A fire crackled in the fireplace. It burned low. I had not bothered to revive it.

There was a single window in the room, looking out onto an inner courtyard. The window was dark, showing more within than without.

Within the window, my reflection sat with its back to a chair, forearms propped up on my knees, a half-forgotten quill held between my fingers. A bead of ink swelled at its nib, threatening to ruin the carpet.

Papers surrounded my seated reflection. Crumpled papers, torn papers, folded papers. Papers stacked on the table next to me, papers littering the floor all around me.

Far too many papers. They reflected the frantic scribblings of a failing mind.

The other panes showed a room, broken into blurred vignettes.

One pane up: a darkened doorway stood beyond the firelight's reach. It was empty. No sound from within.

One pane to the left: an armchair. Also empty. It had ceased to be comfortable some time ago.

Two panes to the left: A bed, blankets still neatly tucked and undisturbed. Empty.

One pane up and to the right: A table bearing a covered tray. Untouched.

I let my head fall back against the chair and looked at the reflections in the window, thinking.

What I would have liked, in that moment - more than anything - was to have Drogan there. I could have used his advice. I had run into a problem I could not easily solve. I was certain that I would be able to solve it in time, but still...

It would have been nice to talk to him. Just one more time. Just for a little while.

But of course this was all wishful thinking. Drogan was gone. There would be no more conversations by the fire, or sage advice, or even a short, sharp rap to the kneecaps with his cane.

That bloody cane. I even missed the cane. How could I miss the cane? I had hated the bloody thing with the heat of ten thousand fiery suns, and now I missed it?

You had to go and die on me, old man, I thought. My eyes stung. From the smoke, most likely. This chimney had the look of something that had not been cleaned since well before the fall of Netheril.

Memories of Drogan led me to others, as they often had in the past few months. For some reason, memories which had not plagued me much before Undrentide had done nothing but plague me since. Perhaps my strange death and resurrection had undone my mind in some way. It was as good an explanation as any.

Some of those memories centered around the cling of a feverish hand and mutterings that I had tried very hard not to hear. Mother had never been in full control of her power. I had always thought that she could have been far more than she was, with training, but without it, her life had become that of a half-mad hedge witch, wielding power like lightning - unpredictable, fey, and startling. As her body weakened in those last days, her power's control over her had only grown. When she was healthy, most of the things she said and saw could easily have been ascribed to hallucination and delusion. When she lay dying, her raving had begun to take on the ring of true divination.

I had not liked to hear it. I had not wanted to listen. Foolish of me, yes, but I had not been entirely in my right mind at the time, and I had not wanted to hear her speak to people that were not there. I had been there. I had wanted her to speak to me. But of course that had not happened – she had been too far gone into illness and madness, and no longer even knew who I was.

She looked on the soul of the world. And, like Karsus, it had left her mind shattered, and it seemed that every time she had tried to pull the pieces of her mind back together they had only fallen through her fingers, like dust.

So much for power. Why was it that those with true power always seemed to end up mad, or alone, or both?

Those memories led me inevitably to another, to the splat of mud on wet cloth – no coffin, no money for one and they had turned out to be damned near impossible to steal - and the steady patter of rain. Of course it would have been raining that day. The gods did like to piss on half-mad hedge witches and their half-orc sons.

Everyone left, sooner or later. Dead or fled, in the end it was always the same, and Xanos always ended up sitting alone in the dark.

I stared at my reflection in the window. Then I began to laugh. "This is ridiculous," I muttered, passing a hand over my face.

A light voice and a soft step nearly made me jump out of my skin. "What is ridiculous?" the voice asked.

My head jerked up. In the window I saw the blurred reflection of a figure standing a few feet away. It was short and had long, tousled dark hair. Brown skin. Huge eyes, so dark in the dying light that they looked like pools of spilled ink.

And, for some reason, she was wrapped in a blanket from the neck down. I did not question this strange providence, though I did wonder what she would do if I burned every robe and robe-like object in a twenty-mile radius. Most likely she would taking to wearing the curtains, rod and all.

I sat up, grimacing. I am ridiculous, I thought, disgusted with myself. Sitting here wallowing in self-pity so deep that an army could sneak up on me. It was the time of night, that was what it was. The early morning hours were always the worst. Every terror and misery seemed to live in these hours, and to creep up on the unsuspecting fool who really should be working rather than wallowing.

"Everything is ridiculous, princess," I said at last. I laughed again, and leaned forward, turning my attention back to the papers in front of me. A knot running from the back of my neck all the way down to my shoulder blades made itself known. I tried to ignore it. The floor had only been a temporary improvement over the chair. "Was there something you wanted?" I added impatiently. I gestured with my quill. "I am somewhat occupied, as you can see."

The little Bedine had to kick her blanket out of her way in order to walk. It was quite a sight, especially since she did not deign to acknowledge her difficulty and proceeded across the room with a dignity all out of proportion to her size. Once there, she stood frowning down at me. "Have you slept?" she asked.

I grunted. A thought occurred to me. I pulled another paper close and scribbled a note. "Sleep is irrelevant," I said dismissively.

Her frown deepened. I wondered if she ever smiled. A priestess of Shar presiding over a mass burial would have looked less gloomy. "And unless I miss my guess, you have not eaten, either," she insisted. "Is food irrelevant, too?"

I considered that. "Yes," I answered, and bent back to my work.

I heard her irritated 'tsk'. "Xanos-"

I sighed and sat back up. Obviously she was intent on interrupting me and would not be dissuaded unless I rolled her up in a carpet again, and I was too tired to bother with that. "What do you want, princess? Surely not to complain about my personal habits. I do not see how they effect you."

She hesitated. Then, abruptly, she sat. Her blanket pooled around her. I saw the outline of her fist below her throat, holding the blanket tightly closed. "You do not eat enough," she said sternly. "Nor sleep enough. I have seen it in these few days. You would rather neglect yourself than rest. That is not good. You will drive yourself to death this way."

Good. I stifled the treacherous thought. "And?" I demanded testily. "I will reiterate. What concern is it of yours?"

A new voice interrupted whatever her response might have been. "What's going on?" Brown sounded sleepy. His footsteps crossed the threshold from the other room. "I heard voices."

This would teach me to wish for companionship. I threw down my quill. Ink splattered from its nib. "Both of you?" I growled. "Nine Hells. Why can you two not stay where you are? Does the prospect of pestering me hold such allure that it draws you from a dead sleep?"

Nadiya ignored me. She looked up at Brown. "He has not eaten," she said disapprovingly. She nodded at me. "Or slept. Can you reason with him?"

"Reason? Brown?" I barked a laugh. "Hah!"

The boy shuffled over. "Well, why haven't you gone to bed?" he asked curiously. "It's awfully late. You need your sleep. We can't have you fainting or anything, can we?"

From a purely analytical point of view, it was almost fascinating how quickly my teeth began to grind whenever I was in the presence of these two. What had it taken, less than two minutes? "I am busy."

Brown had moved over to the fireplace. Leaning down, he picked up the poker and prodded at the coals. "Busy doesn't mean you have to pass out. Or starve," he argued.

"Spare your breath, boy," I snapped. "And stay away from that window," I added. "Gods know who might see you." The last thing I needed was a dead idiot on my hands.

He eyed the window with sudden wariness. Hastily, he dropped the poker and shrunk back. He appeared to be trying to make himself a part of the wall next to the mantelpiece. "Oh. Er. Right. Maybe I should-"

"Leave?" I finished for him. "Yes." I gathered my papers. "Go back to sleep. I will see you in the morning. Goodbye."

Nadiya spoke up. "Brown, stay," she said shortly. She kept her big dark eyes on me. "Since Xanos will not sleep, we will stay here until he does, so that he will not be alone," she announced.

My teeth were getting dangerously close to disintegration. "How kind of you."

She inclined her head regally. "Yes," she said. She raised her head and looked at me calmly, one eyebrow raised. If I did not know better, I might think that her expression was mocking. "And perhaps if we stay here, you may decide to seek your blankets all that much sooner."

I stared at her. I did not know whether to shake her for her stubbornness, turn her over my knee for her blatant attempt at manipulation, or to give up and laugh. "Why, you little-" I spluttered.

Nadiya ignored me. She fingered the papers nearest her curiously. "What is this?" she asked abruptly, interrupting me.

I reeled temporarily, knocked off balance by her interruption. I regrouped. "A memory," I said shortly.

"Of what?"

If she was going to badger me all night, I would be damned if I gave her a straight answer. "A book."

"What book?"

"Why do you care, princess? You cannot even read."

She put the paper down and glared at me. "I have changed my mind," she said. "Brown, please go out and find me a shovel."

Brown had sunk down to sit with his back to the wall, well away from the window. Now he looked up, alarmed. "What?" he squeaked. "Why?"

"So I can hit Xanos in the face with it."

Unexpectedly, I found a laugh bubbling up from deep in my chest. "My, my. I am impressed. That is quite the threat, little one."

She scowled at me. "Stop laughing," she commanded.

"Hah! It looks like Xanos is not the only one here who needs a nap."

She glowered back. "It is not my fault if you insist on staying up all night."

"Nobody is forcing you to lose any sleep over what I do, princess. Tuck yourself into your blankets, dream your little dreams, and leave the difficult parts to Xanos. That is what you wanted out of me, is it not?"

It sounded as if her teeth were beginning to grind, too. Good. "I would not have to lose any sleep if you would just show some sense," she growled.

"Nothing anyone in this room has ever done has ever betrayed the slightest hint of good sense. Why start now?"

"And now you are just being insulting."

"This surprises you how?"

Brown cleared his throat. "Um," he said. "Sorry. I couldn't tell. Were you serious about that shovel, Nadiya?"

"No, she was not," I said, before she could do more than open her mouth. It was not an interruption. It was purest self-defense. "Besides, if she knocks my teeth out I will not be able to tell her what I have found," I added. This game was becoming boring, and I was too tired to keep fighting. I needed sleep. She was right on that, at least.

I saw her sit up. "What?" she demanded blankly. She looked around. "Did you find something in these papers?"

"Possibly." My mood soured again as I remembered why I had been having such a miserable night to begin with. "While you two have evidently been wasting time on irrelevancies like sleep, Xanos has been decoding some information from our asabi friend's ledger," I explained.

Brown peeled himself away from the wall to take a closer look. He examined the results of my night's work, tilting his head curiously. There was something in that mannerism which nagged at me. It took me a moment to figure out what that was. The boy did not blink. Oh, he blinked when nervous, and he blinked when startled, and he blinked when confused, but on the rare occasions when he was none of these things, he hardly blinked at all. "These?" the boy asked, oblivious. He nudged one of the papers with his foot, and promptly wobbled. I thought he would have fallen if he had not put a hand out and absent-mindedly steadied himself against the table. "These aren't a ledger. These just look like notes."

I snorted. "Well, I could hardly steal the bloody thing right out from under his nose, could I?" I had already done that once today, granted, but my victim had not been expecting it. This one had been more alert.

"Then how did you get it?"

"I convinced him to show it to me."

"I still don't see what use-"

"Then I memorized it."

"Oh." The boy scratched his head, bemused. "I hadn't thought of that. That's a neat trick."

"Why, thank you," I said drily. I did not mention that I had been on the verge of forgetting at least half of it. Some of those pages had flipped by rather quickly. I thought that I had gotten most of it right, though. The important parts, anyway. Hopefully.

From the corner of my eye I saw the princess inch closer, clutching her blanket to her and peering at the papers with a wary sort of curiosity, as if they might rear up and bite her. "What was in this ledger?" she asked.

I spared her a brief sideways glance before looking away again. "It records the movements of all slaves who enter the city," I said shortly.

She was silent for a moment. "Including-" Her voice trailed off, as if she did not dare to say what she thought it might be, either for fear of getting her hopes up or for fear of being overheard.

I did not ask her to elaborate. From her voice, it seemed she had already reached the correct conclusion. "Yes," I said.

Her intake of breath was sharp. I could not tell if it was a half-gasp of surprise, or the start of a sob, quickly checked. "You found it."

I shifted uncomfortably. I hoped she would not start crying. If she did, I hoped she would use her blanket to blow her nose. I seemed to have some vague recollection that an appropriate response to seeing a woman cry was to offer her some kind of handkerchief or handkerchief-like object, but I had no such thing, and I was not about to offer up my sleeve for her to slobber on. "Er. Yes."

"You found it," she whispered. Suddenly, she smiled at me. I had never seen her smile before. It seemed as rare a sight as a rainbow in the Abyss. "Thank you."

A few seconds too late, I realized that I had been staring. I looked down at the papers in my hand. For some reason, I wanted to hit myself in the face with a shovel. It was a struggle to remember what I had been about to say. I was aware that I was not thinking as clearly as I should have been. I had not slept, that was it. I had not slept and Nadiya was beaming at me as if I had given her flowers instead of news of the annihilation of her entire family and the world, as a consequence of this, had momentarily ceased to make any sense. I groped for words that might restore some sanity to the equation. "Do not thank me yet," I warned her.

She had stopped smiling. I regretted my words immediately. I felt relieved. I suspected, very strongly, that I was a fool. "Why not?" she asked.

I tried to gather my thoughts. They kept darting off in strange directions. "Because it is in cipher and Xanos…cannot decipher all of it." The admission left a bitter taste in my mouth. "Though I have found...enough." Enough to make a start, anyway. I cleared my throat. My voice became clinical. Good. Clinical was…good. "To begin with, race, age, and gender are not encoded. Recall that the little fool at the gate inquired about yours. Apparently he was telling the truth when he said that it is standard practice to record those details. The seller's name and date of sale, if applicable, are also recorded, but encoded. So is the owner's name, which is what allowed me to crack the first cipher. I knew I needed to find Thimm's name. I simply needed to find a likely match. Something with the right number of letters in the right order, assuming that the cipher was for personal use and therefore not especially complex."

She nodded, looking down. She had her arms wrapped around herself, her shoulders hunched forward under her blanket. "I see," she said quietly. Her eyes stayed on the floorboards. "And?"

"And it turned out to be encoded with a simple substitution system." I gestured to one of the piles at my elbow. "You will find what you are looking for on the third page. Apparently this Thimm, their buyer, is not of a high enough position to evade the tentacles of Zhentarim bureaucracy – or perhaps he simply feels no need to. There are twenty-three names recorded. Place of capture: El Ma'ra. Place of origin is listed simply as 'Anauroch'. No mention of your oasis. Either they do not know of it or your kin have been able to keep their origins a secret."

She nodded, fingering the papers with a slightly helpless air. Her people really should have taught her how to read. This inability was crippling her needlessly. "When was this?" she asked. "When were they here?"

"The date is written in the standard merchant's format," I answered. "It is used all over Faerun. Eight characters. Two digit day, two digit month, four digit year. The numerals use the Maztican system. With eight characters the number of possible combinations is limited. It took me less than half a candlemark to decipher the code." I paused to give her the opportunity to express her admiration of this feat.

She did not look particularly admiring. "And?"

I scowled. "And what?"

"Do not take me for a fool," she snapped back. "They are not here, or you would not be looking for them in a book. When were they here?"

My irritation deflated. "Ah. Yes," I said. "That." I cleared my throat. "They…were registered twelve days ago."

To my surprise, she did not immediately try to kill me. I would have deserved it. The slavers' lead had widened. I was trailing. Losing. "What else?" she asked. Her voice was strained.

I considered where to begin. "I was also able to decipher their physical condition," I said eventually. "There are four variables, repeating throughout. Poor, fair, good, excellent. Fairly straightforward. Substitution again, plus the positioning within the text made it obvious."

Her forehead wrinkled. "How so?"

I shrugged. "The asabi thinks left to right," I said. "Most people do. It is how he learned to read, and thus how he writes and records values. And, for some reason, most people, when confronted with a series of numbers to list, will start with the lowest on the left and ascend to the right." I brushed my fingers across the face of the nearest page. "The asabi is like most people. He has the lowest value, poor, on the left, ascending to the highest, excellent, on the right."

She nodded. I saw her nostrils flare as she drew in a breath. "What…what condition were they in?"

I hesitated. "How old is your sister?" I asked.

"Twelve."

There had been only one of those. I wished there had been more. It would have given me more potential responses to choose from. This way, it was either lie through my teeth or tell the truth, and the tugging in my head suggested that lying would violate the terms of the geas. I could have convinced myself that a lie would serve her as well as the truth, but it was…difficult to make myself believe that. Very difficult. "She was in fair condition," I said at last. "Details were not offered."

Her voice was hoarse. "But she is alive."

"Yes." I looked at her face. "And you may rest assured that Thimm will try to keep her that way," I added, on impulse. It was the truth, after all. At least, I suspected that it was. "She is a sorceress. She is worth a hundred warriors. More, if she is strongly gifted, and more still once she is trained. He will not readily give that up, not as long as there is a chance that he can bring her to his side."

She nodded again, mechanically. "Good," she said. She swallowed. "And the others?"

"Some…were sold, it appears."

"Who? And how many?"

I thought back. "Ten," I replied. "Most slaves above forty years, it seems. Most of the men. And some young women."

The girl twined her fingers together. Her knuckles were white. "My mother is forty-three," she said haltingly. "Was she-"

That, at least, was not bad news. "No. At least, there was only one such listing, and it was still under Thimm's ownership." I suspected that I knew why.

She took another breath. "But…they are no longer all together. Is that right?"

That, on the other, was bad news. "Yes," I answered. "Though, as I mentioned, it seems that your mother and sister are still together." I thought that bore repeating.

"Why?"

I shifted again – partially because my knees had joined my back in aching, and partly because I had hoped she would not ask that question. "There are two possibilities," I said reluctantly.

"And those are?"

"It…may have been a calculated move to gain the girl's trust."

She would not give up. "Or?"

"Or it might have been a move to gain leverage over her."

Her voice was toneless. "Leverage."

"Yes. If she does not cooperate-"

Her voice struck like a whip. "I understand what you mean," she snapped. "Enough. You and that fat woman made it very clear what the Zhentarim will do to coerce my sister. You do not need to say it again."

I had no answer for that, and with nothing to say, I said nothing.

Eventually, she spoke again, her mouth in a bitter twist. "And so I get to decide, do I?" she asked. "Who to leave to their fate, and who to follow?" She turned to me. "How can I make a decision like that?" she demanded. Her eyes were red-rimmed and close to tears. "Who do I save?"

I looked back, raising an eyebrow. "You are asking for my advice?" I asked mildly.

"Yes." She blinked. Her jaw firmed. "I am."

Will wonders never cease? Bemusedly, I leaned back and considered the alternatives. Then I spoke. "I would follow the greater group," I said. "It will allow you to save as many as possible in the shortest time possible. It will also allow you to say those you care most to save." I caught her glare. "Do not look at me like that, princess. You clearly care more for your mother's and sister's welfare than that of the others. If so, save them first."

She stared at me, her face twisted in disbelief. "And so I let the others go, just like that?"

I spread my hands. "You asked for my advice," I reminded her. I brought my hands back together. "As Xanos sees it, you can search for ten separate needles in ten separate haystacks, or you can concentrate your efforts on one – and while you search for the others, your sister will remain in Thimm's hands. The longer she stays with him, the more likely she is to become his weapon."

Her face turned even more incredulous, and she half-turned away, shaking her head. "A weapon?" she scoffed. "Zebah? She is as gentle as a lamb. She would never harm me. She would never harm anyone."

Magic twined around my spine, burning in my blood and skin and bones, as restless and hungry as a caged tiger. "She is what she is," I said softly.

She threw me a baleful look. "And you?" she growled. "Do you so advise me to do this because you think it is best, or because you see this course as the quickest way to freedom?"

Irritation flickered. So did the fire, which rose a little higher on the hearth. I was tired, that was the issue. It was always harder to restrain the magic when I was tired. "Time is no more on my side than it is on yours, princess," I pointed out. "Besides, what do my motives matter if our interests coincide?"

She chewed her lower lip. "What interests?" she asked warily. "You have no stake in this-"

"I did not. However, thanks to you, I am now…involved. No doubt I have already made a few enemies. I have gone too far down this road to leave it now." I paused. "Besides, I would not like to see a fellow sorcerer enslaved." Truth again. Exhaustion was turning me honest. I tried to recover. "It sets a bad precedent. Someone might come looking for Xanos, next. We cannot have that. I would make a terrible slave."

She gave me another long look, then shook her head and sighed. "Very well," she said grudgingly. "What else can you tell me?"

"Ah." I cleared my throat. "About that. Yes. I…did not mention. There was a fifth variable."

She looked at me sharply. "What was it?"

"Deceased."

She did not blink. Instead, her face went very still, all expression pulling away from it like water flowing down a drain. "How many?"

"Four." Hot metal splinters under the fingernails would have been more comfortable than this. "I know their ages and genders only."

Her voice cracked like a whip. "Tell me."

I sighed and closed my eyes, briefly, summoning up a memory. A list wrote itself across the insides of my eyelids. I read off of it. "Female, age sixty-two," I murmured. "Male, age fifty. Male, age four months. Female, age one." I opened my eyes. "The others were alive. They ranged from fair to poor."

She had her fist balled against her mouth, biting her knuckles. "Four months," she murmured against her fingers. "Mirim's child, then. She had not named him yet." A sputter of laughter escaped her – high, abrupt, uneven. "It is bad luck to name a child before his first summer." Another sputter of laughter, half a sob. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth as if to stop it. "B-bad luck. Oh, spirits…"

I looked away as she turned away, her hand over her mouth. If there was a god whose sphere encompassed screamingly uncomfortable moments, I thought he was with us now. I wished him a speedy trip to the Abyss.

Brown stepped forward, his hand reaching down to touch her shoulder. His eyes were pitying. "I'm sorry, Nadiya," he said softly.

I threw a sheaf of papers aside. "Shut up, boy," I growled. My knees screamed as I tried to stand. Sitting on the floor had been a bad idea. Of course, sitting on the chair had been worse. Just once, I would have liked to find seating sized to half-orc backsides. Just once.

The boy blinked and looked at me, bewildered. "What?"

I made it to my feet. "You heard me, I said. There were papers on the chair, where I had thrown them behind me as I wrote. Methodically, I began to pile them into a single, neat stack. "Come here, boy. Leave her be." I knew that I was not behaving rationally. I did not know why. If she was upset, so be it. After what she had done to me, I had no sympathy to spare for her.

Pride, I thought. Perhaps that was it. She was a proud woman. Xanos may not have known a damned thing about comforting crying women, but he knew all about pride. The only thing worse about such a moment of weakness was having a bloody audience to it. I could no more subject her to that than subject myself to it. It was not that I cared for her feelings. It was that the whole notion of such a humiliation was repugnant. I could not even watch it.

Besides, she had bested me. The geas I was under showed as much. She had been lucky, but a win was a win. "Come here," I repeated. Irritably, I gestured to the floor. "And pick up those papers while you are at it, boy. Make yourself useful for once."

The boy moved slowly, confused. I stepped aside to make room for him, twitching my robes out of the way. "Under the chair, as well," I ordered. No reason for Xanos to subject his knees to all that kneeling when there were shorter people around who were already much closer to the floor and could do the kneeling for him. "There are some to your left…good. Give them here." I accepted the papers and added them to the pile.

Then I rolled the pile of papers up as tightly as possible, balanced them on my palm, ran a mental check to make certain that I remembered all that I needed to remember, and set the papers on fire.

Green flame licked upward from my palm. Pale parchment smoldered, then blackened, its edges curling inward like a flower blooming in reverse.

When nothing was left but fine black ash, I let the fire go. My power subsided, liquid fire in my veins. Losing it left a hollow taste of disappointment in my mouth and a shiver in my spine. I shoved the loss and shiver both in a mental box, lined it with adamantium, and locked it. "There," I said hoarsely.

Brown blinked at me owlishly. "Why did you do that?" he wondered.

I dusted my hands off and cleared my throat. "Always hide the evidence," I said vaguely. "It is one of the secrets to a long life. Well, a longer life, at any rate." I looked at my hands. Gah. They were filthy with ash. I stalked to the bedside table. "Is there water in that basin? Yes? Excellent."

I was drying my hands when she spoke again. "Xanos?" she said.

I jumped at the sound of her voice. The towel fell out of my hands and into the basin with a sad, soggy splash. I scowled at it. Then I scowled down at the water spots on the front of my robes. I had just washed those, too, I thought mournfully. "Yes?" I said testily.

I heard her clear her throat and sniffle. "The part you cannot decipher?" Her voice was husky. "What is that?"

I hesitated. "Owner's location," I said shortly.

"Oh."

Saying it out loud was like jabbing a red-hot needle into an open wound. A festering wound. With maggots in it. "The only thing I actually need to know, in other words."

"I see." She was silent for a moment. "Well...you did your best."

Something snapped inside my head. I spun to face her. On the hearth, the fire flared up with a roar, its outer tongues green-tinged. "Then my best," I roared, "-is not good enough!"

Warily, she looked at the raging fire on the hearth, then back to me. "Xanos…that is not…I did not say…"

Power was bleeding out of me, making the fire climb higher and the candles flicker. It took an effort to draw it back into me. Control. I needed control. I knew how a lack of control ended - I would die raving and consumed by my own power. "I do not care what you have to say," I snapped. "I know the truth, woman. Failure is failure." Taking a deep breath, I clasped my hands behind my back. They wanted to shake. I wanted to explode.

I began pacing instead. It was a poor substitute, but it was either that or blow a hole in the nearest wall, and that would only make the other guests complain. "What I need is that bloody key. Or, Hells – just a moment alone with that chest." The ram's head ring on my right index finger was a solid, reassuring weight. "Just get me in there for half a bloody moment..."

Brown had flattened himself against the wall again. In my frustration, I had not noticed it. Now, he watched me, unblinking and more than a little afraid. Good. Fear was good. I was good at inspiring fear. With any luck, I would inspire enough in him to keep him in line. "W-what chest?" he asked.

I reached the end of the room and spun on my heel, pacing back the other way. "That lizard's personal stash box," I answered shortly. "He has a journal in there-" I bit off my words with an inarticulate snarl. No. Control. Calm. "Damn it. It was right in front of me," I muttered then, half under my breath. "He hardly let it out of his sight. I must have been blind."

She was watching me, on her feet now and well away, I noticed, from the hearth and its raging, green-tinged fire. "I…think you need to try explaining that again," she said carefully.

"It is quite simple," I said impatiently. I turned on my heel again. My fingers were clasped so tightly together that my knuckles ached, but the fire was ebbing, its tongues shrinking and turning more orange than green. Good. "These last few codes are written in a type of cipher which appears to be referencing pages and paragraph numbers within a separate text."

Her head turned to watch me. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. "The journal?" she guessed.

Well, it was good to see that she could do things with her head other than hit people with it. "Without a doubt," I said. That also explained why Undissa had kept the book so close. If my guess about the cipher's origin was correct, that journal was not just a personal record. It was the key to all of Orofin's slave trading operations. No doubt he was willing to show it to customers because he did not expect his customers to memorize it. He was a fool, if so. Anyone with some magical training would have been taught that particular trick. Then again, if he was no mage, perhaps he did not know that. "If Xanos finds that book, he will be able to unravel the cipher."

She watched me a few moments longer. Then, decisively, she nodded. "Very well," she said. "Then we must take it from him."

I stopped and turned to stare at her. "We?" I repeated incredulously.

She scowled back. Now she looked offended. Why was she offended? Now what had I said? "Yes," she said. "We. Do you think that I would send you to your death on my behalf?"

I stared a moment longer. "I thought that was the point," I said sharply.

She shook her head just as sharply. "No," she said. Steel slithered, and she raised her hand, the blanket falling away from her arm as she held her scimitar out before her. The leather grip was frayed, and the blade itself was pitted and scarred with age – all but the edge, which gleamed. "This is my ancestor's sword," she said. "I carry it in his name. I will use it to kill the man who took my people, or I will die trying." She pointed it at me. "I will. Not you. Not anyone else." Reversing the sword, she slid it back into its sheath, concealed under her makeshift cloak. "My people. My fight. Do you understand me?"

Understand her? Her perspective was as alien to me as the backside of the moon. She came from a family of dozens and a lineage that she could trace through a hundred generations. Of the three people I might once have called family, two were dead and one was as good as dead, and the gods only knew what lineage had spawned me. She would kill for her family, but Xanos? How could one kill for something one did not have?

I looked away from her. I wondered what her family had done to earn such loyalty. I hoped that they valued it. If not, I hoped she had a sword in hand when she found out that they did not. "That is where you are wrong, princess," I said at last. "It stopped being your fight when you drew me into it."

Her determined expression vanished with a wince. "I know," she said awkwardly. She found something interesting to look at near her toes. "If it matters…I…I am sorry. I should not have done that."

I resumed my pacing. "Then why did you do it?" I threw over my shoulder. No need to say what 'it' was. We both knew. It loomed between us like a gallows.

"Because I need you to find him."

I need you. Now those were three little words that a man liked to hear. Pity that they were occurring in entirely the wrong context.

Brown cleared his throat. "Um," he said. "What about me? I can help, you know."

I spared him a scathing glance. "If we need you to cut his purse, we will let you know," I said dismissively.

The boy was not to be dissuaded. "Why cut his purse?" he insisted stubbornly. "Why not sneak in there, open his chest, and steal his book?"

That made me pause. I looked at him sidelong, one eyebrow arched. "Did you say steal, boy?" I asked slyly. "My, my. And here Xanos thought you were against such…immoral activities."

He shrugged awkwardly. "It's not right to hurt people just to hurt them, that's true," he agreed. His face darkened. "But this…lizard has hurt people, too. Or he's sold them to people who hurt them. Why should we be nice? Let him lose his precious book. Maybe he'll have a harder time hurting people without it."

This was a new side to the boy – or perhaps not. He had tracked us through the desert, after all. He may have acted like he had a wet noodle for a spine, but wet noodles did not last long in deserts. "And you are not nervous about walking into a heavily guarded building in a place like this?" I asked mildly.

"Oh, I'm so scared I think I might wee myself, actually," the boy admitted frankly. "But then, I'm always scared, so really this isn't any different." His laugh was shaky. "The funny thing is that I don't even remember a time when I wasn't scared. Isn't that strange? I know I must have felt safe, once." His eyes were distant. "I just…can't seem to remember what it was like."

I stopped my pacing, paused, and turned to face him. "And why can you not be safe, boy?" I asked quietly. I met his eyes and held them. I had been told that my eyes could be unsettling, so I let him look and be unsettled. "Tell me. What is so special about you that makes you believe you are in such danger from the Zhentarim?"

The boy turned his face away, averting his eyes. "It's not-" he began. Then he blinked uncertainly. "Um," he said then. "What's that at the window?"

I snorted. I did not take my eyes from him. "Nice try, but if you think that will-"

Nadiya's sudden, startled intake of breath stopped me in mid-sentence. I heard steel hiss, and alarm in her voice, and when she said, "Xanos, there is something-" I remembered that while Brown might have been a fraud, she was, without a doubt, the worst liar in the entire Anauroch.

Guided half by instinct, I half-turned, the hairs on the back of my neck rising almost as quickly as I threw down the floodgates and let it loose.

That was when several things happened at once.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the white flash of a flaring ward, and in the same instant heard the click of a lock being undone.

Steel sang out of its sheath – Nadiya, drawing her sword. Good girl.

Something else clicked, and I felt the stirrings of a breeze – the window, opening. No time. Door first.

I twisted, a globe of fire springing to life between my outstretched hands, and saw the door opening and a dark shape slide in.

I saw the flicker of metal as the figure raised a crossbow. He aimed at my heart. I heard a click.

I jerked my hands wide, yanking the globe of fire into two pieces.

One part I aimed at the crossbow. The other I aimed at his head.

The assassin's crossbow vanished in a gout of witchfire. So did his head.

No time to admire my handiwork. I twisted again…

…and jerked to a halt with a knife at my throat, held by a wiry leather-clad arm, just as the silvery arc of Nadiya's scimitar came to quivering halt against my attacker's neck…and stopped.

Silence fell, broken only by the creak of the window casement, swinging slightly in the night breeze.

I looked down my attacker's arm to a face that was as grim as death and twice as ugly.

Brown's voice, as usual, was the first to break the silence.

"Ishiko?" he said incredulously. "Is that you?"