This story is the sequel to The last page of a book, the beginning of a new story; you can understand it even without having read that story, but I still recommend that you read that first.

1109 DR: Commoner cuckoo

Seven years earlier, Menzoberranzan, market district

The woman was running like she had death on her heels, slipping thru the crowded people with all the agility of her half-human body. Every so, the road was often blocked by the crowd or by some merchant loaded with parcels; then she had to push her way, and she was starting to attract a little too much attention. The person chasing her was superior in rank, but her shouts of "Thief! Stop her!" always came too late. The market was enchanted, so that the sound could not propagate more than a few yards from its source, otherwise the noise would have been intolerable. Consequently, whenever the drow cried out for justice, the thief was always already beyond the reach of passers-by, and no one had been able to catch her so far.
Unfortunately for her, her purebred pursuer was not only more important, but also more agile than she was. She was inexorably approaching.
The half-human slipped into an "alley" between two stalls. She realized that she was automatically running home, and it was a very stupid thing to do. Her precious bundle made no sound, by some miracle the bustle of the market had not woken him up. She hid behind some crates to catch her breath for a moment and suddenly felt a strong dizziness. Then that moment of discomfort passed - perhaps it was just the fatigue of running - and the woman resumed moving at a brisk pace, zigzagging through secondary streets. After a while, she realized that no one was following her anymore. She had made it. She had a purebred child, her life was saved.

At the same moment, a somewhat irritated drow female turned a corner and came upon an aristocratic-looking male, holding a small bundle in his arms.
"My lady, I think this is yours," he greeted her, with a discreet bow.
The drow hesitated, taken aback by that courtesy. She was a female, so she was nominally superior in rank to any male in the city, but this drow looked like a noble, possibly a wizard, and she was just a merchant and a poorly skilled priestess.
"He's my son," she confirmed, but without taking a step towards the charming stranger. "That half-breed wanted to buy him, but she said the price was too high, so she thought it would be a good idea to steal it. Where did she go? I will teach her not to steal from those who are superior to her!" She threatened, waving a whip.

Kazran just raised a white eyebrow. It seemed that this mother was more interested in punishing the thief than in getting her son back, and that gave him the confirmation he needed: he had made the right choice.
He was looking for someone to foist little Dhaunryn on; he could have presented Dhaunryn to this female in place of her real baby, a Confusion spell and she would never notice the difference... but between a woman willing to sell her baby as a slave and one who, on the other hand, was ready to risk her life to steal one, the wizard had cunningly understood that the most desperate was the one who would give more value to the baby's life. It mattered little that the woman he had given Dhaunryn to was a miserable half-human.
"I used a simple spell that confuses the mind and that woman left holding a packet of flour believing it was your son." He lied. "Your revenge is none of my business."
"Thank you for your help, but if you expect me to pay you for the spell you used, you can keep the baby for what I care." The female snapped, acidly.
Definitely, I made the right choice, Kazran repeated to himself.
"As I imagined. I wouldn't mind having fresh organs available for my necromancy experiments…" He reasoned, only to see the female's reaction. She didn't flinch. "Unfortunately, this specimen is too young." He took a step towards the woman as if he wanted to give it back. She believed him and stepped forward as well.
Kazran grabbed her wrist, swift as a snake.
"But you are perfect," he whispered with a malicious smile.
She didn't even have time to realize the implications of those words: a wave of death energy swept through her body and a moment later her corpse fell on top of the wizard. He grabbed her with the confidence of habit and teleported to one of his labs, with the dead woman and the baby who was now screaming.
He could have killed him too, but he had other plans. If anyone had remembered that Kazran went around the city with a newborn just after the fall of House Menz'brez, he wanted it to be this newborn. He would find a place for this child too, and he would do it in secret… but leaving behind him the slightest trace, perhaps a witness. It was unlikely that anyone would ever track down a child who theoretically did not exist, but a drow with his wits knew that one is never careful enough.

In the market district, Janneza made a wide tour to return home to the shop of a tanner. The half-human was only a slave, but her master, the craftsman who ran the shop, had made her his bedmate. After a few years she became pregnant and this meant a possible improvement in her status, but also some risks. He was a purebred drow, and the fruits of such a union usually had all the characteristics of true drow, despite their partial human heritage. The master, however, had been very clear: if the future child was not completely equal to a drow, he would not recognize it. He did not want to leave the shop to an heir who looked like a half-breed. The children of an elf and a half-human unfortunately usually had too coarse features to pass for purebred elves. Maybe a Surface elf wouldn't have noticed, but a drow, with the keen aesthetic sense of that elite race...
Janneza thought of her baby sleeping unaware in the mushroom-wood cradle. His skin was as black as night, but his hands were those of a half human, and his nose was far too big. Instead, this baby she had kidnapped was almost perfect. She looked at him better, to be sure: yes, he was certainly a drow, even if his chin was slightly too pronounced. He could pass for someone with a human ancestor, or a pure drow who happened to be born that way. For her purposes he was ideal.
I'll tell Pharius that I had twins. Maybe he'll be satisfied and let me keep my real son too. I could persuade him to keep my baby as a servant. I don't want Pharius to kill him.
She didn't care that her child was just a male, she wasn't a priestess so the drow obsession with power games between males and females didn't concern her. Her baby was the only thing in the whole city, indeed in her entire life, that really belonged to her. For some reason the thought tasted sweet, comforting, and she wasn't ready to give it up.
She slipped into her master's shop in perfect silence, clutching that little bundle that represented the best hope of survival for herself and for her son.
She returned to the crib she had left a few hours earlier, finding her baby was about to wake up. She placed the newborn drow next to him, they were small enough to fit both in the cradle.
"My son." She sighed, stroking the frail little head of her nameless baby. "Your father will be back from his business trip, it's a matter of days now. Then we will know if you can live, and if you can have a name."
She did not deign to glance at the baby she had kidnapped. She felt nothing for him. He was the key to her future but he was also the symbol of the injustice she had to swallow.

1109 DR, Menzoberranzan, market district

Two drow children were busy cleaning a liming tank, protected by thick leather gloves, high boots, and masks mado of leather and glass that made them look like deep-sea divers. Maybe those precautions were a little excessive, but their father didn't want to risk their skin being damaged. Aesthetics were too important for a drow. He did not want permanent marks to remain on his children, otherwise people would then understand that they could not afford slaves or servants for those menial jobs.
In reality, things haven't been going very well lately. A new tanner had opened a shop in direct competition with Pharius, had already stolen some customers and consequently the drow had had to lower the prices. Unfortunately, the cost of raw materials and labor had not decreased, so its profits had been dangerously eroded in recent months.
Daren could feel that even now, upstairs, his father and mother were talking about it. He couldn't hear their speeches well, but he figured the topic was always the same. Lately, at home and in the shop, there was no talk of anything else. His brother Minroos noticed that he had slowed down and kicked him, a little harder than necessary.
"Hurry up, little one, if we don't finish quickly our father will hit us again! I don't want to get a beating because you are a slacker."
Daren got back to work at a good pace, wiping a wet rag to remove the layer of dirt that had accumulated. The solution of water and lime was used to remove animal fat, hair and dung that might have stuck to it, but then that dirt did not disappear by magic. It became… something different, but it still stank. Despite the mask, the little drow could smell it; the stench stuck to him and he kept smelling it for hours. Some days he would give anything for a hot bath, with a scented soap like some rich people who came to the market could afford. Their evening bath was cold and the soap smelled rancid, though it couldn't be worse than the sewage they worked in during the day. The whole laboratory stank: of lime, animal fat, dung, salts that made his head spin, occasionally even putrefaction, when the processing went wrong (and then his father would always get a lot angry, and take it out on their mother or the children).
"Our father is worried about the competition." He noticed, because he needed to voice his concern.
"I know, and he said that if we get even poorer, he will sell me as a slave." Minroos remembered him, in a tremulous voice. "But we can only help him by working well and fast. There's nothing more we can do…"
Daren frowned, a rare display of emotion from a drow. But he was only seven years old after all.
"Last year a nobleman killed the merchant who sold rothé wool. Do you remember?"
"Yes, because that merchant had insulted him by doing a bad job. But it won't happen to our father" the boy supposed, in a nervous tone "so now shut up and work, or you'll take it from me too!"
Daren was not at all thinking it would happen to their father, but he avoided sharing any other conjecture with Minroos. He suspected his brother was too stupid to follow his reasoning. Or maybe he was too scared, but according to Daren it was the same thing.

The children were allowed a six-hour rest period each night, or during the period of time that Menzoberranzan considered "night", when the magical light of Narbondel was in the descending phase. Daren got into the habit, in the weeks that followed, of sneaking out the window of their room above the shop (his family lived in one large room) and going to their competitor's shop. He stopped nearby, disguised as a street urchin, not understanding how dangerous it was for a child to move alone at night. He hid whenever he saw an adult, no matter what race, approaching, and those good enough to spot him still had their own shady business to look after. He only stayed around for a couple of hours: he didn't dare risk more, because his father did not go lightly if he saw him lazing during the day due to lack of sleep. Once Pharius had almost surprised him on his way back into the shop, but Daren had lied about not being able to sleep and that he had gone down to the laboratory to check certain hides. His father had beaten him, but not so hard. He was annoyed by that disobedience, but he was also proud that his heir took the family business to heart.
However, Daren continued with his exploratory missions until he began to obtain interesting information. There was a drow, mysterious and with a noble bearing, who had left the tanner's shop one evening at a very late and unusual hour. Much past the closing time, but it was normal for a craftsman to receive important customers privately, even his father did. The point was that tanners never dealt with finished products, such as dresses or cloaks, so their customers were usually other merchants. This drow didn't look like a merchant. Daren that night pretended to be a slave intent on cleaning the streets (he had stolen a broom from a kobold who was now looking for it in a panic), and when the drow passed him, he managed to peek at the symbol that sported on the buckle of the belt.
The next day he had his father teach him how to open padlocks, and spent the following month practicing, suspending his nocturnal raids. When he was sure he had learned that technique, one night he returned to the shop. There was a back door that was only locked, it wasn't protected by magic, because those unfamiliar with the place wouldn't think it belonged to the same shop; it seemed to be part of the building next door. The owners probably didn't have enough money to magically protect all their doors and windows. Daren came in like a shadow and did his best to pick the lock. It was harder than the old lock he'd practiced with at home, but he finally succeeded and slipped inside, unseen. It was in a chemical reagent warehouse and the smell was intolerable, toxic. He covered his nose and mouth with one hand and looked for the door to the shop. It was closed from the outside, of course, but only with a hook latch. The gap between the wall and the door was enough for something as thin as a sheet of parchment to pass through and lift the hook. Daren had nothing with him, but he searched around and found a cruet with a parchment label sewn into the stopper. He had to uncork the cruet to be able to use the parchment, because he did not want to leave a trace of his passage. Fortunately, the hook was light enough to lift with just the pressure of a parchment. The child closed the glass bottle and continued his exploration. The shop and the laboratory were empty; after all, it was just a craftsman's business, not the home of a noble family, and there were no guards. What on earth can you steal from a tanner?
Daren knew that there was nothing interesting in that kind of laboratory, except perhaps for... a particular solvent that was used only on the hide of rothé and other animals with supernatural powers, so that any residual magical energy was removed. The reverse process could fix certain powers that belonged to the animal into a skin, like dragon skin (not that his father was important enough to get his hands on dragon skin! But Daren knew the theory). In any case, the hide of magical animals always had to be tanned to fix or to remove those traces of magic, otherwise any spell you tried to instill on the skin later (for example to make it a magical cloak) would have had uncertain and dangerous results. The only side effect of that solvent substance was that any tissue treated with it remained poisonous to the touch for a month before the substance decayed and became harmless. The liquid was brownish and not completely odorless, but on dark hide in a tanner's shop it would not have been noticed.
Daren searched the warehouse for products ready for delivery, hoping to find again… there it was. A chest engraved with the symbol he had seen on the buckle of that drow who looked like a noble. The crate was locked, but Daren hoped he had a few more hours to work on it. It was vital that no one found him out.
The crate contained cloaks, and this was strange because tanners don't deal with finished products. Daren didn't know the concept of "license", but he knew that a merchant usually wasn't allowed to sell anything other than what their shop's sign claimed, and maybe that was why their competitor had made so much money.

He pulled over a stool so that he was at the right height to be able to work on the cloaks in the crate. He put on a pair of leather gloves, took a small metal spatula he had brought with him and went to work on the inside of the collars. He didn't stop to think that in that way he was condemning people to death, spreading poison on clothes they would wear long before a month. They were strangers, like that wool merchant who had been killed long ago. The life of strangers is of no value to a drow, in fact, usually neither does the life of his relatives.
For Daren, however, Minroos's life was valuable. He didn't want to lose his brother, and he hated their bitter rival for putting his family in that position.

He never knew who the important drow was who had come to commission this secret work, nor which House or faction he had condemned by his actions. Who knows, maybe no one had died, they had simply noticed the poison thanks to normal drow paranoia. What is certain is that, without any scandal or public announcement, the rival tanner and all his apprentices were discreetly murdered in their sleep about ten days later. A female drow dressed as a priestess also came to ask questions in their shop, but spoke only to Daren's parents, who were found to be completely oblivious and innocent even when faced with spells to uncover lies. The priestess did not care for the children. Nobody ever did.

A few days later, Pharius was commissioned a large order, an important and profitable job that could have revived business. A period of hectic but happy work began, in which Daren and Minroos had too much to do to even talk to each other. In the evenings, they were too tired to bicker.
Maybe they were too tired in general. There was still not enough money to hire or buy a servant, but the workload had doubled and the rest hours had been reduced accordingly. One afternoon Daren, who was physically weaker than his brother, let a thick, rolled-up skin slip out of his hand and it fell to the ground getting dirty again when it had just been cleaned. It was not irreparable damage but it meant having lost hours of work. Pharius screamed and reached for the knife-sharpening belt, which he usually also used to punish the most serious mistakes. Minroos, however, was faster. Seeing all that work go up in smoke had made the blood rush to his brain. He jumped on to his little brother and tried to grab him by the neck, but Daren managed to escape. Minroos however managed to grab him by the apron and slammed him sideways with force, making him fall on top of one of the soaking tanks. The liquid inside swayed and a generous gulp spilled onto the floor, but luckily it wasn't toxic, it was just salt water. But when Daren fell, he hit his head against the edge of the tub and passed out.

He woke up several hours later, in his bed. His father was nowhere to be seen. His mother, on the other hand, was in a corner of the room, holding her head in her hands, crying silently.
"Mother," he called softly, because his throat felt dry. His lips tasted like salt, perhaps the water from the tub had spilled over him.
Janneza got up as if it cost her immense effort and walked over to his bedside.
"You're alive." She noted in a neutral voice.
Daren knew that his mother preferred Minroos as his father preferred him, but feeling such indifference towards his life still hurt him.
"Mother, what happened?"
Janneza was silent for a long moment, spacing out without blinking. It was a trick to keep from crying, Daren knew it well. His father did not tolerate such weaknesses.
"You angered Pharius." She said, still in that absent voice. "Minroos, however, reached you first. He pushed you, you hit your head. You've lost a lot of blood." Daren touched his forehead, which was wrapped in a bandage, and realized that his right temple actually hurt a lot. "Pharius was already so angry… when he saw what Minroos had done to you, to you, who are his favourite… his heir… it looked like you were going to die. Pharius already had the belt in his hand. He started beating your brother. He gave him everything he should have given you, and so much more. I tried to stop him, I tried, but he pushed me aside. When I finally got him to stop, Minroos was…" She stopped talking and spaced out again, and Daren understood. There was no need to say it. His brother was dead.
Daren was stunned. It was the first time he really contemplated death, that he felt the weight of it. Maybe he had even killed, but they were strangers, they didn't count, they weren't real people. Minroos was his brother, his only equal in a terrifying world, his point of reference. He was big and stupid and childish and they often beat each other, but that was all he had.
"Mother, I... I'm sorry." He murmured, the deepest display of feelings Janneza had ever seen him give. "I liked him. When... when our dad talked about selling him, I did... I did everything I could. I spied on Quave's shop, sneaked in and poisoned his cloaks. I swear, I did it. For my brother. I didn't want him to die, mom, I..."
Daren knew how to hold back the tears, but he didn't bother to. Janneza put her hand on his head, the first tender gesture she had ever made to him.
"Daren… My son just died. Does it seem appropriate to you to invent these lies? Do you think they will make me hate you any less?"
The boy looked up and found that his mother's eyes held nothing but resentment, perhaps even contempt.
"You are not my son. I took you with me in the hope that Pharius would like you and that he would also keep Minroos, his only true son. You were brought here to save Minroos' life and you did, for seven years. It's not your fault he's dead, it's not your fault for anything... but if only you could imagine how much I hate you, how much I've hated you all these years. Now my son is dead, so there is no reason why you should live any longer."
Janneza had a crazy light in her eyes, the hand she had placed on the boy's head went down to his throat.
At that moment they heard Pharius's footsteps climbing the stairs, and Janneza jerked away from her adopted son.
The drow swung the door open. He looked tired and angry.
"So, is he alive?" He only asked.
His servant nodded assent, without saying a word.
"Well. Tomorrow you will work, kid, you have already wasted me enough time." He decreed, without making the slightest mention of the shameful crime he had just committed.
Janneza caught Daren's gaze once more and silently ordered him not to say a word. He didn't, he was shocked. His brother was dead, his mother hated him, were his parents not even really his family? Inside, he still hoped it was all a bad dream from the blow to the head.

That evening Janneza uncorked a bottle of liquor with the excuse that she needed to drink to get over her son's death. Pharius mocked her for her tender heart, but eventually allowed himself to be persuaded to drink with her, and to give her that marital comfort she needed.
Daren watched impassively. It was not the first time he had seen his parents exchanging certain affections, after all they all lived in one room. He had noticed that Janneza had taken a small knife before straddling the drunken companion, and he knew perfectly well what she was going to do.

She was so stupid. So gross. Such a move shouldn't have worked, not against a drow.
But Pharius was dumber than her, and even more drunk.
Daren stayed silent for the full two hours it took her mother to get her father drunk, seduced, and killed. It was like watching an ugly and obvious play.
They are too stupid to be my real parents. I should have known.
Finally he got up. His head still ached a little, but he didn't care. He walked around his parents' bed to look the woman in the face.
"Mom." He called her, in a soft voice. It felt like the feelings inside him were somehow muffled, as if they were still in his heart but couldn't reach the surface, his mind. "You stayed with me while I was passed out. I think if you wanted to kill me you could have done it then. So I don't think you really want to hurt me. I'm sorry I'm not your son, but you're the only mother I know. Tell me what to do."
The woman looked at him as if she struggled to recognize him, as if her mind was at a great distance from her body.
"I do not know." She finally murmured. "Get lost."

Daren took some food, a change of clothes (from Minroos, so they would be fine for a year or two), a pair of gloves, a flask of toxic liquid because you never know, and he left the shop without looking back.
There was always someone looking for children to be employed as servants or as slaves; once he had seen a batch of children in the market being sold to a noble House that wanted to train them as warriors. Daren knew he had some interesting skills. He was able to open locks with wire and he knew how to poison an object without getting intoxicated. He also knew a few tricks to keep from crying, something small children usually couldn't control… even though he suspected he would never feel the urge again.

...

Author's note: when Daren says "I liked him" (meaning Minroos), what he meant was "I loved him"; but drow language has no word for "love" except for "sexual love", which is obviously not the case.