After that, the both of them went to bed.
Hours later, the sounds of their steady breathing, and small crumpling noises as they shifted in the dark proved that they were both still awake.
The assassin felt the need to speak first. "I'm sorry for asking," Artemis said.
Jarlaxle couldn't be angry with him. "I'm not." He rolled onto his side and faced the man, though he knew that Artemis couldn't see very well in the dark. "I've been thinking."
"So have I," Artemis said.
Jarlaxle felt a pang of sadness. So they were both awake for the same reason. "Ah." He was exhausted beyond his ability to stand. He knew it wasn't just a physical need for sleep. It was mental fatigue. And yet, he was still trapped in his consciousness, because he couldn't escape the feeling of painful responsibility. "I've been thinking…about us."
The assassin didn't respond.
Jarlaxle took this as an indication that he was ready to be an audience. "I can't…do what you want me to…because that would require me to give up control." He let out a shuddering laugh. "Neither one of us can bear to part with what we have left, and love requires this parting. It would be pretentious to call what we have love." He closed his eyes. "Because of me, it is only possession."
"And lust?" Artemis said. Even if he hadn't been able to see, the drow mercenary would have known that his friend had raised his eyebrow.
Jarlaxle stirred, making a noncommittal gesture. "Lust. How could I forget that?"
"Lust is a perfectly healthy emotion," the assassin said. "After all, without it there would be no drive to have children, and the races of Faerun would be doomed. Lust is only dangerous when in the wrong hands."
"Like mine?" Jarlaxle said, a tired grin inadvertently spreading across his face.
"By your definition, I must lead a life free of blame," Artemis said, but his expression was mocking. "I have no lust."
"How can you want to do what you said you wanted to do if you don't have any lust? That's a contradiction, my friend."
Artemis shrugged. "Ah, well, so I contradict. I seem to remember you saying that I am contradictory in nature." He shifted. "I do know that if this is lust, then I am keeping it perfectly under control."
"How can you tell?" Jarlaxle said. "You've never had it before." He grinned, less tired.
"Then I'll tell you my symptoms, and then you can tell me whether or not I'm managing it," Artemis suggested, grinning back at him.
"Amusing, Entreri, but no."
"And I felt so sure you would be unable to resist."
"Well, that's lust for you."
Artemis chuckled. "So, what have you been thinking about?"
"I told you," Jarlaxle said.
"No, I mean the rest." Artemis tilted his head at the other man. "Before I rudely interrupted you."
Jarlaxle looked slightly shifty-eyed, but he knew Artemis would be unable to detect it in the dark, so he tried to get away with it. "That was it."
"The great Jarlaxle's mental genius finally revealed," the assassin said. "In four hours, he has one coherent thought on average."
"I'm tired," the drow snapped. He turned his back on Entreri and tried to ignore him long enough to go into reverie.
"Then I suggest you say whatever you were going to say quickly, so we can both get to sleep." Artemis smirked.
"You are being cruel," Jarlaxle said.
"Do you like that?" the assassin asked.
The drow glared at him. "I think that you are definitely not in control of your lust."
"I can't help it," Artemis said. He frowned accusingly. "I'm willing to be more accommodating than you think."
"Be careful how you use the word 'accommodating'. To the wrong people it means you're willing to degrade yourself. Choose your partners carefully," Jarlaxle said. "That is the only advice I will give you. Now good night."
The silence in the room burned angrily. The assassin resisted the urge to start a shouting match in the middle of the night, when the whole inn could hear them. He valued his privacy. Artemis resented Jarlaxle's constant implications that he was putting himself in a position to become the injured party in this dispute.
Eventually, the hostility changed to slow, heavy breathing as the both of them succumbed to the rest they desperately needed.
Jarlaxle awoke, rolling his eyes around the room with a moan to make sure that he had actually survived. That was the past, he said to himself. I am past that point. I got past that period in my life a long time ago. He curled up, resolving to stay quiet in order to avoid questions from his friend, who was still out like a light. He tried to distract himself with pondering that expression. A slight smile came to his face. Out like a light.
He couldn't stop himself from thinking, No more groveling.
He reflected on his reverie.
He had been embroiled in a fight between Houses, and he had lost. He'd slipped off to inform his employer of that. His employer's reaction taught him never to do that again, no matter what the situation. The rule he'd abided by at all costs ever since was this: always send somebody else to inform the employer of failure, no matter who, and no matter how much of a tantrum they throw. He would never again get caught in a situation like that. No sooner had he attempted leaving than he discovered that a certain woman felt it necessary for him to pay for her failure to eliminate another House himself. In her estimation, this involved about twelve years of servitude as a common slave. She had forced him to grow out his hair, give up his hat and many of his other articles of clothing he held dear, and his mercenary band thought him lost to her clutches forever. When he escaped, Zak had laughed at the tale, but Jarlaxle could see the anger flashing in his eyes and knew that in truth, his friend was upset. It had taken Jarlaxle nearly 46 years to get his mercenaries back under his leadership again.
It was no doubt Artemis' fault that he had dreamt of this period in his life.
The worst part was that he had dreamed of Zak. There he was, in front of Jarlaxle in every detail, close enough to touch. But Jarlaxle couldn't, bound by the restraints of his own memory.
The last part of the reverie replayed perfectly in his mind.
"Where have you been for the last twelve years?" Zak asked, jovially gesturing in surprise. His fingers signaled, I thought you were dead. His expression didn't change. He'd had an irritating way of doing that; sending two messages at once, just to see if Jarlaxle could pick up on them both. The silent message was frequently insulting.
The mercenary grit his teeth. "In servitude." He knew full well that Zaknafein knew where he'd been. The story, he'd heard, was all around Menzoberranzan. An attempt to humiliate him. Well, it worked. "Rendering services to a certain Mistress Yanari."
And Zaknafein had laughed heartily at his predicament, all the while with the spark of anger in his eyes fanning brighter and brighter.
It was probably that anger that got him killed. Jarlaxle knew it was a dream, but he couldn't help himself. The paralysis was broken, so he took his chance. He grabbed Zaknafein by the wrist. "If you value your life, listen to me," he hissed. Zaknafein, shocked, tried to pull away, then stilled as Jarlaxle's words registered with him. The mercenary locked eyes with him desperately. His heart hurt as if he'd been stabbed in it repeatedly. "Whatever you do, don't have a son."
"What are you talking about?" Zak said, grinning uneasily. "Females have children; I can't give birth, son or no."
"Don't you care?" Jarlaxle hissed. "Listen to me!"
"I think you've had one too many drinks, friend," Zaknafein said. "This is a dream."
Jarlaxle stared at him. Then he tremblingly sank to the stone ground of the street and began to cry.
Zaknafein bent over him, as sympathetic as he was capable of. "You have to tell him." He repeated a few minutes later, "You have to tell him."
Jarlaxle hadn't known what he meant, but through his tears, he thought that it was probably some kind of dream thing that was some kind of message to himself.
At that moment, he didn't care.
The whole world's a stupid gray nothing. Jarlaxle clenched his fists.
"I was stupid," he said, blinking away the urge to start crying now that he was awake. "Stupid to think that talking to myself could change what went on in the past."
"And stupid to think that you wouldn't wake me up," Artemis grumbled, turning over and glaring up at him, bleary-eyed.
"I didn't intend to wake you," Jarlaxle said, folding his arms. His hat provided some kind of obscure comfort, so he pulled it back down onto his head and sat there, the brim hiding his face.
To Artemis, he sounded definitely hurt. Though he couldn't see the point, he had a suspicion that if he were really the elf's friend, he'd say something sympathetic. "It's only a couple hours before sunrise. I couldn't have gotten much more sleep anyhow."
He couldn't really do much else, because every time he tried to offer his friend some gesture of compassion, the drow would make him wonder why he ever bothered to do anything other than shove Jarlaxle away when he tried to bestow kindness on Artemis. His friend was truly unfriendly the moment the tables were turned.
And indeed, Jarlaxle didn't reply. He shifted grumpily, and crossed his arms tighter, but that was all. Just when Artemis thought his friend wouldn't say anything, the drow said, "Go away."
That was not something they had ever done to each other. When one wanted to be outside the company of the other, they were the one to leave the room. They acknowledged that the room belonged to both of them, and so neither of them could simply decide to kick the other out. The words he'd heard didn't register with him. "What?"
"Go away," Jarlaxle said. Artemis still couldn't see his face. The elf's voice had a catch in it. "Leave me alone. I have to be alone." When Artemis didn't respond, he said more loudly, "Give me time to myself. I can't wander this thrice-damned circle of hell without being harassed for being drow. Leave me alone, and I'll talk to you later. I promise. If I try to convince you otherwise when we next meet, tell me I promised, and I'll take the reminder seriously. Now go."
Artemis slowly climbed out of the bed, smoothed the covers down, and buckled his belt around his waist. He carefully tied on his leather armor, and took his cape down on the peg from where it had been the first night of their stay. Without another word, he glanced at his friend, gave a nod, and closed the door behind him.
How he occupied himself he couldn't have said. He honestly didn't remember what happened as hours passed in the common room of the inn. He chose a table against the wall so that he could watch everything that went on in the room.
Travelers came in, smelling of dirt and blood and excrement, hard-soled boots clanking against the wooden planks of the floor.
He sipped a beer on and off, and for once, couldn't think of something uncomplimentary to liken it to.
A bard with a huge brown beard, dressed in an ugly shade of purple, began a boring epic that everyone listened to. Halfway through, Artemis Entreri's awareness was penetrated by the dramatically accented words "Drizzt Do'Urden". He rolled his eyes, taking a pull of his beer, which was now warm, and turned away to scan the stairs.
A gaudily dressed woman with a hat that struck him as a poor imitation of Jarlaxle's with too many feathers walked down the stairs. As she passed, Artemis smelled cheap perfume that invaded his nose with its toxic stench of soap and dried flowers.
Sometime later he realized it was time for lunch.
He glanced inadvertently at the stairs again, but then realized he expected Jarlaxle to appear, which wasn't likely given the state he'd left the man in. He'd probably brood through the whole day.
Artemis decided he wasn't hungry.
Three different women hit on him, but then were driven away by his silence and the dull look of apathy in his gray eyes. He didn't even know whether they were barmaids, and didn't know why he should care.
Then he wondered if Jarlaxle was in the room at all. He glanced at the ceiling, imagining that it gave a view to the room. He imagined it was empty. For all he knew, Jarlaxle had taken advantage of his absence and had taken off, just packed up and departed through the window.
Strangely enough, this didn't worry him.
It took him fifteen minutes of staring at the bar to figure out that this was because he didn't believe it.
The next thing he knew, he glanced out the window and found that it was dark. He jumped up from his chair and paid for his beer, some of which was still in the bottom of his mug. Feeling detached, almost as if he were dreaming, Artemis ran up the stairs two at a time and walked down the narrow hallway with quick, long strides. He shoved open the door.
Jarlaxle was waiting for him. Artemis paused with his hand still on the doorknob. Jarlaxle smiled at him. The drow mercenary tilted his head at him curiously. He was standing in the middle of the room, not far from the door, but he'd given Artemis enough room to come in and shut the door. Artemis did. "Want to know?" Jarlaxle asked, once again the calm person Artemis knew.
He nodded. He didn't mention the time he'd spent waiting, not able to think of anything else.
"I had to think for a long time. A friend of mine told me to tell you –"
Artemis gave a start. He hadn't seen anybody go up or come back down the stairs except for the cheaply perfumed woman.
Jarlaxle smiled at his startled reaction. "Well, he had his own way. I don't want to discount it as a dream, but at the same time, I could give the credit to myself for the decision that I made to tell you." He shrugged. The pause signaled his shift in conversation. "When I was young, I had something happen to me. I hadn't been a successful mercenary with my own organization for more than sixteen years when a miscalculation of mine led me into a mistake." He seemed to have rehearsed this quite a bit, because he was still smiling, and remained sensibly detached from the things he was saying.
Artemis shifted, more to keep from getting stiff than anything else.
The drow mercenary continued, "I was hired to provide manpower for a scheme to take down another House. There was nothing that made this mission more difficult or dangerous than any other mission, so I accepted it. After all, what did I have to lose? House disputes are decided mainly by luck and planning, and I was paid either way." He shrugged again.
His eyes began to get a faraway look. "To be concise, the House that had hired me lost to the House that they had attacked. Because of my mercenaries, I knew before anyone else heard the news. Once they reported that they were losing, I told them to come home, and we managed to escape with only minor casualties."
Jarlaxle began to pace. He needed the movement to keep himself focused on the story. "It didn't surprise me, and being the youth that I was, I did enjoy subjecting females to ridicule and humiliation. A bitterness borne of a youth of oppression." Jarlaxle made a dismissive gesture.
Artemis doubted if anything had really changed. The drow had a bad habit of rubbing people's noses in their failures.
"What did you do?" Entreri sighed.
Jarlaxle beamed ruefully. "I decided to call upon her myself and tell her just how her takeover was faring. It was very satisfying bowing in front of her and being the bearer of bad news." He rubbed his bald head. "Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on the woman that hired me. She was the daughter of the Matron Mother, and my humiliation of her went a trifle deeper than it did with her Mother. Her Mother was the old, wise type. Like an aging dragon. She knew which losses to let go. Unfortunately, she was still a Matron Mother, and so her daughter's suggestion to bar my escape and punish me personally amused the old dragon." Jarlaxle sighed.
"What did she do?" Artemis asked, frowning. "Torture you?"
The drow laughed. "Oh, much more than that, my friend. In the drow circle of things, torture is a slap on the wrist."
"Well, obviously, they didn't sacrifice you," the assassin said.
Jarlaxle grinned. "Lloth wouldn't have me." He tapped his chin innocently. "I believe that was the first thing they tried. Not knowing how important I was, of course." For a moment, he seemed positively gleeful.
"Then what?" Artemis asked.
Jarlaxle's smile faded. "I became Mistress Yanari's 'indentured servant'." He looked at the floor, then raised an index finger and wiggled it warningly. "Never become an indentured servant to a drow. It's a bad idea. They're always changing their ideas about what fulfills your contract or not." He stayed still, looking at the floor for a while longer before he suddenly resumed his pacing. "Anyway, I was trapped in their household for almost twelve years playing the part of a common flatfoot to that woman." His indignant feelings of bruised pride seeped through to his voice. He paused.
"A flatfoot?" Artemis said, looking incredulous. "That's slang for a city guard."
"Well, in drow, it means a messenger or a servant," Jarlaxle said. He resumed pacing. "'Get me my slippers'," he said, flinging out his hand. "'Summon this person,'" he said, flinging out his hand. "'Summon that person,'" he said, flinging out his hand. "It was an endless stream of orders all day, without rest, and whenever she saw me sitting down, she'd order me to do something at the other end of the House and then come back. If I didn't get back quickly enough, she used her whip against me."
The assassin blinked. Jarlaxle in the role of that common servant was absolutely impossible to imagine. "It…sounds terrible." He must've been tired at the end of the day.
"Do you know why I shave my head?" Jarlaxle asked.
Artemis shook his head.
The drow explained, "The length of one's hair indicates the status one belongs to in drow society. Longer hair, more status. That is why nobles take such pride in braiding and decorating their hair. It shows everyone how great they are." At the assassin's puzzled frown, Jarlaxle said, "The reason I shaved my head is because I refuse to be part of that hierarchy. Not even the common people, the lowest of the low, not even beggars shave their heads as I did." He frowned. "What I did was an act of defiance."
He pouted. "And that sadistic woman ruined it all. She forced me to grow out my hair." Jarlaxle turned to Artemis with a pitiful expression. "And she took away my beautiful clothing."
In spite of himself, Artemis almost laughed. "How long have you been wearing that garish ensemble?"
Jarlaxle said primly, "Longer than you can imagine." He made his pitiful face again. "And she took it all away! My hat, my vest, even my cape. She could have left my cape, but she didn't."
"Your boots?"
"I didn't have my boots then, so she couldn't take them," Jarlaxle said. "I didn't get my boots until later."
"How lucky."
"Extremely!" Jarlaxle said. "Or I would have had to steal those back, too." He blinked, looking a little flustered. "But I digress."
"Yes."
"And at night!" the drow said. "You can't imagine what she put me through every night!" He crossed his arms, pacing agitatedly. "I was lucky if I got any sleep at all!" He frowned bitterly. "She was jealous of me." A glint of triumph entered his eyes. "Not all drow have the ability to perform reverie. In fact, most of them can't. They lost the ability when they were children and never regained it. I stayed whole."
Artemis was startled. He hadn't exactly noticed that before. He'd thought that all elves were alike, dark elves or not. At least in some ways.
"I don't think I would have survived had I not been able to hide in reverie," Jarlaxle said. "She would have ran me to exhaustion in two or three days if I had had to get a good eight hours' sleep. She couldn't tell when I was awake and when I was in reverie, you see." He smiled. "Otherwise, she would have made sure I get no sleep." A tremble shuddered through him from head to foot. "She wanted to break me."
Entreri had seen someone, one of his fellow assassins, after being tortured with sleep deprivation. He'd gone insane. He had a sudden flash of the tall, thin man curled up in a corner, his long blonde hair matted and filthy, lashing out at anyone who tried to come near him. He'd starved to death.
Artemis felt sick. He was suddenly glad he hadn't eaten anything for lunch or dinner.
Jarlaxle said, facing the wall, "She was pushed to find other alternatives because of my resistance." His shoulders shook, then stilled. Artemis stared, transfixed. "Sometimes I think she succeeded."
"No," Artemis said. He didn't know if he could stand to hear anymore. He was sorry he'd asked in the first place. He didn't know that he'd spoken out loud.
Jarlaxle seemed to realize that he was upsetting the assassin. "Well, as I said, it was all a very long time ago," he said cheerfully, shrugging. When he turned around, however, he found Artemis staring at him.
"No," Entreri said. "…Finish."
Jarlaxle shrugged again, uncomfortably. "There isn't much more to tell. I told her that she would never break me – which only goes to show you that I hadn't really learned anything up to that point, don't you think? – and she begged to differ." He smiled. "She engaged in a certain kind of abusive relationship, and tried to convince me that I was helpless to stop her. It hurt quite a bit, so I decided that it would be worth it to go along with her and…simply pretend that I enjoyed being…ah…forced into submission. It…ah…backfired. I was rather the worse for wear when I escaped eleven years later." He stopped. "So," he said, smiling brightly, "then I made sure that one of my underlings told the employers about our failure. By messenger, if possible."
Artemis looked at the floor. "I…I never saw you that way before. I always thought that you were above such…situations."
There was silence. Then Jarlaxle said, "Thank you, my friend." He seemed to mean it. "I wasn't always that way, but certainly, it has not happened recently. My reputation has grown too large for my position as a plaything."
Plaything.
Entreri never thought of himself as weak for the turmoil that he felt, crushing down on him like an ocean of anger and fear. It was so much a part of him that for a long time, those were the only emotions he allowed himself. Their ferocity, their persistence earned them a place inside of him.
And in a large part Jarlaxle had convinced him to let go. Jarlaxle had talked to him the other night, had taken the time to get through to go him when he was consumed with these emotions, lost in his dream, and demanded that Artemis listen to him with the only currency he had that Entreri honored.
He demanded that Artemis honor his trust over his overwhelming anger and fear, and in the process, Artemis was forced to let go. Little by little, Jarlaxle listened to what he said, didn't raise a hand against him for saying these things that were obviously betrayals to think, and therefore unacceptable to him to feel. The drow had eased Artemis' death grip on these things, allowing more and more of these incoherent, pain-filled moments through, frightening in their insanity.
And then the pressure was released, and he clung to Jarlaxle like a piece of flotsam in a storm. Then he confessed everything; he'd confessed all of the buried fears that had secretly started his nightmares. They were like corpses in shallow graves underneath what he knew, and what he rationalized. He allowed them to haunt him, even as he knew that they were waiting to rise up and rip him apart.
He realized then in shame that he had been weak. Ever since his childhood, he'd shown the sense of a man stumbling through a busy street hiding a wound, even from onlookers who followed the trail of blood and tried to treat him. In his head, it had made sense, before. Why should a man trust somebody else when they could be hiding a dagger under their cloak? Artemis was ashamed at the picture that emerged, now. Not even to save his life had he been willing to stop himself from bleeding to death. He should have known that if the worst someone could do was kill him, then the worst wasn't really very bad.
But finally, after hours of contemplation, he came to another realization at what had happened that made his self-image a little brighter. In the end, when Jarlaxle had offered help, he had taken it. He, Artemis, had taken the decision to confide, and in confiding with that someone, he had been treated. There had been no dagger. No additional pain. His wounds were bandaged, and he was alive.
Jarlaxle…
Most of all, his secrets were safe.
Jarlaxle looked at the assassin sharply, wondering what the prolonged amount of silence was for. He had assumed that his words made the other man uncomfortable, but that was contradictory to how his friend was behaving. Artemis usually turned around and left, or changed the subject after a few seconds. He had done neither, and so Jarlaxle wondered. "Are you alright?" the drow asked. His voice was sharper than he had intended, and he winced. "I mean that. I want to know." My emotions are getting the best of me, he thought. It's not a pretty sight.
"Your secrets are safe with me," the man said. His voice had an odd note of slowness to Jarlaxle's ear, as if he had been thinking about it before he said it. That note of slowness was comforting; that was more like the Artemis Entreri he knew. Artemis looked into his eyes. "I will not repeat anything beyond this room, and I will kill anyone who holds this knowledge beyond this room in the attempt to hurt you."
Jarlaxle looked at him. The look in his eyes was contemplative, filled with an emotion that caused a tingle down Artemis' spine. "So you see, I cannot relinquish control," the drow said. "I can give you anything else. You…Your friendship has forced me to uncurl my fist from around some of my most prized possessions, forced me to bequeath myself to you in more ways than I can ever show, and more ways than I hope you will ever know. But the one thing I cannot do," he said, a ghost of a smile flitting across his lips, "is that which you now ask of me." He paused, tilting his head towards the floor, causing the feathers in his hat to flutter. Then he looked up, into Artemis' eyes. He said, "I want you to know that if I could give it…I would consider…you among my first…" The drow's cheeks began to color a delicate shade of black-purple. "…ah…candidates."
