming to some sort of important decision, “I— Please understand… If these are the horses I’m thinking of, they once belonged to my family. Grasshopper was my father’s, and the mare—her name is Buffy, by the way—she was… she was mine. We lost them in very… very unhappy circumstances. I would really like to get them back. I can pay you more than a fair amount.”
Imoen frowned, and did yet another, much slower and thorough re-evaluation of the taller woman, now playing with her wine glass nervously, clearly unwilling to drink from it. “I think,” she said carefully, “that I have been told that Grasshopper and Deneb once belonged to some prince.” Anomen even said a name, she remembered, though she did not remember the name. “D’Ar— d’An— d’Anise?” she hazarded.
The pretty redhead sighed again, this time utterly miserably. “D’Arnise. And not a prince. A duke. Beyond that, you are, essentially, correct.”
“You don’t look like a duchess,” Imoen retorted by reflex.
The woman laughed. “How do you think a duchess should look like? But yes, you are right, again. That would be the ‘dispossessed after her father’s assassination’ part, I’m afraid.” Suddenly, she drank her wine; all of it in one go.
Imoen blinked. “I’m sorry,” she said; to her own surprise, she found herself believing the woman’s story.
What a day, she thought. First, a wingless winged elf, then a hamster-talking barbarian, and now, a dispossessed heiress… It’s almost on par with yesterday. Perhaps I should start a ranking of the days of my life.
“Listen,” she said, “d’Arnise—”
“Nalia,” the redhead interrupted.
“Imoen,” Imoen replied with a smile. “Listen, Nalia. The truth is that— Well. The truth is that Deneb and Grasshopper are not really mine. Or, well, Deneb may be, but Grasshopper is my brother’s—”
“That would be the dragon-riding brother who is currently in prison?” Nalia interrupted, in an alarming display of good memory and faculty for logic.
“Yes, it would,” Imoen replied levelly. “Grasshopper is his. And, actually, they are both probably neither his nor mine, but a friend’s of my brother’s—” who told me today that he would try to kill Sarevok, soon, because business was business— “So, I’m sorry. Even if I wanted to sell them both to you, I really couldn’t.”
She shrugged. “So. That’s how it looks. It’s not up to me. I’m sorry. You’d better go… Say hello to Minsc and Aerie from me.”
-----
Nalia d’Arnise left the tavern soon after. Imoen ate the rest of her dumplings, pork and vegetables, drank another glass of wine, and also set off, into a torrential rain. It didn’t look like the downpour was going to stop anytime soon, and she’d better return to Kriemhild.
First, though, she turned towards the council building and took a quick peek through Pangur’s eyes, telling the cat that under no circumstances should he tell Sarevok that she did so. Her brother was sound asleep; and if she did not know what his sleep must be like; which, now, she did—she would be happy for his moment’s rest.
In any case, walking slowly in the heavy rain, looking through the eyes which were not her own, she did not notice the running halfling. They crashed into each other with an effect which would be comical, but for how painful it was to slide and hit the wet mosaic stones of the Trademeet street.
“Oomph,” the halfling groaned; “I’m sorry, I really am,” Imoen repeated, helping him up. “Hey! I know you!” she exclaimed, seeing the halfling’s face. “You’re the fiancé of Mazzy Fentan’s sister!” She met the man, vaguely, when she had spoken to the sister herself.
“Pala’s, yes,” the distraught halfling replied. “Danno. Although fiancé may be too big a word after what I’ve done— Listen. I don’t have much time. You wanted to meet Mazzy? She’s at home. Unless… Could you help me? I have to go to the temple of Waukeen, it’s—”
“—right behind the corner, I know,” Imoen replied, rather surprised. “What happened?”
“I… Well, I had Pala drink a love potion,” Danno said, ashamed, as they started for the temple in a hurried march. “It turns out that it may have been poisoned. Either by accident…”
“…or on purpose,” Imoen finished, checking her weapons for the hundredth time that day.
“Yes,” the halfling nodded. “Wallace says he bought the potions from a man at the temple. And the usual antidotes won’t work.”
The woman sighed, and followed. The day was moving up and up in the ranking of interest.
-----
Barl, for that was the poisoner’s name, was a worshipper of Talona, the poisoners’ goddess; he had managed to insinuate himself into Waukeen’s temple due to the weakness of Waukeen’s clergy—
They managed to subdue him, in the end, the two other priests, Imoen and Danno; subdue him, and destroy the poison mists he called to his aid. But they found no antidote in the room they searched when he died to the venom he swallowed as they were subduing him; only the recipe for the extremely complex poison.
Apparently, Danno’s love-struck foolery and Pala Fentan’s idiosyncratic reaction to a test sample released by mistake saved the halfling population of Trademeet from extinction: Barl had meant to poison the wells. Still, there was no antidote.
“Can you two go and try to cure the poison? Or slow it down, at least?” Imoen asked the horrified, mortified priests; if Pala lived that long after ingesting the toxin, it might just be possible to cure her. “And Danno—can you go to the druid embassy, and ask Cut-Face to come here, and bring Adratha’s book? He’ll know what I mean. Take the horses when you return. There will be a lot of running around if we manage to figure out the antidote— Some of the things here look pretty rare…” she muttered to herself as she eyed the poison recipe; she was beginning to understand where Edwin’s habit had come from. “Ooze mephit liver—”
When Cut-Face came and brought Adratha’s book with him, Imoen was sitting by Barl’s small, makeshift set of alembics, working out the antidotes to the poison components. She greeted the old druid’s arrival with great relief: she knew the basics of the alchemical arts, and poisons, but had never intended to be a specialist. Cut-Face’s knowledge of natural toxins would be helpful.
It took, in all, four hours to figure out the antidote components and the tentative way to combine them so that they would not neutralise each other; Danno was sent to spoil the merchants’ well-earned rest, dinners and suppers, and force them to re-open their stalls and shops and sell him the necessary items—
There were two shadows on the floor, of two people standing in the entrance to Barl’s cell and laboratory. Imoen looked up; and was not exactly surprised to see that it was Nalia d’Arnise, and the avariel Aerie.
It was— It was more like the last piece of a puzzle falling into its proper place: after all, how else but in an adventurers’ party could a dispossessed heiress to a duchy have met a wingless winged elf and a half-wit barbarian with a hamster?
The two women understood that she did; Aerie smiled. “W-we sent Minsc with Danno. S-sorry for coming s-so late…”
“We didn’t know what happened,” Nalia added. “Pala’s stable, but the priests say that to heal her, they must have the antidote.”
Imoen nodded. “We’re almost done figuring out the recipe, but we still have to prepare the stuff. There’s plenty of work for you two.”
-----
Cut-Face took Minsc, half the antidote components, and set off for the druids’ dwelling; they would double up the work this way, just to make sure that if something went wrong during the preparation in one place, the other team would carry on the work, and less time would be lost. Imoen told him to try and tell Kriemhild what was happening; she was feeling bad on her sister-in-law’s account. She must really spend more time with the half-orc. But Aerie and Nalia were… were fun.
They were both almost useless in the laboratory: Nalia, who was a wizard, had no experience in the preparation of potions; Aerie, who had, was pregnant, and so, had to leave the small, stuffy room when it started to fill with the noxious fumes. But later…
…later, when the initial preparation of the components was finished, and the work was almost doing itself, and all that remained was to whisper, at times, an incantation to instantly cool down, or heat up, a concoction; or to stir a solution seven times every half an hour for two hours, now deasil, now widdershins; or to filter the precipitate from the supernatant after waiting one hundred and thirteen heartbeats, and add this to that, and separate this other thing from that other thing, and watch the small droplets gathering in the distillers, ano kai kato, ano kai kato, up and down, up and down…
…then, they talked; night came, and they talked, just so that Nalia and Imoen would not fall asleep—Aerie, reluctantly, made use of her enchanted belt to lent her strength not to have to step into her elven reverie. They talked: about magic; about swords, and staves; about dungeons, and dragons; about lost homes; about gained enemies. (“H-haegan,” Aerie said, with utter distaste; “Roenall,” Nalia, in the same tone; “Irenicus,” Imoen said, just not to have to say, ‘my family, and a lot of other people, too’— “T-the Shattered One?” Aerie asked, surprised. “Perhaps,” Imoen replied, “I don’t know.”) About enemies; and friends; and lovers; and family; and gods. (“I still can’t understand how she can pray to Aerdrie Faenya, Baervan Wildwanderer and Ilmater at the same time,” Nalia said, shaking her head; Aerie giggled. “They all listen,” she said, as if that explained anything.)
Much remained unsaid, and much of the talk was, very much on purpose, about lighter matters: for example, the latest news from and the latest fashion in Baldur’s Gate, where Skie Silvershield and Aldeth Sashenstar-Silvershield, her husband the latest addition to the complement of the four Dukes and Duchesses, were the heart and soul of every gathering. “Skie Silvershield is pregnant,” Nalia said. “H-half of the noble ladies in Baldur’s Gate are,” Aerie added. “Long-time visionaries, I guess,” Imoen laughed. “But it’s very easy to buy robes,” Aerie finished, blushing, with one hand on her belly—
-----
“Mmm?” Imoen asked, wiping the saliva and the blood from the corner of her mouth. She had slept a bit, and it had been a nightmare.
“I said that for an adventurer, you have a heavy sleep,” a businesslike female voice answered. “The dagger is not necessary, by the way. Aerie let me in. I’m Mazzy Fentan.”
Imoen started into a sit. The halfling had brown, sharp eyes, was dressed in chain mail, and reminded her, for some reason, of Jaheira. “You’re Mazzy Fentan?”
“Yes,” the older woman replied. “You’ve hurt yourself.”
“It’s nothing. It’s psychosomatic, I mean.”
The halfling laughed. “By their words, you shall know them— If I had had any doubt that you were a wizard, this would have dispelled them. Here,” she added, putting one small, slim and warm hand on Imoen’s cheek. “I may not be a paladin, but it has been given to me to lay hands on others… Done.”
“Of course,” she said, moving away and eyeing Imoen curiously, “that it’s psychosomatic only begs for the question what kind of stress you are passing through…”
“I see,” she said when Imoen offered no explanation. “We don’t know each other long enough, do we?”
“No,” Imoen replied. “No offence, Miss Fentan—”
“Call me Mazzy. You saved my sister’s life, after all,” the halfling said matter-of-factly.
Imoen looked around the small cell, finally remembering: it was about the seventh hour of the morning when the preparation of the antidote was complete—long past daybreak; the bustle of the city’s traffic under the windows of the cell had almost returned to its usual intensity when she sent Nalia off to the Fentans’ house with the mixture and, utterly exhausted, dropped into the bed and the sleep and the chase and the fighting and—
Sarevok.
She cursed, in a very un-ladylike manner, before she remembered Mazzy’s presence in the room. The halfling was watching her calmly. “I take it that the offer is rejected?” she asked, and, for the first time, the traces of merry, halfling-like sparks showed up in her eyes.
Imoen laughed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I really do have a lot on my mind—”
“Yes,” Mazzy said. “I suppose you do.”
There was a note in her voice which made Imoen pause for a moment. “What do you mean?” she asked carefully at length.
“I met Raissa,” Mazzy said offhandedly. “She told me about the pair of strangers who helped her and Tiris— Apparently, I am not the only one in our neighbourhood who owes much to you. I talked also with Danno, since Pala is still asleep, and he described you and the man who accompanied you. And Aerie told me about that strange aura of yours… And Nalia, this morning, brought the strangest tale from Vyatri’s inn. Apparently, a paladin said—”
“Enough,” Imoen said, resignedly. “I asked what you meant, Mazzy. That there won’t be a place for me in your party?”
The halfling smiled, briefly. “No. Only that if you’re afraid that your secret will be discovered…”
“…it already has,” Imoen finished, still with mixed feelings: gratefulness combined with the wish that every second cleric could not tell that she had a strange aura around her.
“You should, perhaps, be more careful with what you let people know about yourself. We’re departing tomorrow,” Mazzy said, standing up from Imoen’s hard, uncomfortable cot.
Imoen started. “Tomorrow?”
Mazzy nodded. “Yes. We would go today, but there is an auction scheduled for the evening. We cannot put that off, I’m afraid.”
“But,” Imoen started to say, “your sister…”
“Pala should be fine by the evening.”
“But— I mean, when have you come here?”
“The night before yesterday,” Mazzy replied calmly, and Imoen suddenly decided that this was a very meaningful calm; the kind of calm which advised her to drop the topic.
“I’m not going,” she announced instead, swinging her legs to get off the cot.
The halfling closed the door she had been opening, and shook her head. “Yes. I thought that you would say that,” she said, with a slight grimace of the mouth. “You really should be more careful with your information… Aerie and Nalia told me about your brother.”
“Forgive me,” Imoen replied. “I didn’t know that loving my sibling is such a rare and deplorable thing that I should hide it.”
Mazzy’s expression very carefully did not change. “The crux lies, perhaps, in the sibling’s identity?” she suggested, without a trace of merriness. “We have just come from Baldur’s Gate—”
“I know that,” Imoen snapped.
“He will have a just trial. That is more than he would ever let his victims have.”
“I don’t want a just trial. If it’s just, they will kill him.”
The diminutive woman sighed deeply. “Nalia said that you would say that. Aerie said that, if you said that, she would trust your judgment. Nalia agreed. Mercy over law, they said.”
“And what did Minsc say?” Imoen asked, undecided whether to be curious or angry at the way her matters had been discussed behind her back.
“Minsc is against, because there is no righteous butt-kicking involved,” Mazzy replied with a passing smile, before returning to her usual grim face as she added, “This, incidentally, takes us to the next point of order. Though you win the vote, I cannot let anyone die—”
Imoen blinked. “Wait. What are you talking about? In particular,” she added, “if you think that I helped your sister so that you would help me free my brother, forget it. Forget it all. All of it. You owe me nothing.”
Mazzy shook her head. “No,” she replied equivocally, “I don’t think so. But…”
“For your information, I think that one day, my brother can be a good man,” Imoen said with sudden, cold fury.
A bitter grimace crossed Mazzy Fentan’s face.
-----
They all met in the druids’ herbal garden for the discussion of the breakout plan; Imoen sought out Kriemhild and Minsc; in a way, equally curious about them both.
The half-orc, thankfully, did not appear any worse for the wear after the night she had spent alone. She was clean, having, very obviously, washed herself, and she was wearing different clothes than on the day before: a green and red shirt and pants— Her dark eyes were watching the gathering from her impassive face with more curiosity than fright, and rather more curiosity than contempt; she knew about a hundred words of the common tongue and a very rudimentary grammar—and was not afraid to use them; she said, “Hello, Imoen,” when she saw Imoen, and, this time, when asked if she wanted to stay with the druids or go, she rumbled, “Go.”
Imoen was, admittedly, impressed.
Minsc… Minsc was large, boisterous and, apparently, mostly harmless. “We met him near Nashkel,” Nalia explained. “The way he tells it, he is Rashemi, and came to the Sword Coast with some witch of theirs. She died when they were attacked by gnolls, and he could not save her…”
“…b-because he was h-hit on the head,” Aerie added. “They c-captured him and wanted to eat him. W-we saved him…”
“…but by this time, he already had Boo,” Nalia smiled. “He projects his advanced cognition on Boo…”
“…but he has a good heart,” Aerie finished. “H-he knows good from evil.” A small smile. “He calls us his witches now.”
Imoen decided that, for now, until she could form her own opinion about Minsc and his harmlessness, she would trust the two women.
She watched the large man as he was feeding his hamster grains under Altair’s alert eyes; and suddenly, a plan, a crazy plan, a plan which just might work, occurred to her—
She looked at Nalia, now in her sorceress’ cloak again. Hmm…
-----
The auction would start in about an hour, and the interested citizens of the fair city of Trademeet were already beginning to gather in the building of the city council. Imoen would walk in with the biggest crowds; for now, dressed like a noble bore, she was spending her time idling in the marketplace, waiting for her opportunity.
There was a new tent standing where she had first met Minsc earlier that day; it was purple and blue, bright and cheerful, and outside it, a skinny, dark man was rattling a tambourine, advertising:
“Ten gold pieces! Ten gold pieces, and my wife, the illustrious Roma seer Kveroslava, finds lost loves and lost items, tells the truth of things and foretells the future! Do you want to know what man lies in your future, miss?” He flashed in Imoen’s direction a smile of teeth as golden as the masses of his chains and jewellery; a smile as bright and cheerful as the tent, utterly impossible to resist.
She smiled back. “Not really. But I’ll come in. Ten-gold-pieces’ worth of insight for me, please.”
The inside of the tent was dark, warm and stuffy, suffused with the familiar smell of frankincense; Imoen smiled. She could just imagine how happy her brother would be to change into fresh clothes and fresh scent after his stay in prison. And, especially, to change into fresh scent after changing into the clothes she was carrying with herself now.
There was a small, round table, covered with a white lace cloth; on it, a crystal ball, and cards—
“It is the Deck of Many Things,” an accented female voice said. “You will meet it again one day, Daughter of Murder, and will play a game with it, a game whose outcome will echo loudly through the Planes… If you survive. Your path is difficult to predict… Impossible to see directly; there are only the ripples to trace, the fates of the others you affect…”
Imoen shuddered. In spite of being raised in Candlekeep, among Alaundo’s prophecies—or, perhaps, because of it—during the days of the Avatars, the Lord of Murder will spawn a score of mortal progeny…—diviners gave her the creeps, as simple as that. It would be a good thing not to know one’s future; not to know that the future was almost a set thing already.
She heard a deep, hearty laugh. “The one who ignores the past is condemned to repeat it,” the seer’s voice carried on, dimly. “The one who ignores the future, Daughter of Murder, is condemned to live it.”
“In that case, I’d better learn how to play cards well, I suppose,” Imoen retorted, and was greeted by another hearty laugh; and the seer Kveroslava showed herself at last.
She was fat and bronze, with black hair gathered in a bun, black, lively eyes and a black dress; and had a dreadful mass of jingling bracelets and a fine, healthy voice. “That was free advice,” she said. “Not many puissant ones grace Kveroslava’s humble tent. Now, what is your business, woman?”
“My brother—my brother by the name of Sarevok,” Imoen said, remembering that she must have a great many other brothers, too, “He had a geas cast on him, by a thief called Aran Linvail. I need to know what this is about, and how to take it off. Here,” she said, unclasping a golden necklace from her neck. “This once belonged to Linvail, and then, to Sarevok. Perhaps it will help you.”
Kveroslava took the powerful amulet from her hands, and, closing her eyes, seemed to focus on it— However much of the stifling, heavy, mind-thickening atmosphere around Imoen aided the actual divination, and however much of it was simply catering to the public’s expectations, there was no telling; but, soon, words flowed forth.
Imoen listened; heard the answers; recovered the necklace; thanked the seer; left the tent.
So, that was why— And he had not told her, and he had not seen it fit to tell her, and— I wonder how he got round it in Edwin’s case, she thought, very disappointed; then, Perhaps he did not; perhaps that was why he left it to me to kill Edwin, in the end.
He must have been terrified, or amused, perhaps, by the conundrum—partly of his own making, after all: after all, he had told Aran to employ me; so, when Aran had the geas put on him, he could not ask him for my death without drawing even more attention to me than I was drawing to myself. And Aran might possibly decide, as he has decided now, to offer a Bhaalspawn and a thief his pet favourite’s position, and remove from it an ambitious Bhaalspawn with a history of treachery and insanity—
—But he should have told me. Doesn’t he trust me enough to understand?
Then another, less palatable thought: Would I understand?
Then another: Why should I?
A man accosted her. “It’s gonna be a fine auction. The Fentan Knights found the butter knife of Balduran, they say! Sausage inna bun? One teeny gold coin, missus, and that’s…”
“Cutting your own throat?” Imoen asked, and something in that prissy missus’ calm eyes warned the peddler that, despite the cloth and the neighbourhood, the lass would not satisfy herself with adding, ‘it’s easy to arrange, you know;’ instead, be arranged it would.
“Excuse me, missus, wrong person,” he muttered; and backed off.
-----
That same evening, on the isle of Brynnlaw, Joneleth Irenicus inspected the inmates of the former asylum. They all boasted rare, interesting powers—there was Aphril, who could see across the Planes, and Nadjer Skal, who could reach into them—
His eyes stopped. There. The shape-shifting girl had taken his face that day.
“Dili,” he said. “Follow me.”
