Disclaimer: The recognizable characters in this fanfiction were created by R. A. Salvatore in association with the legal entity Wizards of the Coast, who owns relevant copyrights to additional Forgotten Realms material referred to herein. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserve rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all of the situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer.
Note: This chapter started off fun, but when I realized how dysfunctional it would be, the writing (and pace) began to crawl. My working title was 'The Unsexy Harem Chapter', which I hope it lives up to. This is meant to address the discrepancy I mentioned in the first chapter. There's nothing graphic. File this under psychoanalysis. And thanks go to Ariel for looking over most of this chapter.
higher math
It was not very far a walk from Pasha Basadoni's sober office to the magnificent apartments where the harem was housed. The word itself was tantalizing and mysterious, meaning something akin to 'forbidden people.' Within the opulently tiled walls the harem occupied, few expenses were spared on luxury or hedonism.
There were few men alive that would not like to carry a message into the pasha's harem; Artemis Entreri was one of them. He did not find himself eager to walk into the harem with a simple slip of paper with obscure letters held between his index and ring fingers. He had been there before on business and once on an abortive attempt at pleasure dictated by a tormented moment of teenage impulses. Inside one concubine's quarters he'd discovered deeper confusion and a need to conquer he couldn't understand. The resulting encounter had been disastrous. Thankfully he hadn't heard from Basadoni about the incident nor did the women seem to act as if they knew anything about it.
Now it seemed clear Basadoni was offering his young lieutenant another stab at a game Entreri was not well-suited. While the assassin was already something of an expert at disguise and schooled in following courtly intrigue, the young man was not skilled in acts of love. Not that he considered sexual pursuits even remotely connected with love. If love was indeed anything more than a childish story pursued by the greatest fools in the entire Realm.
Not that he cared. His own well-being, and thus Basadoni's goodwill, was the only thing he was interested in. If that meant he had to make a liaison with one of the pasha's favorites work, however briefly, then he would see it done. He knew he was disciplined enough to keep the encounter from weakening his strong will.
As soon as he began to think of the issue as a mission, tension he hadn't even known he felt slipped from his shoulders. His grace was always a deceptively loose flow of controlled muscle, but tension left a faint afterimage of malevolence unconsciously detected by his natural prey: anyone not already dead. Though only a member of the guild for barely four years, all made way before Artemis Entreri.
Before him, flanking the great cypress doors, chased with marvelous designs in gold and silver, were two of the largest toughs the guild had to offer. Neither their impressive size nor their wicked scimitars fazed the young man. Though he stood several heads shorter than the two eunuchs, the older toughs bowed respectfully to the relative youngster. These were neither stupid nor physically slow men; even with arms nearly as thick as Entreri's waist. They had always sensed the budding, and now blossoming, danger within the man. One went so far as to pull the heavy doors ajar to allow the wiry assassin entry.
The scent of the courtyard gardens hit Entreri as he flowed through the door without a break in stride. Plants exotic even to Calimshan lined the courtyard in tasteful arrangements of color and composition. The vegetation threw relaxing aromas into the air while pollen and fluffs of seeds made the atmosphere a soup of fairytale romanticism.
Aquatic species unfolded leaves and petals on the surface of the courtyard's main pools. Jewel-toned fish sparkled in and out of the dappled shade the lily pads offered as respite from the thinly veiled sun overhead. The sand storm outside was not in full force; the fountains still covered the sound of the sand lightly scouring the arcing skylights.
Amongst the lotus and water lilies, several of the pasha's concubines played a frivolous game of hide and seek with the children of Basadoni's wives and favorites. All under the watchful eyes of a red and gold scaled mermaid. Many of the children were the brown-skinned stock of Calimshan, but more than a few sported foreign features; a blond head of hair here, a tapered set of ears there.
Entreri found the scene vaguely nauseating, though he couldn't say why. He found himself condemning every single creature within the room as hopelessly useless, even though he knew Basadoni's harem was not unlike the Sultan's. Something of a traditionalist, the man had selected the women on the basis of what they offered him and the guild. Many of the women of the harem had brought with them valuable skills, education, and ties to powerful families.
Still, Entreri despised them as a menagerie of meaningless pets. They weren't as pathetic as Calimport's many prostitutes and vagrants, he decided, but to gain lives as advisors by virtue of sexual benefits didn't suit the assassin's rigid standards. Anybody could fake their value by taking a strong ally to bed. Just like any fool could augment their social standing by proclaiming themselves a priest of some supposedly goodly god.
As close to anger as he'd been in the last few hours, Entreri banished the unproductive thoughts from his head and walked to the left of what many would find a lyrical tableau.
Many of the women looked to the door when it swung open, but didn't watch the young man as he entered the shadows along the wall, on the opposite side of the marble columns. It was not often they saw men other than the eunuchs and Basadoni, but it was hardly rare. If he had no business with them, it was just as well; the man wasn't entirely unknown to them. None were in a hurry to make the acquaintance of their pasha's principle killer.
Controlled strides brought Entreri through the outer yard's shadows and bore him down a vaulted hallway, no less opulent than the courtyard despite being little more than a corridor to the favorites' personal apartments. Ferns and succulents brought a jungle-like ambience to the hall, which Entreri brushed past until he came abreast of a fountain that fanned out in a sinuous curve from the wall.
Opposite the fountain, encrusted with smooth glass stones, he found the open doorway Basadoni had directed him to. Without hesitation, he stepped through and beyond the small red entryway's array of sheer silks and strands of tiny silver bells into what might have passed as a library in a merchant's home. A grimace came to his face at the tinkling of the chiming bells; Entreri preferred silence to reign in his presence.
The circular room was carpeted in red and painted a sedate eggshell blue where bookshelves permitted. The carpet itself was unusual in Calimshan, a country by and large uncomfortably warm by day and frigid at night. Carpet was an unwanted insulation that soaked up the sound of every footfall. The bookshelves were built into the walls and housed books of many sizes and hues but for several shelves dedicated to uniform tomes all backed in dark red leather and with no lettering embossed on their well used spines.
The furniture was exotic, carved of hardwoods the assassin could not have identified had he a mind to do so. There was an array of musical instruments in glass-faced cases or reaching for the ceiling's crystal fixtures from the floor. Of passing interest to the assassin was a large, unusually thick, rectangle of glass set at an angle on what he took as a writing desk. It seemed to be the sort of thing a wizard would keep.
Also notable in the room, other than the books and thick glass, were several tables inlaid with game boards of strange and familiar designs and drawers that would possibly contain game pieces, were those very pieces not already on top. Many of the boards were set with what Entreri took to be games in progress, others were set in a manner that suggested a new game was about to start.
Of the girl, Rashi, he saw no sign, though he felt a presence in the chamber beyond. He assumed the next room was the girl's bedroom and not a place he wanted to venture immediately. The situation did not need to become more difficult than necessary. He needn't have worried; the lady had heard the sound of the bells in the doorway and had come to greet her visitor.
Entreri noted her surprised expression through her transparent veil when her dark brown eyes registered his presence. Like most young men, Entreri immediately registered the beauty of her form, but violently suppressed any feelings that began to surface in reaction to her beauty. He forced himself to think clinically. He supposed she was desirable by any standards, with almost perfectly symmetrical features, curves that reminded a man of the desert's sinuous sand dunes, and smooth skin the color of Calimshan's distinctive perfumed coffee. Her belted skirts and flowing veils were a bright array in a warm palette that contrasted with her skin and highlighted the tinkling glass beads in her hundreds of thin braids. Her toe-heel steps sang with the scores of bangles adorning her thin ankles as they did from the swing of her wrists.
The woman's attitude was of much more interest to the assassin. Her surprise blended into a curious expression, which did nothing to cover her slight trepidation. Entreri did not believe he'd seen the girl before, nor did he suppose she had ever seen him. If he thought the girls in the harem were capable of separating gossip from facts, he might have found the lack of familiarity promising. Not that facts spoke well of him, either.
Before she could speak a word, Entreri took control of the situation, holding up the slip of paper Basadoni had given him, and advanced toward her. "The pasha sends you a message."
The woman, Rashi, met him halfway across the room, smiling congenially behind her sheer veil, but did not reach for the note he offered her. "He does not often send me notes," she told him, avoiding his direct gaze by ducking her chin in a charming display, "I see things far away much better than up close. Can you read it to me?"
Uncharmed, Entreri absorbed this information with a mental shrug, understanding the need the girl had for the large glass on her writing desk. Glancing down at the paper he read pasha Basadoni's neat script, "KK to 49." It was as cryptic as the moment the stately man had written it down.
The woman reacted with clear understanding. "The sly fox," she murmured thoughtfully, more to herself than for Entreri's benefit. All the same, she smiled at him again and motioned for him to follow her beyond the library ambience, into her bedroom.
Having little clue what the code meant, but suspecting it was some veiled instruction telling her how to proceed with him, Entreri followed the woman. He preferred to avoid identifying her with a name; it would go unnecessarily far in humanizing her. And he hated enough humans already.
The concubine's room was a study in textures, reminding him somewhat of Sawouz's quarters. The floor was swept up in fanciful mosaics that formed swirls of gold, orange, and indigo interlocking swirls on a backdrop of white. The walls were tiled in matte, glossy, and opalescent white tiles, creating a clever illusion of movement as one moved through the room.
Across the room, one of the steaming basins of scented water the house was known for was draped in more sheers and more white; giving the mere illusion of privacy. Her large, canopied bed was given the same treatment, draped in white and sienna sheers that did nothing to disguise the sinuous silver posts, nor the luscious royal blue velvet comforter, pulled back to display white satin sheets.
Beside the bed was another game table, with yet another game in progress. Simple pieces wrought in ivory and onyx sat on a checkered board of the same materials. This, at least, was a game he knew, even if he had not often played it. It was the object of the girl's attention: she went straight to it, bangles jangling and glass beads chiming softly to each other.
He joined her at the board, standing just to the right of the table, rather than in reference to her. The game, he understood, was in a critical stage. When the girl's hand descended on a black horse head piece and moved it forward and to the left, it became apparent the white King was threatened. The only escape Entreri noticed would come with the sacrifice of the white queen.
"Check," the girl breathed, her sigh fluttering the superfluous material covering the lower half of her face. "But not yet check mate."
Seeming to suddenly remember him, she looked over at the assassin again. Truth be told, she knew of him. She'd been a concubine when he'd come into the guild, but not a favorite until recently. He seemed less rowdy than the guild's other lieutenants; she took satisfaction in his quiet demeanor. However, the lack of warmth in his eyes did nothing to put her in mind of the often gentle Basadoni.
Moreover, while she had no fear of being mistreated by the pasha's favorite assassin, she'd heard something of a mishap with one of the other women. According to what little the other would tell her, the youngest of the guild's lieutenants was controlling and obviously bereft of much experience. As Rashi considered the source, she could see the young man's mistake. It was not wise to seriously attempt to dominate the lady in question; she was valued for being a spitfire, a fighter. The encounter could only have devolved into barely constrained contempt on both parts. Anything else was left to her imagination.
Sensing her gaze, but giving her nothing to read, the young killer stared silently at the board a few moments longer. Was there significance in the move? Was this a message to the girl? Basadoni's knight to take, in chess terms, the girl's queen? Or was it simply the most logical step for the pasha to take to win the game? He found he didn't care. All he wanted was to get the coming incident out of the way with as little fuss as possible.
He knew his prior mistake had been to approach the girl with the only experience he knew. Experience that was no more kind than it was gentle or subtle. He'd hated the situation profoundly. Perhaps the greater part of the problem was that he hated anybody who would allow themselves to receive such gross conduct. Despite the value of the Pasha's goodwill, he supposed the only reason he'd never returned to kill the other girl was that she had, indeed, violently rejected his advance.
Seeking, as always, to take action rather than tie himself up with what he considered half-baked introspection, he snapped his gray-eyed gaze up from the board and skewered the pasha's favorite. "Is it your move or mine?"
A shudder ran up her spine with the cold intensity of his ironclad stare. Rashi knew better than to make the mistakes her fellow concubine had. Instead she ran several calculations through her mind. Several scenarios resulted; many of which she threw away. It was obvious what the pasha intended, but she was uncertain she could really succeed. How did one seduce a man that gave away nothing of his intentions? Perhaps the lieutenant was merely emotionless, rather than hard to read. She reminded herself that the pasha wouldn't give her a puzzle he didn't think she would like or couldn't solve. The approaches to the problem were only limited by her own ingenuity, not the assassin's studiously blank slate.
"Mine," she smiled, hoping the question was an indication that he was willing to grant her a bit of lead. Perhaps he had learned since his only known encounter in the harem. Forging ahead, she gestured in the vague direction of the deep basin of scented water. "Please allow me to help remove the dust of your journey."
Remembering where he had recently come back from, Entreri followed her suggestion, heading silently for the heated basin of water. Not only were his clothes dusty and torn, he had shallow wounds that needed cleaning lest they fester. The removal of his tattered tunic filled no seductive function, but Rashi admired the trim lines of his body anyway. She'd never actually seen such a fine body beyond the black and white pages of an anatomy book she'd borrowed from the harem's resident physician. Of course, none of the illustrations from that book had included cuts crisscrossing a fine young body. The cuts did not surprise her when she considered his dangerous profession.
Her own movements were calculated to be beautiful and seductive as she pulled the sheer drapes from the scented basin of steaming water. Her efforts were lost on the assassin, but without any indication from him, she continued in the same manner. She clipped the sheers back, leaning over the high basin in a movement calculated to highlight her long legs and shapely posterior.
At first, Entreri did not catch on to her motivation. For a moment he found himself staring blankly at the girl's backside. When he recognized his slip, obviously dictated by his gender and adolescence, a heated snarl came to his mind. He tightened his focus with the discipline that had seemed less challenging when he was new to the guild, and forced him to be more interested in scanning his wounds.
When she turned back, he was removing his high boots, paying her little mind. Another sigh rustled her veil in slight exasperation; he had proven immune to what most considered her best feature. For a moment she wondered if the assassin preferred men. Having little understanding of such things, she supposed it could explain the brusqueness he'd shown the other girl. Rashi dismissed the thought when she considered Pasha Basadoni; the man wouldn't send her such a person. If he'd sent Artemis Entreri with the note, there was only one thing to do about it.
"It will be more effective if you step in," she said quietly, trying out a more submissive role. If he liked to be controlling, she could try that route. "If you would Master…?"
He fixed her with another stare as he set both boots aside. "Entreri." Didn't she know who he was? Or was she being polite? Again he raked his eyes over her, taking in her subservient attitude and the underlying confusion that hovered around her. Perhaps, he mused, she was new and didn't know how to handle a man? The thought was deeply disturbing, even if Entreri didn't want to think why.
Favoring action over more self-defeating thoughts, Entreri removed his curving daggers, stripped off his wide black sash and baggy breaches before stepping into the basin. He gave little thought to his nakedness; a finely trained and disciplined body was dangerous clothed or not. Besides, he affirmed, watching the girl reach for a hand towel as he knelt within the warm water, she had yet to make a truly threatening move.
Rashi moved slowly, respecting the young man's constrained power. She felt a little like she was about to groom a hungry desert cat. With steady hands, she sank the towel into the warm water near his left elbow and waited a moment while the fabric soaked. When she lifted the cloth, heavy with water, and carefully pressed it against his arm, she detected the slightest narrowing of his cold gray eyes. As soon as she saw no other reaction was forthcoming, she began washing away the dust and muddy stripes of blood from his attractive body.
For his part, Entreri concentrated on the ambience of the room. The windows kept out the rising blasts of scouring sand, while allowing in somber beige light. Water drops could still be heard beneath the wind. They made concentric ripples on the mostly still surface of the water as they fell. Faintly, the girl's bangles and beads clinked against one another and the porcelain bath. He imagined he could here her breathing, soft in concentration and precarious in his presence.
He looked down at her progress when she began to clean his minor wounds. It felt familiar. Unbidden, a memory surfaced to trouble him. Almost half his life ago, there was another woman who had washed him, had cleaned wounds a child was not meant to suffer. She had not been an unattractive woman, nor was she particularly strong. That vague recollection of a woman was something of a survivor. Had she not known when it was most advantageous for her well-being to let a child be broken? Didn't she know when to pick up the pieces in order for them to be scattered again?
Under Rashi's hands, the assassin's muscles tensed. No fool, she leaned back from him to wait for his instructions. It wasn't easy dealing with people that expected her to know what they wanted. Her inner exasperation and the slow erosion of her confidence was fast leading her to be unthinkably blunt with the man.
It took him barely a moment to dismiss the thoughts that brought him such consternation. He did so with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. It was an action that allowed Rashi to see that a man did indeed exist below the surface of taut muscle, wiry sinew, and scarred skin. His human action gave her confidence in speaking to him again.
"Master Entreri," she began, though nearly faltered when his eyes again rested on her, "You are one of the pasha's most trusted lieutenants. I am one of his favorites. I gain nothing in failing my duties to you and you gain nothing in not aiding me."
The assassin continued to stare at her blandly, not really interested in whatever entreaty was forthcoming. "What aid do you need from me?"
"My value comes from problem-solving," she stated as politely as her considerable skills would allow, "not mind reading. I don't know what you want; I only know that whatever it is, I should follow."
He kept a sneer off his face and out of his voice as he replied, "Shouldn't your valued problem-solving skills suggest a solution?"
If she wasn't mistaken, the man was shifting blame onto her head rather than his own. It was hardly something she expected from anyone who would come to her under the same circumstances.
"Astute observation, Master Entreri," she commented blithely. "My problem-solving skills suggest I define the problem. The equation, properly understood, is such: party B wishes party E to relax with party R. The problem lies in defining party E in relation to party R. On the very few occasions I've had to work with this sort of problem, I usually go with R plus X solves for relaxation. If we replace X with E in this equation, it may be solved the same way. However, if E is a negative value, which I'm beginning to suspect, the problem becomes more complex."
The dissertation made him wonder if she was also valued for numerological divinations. For that matter, he'd never actually met both guild diviners. A bit of grudging respect, not terribly much, informed his flat response. "I know what the pasha intended when he sent me here…" He paused, struggling with impulses he couldn't separate from a tangle of pride, disgust, desire, and torment. "He doesn't intend for me to kill or hurt you. The problem, properly defined, is to keep the equation from becoming zero sum."
"I think we can keep that from happening," Rashi replied wringing out her hand towel with a calculated lack of concern, "with some creative mathematics. May I continue?"
At his guarded nod, she again plunged the hand towel into the heated water and lifted it to scrub the taut lines of his collar and the planes of his chest. His response was not what she had imagined, but it fit what little character he had revealed. If she had to guess, the young man didn't have much experience with women and was far too proud to admit it.
It wasn't difficult to gather why the lieutenant would have a deficit in sexual knowledge. He'd come into the guild as an attractive lad of few years, from streets filled with all manner of defeated and perverse people. A boy like him would have been hard pressed to avoid being forced into prostitution. For that matter, she sighed, perhaps he'd been the subject of worse. There were many horrors a homeless child would meet out on the harsh streets of Calimport.
It was then the obvious hit Rashi like the proverbial bag of bricks: she was likely fully ten years the young man's elder! One would never guess by his demeanor; he hid his age behind cold gray eyes.
The smooth hands running over his skin seemed paradoxical to Entreri. Under her direction, the hand towel traversed his skin, leaving swaths of clean skin in its wake. Skin that felt far more sensitive to the girl's touch than he could easily explain. He felt flush and he felt nauseous: both pleasant and sick. Try as he might, he could not rein in the strange combination of sensation infusing his body. This was not the touch of a mother, nor the touch— he put the thought out of his mind.
Entreri was used to controlling every situation he came into; it was his best defense against a world bent on snubbing out any foolish enough to commit the smallest error. Errors of ignorance, judgment, and innocence were equally damning and were perceived by the young man with equal amounts of contempt. Unfortunately, the contempt he had for those errors was negligible in comparison to the damning disgust he felt when they influence over him.
Her touch traveled down his chest to his ribs and stomach, removing dust and blood, leaving more of the nauseous desire in its wake. His throat was constricting even as his temperature was rising. He didn't want to lose himself to lust. He didn't want to lose the internal empire he'd built in the last nine years.
Very slowly, with pinpoint precision, Entreri lifted his left hand from the water and reached toward the girl's closest bangled wrist. She saw his movement clearly, but rather than avoid his grasp, she moved her wrist directly into his grip. Perhaps this was something, she mused, the two of them could act on.
When his fingers closed around her thin wrist, trapping many of her bracelets against her skin with a series of flat clinks, Rashi began to doubt her choice. His grip was not painful, but neither was it gentle. Would he act on the impulses of a murderer, like he had with the other concubine? Had she gone too far without realizing it?
Entreri gritted his teeth against explosive rage. He was having trouble addressing an unprecedented amount of pressure. The old festering pain that forever ate away at the deepest part of who he was supplied the poisonous outburst seething through his veins. Rationally, he had a superficial understanding that the girl was not seeking to exert control over him. It was the irrational rage of a wounded animal that wanted to choke the life out of the woman for touching a wound stretching into a soul grown gangrenous.
Concentrating on a twofold goal was the only way he was able to endure the woman encroaching on broken ground. With her help, he would learn what he needed to control the conflicting surges of lust and revulsion. Additionally, there wasn't the inconsiderable fact that a portion of pride, shattered by the horror of his early life, might be cobbled together. On an unconscious level, he didn't want the preponderance of his sexual experience to be dominated by men, especially not the men he'd worked hard to erase from his mind. Here was another, possibly more effective way, to wipe them away.
"You don't know what to do with me because I don't know what you should do," the man stated in the too calm voice Rashi recognized as that of a person choosing their words very carefully.
Entreri felt he was losing his hold on the situation, but with his hand around the woman's wrist, there was some semblance of control. He knew he could break her thin wrist a thousand different ways. With two quick jerks, he could reduce most of the little bones to powder. With a simple twist, he could force her to the floor and make her beg for release from the pain. Still, his pride, battered and confused as it was, made it very difficult to get the next words out of his mouth. "I have no relevant experience."
Despite having surmised as much moments previous, she was stunned by the admission. Most men would be ashamed to admit they had little experience with women, but the young man before her didn't operate under the same misinformed sense of societal shame. His mannerisms had established him as someone that did not let society build his outlook. With his attitude of fiercely cold independence, she could only assume his admission of weakness cost him dearly.
Doing her best to embody inoffensive grace, Rashi placed her dark elbows on the white basin's rounded lip and rested her chin in the folded nest of her hands. "I can share relevant experience with you," she said calmly, her beads again tapping against the basin and each other with her movement. Holding his gaze for a moment with her expressive eyes, she caught the material of her veil between her thumbs and tugged it until it pooled on the basin's edge and then slipped freely onto the surface of the water, "Perhaps you'll use that experience for a good purpose, but I suspect not."
In what he took as a stable environment with a woman he decided to look at as, for his mental welfare, a valuable mentor, Entreri read her intention and allowed himself to take the bait. He did not release his hold on her wrist, but it loosened to an almost gentle grip. Slowly, he drifted to the side, where she waited with calm serenity. This he'd seen on many occasions and had no doubt he could perform properly. It disturbed him to think that the last person he had willingly kissed was... on the other side of the Calimshan desert.
He left her no doubt, as his lips pressed somewhat stiffly against hers, that she couldn't expect a killer to be a natural kisser. When he released her lip, she nodded sagely. "I can work with that."
Her comment didn't soothe his deep rooted anger, but he didn't let his temper take control, either. He was beginning to see the difference between the girls in Basadoni's harem and the different kinds of men and women on the street. The street workers, even the high-paid ones, had given up the fight and sold their souls for things of little worth. The harem girls retained life and pride in their other work, taking no shame in the sexual side expected of them.
By comparison, Entreri took pride in selling his soul for abilities that would help him gain absolute independence. It was pride, he decided, that separated the animals on the street from the skilled labor in a harem. It was all about self respect. Perhaps he would never see sensuality as anything other than a weakness or weapon, but he was damned if he would forever let it dominate him.
Her bracelets chimed when his strong fingers uncurled from her wrist. "It seems I am convinced of your creative mathematics."
She bowed her head, taking the compliment as the rare manifestation it was. "My other skills may not be as creative," she sighed, drumming up what little desire she could, "but if you follow my lead, we might not be left with a deficit."