A SCENE UNCOMFORTABLY FAMILIAR
Lady Christine, Queen of Damara, sat on the white, iron-backed stool before the grand, platinum-decorated mirror of her vanity. Before her rested an assortment of beauty treatments, jars, and perfumes she had been given as gifts from all over the kingdom, and from Impiltur as well. Her appearance was important, the ladies-in-waiting continually reminded her, for with her stature and with her magnificent husband, she held the hopes and dreams of women across the Bloodstone Lands.
She was an illusion, built to sustain the facade necessary for effective leadership.
Though she had been raised as a noblewoman, Christine was not comfortable with such things. In her heart she was an adventurer, a fighter, a determined voice.
How thin her voice had seemed that day, when Artemis Entreri had been let go. She heard Gareth moving around the bedroom behind her, and saw him flitter across the image at the corner of her mirror. He was on edge, she knew, for her lack of conversation after the release of the assassin had told him clearly that she did not approve.
It was such a coy little game, she thought, the relationship called marriage. They both knew the issue at hand, but they would dance around it for hours, even days, rather than face the volatility head on.
At least, that was the usual way for most couples, but never had demurring been a staple of Lady Christine's emotional repertoire.
"If you would prefer a less opinionated queen, I'm sure one can be easily found," she said. She regretted the sarcasm as soon as the words had left her mouth, but at least she had started the dialogue.
She saw the image of Gareth behind her, and felt his strong and comforting hands come to rest upon her shoulders. She liked the touch of his fingers against her bare flesh, interrupted only by the thin straps of her nightgown.
"What a fool I would be if I desired to be rid of the closest friend and advisor I have ever known," he said, and he bent and kissed her on top of her head.
"I didn't suggest that you be rid of Master Kane," she replied, and she let Gareth see her smile in the mirror.
He joined in her laugh and gently squeezed her shoulders.
Christine turned in her seat and looked at him. "Yet you were quick to dismiss my advice throughout this ordeal with Artemis Entreri and that devilish drow."
Gareth's nodding sigh was one of both agreement and resignation.
"Why?" Christine asked. "What is it you know of them that the rest of us - other than Kane, it seems - do not?"
"I know little of either of them," Gareth admitted. "And I suspect that the world would be a better place with both of them removed from it. Certainly I find few redeeming qualities in the likes of Artemis Entreri or that confounding drow. But neither have I the right to pass such judgment. By all accounts they are innocent of any heinous actions."
"They committed treason to the throne."
"By claiming a land over which no man has rightful dominion?" Gareth asked.
"Yet you went to dethrone them, posthaste."
Gareth nodded again. "I would not let it stand. Vaasa will become a barony of Damara. Of that I am determined. And I am certain it will be done with the blessing and support of every city within our northern neighbor. Surely Palishchuk desires such a union."
"Then which is it? Treason? Or are you a conqueror?"
"A little of both, I suspect."
"And you believe the drow and his wild tale that this was all prearranged?" Christine did not hide her skepticism in the least. "That he planned for you to come so that you could be seen as a hero yet again to the folk of Palishchuk? He is an opportunist in the extreme, and only your quick action prevented him from securing his kingdom!"
"I do not doubt that," said Gareth. "Nor do I underestimate the threat from that one. For him to successfully infiltrate the Citadel of Assassins is no small feat, nor is retrieving the head of Archmage Knellict an action of one who should be easily dismissed. Spysong is watching them, and carefully, I assure you. They will be gone from the land within the tenday, as demanded."
"Or they will be killed?"
"Efficiently," Gareth promised. "Indeed, the dragon sisters have agreed to fly them far from our borders."
"Where they may wreak havoc somewhere else."
"Perhaps."
"And in that admission, do you believe that you serve Ilmater?"
"I often do not know," the man said. He turned away and paced back to the side of the bed.
Christine shifted her chair so that she could face him directly, and earnestly asked, "What is it, my love? What hold has this man upon you?"
Gareth stared at her and let a long moment pass silently, then said, "The experience with Artemis Entreri will make me a better king."
That proclamation made Lady Christine raise her eyebrows. "In that you are determined that you will not become akin to him?" she asked, and her inflection revealed doubt and confusion with every word.
"No, that is not the point," Gareth replied. "But in my private conversation with Artemis Entreri, he was correct in that neither blood nor a disconnected deed is the true measure of leadership. My actions now, and now alone, can justify this title I hold dear... and it is an empty title unless it is one that truly represents the hopes, dreams, and betterment of the people of the kingdom - of all the people of the kingdom."
"Artemis Entreri told you that?" Christine asked, not attempting to mask the doubt in her voice.
"I'm uncertain that he understood what he was asking," said Gareth. "But in essence, yes, that is exactly what he told - what he taught - to me. I rule Damara, and wish to bring Vaasa under my fold in the single Kingdom of Bloodstone. But that decision must be one that serves the betterment of the folk of Vaasa, else I am no more worthy to claim this title than - "
"Than Entreri, Jarlaxle, or Zhengyi?"
"Yes," said Gareth, and he nodded as he looked at her, his eyes set with determination, his lips showing that optimistic and hopeful grin that so endeared him to almost everyone who had ever looked upon him. Against that sincere expression, Lady Christine could not maintain her resentment.
"Then let the image of Artemis Entreri linger in your thoughts, my love, for the good of Damara and Vaasa," she said. "And let the man be far gone from here, his dark elf friend beside him."
"For the good of Damara and Vaasa," said Gareth. Christine went to her husband, the man she loved.
She barely felt the dagger tip connect with his skin before she retracted her arm and stabbed him again, and again. In a wild, crying frenzy, Calihye struck at the helpless man. She felt the warmth of blood under her thigh and pumped her arm even more furiously, her eyes closed, tears streaming down her cheeks and crying for Parissus all the while.
Her anger, her frustration, her sadness, her remorse, her explosion of desperation all played out, leaving her in a great physical weariness, and she looked down at the man who had been her lover.
He lay on his back, arms out wide and making no move to defend against her. He stared at her, his jaw clenched, his expression a mask of disappointment.
He didn't have a scratch on him. The blood on her thigh was her own, caused by a cut she had inflicted on one retraction of the blade.
"So predictable, these weak human creatures," Kimmuriel Oblodra remarked as he and Jarlaxle watched the spectacle playing out on Entreri's bed from an extra-dimensional pocket from which had opened a gate to the side of the room.
"She was so convincing," Jarlaxle said. "I never would have believed..."
"Then you have been around these fools too long," Kimmuriel said. "Are your judgments so impaired that I should not welcome you back to Bregan D'aerthe when you at last abandon this folly and return to Menzoberranzan?"
Jarlaxle glanced at the psionicist, a frozen look, a murderer's look, that reminded Kimmuriel in no uncertain terms who he was addressing.
But Jarlaxle didn't hold to the threatening stare, as he was drawn back to the spectacle on the bed. Calihye's expression had turned more to terror by that point, and she struck again, at Entreri's eye, as if she wanted so desperately to stop him from looking at her with his accusing gaze.
Entreri did flinch, but so remotely that Jarlaxle marveled at the sheer discipline of the man. He had ordered Kimmuriel to enact the psionic kinetic barrier, of course, for the psionicist had learned of Calihye's desperate plan. But Entreri could not have known that he was so protected, and yet he had not in any way tried to fend off the attacks.
Had Calihye coaxed him to a point of such vulnerability? Had her actions and soothing words so put Artemis Entreri off his guard?
Or did he simply not care?
"Fascinating," Jarlaxle whispered.
"It reminds you of your own birth, no doubt," said Kimmuriel, catching him off balance. He looked at his companion.
"No doubt," Jarlaxle replied, and since his companion had mentioned it, he could indeed picture a terrified and frustrated Matron Baenre plunging her spider-shaped dagger at his newborn breast. He imagined that her look must have been somewhat similar to Calihye's at that very moment, such a delicious mixture of a dozen conflicting emotions.
"You never did get the opportunity to thank my House's matron mother," Kimmuriel remarked.
"Oh, but I did," Jarlaxle assured him.
"When Baenre's Secondboy scooped you from the altar and all of the kinetic energy bound within your infant frame exploded into him and tore his chest apart," Kimmuriel agreed, recalling the stories of that distant time, tales that had been told and retold in House Oblodra over the centuries. "My grandmatron did have a way of removing her sworn enemies."
"Few could so fluster Matron Baenre as the matron mothers of House Oblodra," said Jarlaxle. "I am certain that Baenre keenly considered such insults as the power of Lolth flowed through her and offered her the power to tumble House Oblodra into the Clawrift."
Kimmuriel, ever so in control, did wince at that, and Jarlaxle smiled. For only a few short years before, Jarlaxle's mother had obliterated Kimmuriel's House in one devastating burst of power.
The two exchanged looks of mutual surrender, then turned their attention back to the room, where the stubborn and terrified Calihye lifted the dagger before her in both hands, clutched it tightly, and drove it at Entreri's heart yet again. He reached up and stopped her, and as she struggled to push through his powerful grasp, his other hand came up and slapped her hard. As he did that, he turned his hips and sent her tumbling off the far side of the bed.
"He knows what happened," Kimmuriel remarked. He led Jarlaxle's gaze behind them, to the brutish orc warrior patiently awaiting its orders.
"End the dweomer," Jarlaxle instructed, and he grabbed the orc's tether and pulled the creature behind him into the room. As Entreri jumped up from the bed to face them, Jarlaxle tugged the orc close and whispered, "Kill him," into its ear, then shoved it forward at Entreri.
The sight of a naked human, his right side red with blood from chest to hip, was all the encouragement the brutish beast needed. It charged Entreri and leaped for him.
With hardly an effort, only simple instinct, Entreri's hand came out hard to grasp the orc by the throat, and all of the energy that had been bound up kinetically within his frame, every one of Calihye's vicious strokes and stabs, flowed through that connection.
The orc's chest exploded with garish wounds; its left eye drove into its brain, blood spurting from the wound.
It spasmed and jerked, and tried to cry out in stunned horror.
But all it could do was gurgle on its own blood, and Entreri unceremoniously dropped the dead thing down to the ground.
He stood there on the edge of disaster, covered in blood, breathing deeply as if fighting for control.
Jarlaxle knew that the furious man wanted nothing more than to spring forward and strike at him, then. He also held faith that Artemis Entreri was too disciplined to do such a stupid thing.
Behind Entreri, Calihye rose and gasped at the sight of the dead orc and the two dark elves. Her arms went limp at her sides and the dagger fell to the floor.
"I am sorry," Jarlaxle said to Entreri.
The assassin didn't blink.
"It is not the way I wanted it to be," Jarlaxle said.
Entreri's look told him clearly that the man considered it none of Jarlaxle's business.
"I could not let her kill you, even if you seemed resigned to that fate," Jarlaxle explained.
Kimmuriel's fingers flashed disapproval in the air. You spend too much time justifying yourself to your inferiors, the psionicist scolded.
"And you spend too much time breathing," Entreri said to Kimmuriel, reminding the drow that he had learned to interpret that silent drow language during his stay in Menzoberranzan, even though his less delicate human fingers could not "speak" it well.
Jarlaxle put his hand on Kimmuriel's arm, a silent reminder to the psionicist that he did not have permission to kill Entreri.
Never blinking, never taking his awful stare off of Artemis Entreri, Kimmuriel obediently stepped back, prepared, Jarlaxle knew all too well, to cripple or even kill the human with a wave of psionic energy.
As Kimmuriel retreated, Calihye stumbled forward to Entreri's side. Her sobs genuine, she grabbed his arm and lowered her head to his shoulder in supplication, whispering that she was sorry over and over again.
"The poor thing has wound herself into an emotional collapse," Kimmuriel remarked.
"Shut up," said Entreri. He turned to Calihye and roughly pulled her back.
"It was Parissus," she blabbered. "And you were leaving. You can't leave... I can't let you... I'm sorry."
Entreri's responding expression was, perhaps, the most profound look of disappointment and dismay Jarlaxle Baenre had ever seen. Entreri let out a long sigh and seemed to relax, and apparently bolstered by that, taking confidence that the moment of crisis had passed, Calihye dared to look up and say, "You will never hurt me." She even managed to put a weak, hopeful smile on her face.
She was trying to be cute, to be coy, to be playful, Jarlaxle recognized, but he saw, too, that to Entreri, she appeared as nothing but mocking.
He ran his hand down her cheek softly, then changed in a blink, his expression going hard, his hand grabbing at her chin. Her eyes went wide and she clutched and clawed at his unyielding wrist with both hands.
He drove her before him with two powerful strides and with frightening strength shoved her backward. She crashed through the shutters, she smashed through the glass of the window, and she shrieked only once as she tumbled over the pane to fall a dozen feet to the street below.
Entreri turned back to Jarlaxle.
"You should have killed her," the drow said, and in a voice dripping with sympathy and regret. "She is dangerous."
"Shut up."
Jarlaxle sighed.
"And if you slay her, I promise you that you will join her in death," Entreri added.
Jarlaxle sighed again. But of course, he could only blame himself for using the flute to manipulate the assassin, for prying open the heart of Artemis Entreri, which for so long had been shielded from the agony of love.
The cold began to overtake her. Blood flowed from a hundred cuts and when she tried to extract herself from the planking and broken glass, Calihye found that her leg would not support her.
She was dying, she knew. Miserable and alone in the biting cold, naked and bleeding before the world. She held no hope, and didn't want to live, anyway. She had failed, in all ways.
She had fallen in love with the man who had killed her dear Parissus, and that discordant reality had broken her. When faced with the thought of leaving her home, or of saying farewell to Entreri, she had found the options untenable.
So she had made her own course, reverting to her fierce desire for revenge, using her despair at the loss of her dearest love Parissus as armor against the heartbreak Entreri was about to inflict upon her by leaving her.
And she had failed.
So she was dying, and she was glad of it. She crawled through the glass in search of a suitable shard, agony burning, cold wind biting. She found a sizable chunk, elongated like a dagger's blade, and with it clutched in hand, she crawled around the side of the inn, into the alleyway where she could die, free from the intrusion of any curious eyes.
She barely made it in, and fell back into a sitting position against the wall. Her breathing came in rasps, and she coughed up some blood. She realized she didn't even have to put the shard to her throat to end it all; the fall had done the work.
But death from her wounds would be too slow, and it hurt too much.
Calihye lifted the point of the shard to her throat. She thought of Entreri, of their lovemaking, but she brushed it away. She pictured Parissus instead, and imagined her waiting in death, arms wide to embrace her dear Calihye again.
Calihye closed her eyes and stabbed.
Or tried to, but a stronger hand clasped her wrist and held it steady. Calihye opened her eyes, and they went all the wider when she realized that a dark elf held her wrist, and that other drow were about, all leering at her. In that instant of terror, the fog and the pain abandoned her.
"We are not finished with you quite yet," she heard from the back of the group, and the dark elves parted to reveal one of the drow she had just seen in the room above, the one Entreri had spoken of before and had named as Kimmuriel.
"Perhaps in time we will allow you to take your life," Kimmuriel said to her. "Perhaps we will even do it for you, though I doubt you will enjoy our technique."
A pair of dark elves forced her to her feet and a twist of her wrist made her drop the glass shard.
"But then, perhaps you will enjoy the Underdark even less," said Kimmuriel. "Fail in your duties, and we will be happy to determine which is the worst fate for Lady Calihye."
"Duties?" the stunned woman managed to whisper.
The drow dragged her away.