Intersection
"If you must know…" Jarlaxle's voice had an odd blend which suggested at anticipated amusement. Sensing this – S'kaerik had, after all that time spent in his company – learnt some of the more rudimentary word cues – she mentally steeled herself.
"It is for the general…"
Jarlaxle shot her a look that just verged on being a stare, without the impropriety involved in the latter, such that S'kaerik trailed off quickly before she pushed him into changing the subject. Talking to wilful dark elves was occasionally seriously trying on her patience, and not more than once she agreed on some levels as to the Matrons' insistence on males having to seek permission before speaking.
Jarlaxle did not like – did not seem to like, anyway - being lectured on 'For the Greater Public', especially more than once. It was just that - well, the mercenary leader should know the reasons for why S'kaerik required more detail. Sometimes she suspected that the dislike was too open to be wholly felt, and either he was trying to tell her something, or it was amusing to see her hastily try and rescue the conversation.
It was probably the latter.
"That is to say," S'kaerik said hurriedly, despite her doubts, "I was simply curious. I suspect that you are aware of the human metaphor involving us felines and that particular state of mind." She grinned quickly. "Please indulge me."
"You have fenced me into a corner with your smile," Jarlaxle offered extravagantly, smirking briefly when S'kaerik snorted. "Very well – I was going to ask you to leave out those sections of his diary because they all involved… sexual escapades."
"You would be surprised as to…" S'kaerik had automatically started on her pre-planned reply, before her ears caught up. "…what?"
"As I said," Jarlaxle said mildly. "This would be why you were unable to locate the words in your translation device."
"Oh. Oh dear," S'kaerik managed, trying to look very solemn, immediately failed, then let out a burp of badly-stifled laughter.
Jarlaxle waited calmly until she regained her former poise. "So would you still try to translate it?"
"I'm quite sure you would still know those um, words." S'kaerik smirked.
"I must beg your pardon," Jarlaxle said with dignity, raising an eyebrow.
"You must, must you?"
"Are you teasing me?"
"Am I?" S'kaerik noticed the sides of Jarlaxle's mouth twitching down for a brief second, a danger signal that the conversation was beginning to cease being amusing. "Sorry about that. Unfortunately, I would have to submit a full set of translations, so if you do indeed know nothing of the words, I may have to scout around for aid."
"I could try to remember," Jarlaxle conceded, "But of course I have had nothing to do with such language." He winked.
"Oh, but of course," S'kaerik said dryly. "It would be left out of copies for general circulation. I hope."
"If your… translations were ever to be popular, it would have been because of sections such as this," Jarlaxle pointed out. "The 'public', as you insist on terming the rest of the world, in general prefers such stories."
"Even the dark elven public?"
Jarlaxle let out a derisive chuckle. "Despite what you may believe, dark elven society is consists mainly of commoners, who may have a higher intelligence average than the human, dwarven, or Weyr-cat 'public', but do not act that much different. They buy and sell their money, possessions, time, skills, lives, and each other."
"That is an interesting way of looking at society."
"A neutral statement that yet hints at possible approval. You are starting to speak like Ilythiiri," Jarlaxle smiled.
"You just demonstrated your 'neutral statement with possible approval' right there."
"I am, unfortunate as it may be at times, Ilythiiri, Lady Cat."
"It's quite hard to ignore. Um, I would like to ask you a potentially inflammatory question, and you don't have to answer…"
"If anything, it should prove amusing, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle said with mock graciousness. Ignoring his tone, S'kaerik plunged on.
"If your… er, the dark elven society of Lloth was as non-different as you say, why did it not fight to change its form of government? The main bulk of it must have been the common-born, and they should have noticed that despite magic and all that they could overcome the matriarchal system."
Jarlaxle seemed thoughtful as he leaned into his chair, and in the silence that followed S'kaerik looked at his unreadable face, half-obscured by his hat, and wondered if she should have asked the question. It was definitely not one that she would have attempted to ask Drizzt, if he were still alive. 'Ballistic' may have been a good word to describe the probable outcome.
She considered breaking the silence with a reassurance that his answer was not required, but it may have seemed impatient and rude. Cats hated to be seen as rude, so she simply occupied herself by furtively glancing at her surroundings. With the continued expansion Bregan D'aerthe had reclaimed its former main offices, though the current group under Jarlaxle stilled resided in their building near the Company's offices (and her rooms). She had been on a tour of the building, provided by Jarlaxle, and had been sketching some of the rooms. Devices that took 'photographs', or miniature, perfect (if one-coloured) pictures of rooms, were still not available in enough bulk to the Company such as to allow them in a hazardous Underdark journey, so she contented herself to trying to commit the area and layout to memory.
It was proving difficult. S'kaerik suspected that Jarlaxle had been behind the plan – or original idea, at least – of the Bregan D'aerthe offices. They were such a rabbit-warren of corridors which bore strong resemblances to each other that a casual visitor such as herself would be quite lost if she had tried to explore the area by herself in a second visit.
Still, though the decorations had been removed – if there had been any – the Bregan D'aerthe buildings were probably some of those still in good condition. Perhaps spells were involved, but S'kaerik did not think so – it would be too much effort, and Jarlaxle had demonstrated before that Bregan D'aerthe consisted of dark elves, not of buildings or objects, which could be rebuilt or done without. Apparently an incident of quite some magnitude had occurred once which had solidified this conviction, and S'kaerik believed that it probably had to do with the Shard which had once been in his possession.
Or perhaps it had to do with the War of the Mask. It was quite hard to tell, and the answer was rather likely to be a combination…
She snapped out of her reverie once Jarlaxle gave a subtle inclination that he was going to speak, by inclining his head forward a fraction.
"The will of Lloth was very strong then," Jarlaxle pointed out, "And she could walk as an avatar among the people. They could not 'fight' against that. Fleeing would have been useless – no cities were close enough for them to survive the journey in the Underdark. Most of the soldiers were commoners, true, but by default they belonged to Houses."
"A revolution – perhaps that is what you spoke of – also requires a substantial amount of trust, as well as a good leader. There were no good leaders – all with talent in magic or weapons were quickly seen and 'acquired' by Matrons. But perhaps the largest reason was that the idea, at least, of a matriarchal society was innately logical to half of Lloth's dark elven society due to the chance of their gender."
S'kaerik furrowed her brow unconsciously. "But the common-born dark elven females – were they not treated as mere commoners?"
"One thing females always want is to have – or see - equality with males, or better," Jarlaxle said dryly, "Which is, on hindsight, not too demanding, since all they have to do is close their legs and the future of that race would be quite non-existent."
S'kaerik blushed, and then scolded herself mentally for doing so. "Ah…"
"But I could be wrong," Jarlaxle shrugged. A short silence suggested to S'kaerik rather belatedly that conversation was back to her side.
"Well, you have the qualification of being a dark elf, in understanding your kin."
"But you are female." Jarlaxle said, elegant fingers gently teasing at one of the long diatryma feathers that hung from the band of his hat.
"Your meaning being…?"
"Females share an elemental similarity that does not seem affected by race," Jarlaxle stated.
"As you have said before," S'kaerik found the way he curled the tip of the feather around a finger, and then unwound it, mildly hypnotic.
"Would you not think so?"
"I cannot pass judgement, because I am too young as yet to meet all the races in the world," S'kaerik grinned, seeing a way out that combined humility and possible praise or insult. The phrase 'Unlike you' hung unspoken in the still air with the penetrating presence of an unwelcome visitor.
"I seem to have walked into that one," Jarlaxle admitted, with a wink.
"Each time you say that I start getting worried," S'kaerik muttered.
"About what? My encroaching senility?"
"It seems to be a pattern of behaviour with you that once you start insulting yourself your scheming mind is preparing another evil situation for me to flounder into."
"An 'evil situation'? You wound me," Jarlaxle inserted enough melodrama into the words to lend it a disarming amount of humour.
S'kaerik chuckled. "I wish. I still haven't really recovered from that 'duel' of yours. That, before you ask, is a prime example of your 'evil situations'."
"Ah, you are anticipating my thought already. I must be slowing down considerably."
"Talking to you gives me a headache whenever I operate on the same level of conversation as I do with everyone else, as I have slowly realized."
"So, what 'evil situation' do you think I have in store for you this time?" Jarlaxle was definitely feeling playful today, S'kaerik noticed. He hadn't even changed the subject yet.
Wait… he just did.
She could feel the beginnings of another headache.
"If it's another 'duel', I'm not agreeing."
"You have great potential."
S'kaerik shifted in the soft chair to a more comfortable position. "To my knowledge, 'great potential' used in terms of fighting generally just means that the winner wishes to have another chance at beating up the loser, with an excuse for using more force."
"You must have very great knowledge indeed, then." A smile.
"And now you're trying to egg me into fighting with you just to try and scratch off that smirk. Sorry. Although I must admit the temptation is great, my sides are still protesting from the last time."
"Truly?"
"You shouldn't try to look innocent. It doesn't work."
**
Back in her rooms, S'kaerik leafed through the heavy black diary again. It was not as thick as it had appeared when she had first received it – the writer having apparently jotted down memories only at a certain point in time, and all at once, and as such recollections go, had left out a lot of material. Quite a few of the pages had turned out to be rather badly done doodles, some of which were too scrawled to make out. It was quite irritating, but S'kaerik knew rationally that she could not expect the writer, having a full-time job, to all appearances, to painstakingly write down all the details of his life and conceal the result. It would probably fill whole rooms, knowing dark elven lives.
But really, some of the material he chose to put down… S'kaerik wished he had instead given more space to descriptions of rituals and places, but she conceded that as a warrior-type with no particular calling for the pen, the fact that he had kept a memoir was surprising enough.
He had stopped writing quite abruptly, with no obvious reason why. He had definitely been alive, since he had stopped at a point before the birth of his son. Had he concealed it? Or just lost interest? It was hard to tell… and Jarlaxle continued to feign ignorance of the whole situation, even though he had 'let slip' at times that he was in the book, and the author was Zaknafein. Or perhaps he had done so just for the added amusement of watching the mounting, confused frustration on S'kaerik's face at trying to sort out the mixed signals.
Tomorrow would be busy, though – enough time had passed such that a workable if somewhat rudimentary rail had been set up for a much larger team of humans, dwarves and equipment to arrive on the scene to accelerate the process of restoration and construction of a publicly-safe rail system. More dwarves than humans this time, though the dwarves had to pull quite a few strings, apparently. There had been a substantial duergar community in the Manyfolk district that had left distinctive flavours to some of the architecture, and as usual the dwarves – red and grey - were curious.
S'kaerik rather liked the gruff, stout race, especially since they didn't bother to make cat jokes. To them, or at least, the current generation of dwarves, all that did matter was how good you were at your occupation. If it involved mining, gold, or artefacts, that was even better. S'kaerik's involved all three, though without the wealth implied in the latter two, but dwarves respected historians. History to them was some kind of racial obsession, sort of like that of wood elves for the colour green even where inappropriate or not required.
She liked Dwarves better than Elves in general – even Dark Elves. Elves tended to have some sort of inbuilt, confident arrogance that even the best at concealing could not really hide. It was no secret that they considered their race the best, and were quite reserved with outsiders – it took years and years to earn trust, normally. Dwarves merely required you not to make short jokes, to be relatively decent and non-hostile, and not to criticise their drinking habits. It did not really matter – there were much fewer surface Elves left outside their kingdoms – closed to non-Elves, and unlike the Dwarves, they still held their grudge against the Dark Elves such that the very thought of visiting the Underdark was somewhat revolting.
Dark Elves, rather similarly, were never really interested in visiting the Surface – Jarlaxle said he found it 'interesting' but not so 'interesting' as to make him 'consider it a place to stay'. They were better adapted to the Underdark, where they still were in enough positions of power to have a large share of the trading business with the Surface, which they did not want to jeopardize by openly declaring further hostilities with a Surface race that still held some sway. They seemed to have collectively decided to ignore their Surface cousins after the Elder Gods (as they called Lloth, Vhaerun and the others) were gone. Having no religious incentive to make Surface raids, which did not have actual benefit and were really quite inconvenient to organise, the drow decided pragmatically to just stop harassing them.
Especially since the Elves of the Surface had mainly withdrawn to their own places of power. Raids could succeed, but at even greater inconvenience than before, and…
With a yawn, S'kaerik realized she was drifting off. Carefully, she shut the book, and placed it outside the 'nest' before curling up to sleep.
**
Neither Jarlaxle nor any of Bregan D'aerthe were anywhere to be found at the unloading platform where the equipment train was to arrive. All the dwarves were there, though – the Company had insisted. Most of the humans and Weyr-cats had vacated the immediate vicinity so as not to crowd the area into total inefficiency, so S'kaerik just watched everything from the roof of the housing area, along with some of the other residents.
Nik'anoi, another Weyr-cat operative, sat next to her, staring off into the distance. "I hope nothing wrong happens," she said again.
"To a train full of armed dwarves disallowed to drink any alcohol for the whole trip?"
"You have a point there."
"I would be surprised if the train arrived now – it's still too early."
"None of your Dark Elf friends to be seen," Nik'anoi said, looking around.
"I would not be surprised – dwarves and Dark Elves still only get along on the most basic terms."
"Profit."
"In a word, yes. And I do not think they are my friends, or at least, not in the way we normally take 'friend' to signify."
"What do you mean?" Nik'anoi asked, blinking. In dark vision, the little light that came from the lamps hung around the buildings reflected off her eyes, giving the impression of perfect gold discs.
"I don't know any of them well, other than Jarlaxle, and that Dark Elf's degree of friendship seems to be based on how amused he is by you," S'kaerik said, watching as the dwarves shouted at each other amiably on the platform, still arguing about how the train should unload. The argument had been on in strength since the Company had sent word of the train's arrival. It gave the dwarves something other to do than think of getting drunk. No alcohol to be found in Menzoberranzan. "He thinks I'm very funny, or something."
"How's the translation going?" It was common knowledge now that S'kaerik had her paws on a very valuable set of documents.
"Okay, I guess. I hit a block yesterday, though." S'kaerik described the 'translation problems', and then had to steady Nik'anoi before her friend laughed so hard she fell off the roof in an un-catlike manner.
"So are you going to publish it?" Nik'anoi asked mischievously, when she'd calmed down a little. "Think of all our professors in the University!"
"Hah, I'd just do some creative editing."
"Be very creative."
"I didn't mean it that way."
"I didn't say anything about what 'that way' implied."
"Neither did I."
There was a pause. Then Nik'anoi said, "You sound like a Dark Elf."
"I think it's some sort of disease."
**
The train finally arrived, to the relief of everybody, and the generally loud atmosphere of one-too-many dwarves became even more boisterous. It seemed to S'kaerik that every dwarf had to introduce the other dwarf to every other dwarf, even when handling the equipment out of the secured train. Short jokes were loudly exchanged. Apparently when a dwarf passes a short joke, it's incredibly funny (at least for other dwarves), but when a non-dwarf does so, it's an instant invitation for an axe-fight. Strange but true.
"Do you think we should help?" Nik'anoi asked after a while.
"No, they're having too much fun."
There was a healthy mix of female dwarves, though the only way you could tell under the armour was the lack of a beard jutting out between the helmet and the breastplate. They did their share of the hard labour – apparently they had the same strength as the males. Dwarves were the only sentient race she could think of at the moment where the females were physically equal and behaved exactly like the males, and she wondered vaguely what Jarlaxle thought of it. Certainly there was no shortage of dwarven female heroes or chiefs. Their ballads were mainly about wars, where, since female dwarven names were the same as male dwarven ones, it was rather hard to tell what gender the hero was, since dwarves thought mentioning the gender was unimportant compared to what the hero's or heroine's axe looked like.
A fresh wave of short jokes erupted as a few dwarves staggered while carrying out a heavy-looking box. Laughter and the obligatory name-calling ensued. Everyone wished they had ale. Everyone invited everyone else to his or her mother's house once they were out of the Underdark for his or her mother's cooking.
S'kaerik shook her head. Long span of dwarven life or not, it was no wonder that dwarves never paid attention to any coming of age issues. Maybe they never did 'come of age'.
Somehow, that revelation put her in mind of Jarlaxle.