The dreams chased Valla from her bed.
After listening in the hall and determining that the others were all still undisturbed in their beds, she retreated to the quiet of the sitting room. She opened the windows, took a seat upon the divan, and began to sort her thoughts.
It was easy, she had determined in these last weeks, to go mad. She thought of Sarevok and felt an all too familiar stab of regret.
In the between, during that brief, blissful period of quiet in Baldur's Gate after the fall of the Iron Throne, she had read Sarevok's journals in their entirety. It was only then that the slow descent that Tamoko and those closest to him witnessed up had close became apparent to her as well.
At first, he wrote of dreams and voices that haunted him in the night; of urges he didn't understand. Then, with time and persuasion, he did not try to fight them. The young man who wrote the earliest entries about his lessons, chores, and invectives about an abusive, angry father, became someone else that rambled about dead gods and destinies.
It would have saved her grief, to have not read them; to continue thinking of Sarevok as a madman ruled by bloodlust and power-hunger.
Instead, they were really not so different as that; the innocent and the brute.
What if he had been her brother for true? What if he had been raised in Candlekeep with her and Imoen; with Gorion? Could things have been better? She'd have had a protector and someone to spar with that wasn't Hull or one of the other Watchers between shifts and the taint might not have touched him so deeply.
Or, maybe, it just would have been worse. If the taint had still called him and taken his will, Gorion's death might have been more than just the death of her father, but also a betrayal she couldn't have forgiven.
Valla scrubbed her hands over her face and shook her head to clear it.
Whatever it was madmen did, they probably also sat around pondering the what-ifs of long-dead half-siblings and the less she mirrored their behaviors the better her chances of keeping up appearances of at least looking sane enough to lead a party of heavily armed persons.
"Aha, I thought I heard your step in the hall. It is good to know my senses have not started to play tricks on me."
Valla looked to the voice. Yoshimo in from hall, his dark hair loose around his shoulders, wearing a plain white shirt and trousers, but his feet were bare and he made no sound as he walked. In one hand he carried a dagger, as if he hadn't anticipated danger enough to take his sword but he had not wanted to be caught unarmed.
"I didn't mean to wake you," she said softly, her voice pitched low to keep it from traveling to the other rooms. "I'm sorry."
He waved the apology away and joined her on the divan. "Losing a little sleep here and there is the cost of good hearing," he explained. "And well worth it, I think." He winked, but his mood sobered quickly. "Did something wake you?"
"It was nothing important."
"A dream?"
She looked to him, one eyebrow raised.
Yoshimo shrugged. "I overheard our distinguished healers discussing a variety of cocktails they might persuade you to drink to put an end to your spell of restless nights. I reminded them that they would be heavily drugging the individual who is not just responsible as our pack leader but also one of our most skilled warriors. It would possibly put us—certainly you—in greater danger than your loss of sleep." He looked to her. "And I have heard you speak of dreams, but not of details. Putting together cause and effect is not so hard."
"No, I suppose not."
He hummed at this and scratched his scruffy cheek as he considered something at the far end of the room, beyond her shoulder. "Is there anything to be done?"
She smiled. "Can you make me something other than the child of a murder-god?"
He laughed, but the sound had nothing to do with joy. It was a bitter acknowledgment and resignation; an apology too. "I'm sorry," he added aloud.
"Don't be."
Yoshimo nodded, but still looked troubled.
Though she wouldn't say it—because how could she without giving away how delicate her grasp was on reality?—she was grateful for his interruption. It was easier or her thoughts to tangle themselves up when she was alone.
Valla considered the man beside her. Was he older than her? Maybe. She didn't know anything about people from the East—how they aged or how long they lived. He looked young, around his eyes and when he smiled, but his skin was olive and brown from long exposure to the sun—maybe from too much time on the decks of boats—and his brow had begun to show lines from furrowing. Even the hair at his temples, only visible when the long fringe was pulled back, was beginning to sparkle with its very first hints of silver.
"Are you all right?"
She focused her eyes on his. They watched her closely, calculating. She offered him a small smile and a shrug. "I was thinking."
"Oh?" His smile was always crooked, an effect emphasized by a scar that cut into the corner of his lower lip and the uneven line of his bottom teeth. "Tell me."
"We haven't had a chance to talk much lately, just you and I," she said. "I always wanted to know how one gets in the business of hunting men…"
His brows lifted and his lips quirked a bit, giving away his surprise, but his shrug was casual. "Desperation. Usually for coin," he said at last. His eyes were on hers again, dark and careful. "You were hunted. I have tried not to talk about my profession lest it bring back, hm unsavory memories."
"The men that came for me were assassins," Valla replied. "None of them were desperate. They were just greedy."
Yoshimo hummed and the sound thrummed deeply in his throat. "A starving thief isn't more noble when his belly's full," he said. He looked her and tipped his head. "Greed makes us all the same—pious men and sinner—but not all treasure's gold, neh?"
A fair point. And pragmatic. She smiled a bit despite herself. "Is that wisdom from Kara-tur?"
"Experience," he answered. "For what it is worth…" He watched her for a long moment, as if weighing something and then looked away. "If you are going to spend many nights like this…"
She raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"
Yoshimo shrugged. "I could teach you things. To pass the time."
"You mean thief things?"
He grinned and scratched his cheek uncomfortably. "That is a word with such a dark, heavy-handed meaning…"
"And what would you prefer?"
"I prefer to think of them as practical skills—"
She started laughing before she could stop herself. "Practical? Yes, of course. Reading, writing, lock-picking—very basic."
He pinched her arm in reprimand, but he was smiling regardless. "Come now, think of how much easier it'd be on the law enforcement sort in if they would use the tactics of Bloodscalp and his ilk against him rather than seeing themselves above such things?" He glanced at the knife his held and then suddenly held it out to show her. "A dagger? To you, yes. To a thief? It is everything from a weapon to a door pry to a… method of persuasion." He smiled at her as he traced the hilt against his neck in a meaningful, playful gesture as he held the blade between his fingers, nested in his palm. "Your sister? I remember something mentioned of her breaking the locks on your cages. I take it this was something she learned before she picked up the Art?"
Valla rolled her eyes. "A quiet upbringing and a ceaselessly curious mind isn't a good mix. Eventually they—Imoen, in this case—have to go looking for excitement, even if it means picking it out of someone else's pocket. When we were children, it was my allowance. When we got older, it was the pocket change of every traveler than entered her father's inn. And eventually there was the lock-breaking…"
Yoshimo smiled. "I bet such talents were useful when you traveled."
She couldn't argue. Imoen had quickly acquired a talent for setting snares, which aided their effort toward not dying from an assassin's blade whenever they rested, which prevented them from also dying of exhaustion for fear of their safety. This also meant she had a rather profound talent for finding and disabling them as well, which prevented several bandit-related disasters.
"It would help you too, to know these things," he hedged, nudging her knee with his. "To at least know a trap before you blunder into it. I cannot always go before you."
Valla looked to the rogue beside her, her lips pursed. True. There had been enough close shaves with Imoen crouched over some device or another when she had to yank the girl away to prevent her from being cleaved in half by a hobgoblin. "I'm not keeping you up?"
"One acquires an affinity for all hours in my line of work," he answered with a shrug. "I would rather be occupied in this manner anyway. To know you are… safe. And not bored." He offered another quick smile.
There seemed to be a word he would have preferred to use, but couldn't locate. It didn't matter. The sentiment was honest. It was probably what sold her on the idea of 'lessons'. She sighed. "Why not? If I said no and then I died impaled on some spike trap I'd be really embarrassed."
Yoshimo consoled her with a pat on the leg. "I would never allow such a thing. Go dress. There are many places to begin learning the basics of thieving, but not here and not in your nightclothes."
Valla learned a few things very quickly. For starters, she realized that she had no basic talent for picking locks. It seemed that there were "havers" and "takers" in the world and she was destined to fit somewhere outside of them. Hopefully comfortably or at least invisibly.
Yoshimo promised they'd work on it anyway. No one mastered such a skill in a night, he had told her cheerfully and he would have attributed any success on her part to blind luck anyway.
It was nice to know that by failing she had somehow succeeded.
However, since the lesson hadn't gotten anywhere that night, he followed it by instructing her how to remove hinges in the quickest manner and gave her pointers for the unconventional use of her smaller armaments for prying purposes. It lacked his dexterous, borderline hypnotic finesse, but if she was good at anything, she had learned, it was breaking things.
Eventually, they retreated to the Promenade and found perches atop the towering arches over the southern gates just before sunrise. Apparently the one thief-y thing she had a good grasp of was climbing. A childhood spent in Candlekeep among its walls and spires, Imoens to chase and tutors to hide from was reason enough to have mastered that much.
It was a good view too and well-worth the effort. Surrounded by the terraced, red stone rises that loomed on every side, the Promenade was enormous. From their vantage point above it, the sprawl of the market and the endless sea of merchant awnings was labyrinthine and a bit awe-inspiring. Anyone could get lost in it.
Their spot also afforded them a good view of just how expansive the damage was from their first confrontation with Irenicus.
The missing wall and the upheaval of earth and stone made Valla feel dizzy.
She thought of the mage and how much he embodied the concepts of power—even his movements, his body itself, rippled with physical grace and prowess—and looking at the destruction he had wrought…
How was she meant to face such a leviathan?
"There are no honest merchants," Yoshimo spoke up, distracting her from her thoughts.
She wondered if he could see her mind wandering. "That hardly seems fair," she argued.
They were eating fruit they had acquired from one of the vendors that was out before sunrise to tend his stall. Valla had wanted some grapes, but they were more expensive than the other fruit available. Reluctantly, she opted for handfuls of cherries and a few peaches.
However, it didn't necessarily surprise her when Yoshimo produced a folded cloth from his pack and contained within were two, heavy clusters of red grapes.
She frowned at him.
He smiled back. "You are in the City of Coin," he said. "Here, there is wealth everywhere and everyone wants a share of it. So, the merchants happily gouge their customers in the name of competition. Anything you sell them they will offer you a quarter of its value for and then they will turn around and charge the buyer three times that." He jerked his head back. "That vendor? I passed his stall yesterday and took note of his offerings for our hamster companion. But you mentioned aloud as we were looking how you craved for grapes, so he thought to charge you too much in hopes that you might pay it."
Valla raised her brows in surprise. "Oh."
He popped one of the berries into his mouth and smiled. "So, if it eases your conscience, you may think of this as karma. Had he been honest, he would have his gold. Instead only one of you is happy." He laughed at the disconcerted twist of her lips. "Honestly, I do not know how paladins live under such complicated rules. It is easier to make your own."
She snorted. "Yes, I'm sure it is," she said. "But I'd have you know that Sunites are considered fast and loose where law is concerned."
"Oh?"
Valla made a face. "Sune's realm doesn't have anything to do with order or the truth or the literal law. Her domains are love and beauty—concepts that quite literally don't have rules. So a lot of her paladins and clerics are considered to be more wild than those of the Triad or of Helm. Her church is more about following intuition and what feels right and the Triad are more about regimented order."
Yoshimo was quiet as he considered something while slowly chewing another grape. "I imagine you must all work together beautifully," he concluded after a while.
She answered with an indelicate snort. "In my experience, it was never dull."
He laughed. "So, how does one go about fighting for beauty and love?" he asked. He reclined back against the stone, folding his arms behind his head. "It is easy to imagine clerics of such a church, but warriors…" He trailed off in search of a word.
"Sound fruity?" she asked.
The rogue raised his hands in surrender, as if to say that he wasn't judging anyone for whatever lifestyle choices they made.
Valla smiled. "Don't worry, I've heard everything. Twice." She picked one of the cherries and examined it for spots. "This world is mad. There are people in it capable of horrible things. We've seen them." She bit into it, avoiding the pit. "Then there are other people who work miracles every day. Some are the conduits of the gods' power and some are heroes that die for virtue and don't expect anything. But some just get up and live this impossible life as normally as they can and scrape out an existence with everything against them. They live and fall in love and keep the world going around." She looked over at him and found that he was watching her again with his dark, hawkish eyes. "Mad or not, this life can be beautiful. That's worth fighting for."
Yoshimo's expression softened. He look away, above, at the sky as its color shifted from endless pitch an ever-lightening shade of navy as it grew closer to daybreak. After a while he asked, quietly: "You still believe this?"
Valla looked across the Promenade again and considered the destruction that had cleaved clear through all the levels of its north wall. At once her mind conjured images of the desiccated remains beneath her feet and the shadows that breathed upon her neck…
She banished the thoughts and rubbed her eyes tiredly. "I have to try."
"You are not whole."
The cage was cold at her back and beneath her and the shift that separated her from indecency was dirty and blood-stained. Though at this point, did decency matter? Did flesh tempt one such as her captor?
This cage was located in one of his labs, amidst specimen jars and the sickly smell of foul alchemical experiments. She must have been relocated sometime during her last spell of unconsciousness. She would never dare call it "sleeping".
Those eyes, piercing and cold, turned upon her. "What was that, little paladin?"
She wasn't sure where this languid contentment had come from. She had been afraid at first; of this place and of him. It had been a cold fear she had never known before. Then she had just been angry and she had tried to escape. Now, this. Had she accepted this as her end? Was she in too much pain? Or had she been drugged?
"Your aura… you don't have one."
He had been preparing a mixture and paused, letting his hands come to rest flat upon the worktop. His fingers were long and elegant, beautiful one might say if not for the scars that warped his skin, pulling it tight in places and puckering it in others. She wondered if he was scarred elsewhere. If that was why he wore the mask.
She took his lingering silence as a bid to go on, though his expression was inscrutable, as always. "To see someone's aura is to glimpse their true heart—to know them if you can make sense of the layers. But you are a void. A shell with nothing to fill it."
The mage watched her still, unmoving. There was something eerier in his silence than there had ever been in his calm, methodical speech or the dispassionate way he caused pain and measured the results.
"What happened to you?" she asked.
He watched her for a moment longer and then returned to his work. "It is not your concern. You need only worry yourself with how you will help me."
To remember something significant and still not yet understand its significance was on par with not having remembered it at all and knowing it was yet missing.
The memory hit her sometime during training in the yard—just in time for Minsc to nearly break all of her ribs in a single swing—and after lunch Valla began to search the library. It was a fruitless task. Not knowing what she was looking for meant she did not know what she needed, let alone where to begin when confronted with the shelves of texts.
She flipped uselessly through a few books that outlined the greatest known powers of the priests and Chosen, how some could sense ailments, treacherous intentions, and even demoniacs without casting spells but by just sensing such things in the individuals' aura. There was even a book about magic made to hide auras or obscure them, means of countering them, and objects and spells that made counters useless.
Not for the first time, she was rather glad she hadn't chosen to become a mage. It seemed rather hopeless when everything could be counter-spelled and then the counter-spell could itself be countered. Swords were so much more straight-forward.
The only mention of those beings that had no aura were creatures like undead and certain magical constructs like golems and illusions. There was no way to be sure save for stabbing him and examining what remained, but she was rather positive that Irenicus was more than someone's disfigured Simulacrum running amok.
Frustrated, Valla swatted a particularly useless book off the table.
Her attempt at meager property damage was countered by a swift hand, which caught the volume just as it was becoming airborne, halting its descent. "One would think a youth spent among books would have instilled in you a sense of respect for them."
If Haer'Dalis' was trying to reprimand her, he was undone by the teasing smile playing on his mouth.
"Is it racist to call a tiefling fiend-bred?"
The bard raised an eyebrow. "Given the kind of discrimination tieflings face here and the general nastiness awaiting them and every living creature, race aside, among the Planes, I'd say that name-calling is something of a kiss on the cheek in comparison. Surely that wasn't the answer you were feverishly searching for among these tomes?"
"No, but it occurred to me before and I wanted to ask."
He hmmed and replaced the book among the stack she had piled at her elbow before taking up occupancy of the seat to her left, facing her with his arms spread so his elbows were propped one on the table and one on the chair-back. "So, if this is not about racial epithets, what is it about?"
Valla shook her head. "I remembered something, but it could be nothing. I don't know."
Her head was feeling cluttered again, like there was cotton wadding between all of her thoughts.
"Might I could help? I have, in my journeys, gathered quite a pool of knowledge to draw from." Haer'Dalis tipped his head. "Or perhaps simply venting this trouble to another person will ease the burden from your own mind."
She considered this. It was surely nothing Edwin or Viconia could complain about. And eventually, if Haer'Dalis was going to turn on them as Edwin seemed to think his blood would bid him to do, he would need enough rope to hang himself with. "You know that paladins can sense auras, yes?"
He laughed. The man could have been a Heartwarder as even his laughter sounded musical. "Pretty bird, I am a tiefling. It is my aura that tends to make your brethren in arms nervous."
Valla nodded and forced a smile. Right, stupid question. Stupid cotton. "I don't suppose bards can feel auras can they? With a spell maybe?"
Haer'Dalis shrugged. "I would not know about other musical and magical individuals, but this one can."
"Let me guess, it's a tiefling thing?"
He grinned in that way that revealed his too-large canines. "You have the right of it, my dear. Although, I would not say I am as sensitive to such things as anyone imbued with divine power. My sense is generally limited to an impression of an individual, but I generally cannot glean anything of their depths."
She nodded again. "So, to you, individuals are blurs of a single color?"
"Usually color, yes. Was that how you saw auras?" He rested his chin on an upturned palm and pitched himself over one arm, leaning toward her in interest. "I've heard that they manifest differently for some individuals—in smells and sounds and such. But you could, how should I say—turn it on and off? Me too. That would be fascinating, though. To see the entire world as a wash of colors with no borders to contain them all of the time." He paused, as if musing on this image. Then he looked to her. "I'm sorry, is there a question in all of this?"
Valla had drawn her legs up, her heels hooked upon the edge of her seat. "You have plane-walked. Have you ever met someone without an aura?"
Haer'Dalis blinked, as if the question has struck him right in the nose. Then he sat back, crossing his legs, chewing upon his thumb, his eyes moving here and there beneath heavily furrowed brows as he thought.
After some moments, he lowered his hand from his mouth and looked to her. "I… have not," he conceded and he looked very troubled. "I take it we are not speaking of an automaton? There are such creatures of Sigil. They are constructs, in a manner of speaking, and operate as a hive mind."
"He is not a construct."
Haer'Dalis raised his eyebrows. "He? May I take a guess and assume we are talking of your former captor?"
She nodded.
Any fear that he might pry or ask something that would require her to dance around the answers were abated when he too nodded and then immediately resumed their previous topic of conversation: "Was he undead?"
She waved this off. "Even if he was the most well-preserved lich to ever walk Toril, undead have their own feel."
Haer'Dalis shifted in his seat, piling his long legs into it to accommodate how he turned to face her. "I suppose then," he hedged, "We would have to know what an aura is."
Valla gestured at the books. "Anything from as generic-sounding as the outward expression of the inner self to evidence of something called a living Weave—don't ask, it's not actually a thing." She shrugged. "All that the philosophers seem generally capable of agreeing upon is that living persons have one, some people can manipulate theirs for different purposes, and nobody is the same." She looked at him and then threw one hand up, fingers cast wide as if she was punctuating a missing point.
The bard answered by surreptitiously elbowing the entire stack of books off the table.
"There can be little doubt then who these people are."
Valla was being prodded at and examined by Jaheira and Viconia was mixing some vile brew or another across the room and giving her measuring stares.
Bjornin offered her no pity and was solely focused on Brus. The street rat had come that morning to notify them of a few jobs he had gotten wind of that might supposedly pay. In the ever busy Headquarters he hadn't stood out to anyone coming or going in the main hall, but the paladin, who had been visiting in their rooms and saw the grubby little toady for himself, had noticed and had begun prying.
"Bjornin, leave off. The less you know the better," Valla said.
"I saw that boy's tattoo—a mark like that on a child no older than ten years!" He scrubbed a hand over his face. "How are the Shadow Thieves involved? How did this happen?"
She sighed and lifted her arms as Jaheira instructed her to. "What we know begins and ends with what our contact offered us," she explained. "If you want to know something more, you'd have to ask someone else. Isn't that how this works? It's all a guy who knows a guy?"
Jaheira, at her side, hummed in agreement. "More or less."
"How do you know he can give you what he offers?" Bjornin pressed. "You might gather all of this money and find that he simply plans to rob you."
"That's a bit needlessly complicated. Also, a really good way to die—using the Shadow Thief name like that," Valla scoffed. "I always got the impression that they were more about being filthy businessmen first and cheating bastards second."
He frowned deeply in disapproval. "Your casual acceptance of this situation is not encouraging."
"There are worse things they could ask me to do to get my sister back."
"Would you do them?"
"Wouldn't you?"
This visibly disgruntled him, but Jaheira spoke before he could. "Unless the Order is withholding some information, we are following the only viable lead," she said.
His lips twisted. "No. The Cowled Ones have no friends among the Order and we have long tried to seek cause to investigate them, but we are supposed to be neutral and as long as Amn lets them run free…" He shook his head in disgust. "I just wish there was another way that did not put you in the path of the Shadow Thieves."
Valla sighed again. "Yes, well, choosy beggars and all that." She looked to Jaheira. "Well?"
The druid let out a gusty breath and shrugged. "You are not sleeping or eating well, but you are recovering, regardless." She looked beyond her charge and met Viconia's eyes. The priestess waved her on and she huffed, her hands on her hips. "You are as fit as you shall ever be if you remain quartered here."
"So, we can start taking real jobs? Finally. Tell the others. We'll leave for Trademeet tomorrow."
The aura thing is a bit of a needless detour, but I wanted to explore it in text because I did always wonder how someone like Irenicus would feel to a paladin. Evil certainly, but what does soulessness feel like? And how would one even begin to identify that?
