A/N: Written Yuletide 2015 for Thimblerig.
—
Rigoleto wasn't worth much, he often said, especially within earshot of his wife, but he knew carpets. Weaving, dying, sourcing, buying, trading, mending, selling. Keep his head down, keep the children's noses clean and their games out of earshot, keep making a profit, and his position as matron Fedryaz' third husband was as secure as anything in Ust Natha, which really wasn't very much if you stopped to think about it. Rigoleto didn't stop and think much, although he did enjoy the occasional chance to put his feet up, pour out some cheap mushroom cordial, and have a good gossip with the neighbour.
"... and so, I tried the duergar merchant's cochineal after all, and the deeper colour was simply perfect for my pattern. Not to mention that it washes well."
"I heard that she's beholden to House Despana. Desperate to sell quickly, to pay their interest rates."
"Well, I couldn't complain about the price," Rigoleto said. "I'm hoping to make a good sale to the Male Fighters' Society so I can order even better materials. My cousin Sardza, he's one of their cooks, says they're refurbishing early next year."
"I heard Matron Melltyrr's latest is one of the new commanders. He took on a mind flayer in the tavern gladiator pits and walked out alive, and ever since then he's been a favourite with her. But I also heard ... that his real preferences aren't very drow-like ..."
They shared a giggle.
"I'm surprised she didn't go for the new head of the Society," Rigoleto said. "The youngest in centuries, they say, defeated the last one as well as all challengers and barely broke a sweat. I'd love to watch him in the gladiator games sometime."
"The House Noquar warrior. How lucky, to belong to the second most prestigious house in the city, and to win leadership of the Male Fighter Society as a young prodigy. My matron says Solaufein's quite the manly-man—good at all the graceful arts, selecting furniture and tapestries, dancing, reciting prose and poetry. His House is asking for a fine husband-price."
"I've seen him in the markets. He's as handsome as they say," Rigoleto boasted. He was proud to be at the forefront of gossip for once. "He stopped to admire one of my carpets, the one imported from Menzoberranzan, that night hunter design imbued with heat-opal dust." Dipping the threads in the crushed gemstone meant they stored warmth, and so the design was visible with infravision as well as under normal torchlight. You could even create one design for torchlight, and a second hidden one for the darkness. "It's clear he has fine tastes. There was a lady with him wearing House Despana's sign, too. As well as the colours of a novice priestess." Since you never wanted to get on the wrong side of a priestess, novice or not, especially one from Ust Natha's First House, Rigoleto had made his deepest possible obeisances while his knees shook with stress. Luckily, the two hadn't paid any more attention to him than they did to the stones below their feet.
"He didn't buy from you, then," said the neighbour, rather caustically. "A novice priestess, you say? Perhaps the rumours are true, then. Matron Mother Ardulace's older daughters are fully fledged priestesses. I'd guess it was Phaere Despana you saw. People are talking about her."
"But why would Solaufein spend time with a young one?" Rigoleto asked. Surely the famous son of the Second House was the natural prey of a first daughter, if not of the First House at least one of the other major houses.
"I'm told," the neighbour said with emphasis, "that it's a major scandal in the making. Mark my words. Solaufein and the young Despana, Phaere, spend a lot of time together, and some say she even asks his opinion on some matters. People notice his immodest and unmasculine behaviour. Of course, I mean no slight on any of the Houses. Lloth be praised."
"Lloth be praised," Rigoleto echoed, and he hoped his neighbour wasn't about to report him to the temple of Lloth for improper gossip. Come to think of it, one of the sons in his compound was competing against the neighbour's son for a slot in Quevven Tintarn's Academy of Husbandly Arts. He wondered, briefly, if he should slip some poison into the mushroom cordial.
He poured out another glass for them both.
—
Ulraunis of the Female Fighters' Society was on guard duty, yet again. She always got a crick in her back when she stood and stared at nothing for too long. The kuo-toa were running quiet at the moment, the surface elves hadn't bothered making any unprovoked attacks recently, and raids into beholder and illithid territory had left the creatures quelled. Her companion on duty was a male as bored as she was, and they were just starting to swap tips about the right bets to make for the season's arena fighting.
She'd let her posture slide, and knew it. She straightened up when she saw someone approaching. Solaufein, head of the Male Fighters' Society. Technically, as the ranking female on duty, Ulraunis was in charge of him as well as the other guard, but the reality was that the best fighter in the male Society and the son of a major house had much more power than her. So she did her best to look the part of a dedicated guard of Ust Natha.
"All clear?" Solaufein took in their two nods. "I'm ordered to the svirfneblin. A little matter of a late delivery."
The little gnomes were nothing but trouble to Ust Natha; always late with the supplies and slaves they were ordered to send, never prompt to respond to a message from the matrons. But their mining was wanted, and they would always return to good behaviour for a short while after a fighter strode into their town and made a few examples.
Solaufein pulled up the hood of his piwafwi cloak just as he got out of sight. Ulraunis squinted. Funny, his heat trail made it look like he was turning the wrong way for the village. Perhaps he was trying to sneak up on the gnomes by a different route. She snuck out some nightshade chew from her pouch to relieve the boredom a little bit. The male guard looked at her with envy. She wasn't sharing.
Then Ulraunis suddenly swallowed, and almost choked on the chew. A priestess of Lloth coming out the gate—no, a novice. House Despana. A very noble lady indeed. Ulraunis figured out that she knew the lady by sight: Phaere Despana, cutthroat businessdrow.
Ulraunis meekly looked at her. It was always tough to know that if you were a guard and asked the wrong person to show their authority, you'd be flayed for disrespect, and if you didn't ask someone who looked high rank to show authority, you'd be flayed and executed for failing to ask if it turned out they shouldn't have been allowed. Fortunately, Phaere flashed the sigil she needed to prove she was exactly whom she looked like. Ulraunis and the male guard let themselves relax.
"I am meeting a trade delegation early," Phaere explained. "Do not worry about escorting me, I will not go far." She smiled to herself, and passed along the trail that led away from the gnome village. Again, Ulraunis squinted until she'd disappeared behind the same rock as Solaufein. It was pretty safe out there, but you never knew. Matron Ardulace Despana would do horrible, horrible things if anything happened to her daughter that was the fault of someone outside the family.
"You think I should follow her?" Ulraunis said to the male guard. She wouldn't mind an excuse to cut duty, but pissing off a Despana by disobeying an order was no good for survival chances.
"She went the same way as Solaufein," the male said. "If you haven't seen that drow fight, you should."
Women naturally had more height, reach, and strength than mere males, but Ulraunis wasn't minded to underestimate the head of the Male Fighters' Society. A legendary prodigy, who'd probably burn himself out before he turned a hundred and twenty. Serve him right. Ulraunis once smothered one of her younger sisters in the bath for similar reasons. She'd always laugh about how she was the great genius who got perfect marks on every test, while Ulraunis flunked out of priestess training in the first week. Her sister wasn't laughing any more.
Frankly, book-learning and intrigue-spotting weren't Ulraunis' strengths. Throw her at something she could slash open and she was happy as an aboleth in a lake. She was never the first to spot a conspiracy or hint, and she blamed her survival on pretending they didn't exist until she had to hit something. But there was something just a little obvious about this particular situation.
"Phaere and Solaufein are meeting each other," she burst out. "She must want him to kill some of those older sisters of hers."
"If House Despana and House Noquar are allying at last, the rest of us'll have to tighten our belts," the male guard said.
He was probably right. Phaere Despana would be asking the head of the Male Fighters' Society to draw up an alliance between the two chief Houses—leaving so much less for the rest of them. Well, there wasn't much you could do if it were Lloth's will for that to happen. Ulraunis looked at the male guard more closely, and for the first time noticed a small emblem sewn onto his belt pouch. Severed goblin head design with triangle patterns.
"Now I place you—you're Second Cousin Wanozyr's kid," Ulraunis said. Same House as her. It was amazing how these snot-nosed male brats grew up. She reached into her pouch again. "You want half a nightshade chew?"
—
Phaere was the weak one. Vispera came out of the womb behind her, clutching her ankle, and ever since then Vispera had crushed her sister down. Their older sisters saw the two youngest as a unit, a pair of babies to be quashed at every turn, but Vispera was the strong one. She was taller and heavier than her sister, and knew all the right places to pinch to shut her up.
Vispera surged ahead in her priestess studies, while Phaere sat and lazed around in her room reading boring books about mathematics, of all the silly dull subjects, and clicked beads back and forth on her toy abacus. Sure, Phaere survived several assassination attempts, but it was mostly by pure luck.
And then, while Phaere was still languishing in mediocrity as a perpetual novice priestess, Matron Mother Ardulace started to praise her, once or twice, for her business work. Phaere lent out Despana money and recouped it with high interest, she lured merchants to buy large stocks of wine and suddenly bankrupted them so Despana had a monopoly in return for a low outlay, and she broke the House Noquar hold on spider silk by flooding the market with cheap imitation.
Surely increasing Despana coffers was nothing compared to the glories of Lloth that Vispera was achieving?
Vispera mastered spells and prayers by endless practice, repeating them over and over to herself kneeling in front of Lloth's altar and performing them on slaves and prisoners until she could perfectly inflict pain in the goddess' name. She accepted the high priestesses' punishments when she faltered, and plotted to soon rise so that she could inflict the same coin in return. She gathered the faithful to public sacrificial ceremonies, and rooted out heresy whenever she found it, from kitchen slaves who lit only seven braziers instead of eight to infidels who argued about the difference between fearing and respecting Lloth. She'd be High Priestess someday, and this would be her path to power above all her sisters.
When Vispera prayed for Lloth to show her visions, she saw Phaere from afar. Her sister was in a male's arms. She kissed Solaufein like a pathetic surface-elf, clasping his hands in hers, talking to him as if he were equal to her. Fear and submission was the only drow way. This was abnormal, disgusting, filthy. And so Vispera immediately told her mother Ardulace.
Solaufein—a lowly, unimportant male in himself—belonged to House Noquar, and the time wasn't yet right for House Despana to declare open war. Phaere paid the price, as Vispera planned all along. Matron Mother Ardulace gave Phaere to the Handmaidens of Lloth, who worked in inner sanctums that even Vispera was not yet permitted to visit.
Phaere was cleansed of her heresy. Vispera smiled at several good memories since her sister was finally released. She was broken to submission, shame, and the role of an obedient drow. Vispera found out that Phaere cringed at the sound of water, and the thought of how many times the Handmaidens must have brought her sister to the brink of drowning never failed to amuse her. She took care to purchase large water jugs and order slaves to pour out glasses any time Phaere was nearby; and then there were the excuses she found to drag Phaere to walk by the communal baths and the Ust Natha waterways. Phaere was quiet, traumatised, and Vispera knew how to drag the spiritual whips across her skin.
Other things were looking delightfully upward for Vispera, ever since Phaere was released. Her oldest sister, Omadie, who held onto her power and politicking with an iron fist, was recently dead. She'd duelled with a rival, and it turned out they both had poisoned weapons. They'd killed each other. How unfortunate. And a threeday ago, Bellona, who fancied herself a craftswoman, had made a tragic miscalculation of some ratio. She'd been crushed by the experimental ballista she was working on. It was probably some treacherous servant; Bellona expertly protected herself from poisons and physical attacks with all her fancy inventions, but she wasn't good at managing people. Not like Vispera.
Phaere could take lessons from her in treating males properly, Vispera thought. Phaere sat in the corner of Vispera's sitting-room, supposedly poring over scroll records of the temple roof expenditure. It was almost time to ask a slave to pour her another glass of water.
The messenger slave had knelt at Vispera's feet for the past half hour, in perfect silence. When she bought him, he was an expensive pleasure slave, but now he was more to her liking. She'd spoilt his looks deliberately. Burnt, beaten, scarred, and broken, with parts of his face and hands missing, he existed to serve her every whim. His breath wheezed slightly in his broken nose.
"What is the news?" she said.
Now there was only one older sister between Vispera and the inheritance of House Despana. She'd sent slaves and spies all about Amanie, the better to finally steal her position and her life from her.
"Your sister Amanie, mistresses. She ate tainted meat from a society hunt. Explosive diarrhea and a terrible fever."
"How dreadful," Vispera said.
Lloth guides me to be Matron Mother, she thought. These recent events were perfect for her, and she knew the cause. Lloth rewarded her devotion. Spider Queen, I thank you! When I am Matron Mother and High Priestess combined, the altars will run red with the blood of a thousand victims, no, ten thousand. So much of the city was lax and faithless to the great goddess, especially including Vispera's sister Phaere. After she led a great purge of all heretics, Lloth would grant Vispera the ultimate divine power.
"Phaere, dear, with this awful news we should go and comfort our sister," Vispera said. She squeezed her sister's shoulder gently, just above the nerve point the Handmaidens liked to use as a starter. "Come for a walk with me."
Sister Amanie's estate was on the other side of Ust Natha. The standard route took them over the Strid River, the city's main water source that ran into the low lake. Vispera didn't even have to artificially change the route for Phaere's sake.
"How beautiful our Lloth-blessed city," Vispera announced. This was genuinely one of her favourite spots. The rushing of the water above the sharp rocks below echoed the prayers she liked to make here, and standing high over the cliff reminded her of the position Lloth had preserved for her. She swayed on the bridge, and saw Phaere look quickly down and then away from the water.
"You're being cheated on the temple roof prices, but you deserved it," Phaere said suddenly. "The weight of the adamantine multiplied by the volume of the bricks means that the temple would've collapsed long ago. House Ryrrl's been gilding above common nickel."
"Then they will all pay for it," Vispera promised. Her sister's tone was strangely insolent, but she would certainly act on such blasphemy. She glanced behind at the honour guard following them. No one was near the bridge; the guard had fallen behind. Such slow and lazy service.
"They will, but not at your hands, sister," Phaere said. And in Vispera's mind finally flashed the knowledge that the guards definitely weren't going to be joining them here.
Vispera almost admired weak little Phaere for her attempt, but thought could wait until after her annoying sister was finally dead. She sprung forward. She'd strangle Phaere here and now, with her bare hands. She'd always been the strong sister.
Phaere didn't try to fight back. She stepped aside. Vispera hurtled forward, into the rails of the bridge. They came apart at her touch, as if they'd been weakened in advance. Which they had been.
Vispera fell toward the black water, screaming and cursing, and her goddess Lloth never came to her aid. She landed hard, on the sharp rocks. Phaere looked away from the water, but she still heard the slapping noise, the silenced shriek, and the sucking sound as the powerful current took the corpse away.
Phaere was a good drow, Ust Natha said, a truly changed person since her sisters' deaths.
—
"All love is foolish."
Solaufein's piwafwi cloak was bloodstained and torn as it slipped through Phaere's fingers. The mercenary Veldrin and her group killed him for her. Rid her of a long-term annoyance, so she didn't have to start a war with his House to do it. There were even rumours that Solaufein had recently taken up Eilistraee's sedition. Lloth would bless this action.
Phaere was in the mood to take a male, but Veldrin only had one to choose from. He was a fighter, large and muscled and healthy and fit, but a little crude for most sophisticated nobles' tastes. It was obvious he had no conversation. Even now he looked bewildered and out of place in Phaere's sanctum, while Veldrin's priestess kept a restraining hold on his arm. He wouldn't do.
However, Veldrin had served her well. The foreign drow mercenaries from Ched Nasad came at the right moment, amidst the delicate situation between the silver dragon Adalon's eggs, the war with the surface elves, and the alliance with the masked archmage and the vampire. Veldrin almost reminded Phaere of herself, a calm leader who kept herself constantly guarded, as if she feared ever losing control. Her group seemed devoted to her.
"Your new assignment, Veldrin," Phaere said. With these words, she sealed her fate, but it wasn't the fate she thought that she sealed. "Steal Adalon's eggs from my mother Ardulace, and bring them to me."
The demon mistress erupted from the underworld pits. No one could look directly at her. The inferno crackled with the demon's every breath, and the heat melted stone and destroyed everything within a twelve-foot radius of her. Ardulace Despana was hell bent on signing a deal with a demon, literally, and to sacrifice a silver dragon's eggs was the price she offered for her power.
She did not know Veldrin had replaced the true eggs with Phaere's clever forgeries.
YOU INSULT ME, DARKLING? boomed the voice of the demon. YOU DARE TO OFFER ME PAINTED WOOD?
"They are dragon eggs! I handled them myself!" Ardulace screamed. "What treachery—daughter!"
The demon's fire burned white-hot and final.
FOR YOUR INSOLENCE, PERISH, the demon spoke, and a column of hellfire consumed Ardulace Despana's flesh and bones in a moment. Phaere watched with wide open eyes. Her mother was dead. She had long planned this, and she had seen it done in person. Let the priestesses and servants here know of their new mistress.
She began her own bargain with the demon. "I have the true eggs, my lady. What I desire is ..."
The demon's laughter was an overwhelming tide in Phaere's ears, a low black chuckle deep as the ends of the earth. It contained brimstone and pure defeat. The blackest of all black jests was played on her. In Phaere's hands, the illusion spell over the husks of dead spiders she carried suddenly blew away.
She trusted Veldrin, and Veldrin betrayed her. All trust was foolish. All love was foolish. All life was made of fools. She looked into Veldrin's calm silver eyes, and behind Veldrin she saw one of the temple servants suddenly stand straight and tall. In that last moment Phaere saw behind all illusions.
Veldrin never killed Solaufein, but feigned his death; and Solaufein was a mage as well as a warrior, who made the false dragon eggs for his ally Veldrin. Perhaps even more than an ally. With the death of Phaere's illusions, Veldrin's coal-black flesh melted into soft tawny brown, Lloth's symbol on her armour became the sword of Eilistraee, and only her silver eyes were unchanged. Solaufein wore his own face rather than a temple's servant. He had come to watch the end. Solaufein reached out for Veldrin, and did not let her go. The demon drew closer.
Phaere didn't try to run. All life was foolish. At least the demon's immolating fire destroyed the lies.
—
"Imagine the beat of the night hunter's wings, when it glides over its prey. The heat radiates from the wing struts, spindling and stretching to catch the wind currents at a moment's notice," Solaufein said. "It must feel free and at home in the dark, when it finds vast empty caverns it can call its own territory."
She saw things in a new light. Ust Natha's marketplace was no longer ordinary, and now to Phaere even a mediocre carpet-maker's stall had beauty. The night hunter's wings rose in the design, a picture where the creature lived and breathed in all its freedom. Solaufein took Phaere's hand in his, and suddenly she could feel the secret inside the carpet, the gemstone fragments embedded in parts of the knotted threads. The stall was in full torchlight, but she and Solaufein touched it gently to see how it would look under infravision in darkness. They felt the wing struts woven into the carpet with heat-opal shards. In the dark, it would be as if they saw the night hunter truly flying, far away from Ust Natha in the wilderness. And Solaufein's hand would hold hers there.
Phaere felt as if she'd been a lump of stone before she met Solaufein, and he said he felt the same. Both of them had known too many betrayals from so-called family and allies; both of them had trusted scantily, surviving only because of slaves who nursed them enough to live. Now there was something between them that both of them felt and fed on, something too strong to betray or corrupt. Every stolen moment they were together turned Ust Natha's shrieks and catcalls and threats of murder into song.
Solaufein gave her their own secret signal, and Phaere pretended to admire a hanging pot in a stall. The thing was ridiculous, as ugly as a goblin with warts, so gloriously ugly that she and Solaufein knew each other's thoughts and smiled at the same time. She laughed at it, and made sure her loose hair got caught in one of the lumps. Solaufein disentangled her, and so his mouth lingered next to her ear and whispered the details for their next meeting.
Phaere crept out of the city gates. She was so happy she found it almost impossible to hide it on her face. She flashed the two guards her sigil and muttered her newest excuse, barely knowing what she said. So this was the outside of Ust Natha, a place she hadn't bothered to go before. The stalactites and stalagmites formed weird patterns from slowly-dripping limestone water, patterns that slipped into the part of Phaere's brain that held fractals and geometry, equations where Solaufein was always the answer. Her boots slid on the slippery path, and she wondered whether she was stepping where his footsteps had been.
As soon as she crept behind the third rock, Solaufein was waiting for her. He held out his arms and she embraced him, closing her eyes, sensing the heat of his body. His wet mouth was on her cheek and he held her as if he never wanted to let her go.
Then a large drop of cold water landed on the back of her neck, and she let go of him with a surprised squawk.
"It's damp here, I forgot, I'm sorry, I'm used to it—" Solaufein apologised.
"You don't need to be, when I was the one who startled—" Phaere laughed.
"Share my cloak," Solaufein said. He spread out the piwafwi, and Phaere easily climbed under its folds. He was never without his cloak. The piwafwi was an old drow custom, the cloak that protected the wearers and helped them conceal themselves, and House Noquar was famous for making especially fine ones.
Phaere fingered the fabric, fine and flexible as cobweb, and her fingers crept onto Solaufein's arm. He moved the cloak to shelter and hide them both, safe away from prying eyes and any damp. Under the piwafwi, they were warm and well together, with no one but each other in their world. Phaere's heart beat faster and she felt Solaufein's blood pulsing through his wrist. Her throat was dry and her breath short as she leant into him and wrapped hands around hands. They held each other as if they would never let go.
—