Kaili looked at her face in the mirror. She often worried that she looked too young for her age. Her nose was small, for one thing, which should have been pretty and was, a little; but it made her look like a schoolgirl, which meant that Sir Dosan would never notice her because Sir Dosan was a man and wanted a woman.

Not like Brunos. Brunos liked her nose, and had told her so, and that made her want to cut it off her face. Brunos was everything Sir Dosan was not – or Sir Dosan was everything Brunos was not: kind, wise and patient.

She splashed water on her face, left the mirror and came out of the water closet. Brunos was sitting on the end of the bed without his tunic on.

"Aw, look at youse," he said.

Brunos was man, but talked like a boy. He was a farmer's son from Beregost, and Rieltar had hired him as chief of security when Brunos had broken Rhavel's head open in a tavern brawl. Rhavel had been Rieltar's previous chief of security.

"Aint youse a l'il cutie," said Brunos.

His bare chest and shoulders bulged like a sack full of rocks. Kaili supposed she should have found it attractive. Brunos has gotten his figure, she had heard him tell Rieltar, breaking rocks in a prison yard.

But it would be foolish to offend him. He may not have been intelligent, but he had Rieltar's ear.

Kaili wore the twice-died nightdress she had brought with her from Sembia. It was her foreignness, partly, that had drawn Brunos to her, and she expected he would like it. She approached him with her head lowered.

She bit her tongue. "My lord," she said.

"Muh li'l Sembyun cutie, said Brunos, his grin revealing uneven yellow teeth like a horse's. He put out his hand and touched the point of her chin with two of his fat fingers, with surprising tenderness. Then he drew his hand back and looked at her. There was something childish, also, in his delight, as if she were an especially fine-made present his mother had gotten him.

He grinned. Then, like a tearing seam on the arm of a tunic, his throat opened up from one end to the other.

There seemed to be a moment – when Kaili could see the pure redness inside the wound – before it erupted, dousing and blinding her.

Brunos' stinking mouth gaped. Underneath it, the wound gaped also, a second mouth, and blood poured liberally out of both. He swayed on his feet a moment, then the entire stack of bone and muscle collapsed, carrying all its wasted strength to the ground.

The eyes rolled back in the head. The look stamped on the deathmask was moronic, animal.

Brushing with trembling hands at her blood-smeared face, Kaili looked mutely around. The room was empty. For a moment, so afraid that her legs threatened to give way under her, she considered if perhaps some god had delivered her from Brunos' hands. Then she noticed something nearly as impossible as the corpse now lying at her feet: in the air above Brunos, where he had stood a moment before, a spot of blood had attached to something that was not there. It hung in the air and didn't fall.

The curtains rustled. Reiltar's curtains: thick, lush and red. She looked, and made a small noise.

A man had stepped out from behind the left hanging. He was like no man she had ever seen before – like no man, she was sure, in all the world. No man.

"Hullo, babe," said Slythe. He balanced a stiletto on the end of his finger.

Kaili sank to her knees in the red pool on the carpet. She stared at the man, like an animal might, not caring whether he meant her good or ill.

"The hick wath right," said Slythe, looking down at her with his heavy-lidded eyes. "Y'are pretty cute."—then he covered his mouth, as if he had let something embarrassing slip, and grinned. "But bleth me, if I oughn't to of thaid that. I'm a married man, ya know."

"Yah, Slythe," came a voice from the empty air, where the inexplicable spot of blood hung. "Yer like to break me heart, you are! And right in front o' me as well! I never."

"Thorry, Krithten, babe. Here, I'll make it up to yas."

He took a step forward. His snakeskin boots gleamed in the lamplight. He moved like a lazy panther, slouching, exulting in his own grace.

Kaili whimpered.

"Ol' country-boy bull-lover there," said Slythe, cutting his eyes at the heap of meat that had been Brunos, "didn't know hows ta treat a thine lady like you, now did he? Here. Let ol' Slythe show ya how we does it here in th' Gate. I'll be real gentle-like, I promith ya."

His forked tongue flickered over his lower lip, over the iron stud. He reached down. Kaili could not have resisted him if the thought had occurred to her: she stared at him, then over his shoulder, shaking and trembling senselessly. Slythe held her.

"There, there," he said, stroking her hair.

"Please," Kaili said, so softly that the wind heard faintly through the shutter was louder. "Please."

"Eh?" said Slythe, his hand running down her back.

Kaili's wide eyes took in the wall – the hard, blank wall, that offered no answer how her life had come to this place.

"My birth-day is tomorrow," she said.

"Oh yah? How old'll youse be, then?"

"Twenty…Twenty-one." Kaili whispered.

Slythe drove the stiletto in at the base of her neck. Without a sound, she crumpled out his arms and on the floor, falling over Brunos.

"Now that's more like it," said Kristen, touchily. She huffed. "Pretty indeed. I never."

"Mark me now," said Sarevok. "Turn back, and I shall count you among them."

"Fear me not," said Angelo.

The door stood ajar. Sarevok pushed through; Angelo followed.

Rieltar sat at the table, along with a sour-faced, white-haired elf, dressed in chain mail, and an unfamiliar merchant. Rieltar and the elf looked up: the merchant's back was to the door, and he twisted around in his seat. Three pairs of astonished eyes looked up at Sarevok, who was so tall that his bald head brushed the ceiling. Then Rieltar smiled.

Draped in white silk, his dark hair curled and perfumed, he crossed his hands on his belly and smiled up at Sarevok. They shared the same dark skin, but otherwise were nothing alike. The son's face was hard, sunbeaten and wind-harrowed, the proud nose buttressed by pinched cheeks like the prow of a ship. It was set in a cast of vague unease that would have sat better on a scholar than a warrior. The eyes, large and sensitive, never reflected the smooth sounds issuing from his mouth.

Rieltar's face was broad, insensitive, and mounted on sweating rolls of fat. His lips were nearly always contorted in a smile, showing his brilliant teeth. They were false, made of ivory.

"Ah," he said, rubbing his sausage-fingers against each other. "Master Set Kah, allow I to introduce my eldest and dearest children."

His mastery of his second tongue was rough at best. Sarevok had long suspected it was feigned, to scam the locals into underestimating him.

"And," said Rieltar, extending his sweat-drenched hand toward the ghost-like shape of Angelo, his hood drawn, in his Flaming Fist leathers, "a very excellent friends of mine, Sir Angelo Dosans. Of the Flaming Fist."

The merchant, Set Kah, went wide-eyed. "The Fist!"

"Sir Dosans and I – have understandings," said Rieltar, with a pronounced relish.

Angelo stood expressionless at Sarevok's shoulder, like a bodyguard, and did not speak. Set Kah leaned forward. He was an elderly man who wore spectacles, and he adjusted them to peer at Sarevok.

"What a fearsome boy is your son," he muttered. "Surely tall as never there was a man."

"Master Set Kah," Rieltar explained, "is from our homes. He comes to us direct from our – superiors?"

"We are well-met," said Sarevok, faintly. His eyes focused beyond Set Kah, at the white marble wall. He began to take short, nervous steps, approaching the table.

"My son is strong," said Rieltar, and his eyes gleamed like the many rings on his fingers. "And smarts. He goes far for me."

"Indeed," muttered Set Kah.

The sour-faced elf, yet to speak a word, had begun to eye Angelo. Angelo looked uncaringly back. Anyone would have known the look of a man who had recently inhaled a copious quantity of lotus, and the elf was no fool.

It was comical. Such a large boy as Sarevok, his hands like wine-presses, moved with a mincing delicacy until he stood by his father. He kept his head lowered.

"Gracious sire," he said, in his low, musical way. "I beg your pardon for this most wrongful interruption. Allow me to speak."

Rieltar waved his hand. "It is my pleasures, darling boy. Speak what you must."

"If I may," said Sarevok, inclining his head toward Set Kah, "I will address our guest as well?"

Set Kah spread his hands. "My ears are yours, great lad."

"Then I will speak." Sarevok swallowed. More than ever, the scholarly aspect ate at the edges of his hard, cold face. "My sire," he said, "Rieltar Mosef of the House of Anchev, is a man whose greatness is undoubted in all the realms. Truly, from Waterdeep to Calimshan, his great and terrible name is known."

Rieltar said nothing, but watched his son with an oily smirk.

Sarevok swallowed and went on: "When I, this one, was but a wretched foundling orphan, drifting on the tides of fate, my sire reached out his hand to snatch me from the current – not out of kindness, but because he saw gain for himself. And in that he was wisest. For he has taught me, in my turn, to know that gain is all in life.

"Years passed. Then I was a stripling lad, ignorant of all the world, slow and clumsy in my tasks, and then my sire beat me mercilessly. You will agree, Master Set Kah, that he was right to do this?"

Clicking his tongue, Set Kah nodded. "Such is the way of all good parents."

"Indeed. For each blow, then, was like a blow dealt on an anvil, to a chipped and useless scrap of iron. And from each blow – following on each blow – from that scrap, by my father's hand, a thing of beauty and terror was forged."

"You speak well," said Rieltar, lowly, his grin wider than ever.

"Your kind words greatly favor this low one, sire. But I am not finished." Again, he swallowed, and again his enormous hands worked nervously against each other. "There were times," he said, "when, in the night, my heart was fired against my sire, and I thought he had done wrongly by me. My wounds burned where they rubbed against the bed-clothes. I imagined – at times, yea, I even wished his death. Was I not wrong, Master Set Kah, to have these thoughts?"

"Most wrong, boy, yes."

"But I have grown! By the prudence and justice of my father's hand, I have grown past all such childish frailty. Truly, now I am that blade he sought to forge, with his master's hands. And it is to his glory only; none to mine. Is it not so, Master Set Kah?"

"From all I know," said the merchant, "it is indeed as you say."

Sarevok smiled. It was an odd, young, feverish smile, and lasted only a moment. "Then," he said, and sunk on one knee before his father's chair. "I belong to you, sire, and all the fruits of my labor do belong to you, and you alone. You have the credit for all I do. Is it not so?"

"Yes, boy, and you are wise to speak such."

"Then, father – will you allow me to embrace you? Well I know that you detest such womanly show of affection, yet I feel that I must make my feeling known." He looked down as he spoke, and his voice grew higher and quicker. "This once, will you allow it? Though I am but your slave, may I embrace you as a son embraces his father?"

Rieltar seemed to consider. He regarded the sparkling rings on the fingers of his right hand: gold, silver and bone. Finally he smiled. "Very well, boy. Out of the graces of my heart of hearts, I will allow this thing you ask."

"Oh! Blessed heart," said Sarevok.

Then he stood, and Rieltar stood – some two heads shorter than his son, his head buried in the boy's wide chest – and they put their arms about each other. Set Kah's old, doughy face formed into a smile.

The elf, for his part, looking sterner than ever, cast his eyes again at Angelo. He saw that Angelo's lips were moving. His hand went to his sword.

Looking over his father's head, Sarevok stared wildly at thin air. In his arms, Rieltar began to stir, as if wanting to pull away. His voice was muffled in Sarevok's tunic.

Set Kah's smile faded.

A strangled voice escaped Sarevok's embrace: "Sar—son—stopplease—"

Three things happened nearly at once. First the elf stood, drawing a brilliant arc of a scimitar, and in a moment Angelo was on him. Then the small room filled with a cracking sound, loud as thunder. Set Kah gaped. Sarevok Anchev stood with his arms grappled around a sack of flesh, draped uselessly in silks, stinking of perfume. Blood gushed across the floor. He held the body a moment longer, clenching it with a furor that could only, surely, be love, his eyes shut – then let it fall. His entire front was splashed up and down with red. Rieltar was a dissociated heap, arms and legs jutting away from each other at terminal angles.

Angelo caught the elf's sword arm as he finished his incantation, screaming: "Malakh!"

The air glowed blue around then: then the elf was motionless, silent, his pale skin turned a darker hue. He had become a stone statue, his eyes set forever in their dumb, suspicious hatred.

Angelo stepped back. He brushed stone dust from his left arm.

Sarevok had begun to laugh. On his knees in the putrid mess, he held his sides and laughed quietly, ceaselessly, until a tear rolled down his cheek. Then he stopped abruptly. He seemed to master himself, and climbed to his feet again.

"Selah. It is done," he said.

Angelo did not answer him, and Set Kah could not. The merchant was paralyzed with terror.

All the nervousness had left, like a pox, Sarevok's face. He looked at Angelo with a calm smile, his large eyes gleaming. "So," he said. "I have done it." Another brief spurt of laughter escaped him. "Remarkable. Is it not? Just as the Mind-breaker said. Now I feel that nothing is beyond my powers.

"I am the chief of my own destiny."

"Long live the scion of the house of Anchev," said Angelo, tonelessly.

Set Kah got to his feet and took off on his tottering legs, running in mad silence down the hall. Angelo looked to Sarevok, who nodded.

"Sah brakh nah," he said, and lifted his hand.

A larger, invisible hand seemed to snatch Set Kah off his feet, and held his flailing spindly body in the air for a moment. Angelo looked at him, his eyes madly uncaring: then he curled his open hand into a fist.

More blood doused the floor.

"Truly," said Sarevok, shaking his head in admiration. "Great work has been done today!"

Angelo, his clenched hand still raised, said nothing.

Sarevok looked back at the thing that had been his father. His eyes reflected nothing. "Now," he said. "Arrest the men responsible for this heinous deed."

"To hear," said Angelo, "is to obey."

Later, wandering through the rooms, observing the grotesque but brilliant results of Slythe and Kristin's handiwork, Lieutenant Dosan came across a body that was smaller than the others. Sprawled in the corner of a bedchamber, wrapped in a pretty linen dress, it stood in contrast to the larger, coarser body in the room.

No expression crossed his face, but he shook his head.

"You fool. You little, little fool."

He knelt next to Kaili. Her eyes were still wide open, pained and confused. He reached two fingers and rolled them shut.

Behind the Scenes

"Slythe"
Human
Chaotic Evil
Fighter: Level 6
Assassin: Level 2
Most Powerful Foe Vanquished: Brunos
Favorite Weapon: Short Sword of Backstabbing +3

Kristen Lampeter

Human

Neutral Evil

Thief/Mage: 5/5

Most Powerful Foe Vanquished: Captain Barrington of the Flaming Fist

Favorite Weapon: Tethyrian Hunting Knife