Disclaimer: I don't own Neverwinter Nights, and I'm saddened by this fact.
10. Sigil. The Court of Pain
Ingrid does not need to turn to Gann to know that he is aching to ask her if she is all right, and even Jayne and Valen give her hesitant looks to estimate whether she is in too much turmoil. There is no time for this. The rich in the front rows do not seem in a hurry to leave so far, but the game of power is on, and she needs to carve into it and cut a few new guests for her evening party out of their usual cliques. An indifferent glance, a ghost of interest in the direction of a dark bearded man whose eyes have been straying to her now and then, a lazy question sent into the air when another slaver in silks and furs at the same time passes by, and they flock to her like little sparrows to breadcrumbs. Ingrid chooses cleverer ones this time: her questions are going to be much more specific. She has already made a mental list of about twenty, and she is itching to get to the palanquin and write them down. How does one spirit away a star gladiator from the most guarded place in the city? Possible plans scatter in her mind like beads off a broken string.
They have less than half an hour to make quick orders and change before the guests arrive. Wine is a river, the hostess is all velvet, and her laughter is silver bells in their ears; the conversation soon becomes a competition of wit. Ingrid shepherds it into wilder and wilder hypotheses, and the guests are so drunk that they start discussing the ways to covertly kill the Cripple. Ingrid listens with a predatory smile on her lips, and sometimes raises an eyebrow at some completely nonsensical idea of how to get into the depths of the Greater Pit. Let the drunken party ask the questions she should not pronounce.
When the last guest is half-carried away by his slaves and the four of them are finally alone, Ingrid rises to her feet, casts a spell to cleanse poison and walks to a washbasin in the small alcove to vomit quietly. She returns completely sober and cuts into the problem right away.
"I believe there is no way for us to get into the gladiators' quarters." She states in a calm voice. "They are guarded against competitors. Too many guards, too many levels, no map, probably magical circles of protection and no good pretext to enter openly." She talks them through her notes right as she takes them. She can see no fault in the way the arena is protected from intrusions.
"I can be sold as a gladiator." Valen suggests after a long pause, and Ingrid can see how difficult these words are for him. His tail is twitching, and Jayne touches his wrist reassuringly.
"If I give you my sword, you enter the ring under the collar of that dog Katarro or Malen… There is very little chance you will have the sword, Casavir, and the opportunity to carve the portal at the same time. I will have to be close to will the sword into obedience. Training and testing will take a month at best… No. This is too unreliable and too long." Ingrid hesitates if she should say what she thinks because it may be seen as manipulation, but honesty takes over. "He will have eight chances to die during that month, and… you saw him."
She lets them do the talking, because an idea dawns on her suddenly. As she runs through her notes again, this vague idea takes shape, tightens into a plan and is born. She takes a minute to stare out of the window before speaking, afraid that the plan might be an illusion of her tired mind. She has had those moments of ringing clarity before when a decision seemed brilliant at night, but turned out to be complete nonsense in the morning.
"You know," Ingrid says, measuring her words slowly. "Criminals accused of most atrocious crimes are subjected to expedited trials in this city. Such criminals are brought into the arena with their own weapons."
Jayne raises her eyebrows.
"Great. Now one of us needs to commit a most atrocious crime, and then fight a god-favoured paladin under hostile mind magic. Even if Valen makes a portal right in plain sight of the amazed public, there is a really high risk that he won't be able to drag your kicking husband into it."
"No, Valen will not." Ingrid unsheathes the Sword of Gith and weighs it in her hands. "I will do it. I will be able to defeat him without killing him."
"Are you sure?" Valen and Gann ask at the same time. Valen's voice is calm, while Gann's is full of emotion.
"I know him." Ingrid answers simply. "I know the way he wields his hammer and the powers he invokes. I dare to hope that he will recognize me. As for the crime, there will be no difficulty with that. Right now, I feel like burning this whole city might only improve the landscape." Valen's expression tightens, and Ingrid understands his anger. She probably should not tell him that ten minutes earlier her best plan was to commit several ritual murders, start the rumour mill, bring Blood Wars to the streets of Sigil and wait for an opportunity the chaos will inevitably present. Also, she should never tell him that her main consideration against this plan was not the collateral loss of life, but rather respect for the mysterious someone who has crafted the perfect balance in a city with so much potential for trouble. Ingrid has an eye for such things, and she harbours no illusion that this balance may be a natural state. The city has a pattern, its streets are narrow and winding on purpose. She can bet that if she wanted to start a tavern here, she would need a permit, and the permit would carefully place her establishment in between more troublesome neighbours. The very idea of arena justice is but a neat way to escape responsibility: a criminal who is dead was just weak, not executed by some prejudiced judge of the wrong race, species or reputation. She realizes that everybody is waiting for her to continue and shakes the thought off.
"There are innocents here, however few. It must be a building. Some symbolic monument, for me to be charged with sacrilege. I would attempt to tear the arena apart, but we need it standing for the show. Any suggestions?"
Jayne sends an inquiring look at Valen, and the tiefling paces in thought. They all wait.
"The court," He says slowly. "The court is in the same building with the prison. They are mostly empty because inmates either pay the city or go to the arena."
"Perfect. And nobody will delay my trial if there is no court to host it." Ingrid works out a deep ache that has settled between her shoulder-blades. "There are several other things we need to arrange before that."
The morning is gloomy, and the streets are veiled in mist. Ingrid walks to the tall gate of the Court of Pain and stops. The mansion is impressive; its facade is the same polished black stone, its colonnade is decorated with statues and bas-reliefs that depict creatures of all sorts – screaming, tortured, dying. She spares a moment to stare at them before she takes a deep breath and throws five blood-red rubies on the pavement around her. A sleepy soldier shouts a question, but before he and the other guards can realize what she is doing, a roaring wall of crimson fire surrounds her and seals her spell circle from their intrusion.
Ingrid raises her arms in a wide arc. Needles of pain dig into her flesh and the air suddenly tastes weird – the time itself slows down; the very core of the Weave reveals itself. Ingrid chants and chants and pays no attention to the web of ghostly threads that crawl up her arms and extend into the air, into the heart of all this stone, into the depths of the ground. It must be taking some time, because the voices outside the wall of fire grow numerous and loud. They are trying to get to her, but she is too deep in her incantation to care. It is magic that holds this mansion together, that keeps the streets of this city propped up into each other in this quaint space between the planes, and magic can tear this monumental building down like a house of cards. She is no wizard to understand the math behind the magic, but intuition and raw power guide her flawlessly through its intricate knots. She bites at her lip and spits blood on the ground. The arcane net has taken roots in the fabric of matter, and now it swells with the power of her blood until her limbs grow heavy. She takes a glance at the rubies: they are almost dead and depleted, and the wall of fire is about to fade.
Ingrid waits until the flames around her go dim and pulls all the threads at once in an abrupt, precise motion.
For a short moment, the force that holds the stones together is completely negated, and the building collapses upward, the columns break into a myriad of pieces that rise in the air and fall up into the sky. It is but a split second, so the mansion does not fall into the streets folding up on themselves high above them. Ingrid lets the force go, and the whole building settles down into a mountain of rubble and debris.
Bishop would have been so proud of her. He had always considered her priestly path a waste of talent. Ingrid lets the spell die above her palms and collapses in exhaustion. Dark figures, hundreds of them, advance at her from the dust and mist. All of the city guard must be here.
Screams and roar in the distance indicate that Ingrid is completing that awful spell they had devised together. Gann shifts so that his muscles get a different pattern of blood flow and waits some more. More guards run clinking past his lair behind a stock of boxes at the entrance to a small alley. He caresses the fletching of the arrow he keeps at the ready. His face clouds at the thought of Ingrid alone and weakened in front of that building. What will prevent her from being executed on the spot? She seemed so confident two nights before, and that confidence was contagious, but isn't the whole plan suicidal? The image of her dead body pinned to the ground by swords flashes across his mind. The image lingers, and his gut roils.
He perks up at the sound of heavy footsteps and a palanquin creaking. He hates that his thoughts are straying even at this crucial moment. If Blooden recognizes Ingrid before the pit show, the succubus will never let her be matched against the paladin.
The arrow finds its mark. It sinks into the pale throat of the succubus, and Gann sees the winged lady in the palanquin gasp, grasp at the arrow and try to pull it out. The arrowhead and the shaft are heavily enchanted, and the holy wood burns her fingers. The slaves stop and the palanquin is lowered to the ground. The dead body of his victim hits the pillows. Gann melts into the shadows of the alley. His part is done.
In the filthy backroom of yet another shady inn in her life, Jayne keeps her eyes on the portal. One gorgeous diamond on this side of the magical hole between the planes keeps the entrance steady, another gorgeous diamond can be seen on the forest floor on the other side. Their power will feed the portal for two days, Ingrid said, sheathing her sword, make sure you all leave by then.
Jayne licks at her scuffed knuckles and contemplates her strong prejudice against portals and the alarming frequency with which she agrees to be hurled inside out through them. The door creaks open, and Valen shepherds another group of intimidated slaves inside. There are six of them, four girls and two boys. Jayne springs to her feet, gives them a quick survey – they do not seem to be hurt, only scared of her impressive specimen of a tiefling – and repeats her instructions. She has to shove the assembled packs of food and bedding into their hands, for they hesitate to touch her property and probably do not understand a single word. One by one, they step into the portal and hit the forest floor on the other side a couple of seconds later.
This is the last group. The evening before Ingrid divided the remaining jewels into three piles and this pile, the biggest one, has run out now. Forty-two former slaves are camping in the middle of Neverwinter Forest, and she is to chaperone them for the next few days, knowing nothing of what is going on in Sigil. At what point did she sign up for matron duties at a church summer camp?
Jayne curses to herself and steps into Valen's embrace for a quick kiss. She disentangles herself from his arms, wrinkles her nose at the portal, throws her bag on one shoulder and steps into the halo of light. She is very proud she does not hit the ground face-first in front of her new charges.