Yoshimo emerged from Irenicus's gloomy dungeon, blinking in the glare of Athkatla's unforgiving sun. A passing pickpocket took advantage of his temporary blindness to snatch his coin bag. He made no effort to stop him, and the other thief skittered down the alley and away with his prize. Such as it was.

"You're going to be disappointed!" the Kara-Turan heckled him good-naturedly, for the bag was entirely empty. His gem bag would have been another matter, for that was where he kept the dryads' acorns. The sooner they could see those safely planted, the better.

He took a deep breath of air. With dust stirred up from the traders' carts mixed with soot from a thousand cooking fires, it was hardly fresh. Yet compared to where he had just been, it might as well be mountain air. Already his natural optimism was papering over the memory of that lair of death.

Yoshimo tidied himself up as best he could and retied his hair on the way to the Temple of Ilmater. One of the stalls he passed had a little round mirror with a topaz frame. He paused to look in it, checking that his face was free of blood, or worse stray hairs from the Freya-coat. The store-holder, a woman whose ginger hair was on the cusp of turning grey, bustled up behind him.

"Sprucing up for the ladies are we dearie?" she teased.

"A lady. Just one," Yoshimo admitted, only slightly abashed.

"I have roses, three gold pieces a dozen," the woman offered. "You'll find that Mira is no kobold when it comes to quality and affordability!"

Sadly, she was a kobold when it came to smell. Standing outside all day wearing a full-length peasant's smock in this relentless heat had given poor Mira a cattlesque aroma. He backed up as far as he could without making it too obvious what he was doing.

"Alas, I do not have three gold pieces. Nor even one," he confessed with a twinkle in his dark eyes. "In any case, flowers can be a risky gift."

He recalled Anomen's present of a crimson rhodelia to Jaheira, a move which had resulted in her quarterstaff making sharp contact with his shins. The memory, coupled with his sheer joy at having survived, caused him to laugh out loud. It was hardly appropriate, but he was still too high on adrenaline to care.

Mira, of course, had no idea why he was laughing. She assumed that his comment was intended as some sort of mean joke about her goods, and she shuffled away muttering darkly to herself about 'ignorant foreigners.'

Suddenly she was distracted by some sort of commotion from across the promenade. Yoshimo glanced over and was pleasantly surprised to spot that the circus was in town. He had been so strained on his way to deliver the coat that it had escaped his notice. They had no gold to enter the main tent but there were plenty of animals in cages outside that were free to view. Perhaps he and Arowan could set some of the less dangerous ones loose for a laugh.

He took advantage of Mira's distraction to pocket a potion of heroism, and hurried to the Temple of Ilmater. At first he thought he must have entered the wrong building. Yet there was the sign of Ilmater wrought, for some reason, in pewter and not the usual gold.

Back in Kara-Tur, his small community had been the only Ilmatari sect within a hundred miles. Their founder, a lone missionary from the Sword Coast, had erected a great stone temple with silk cushioned pews and bright stained-glass windows. One in ten gold pieces that each member of the church earned was supposed to be donated toward maintaining and expanding it. Over the generations their temple had grown so elaborate that it became something of a tourist attraction. Non-Ilmatari were not allowed inside, of course, but from time to time curious Kara-Turan sight-seers would find a way in through invisibility potions or other means.

Whereas this place was a rancid hovel. Homeless children played on the floor, barefooted and underfed. The pews were backless and extra wide to accommodate sleeping beggars. There were a lot of them. Curling toes and hairy ankles poked out into the aisle and Mira had smelled fragrant by comparison.

He had not set foot in a temple since he left Kara-Tur. The Chapel of Ilmater in Baldur's Gate had been boarded up to quarantine a nasty outbreak of dysentery, so he had never been inside. After he entered Irenicus's service, he'd felt unable to bring himself to go to temple at all. This was the first glimpse of a traditional Ilmatari temple of Yoshimo's life. It was as different from the one he was raised going to, as a guppy is from a chicken.

"May I help you, young man?" one of the beggars asked. She had a kind, lined face and was completely emaciated. Her torn rags had been patched with even dirtier rags and, like the children, she wore no shoes.

"Forgive me I… I have no gold my friend," he stammered, looking about him in disbelief. Then he remembered himself. He was an Ilmatari in the Temple of Ilmater. He had to part with something. Hastily he removed his earrings and placed them into the beggar's grateful hands. She smiled at him kindly.

"The blessings of the Crying Lord be upon you," she said serenely. "I will trade these for some bread and see it distributed to the poor we shelter here. Are you in need of refuge yourself?"

Yoshimo did not understand. He stood there, head cocked to one side, blinking stupidly. Slowly it dawned on him that this woman offering refuge was not a beggar, but the temple priestess. He gaped in disbelief.

"You're the painbearer?" he cried, before he could stop himself.

The woman looked puzzled, but to Yoshimo this was unbelievable. Back home, to be a member of the Ilmatari priesthood was to reach the pinnacle of society. He certainly would never have been invited to train as one. Where he came from, to be an Ilmatari elder meant living in the best houses, drinking the finest wines and sitting in pride of place at banquets in robes of red and purple velvet.

"Are you feeling quite alright?" the painbearer asked, gently. "You do not appear to require my services but, of course, not all wounds can be seen."

The Kara-Turan was still staring at the woman in rags as though expecting the real painbearer to jump out from behind the altar and tell him that it was all an elaborate hoax.

"I am so confused," he admitted.

"Oh, well just sleep it off my son," she suggested with a wink. "And don't accept any more herbs from the vendors out there. They do like to take advantage of visitors from overseas."

Yoshimo was about to explain, but at that moment half a dozen beggars and children crowded around the painbearer, all scrambling for her attention. She returned to the back rooms with them all trailing behind her, like very grubby ducklings.

He followed too, and there he found Arowan polishing the little, plain glass windows with a grimy rag. She dropped it when she saw him, and threw herself into his arms, burying her face into his neck. The thief patted her hair reassuringly until she had calmed down, though he was scarcely less relieved to have escaped Bodhi in one piece.

Yoshimo helped her to finish the windows and they left the temple, hand in hand. As they walked past the pews of sleeping beggars, he continued to look about him with a baffled expression. Arowan noticed, and asked with a half-smile; "Something up?"

"What happened to this place?" he breathed, keeping his voice down in case the painbearer should hear him and take offence.

"What do you mean?" Arowan asked lightly.

"Did the temple get into debt or something?" he asked. "Where are the statues? Where are the tapestries?"

"Tapestries?!" Arowan laughed out loud. Then she saw that Yoshimo wasn't smiling. On the contrary, he seemed to be finding this quite disturbing.

With a little gentle probing, she discovered that Yoshimo's sect had a very different notion of what it meant to be an Ilmatari than the one that she was familiar with. Technically they were reading from the same texts, but they had interpreted the commandments in a radically different way. A way that sounded like it worked better for the priests, and perhaps not so well for the poor.

"So, what did they do when beggars came to the temple?" she asked him, with a slight frown.

"There was only one beggar in our whole village," Yoshimo replied with a shrug. "So all our charitable obligations were directed at him. He ended up rather more rotund than the beggars I have seen in Baldur's Gate and Athkatla, I must admit."

"What about the poor outside your village?" Arowan asked as they meandered in the general direction of the circus. She wrinkled her nose at it. Places like this tended to be infested with fortune tellers and conmen.

"We weren't really encouraged to mix with…" Yoshimo began, but he never reached the end of his sentence, for suddenly the two of them were being swept from their feet. He hollered in alarm, thinking that Bodhi had chased him outside and was going to feast on him after all.

Luckily it was only Minsc. His enthusiastic greeting squashed the air from Arowan's lungs. They had met at the Copper Coronet only a few days ago, but one would think from his joy at seeing them that they had been apart for years. Yoshimo berated himself for being so daft. Of course it couldn't have been Bodhi. It was broad daylight. Vampires couldn't walk about in the glare of the sun, even one as powerful as Bodhi.

Except standing behind Minsc was a vampire who could.

He was still accompanied by Neera (now mercifully free from feathers) and in place of his mad, distracted thief was a new recruit. She was tall, dark, beautiful and unmistakably undead.

"Er… Minsc?" ventured Arowan, who had also noticed the latest addition to his party. Minsc gave them one last, rib-cracking squeeze and put the pair of them down. "You er… you appear to have a vampire with you."

"I- I said that too!" came a tremulous voice.

Yoshimo looked down. Minsc had in fact acquired not one but two new recruits. The second was a mage so small and timorous that at first he had overlooked her entirely. She was sheltering behind Minsc's considerable bulk. He almost completely concealed her for even by elfin standards, the yellow-haired sorceress was unusually slight.

"What happened to Hexxat?" asked Arowan.

For Yoshimo, however, the penny had already dropped. He had only known Clara in passing, having occasionally run into her on the way to report to Irenicus. As with the rest of the mad wizard's servants, he had intentionally avoided engaging her in conversation. This was because most of Irenicus's followers were sadists, and the ones who weren't tended to end up dead.

The hooded, confused woman he had met in the Copper Coronet had called herself by a different name. 'Hexxat' had been so different from Clara in voice and demeanour, that Yoshimo had not registered that they were the same person.

Now it was obvious, and from the conversation he had overheard between Irenicus and his sister, Clara had been killed by a vampire. A vampire who was not Bodhi. Like Minsc's new friend.

"I am Hexxat," the vampire replied, extending her hand to Arowan. The ranger shook it cautiously. Even in the roasting sun of Athkatla it was icy cold.

"You ate Clara!" Yoshimo said, hand on his katana.

Hexxat conceded this truth with a nod. She seemed in no hurry to attack him, but that might change. It depended on whether she had eaten Clara because she was Bodhi's thief, or for some other unrelated reason. After all, a woman like Clara was bound to have enemies.

"If you knew Clara, then you also know that she is no great loss to the world," Hexxat said, fairly. Beside her the elf woman shivered. "If Minsc and Boo can see past my affliction, surely you can do the same?"

"Minsc may see past your 'affliction,' but I'm very surprised indeed that he can see past you eating a member of his party," Arowan muttered. "What exactly happened?"

"Boo says let us discuss this over an ale and some of those huge suspicious looking circus sausages*," Minsc boomed. "We have just had quite the adventure. The whole circus was taken over by genies, spiders and werewolves. Fighting them built up quite the appetite! Boo was also hoping to get some dessert, but the candyfloss man seems to have gone."

"You didn't need to fight them, I told you they were illusions," sighed the elf. "But Uncle Quayle and I are so glad you freed us."

"And Minsc is glad to have a new witch!" the berserker boomed. Then he smacked himself on the head so hard that he risked scrambling his already-addled brain still further. "I forgot! Boo says, 'Where are your manners Minsc?' Aerie, these are our good friends Arowan and Yoshimo. Arowan and Yoshimo, meet Aerie!"

Over the sausages (which were indeed most suspect) they recapped some of their adventures in Trademeet. They left out any mention of Freya's fur, of course. The werewolf and Minsc's friendship had been a tempestuous one, but he would never be able to understand what they had done. Nor forgive them for returning the coat to Bodhi. In any case, Boo had strong opinions on the subject of wearing fur.

Minsc's party had also been busy. Faux-Hexxat had been replaced by real Hexxat, Neera had saved some wild mages from the Red Wizards, Aerie had just been rescued from the enchanted circus and the search for Edwin went on.

Arowan was still curious as to why Minsc was ok with Hexxat eating Clara. At this question the Rashemen's broad, friendly face darkened.

"Getting past the shades in Dragomir's tomb wasn't easy," Neera whispered. "They kept weakening us by draining our energy. Clara suggested tossing them Boo and letting them feed on him, so that we could get a head start."

"Ah." Arowan replied. That explained it. Though Minsc was already on his second meaty sausage by this point in the conversation, he had a soft spot for animals, and Boo in particular. She was surprised that after Clara's suggestion, the berserker hadn't finished her off himself. "So are the four of you going to be a party now?"

"You mean the five of us!" Minsc beamed, pointing at Boo. Then he tapped his nose conspiratorially. "Perhaps even the six of us!"

He said nothing more, and Arowan looked to Aerie and Neera for an explanation.

"We had some help from a half-orc, but he went away," Aerie said nervously. She was nibbling the end of her sausage, without enthusiasm. Coming from the circus herself, she probably had a better idea of what they contained than the rest of the group did. "I'm rather glad he didn't stay. Not that I'm not grateful, but he was scary."

Arowan was gripped by a sudden sense of unease. She had not seen many half-orcs in Athkatla, or indeed at all. Yet they were not so rare that it necessarily had to be...

"Ah yes, our old friend Dorn was here!" Minsc confirmed happily. Arowan made a non-committal noise in the back of her throat. The three of them had journeyed to Dragonspear as part of the same party, but she did not consider Dorn a 'friend.' She was sure that he did not think of her as one either. "He turned up just as we were about to go into the circus tent and offered to help. Wasn't that nice of him?"

Arowan scowled dubiously. She doubted that Dorn Il-Khan had ever done anything nice in his life. He had to be up to something, but she couldn't imagine what.

"Minsc almost forgot!" he cried suddenly, smacking himself on the head again. "Nice Mr Il-Khan asked me to give you this!"

He fumbled in his pocket pulling out a handful of gold mixed with sunflower seeds, some spare hay for hamster bedding and a lump of nibbled cheese. Minsc dropped the items onto the table before rummaging deeper. Finally he held out a little rolled up piece of parchment that had dropped to the bottom of his pocket. The tiny scroll had been threaded through a ring of red and silver.

Arowan took it from him warily. This gift from Dorn did not seem to present any obvious danger but she certainly wasn't about to put it on. Perhaps it was a geas ring or maybe, like Rancor, a link through which Ur-Gothoz could send her more cursed visions of slaughtered drow.

"Men are leaving you rings now?" Yoshimo asked, though his tone was more amusement than jealousy. "Do I have competition?"

"From Dorn?" Arowan spluttered, though in truth the suggestion was not quite so ridiculous as she was making out.

When she had first met the half-orc, she had found his large frame and sweeping dark hair rather appealing. The ranger had always had a bit of a thing for long-haired men. But then she had grown to know him. His evil, his brutality and his total disengagement from the concept of personal hygiene. So fleeting had been her interest, that by this point she had genuinely forgotten ever having had any.

She slipped the parchment from inside the ring. In spite of herself she was curious. She could read it couldn't she? It couldn't hurt just to read it.

Only, it transpired that she couldn't read it. Dorn's spiky, dense handwriting was beyond her powers to decode. She passed it to Yoshimo instead, who read simply:

...

"I will be waiting in the Crooked Crane Inn. Send word and I will come.

~Dorn Il-Khan

Ps. Keep the ring. Nobody in this world has more need of it than you."

...

Arowan picked up the red and silver ring, glaring at it as though it were about to attack her.

"Anyone know what it is?" she asked.

"No idea," shrugged Minsc. "Dorn claimed it as his share of the treasure when we kicked the butt of the Kalah-gnome. There were better prizes. Swords galore! But Dorn chose this."

"I know what it is," Aerie ventured quietly. "It belonged to Kalah. Quayle tried to buy it off him dozens of times, but he wouldn't sell it. It's a Ring of Human Influence."

"And how would it influence me?" asked Arowan, making up her mind to toss it into the sewers the first chance she got.

"No, no, you're the one who does the influencing!" Aerie corrected her, hastily. "It sends your charisma sky-high."

All her life, Arowan had suffered from the curse of low charisma. Shopkeepers overcharged her, barkeepers served her last. Gorion had more or less ignored her existence. Her brief attempt to lead a party had been so ineffectual that even Khalid had felt compelled to say something. For months she had skulked in the shadow of her sister Freya, the Hero of Baldur's Gate, whose artificially enhanced charisma probably set some sort of record. The temptation to put on the Charisma Ring (as she immediately renamed it) was there. For a moment she waivered.

Then she laughed and popped the Blackguard's present into her pocket.

"Dorn must think I was born yesterday," she chuckled. "If you see him again, tell him he'll be waiting in that Inn for a very long time."

They were to meet Minsc's party again that evening in the Copper Coronet. It only now occurred to Arowan and Yoshimo that they had not agreed a rendezvous place with Jaheira, but since they had previously been staying in the Slum's seediest inn, it was probably one of the first places she would look.

"We'll lose our rooms at the Mithrest then," sighed Yoshimo, a shade regretfully. He preferred a higher end tavern than their low budget party usually chose.

"Actually I didn't book us rooms," Arowan said. A mischievous smile crept over her face.

"You booked us one room?" Yoshimo asked, both surprised and hopeful.

"Don't be dopey," she grinned, giving him a playful shove. "The horses have a room but erm… we don't."

"Why not?" frowned Yoshimo. The Inn was an upmarket establishment but he had never known them turn away someone with the gold to pay, just because of shabby clothes.

"I… I couldn't tell you in front of Minsc, he's far too innocent," she babbled. For some reason the ranger was having difficulty keeping a straight enough face to get the words out. "Only something went wrong."

"What?" asked Yoshimo, intrigued.

"Erm… do you remember the golden pantaloon man?" she asked with just a hint of a smile.

"By Ilmater! How could I forget him?" laughed Yoshimo, raising his fingers to his eye. There was still a ghost of a bruise lingering from where the pantaloons had struck him. "Is he staying at the Mithrest? Is he still mad at us?"

"Yes he is, and possibly. I'm not exactly sure," she replied hesitantly. "What happened was, the stable boy was leading my horses. When he opened the gate to their stall I saw…" She spluttered with laughter, then looked frightfully guilty about it. "I shouldn't laugh, it isn't funny."

"Was he trying to spin straw into golden pantaloons?" Yoshimo hazarded.

"It's a mercy that he was wearing any pantaloons at all," Arowan replied. "We found him in a hay bale with his head up a woman's skirt."

"A bit awkward, but I'm not sure it was worth forfeiting our room and board over," the thief grinned.

"The woman was Keldorn's wife."

Yoshimo goggled at her. Keldorn rarely mentioned his wife, and she was not sure what their relationship was like. She was certain, however, that the paladin would not be happy to learn of his wife's infidelity, and that it was unkind to take pleasure in it. Yet the more she tried to force herself not to find it funny, the more hysterical it seemed. Arowan went on, screwing up her eyes, and willing herself not to betray any hint of amusement.

"He… he… heard someone come in and his head pops out from under the skirt and the stable boy says… he says…"

Arowan's ribs felt like they were about to crack and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. It wasn't that she thought Keldorn's inevitable heartache was anything to laugh about. More the expression on the man's face and the bizarrely posh and formal response of the stableboy.

"He says; 'Lady Arowan of Candlekeep, let me introduce Sir William Thorpe and Lady Maria Keldorn.' Just like that, as though nothing unusual was happening! I just panicked. I didn't know what to do, so I sort of half-bowed, and then I remembered I was meant to curtsey, so I tried to do both and toppled over into the hay. Then I said; 'It's an honour to meet you. Do excuse me!" And I ran away."

"What else could you have done?" chuckled Yoshimo. "Are you going to tell Keldorn?"

"Sweet Ilmater, no!" Arowan yelped. "Why would I do that?"

"He's our friend," Yoshimo said doubtfully. "Sort of."

She let go of his hand guiltily. For a while she looked around the crowded circus. People were flocking back now that the situation in the main tent had been dealt with. The denizens of the Sword Coast were used to magic and random violence. Already those who had not lost loved ones to Kalah were munching on giant sausages and oohing at acrobats as though nothing untoward had occured. Things like this happened so often that what else could the ordinary people do, but carry on as normal?

"Look, this will go one of two ways," Arowan said, sobering up. "Either her affair will burn out on its own, in which case what Keldorn doesn't know can't hurt him. Or it will all come out without our help. Besides you heard what Keldorn and Anomen said about those fallen paladins in the Bridge District. Nobles having affairs is a serious business in Athkatla. If we go sticking our noses in, gods know what the fallout will be."

"Good point," shrugged Yoshimo. "Now, since we have some time before we have to face your mother, what would you like to do, my friend?"

"I think," Arowan said darkly, "That we should take this Charisma Ring to the Adventurer's Mart and have the experts examine it. I want to know what in the hells Dorn Il-Khan is playing at."

*Blackadder III