How does PotWK affect my writing? At this point I can confidently state that DTH and PotWK are not compatible. DTH is officially mildly AU (alternate universe). In other words, the events in PotWK and the short story, Wickless in the Nether, do not take place in the Devil Takes Hindmost setting.
"Barbed like sex
I felt ten thousand volts
My chest was full of eels
Pushing through my usual skin
I opened up new wounds
Pouting, Shouting—"
-Siouxsie & the Banshees, Cascade
three springs
Entreri was calm and cold as death in waiting. Like Jarlaxle to his right, both his arms were held wide from his torso, beyond what passed for his least comfortable reach. The stretch wouldn't have been bad if his wrists weren't encircled in unforgiving iron and bolted directly into frigid stone. The cold reached into his body through the wall and contracted his muscles, locking them in a more uncomfortable manner than the manacles on his wrists.
Complicating matters was a movement-stifling contraption with iron rings that slipped over his fingers. The rings were fitted with leather straps that threaded through another ring of iron on each manacle. The straps were pulled through the rings, bending his fingers back until they were at an extreme angle above his wrists.
It had been a point of interest to the jailers that Entreri's fingers and hands had turned out more flexible than Jarlaxle's, for he was utterly human. It was decided that perhaps the rumors of Calishites being related to desert demons were not as unfounded as supposed. Entreri didn't care enough to correct them on the difference between demons and djinn; what did he care about the opinions of future corpses?
His imprisonment within the frigid humidity inside the fortress' bowels could be blamed squarely on Jarlaxle. The assassin had wanted to bathe his hands in Ashrei's blood, but Jarlaxle had surrendered on the spot.
Logically, Entreri understood they were outmatched: five years was more than enough time for the female to place her defenses. He knew from experience that she presented herself bare of armor, with only a dagger on her hip, because she was completely confident in her other defenses. The eyes he'd felt on them were likely those of a mage, her skin was probably sheathed in a stoneskin enchantment, and multiple poisoned darts were likely trained on them from every angle.
Jarlaxle was right to surrender, but it didn't make Entreri think anymore kindly on him. The immediate issues moving through his mind were neither esoteric nor philosophical and did not deviate far from murder most foul.
"Come now, the silent treatment is so childish."
The voice belonged to his onetime ally but now possible enemy through casual betrayal. The room was pitch black, the sort of complete blackness that took him straight back to the claustrophobic confines of the Underdark. It also dragged him back to face inner demons he'd discovered within the damned underground domain claimed by dark elves: dark elves that appeared to be not unlike Jarlaxle. Physically or mentally Artemis Entreri was not in a happy place.
"I must make do," Entreri replied in a voice far harsher than the stone cramping their flesh, "as the adult option of slitting your throat is currently unavailable."
The use of Calishite and the utter lack of humor in the assassin's voice was clue enough that the man was deadly serious. Jarlaxle sighed silently and turned his head to look at his partner through the colorful spectrum of infravision. Looking over the warm field of a bent back palm, he saw the man's defiant profile and the heat of his breath as it swirled the air before his face. Jarlaxle appreciated both the beauty of infravision and the complexities of the killer at his side.
Slipping through the man's various layers of defense to uncover the personality within was a long and arduous process, but ultimately rewarding. Only to have his work swept away in the matter of a few moments. Entreri was as cold and hard as he had been a few years prior when he had first understood he was trapped in Menzoberranzan. The assassin was no longer broken of body and tortured of mind as he had been then, rendering his current murderous personal armor as formidable as the mercenary had ever witnessed. The assassin was cloaked in his former mien; the cool promise of imminent, unfeeling, death.
It was the extreme reaction that came of betrayal, Jarlaxle mused. Had he betrayed the man? He thought not; if the man trusted his pragmaticism, he would know as much. There was nothing to be gained in betraying Entreri. So, no, the mercenary thought, there had been no betrayal.
However, as his two red eyes focused on the assassin, he knew that his reasoning, though sound, was not completely accurate. The signature of the man's body heat was indicative of ruthlessly contained rage. If he hadn't seen it from Entreri before, he would not be certain. The effect of the realization was unexpected; Jarlaxle felt a fledgling emotion stir within him that was almost totally alien. Dropping his chin to his chest to think, the dark elf isolated the feeling to examine it. He was certain there was no word for it in Drow.
"I have a plan for you to consider." The new voice in the darkness was familiar to both sell-swords. Previously their prisoner, but now their brother in chains, Casteja Vektch did not sound at all wilted for his imprisonment.
Despite the blackness, Entreri had no problem looking in Casteja's direction. Thanks to the vision he'd inherited from killing a shade with his vampiric, and currently confiscated, dagger he could see the man chained loosely to the adjoining wall. It was obvious Ashrei was less concerned about Vektch's ability to escape.
"If I manage to break loose," the tactician said, "and return to free you, it would be in your best interests to escape with me. That being the case, I would be willing to contract your services that you might come back at a later time to assassinate Wianar as I originally desired."
"I agree to the first," Entreri snorted, "but not the second. I'm through with this stinking, humid, insect-ridden quagmire of a country."
The lack of his inclusion in the statement was not lost on Jarlaxle. "We agree to the first, then. But tell me, my friend, how do you expect to escape? You are far less equipped to break free than are we; you have but one arm."
"You think you know Vritra," Casteja replied, his voice cool with steely determination, "but I doubt anyone could know Vritra even if they had a thousand years to observe it. Only the ignorant can know it inside and out."
"You don't strike me as ignorant, but if you are, does that mean you can escape even with the glove muting it?" Jarlaxle asked in curiosity and not a little hope. "Then you were hoping to be captured this whole time? As you said before?"
The man laughed quietly in response. "No, you would never find me so selfless; I am simply happy to take advantage of the situation I find myself within. Now I am here, that is my plan. If they take me to torture, I will return to set you free."
"They will take you to torture," Entreri assured the man. "You should be quick to escape their torments, since I have no intention of waiting long for your return."
Just barely, Entreri caught the dim impression of the man's sarcastic expression. "I doubt it will take long; just pray I can reason with Vritra to hold back the initial onslaught. And think charitable thoughts of me while you're at it; Vritra doesn't obey my commands, only takes my thoughts under consideration."
"Does it not?" Jarlaxle mused, his thoughtful tone drawing a disgusted sneer on Entreri's face. "I supposed you had less control over it when your cleric was drawing on his deity for support and Vritra struck out his thoughts. Why is that?"
"Vritra hates gods," Casteja replied, his voice carefully even, but Jarlaxle's infravision clearly showed the brightness of the man's heart as it pumped a bit harder in reaction. "Did Vritra's reaction enable you to kill my lieutenant?"
"Quickly," the dark elf stated with infrequent honesty. "Is this why Vritra has yet to attack Ashrei? Her lack of loyalty to any deity?"
"No," came the flat response and a slight increase in body temperature. "When I first met Ashrei she seemed rather devoted to a deity called Vhaeraun. She was the lead tactician and general for a city planning a surface invasion and was romantically attached to the high priest of said city. I think Kiretheo is the result of that union; he was little more than an infant at the time."
"That was almost ten years ago," Jarlaxle commented, chuckling, "and it was assumed she planned the surface invasion and then defected to the surface to see if she could defeat her own preparations. She may swear against Lolth, but the Spider Queen's bite bleeds deep.
"But tell me, friend Casteja," the calculating drow continued, picking up on an obvious cue, "how is it you met the infamous Fickle General, Ashrei? It sounds as if you were below ground."
Listening with pragmatic interest, Entreri grew more focused on the revealing conversation. While the two conversed he'd had ample time to consider more than Jarlaxle's treachery; he was considering closely what he knew of Vritra in the event he would have to contend with the damned thing again without his gauntlet.
A low snort rebuffed Jarlaxle's inquiry. "That answer comes on the heels of your interest. Why take all this trouble to meet her if you already know her?"
In the context of imprisonment, with a deadly ally verging on enemy, Jarlaxle was not unprepared for the inquiry, but he didn't welcome it. For more than a tenday he had evaded Entreri's many roundabout ways of proposing a similar question and deflected solidly every approach the assassin had taken. If he told Casteja the naked truth, it would not win back his companion's loyalty.
"Many reasons," Jarlaxle replied, his tone perfectly matter-of-fact. "Not the least of which being that Ashrei is wanted by her former high priest lover. I don't intend to capture her, but information on such an important female is of significant value, as is blackmail. If I came here directly, she would prove less accommodating."
"You call this accommodating?" Entreri asked, his anger growing far more frigid. He didn't believe Jarlaxle was giving Casteja the full truth, but it sounded far more accurate a picture than anything he'd yet confided in the assassin.
It was all give and take with Jarlaxle, he thought bitterly, tit for tat. A score card of meticulously tallied profits which the assassin, no true respecter of money, was not concerned. What was money to a man with the sort of power Entreri held? If he needed wealth, he took it. If he wanted fame, he made it. Money was nothing in the face of power and control.
The problem with Jarlaxle was that money, power, nor control bought actual loyalty or friendship of any worth. Entreri's kinder emotions were rarer than black diamonds and once found they were easily curdled into quick poison.
"Compared to being dead, yes," the dark elf replied, but kept his focus on Casteja. "And so, friend Casteja, how did you come to meet and, perhaps, grow to love the famously fickle Ashrei? From everything I know of her, you aren't her type."
The man smiled into the darkness, his eyes lit with a dark sort of wisdom. "Love is a game that we play on a field of fire," he said, his chains slithering against stone with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "We never know when we will be burned, but we are assured our hearts will be turned to cinders and ash. Ashrei and I are playing that game and very soon one or both of us will be burned. It is the best possible love affair."
"As exciting as that sounds, I think you have a mother complex," Jarlaxle shrugged, sending the man into muffled laughter. "But it doesn't answer my original question."
"I met her underground," Casteja admitted. "Vritra and I were in the possession of an enclave of those tentacle-faced things and when we broke out we were, more or less, lost in the blackness. Ashrei happened to be in the area on her way to negotiate with the ugly creatures and found us instead."
Jarlaxle didn't bother asking the man why illithids would want him; Vritra was an obvious draw for creatures who were masters of the silent magic and gifted with insatiably studious minds. "How did they capture the two of you?"
"I'm not sure," the man said simply, his voice hinting at bemusement. "I wasn't altogether there at the time. Mentally, at any rate."
Casteja's answer was curious, but not available for immediate question, for even as he pronounced it, their cell's arrangement of complex locks began to ring with the hollow sounds of their mechanisms coming undone.
On the way into the cell, Entreri had counted all the locks, noted the sounds they made as they were fastened and set. Hearing them open reinforced his impression of what he'd seen and heard before. They weren't beyond his skill, but he was not on the right side of the door to be truly effective at defeating them.
A vertical seam of dim light announced their visitor. The seam widened and lantern light flooded in, setting all three occupants to squinting against the sudden brightness. Cloaked in bright orange light and shadows, Ashrei stepped through the breach with a lantern in hand, while Soraze and another soldier waited outside.
"Good morning," Jarlaxle drawled, his smile slanting wryly on his face as he switched out of infravision. He noted a gleam of green on her side and realized she wore Entreri's jeweled dagger in place of her previous weapon. A soft snort from his side told him the assassin saw the same thing and marked it as a fortunate turn of events.
The door closed behind Ashrei as the tall woman hung her lamp on one of the iron hooks above and to the side of Casteja's head. She cast a patient smile at Jarlaxle's greeting but then turned her gaze to Entreri's flat glare; it was the first time she made eye contact with the assassin. "You should be happy to know that we've lost no less than three soldiers to that cursed sword of yours. It is almost in league with Vritra."
"You'll lose far more than that," Entreri promised, "when I decide to depart the premises."
She shrugged away the statement and patted the vampiric dagger on her hip. "Not if I plant this in you first. I should have known that if Jarlaxle was going to travel without Bregan D'aerthe, there would be somebody at his side with useful magic items."
"You know me too well," Jarlaxle commented dryly, indicating that his statement should be taken strictly as sarcasm.
Obviously possessing a nature that was inclusive of teasing, Ashrei chuckled at the remark. "Merely in the context of our business dealings. I cannot fathom why you arrived here without your usual back up. If not for natural paranoia, I would have simply thrown you out of the city. You should tell me the real reason you're here."
"I told you," Jarlaxle grinned, his teeth gleaming in the firelight. "I'm after the reward."
"Among other things, I'm sure." She shook her magnificent mane of hair, sending the tassels on her long hair sticks dancing behind her. "But I'm not here to see you."
Sighing dramatically, she swept downward to straddle Casteja's thighs and sit lightly on his knees. The grace and poise that came with drow, especially those used to commanding others of their treacherous kind, was startling even when she casually placed her elbows on Casteja's shoulders and rested her chin on the linked nest of her hands.
"Eles is planning on starting the torture first thing this morning, 'Steja," she said softly, but with a firmness that shaped her husky voice. "You have no idea how pissed off I will be if you push me into letting him do that. I know torture won't work on you, but Eles doesn't believe it. Let's reason this out together."
"Rot. I'm no stranger to reason," the man smiled, "but I honestly don't know what my troops are going to do now. I schooled them to abandon our immediate plans if I were to disappear."
"Then tell me those plans, so I know what I won't need to expect," she replied, freeing one hand to trace his dry lips as she spoke. "It will take months before Eles will figure out how resilient you are. He doesn't understand that you carry over your patience from the battlefield in all you do. Tell me, not for yourself, but because I don't think I can remain attracted to a disfigured man. Bad enough that you're human, an ugliness is too much."
The dancing flames inside the lantern warped Casteja's amused expression, but his voice was clear in the stillness. "No."
Ashrei sat back on his knees, frowning profoundly and setting her hands on her hips. "Damn you, Casteja Vektch; you and your unwavering 'no.'"
"So tell me, as one of the most famous tacticians in the Underdark," Jarlaxle interrupted in a voice that reminded Entreri of a leopard's rumbling purr, "is it humbling to be bested by a human male?"
Ashrei had the grace to return the question with a wicked grin over her tone shoulder, despite her annoyance. "You would enjoy that, wouldn't you? Regardless, he hasn't won."
"You lost five years ago," Casteja sighed in the attitude of a man who is dealing with a child that continues to insist one plus one equals eleven.
"That's not what I said," Ashrei returned, shaking her hair out over one shoulder. Jarlaxle and Casteja watched the ends of her hair dance along the top of her breasts as she combed it out with her fingers. Entreri noted the display, but was too suspicious to see it as anything other than the distraction it was. "I said you haven't won, not that I haven't lost. According to the terms of the wager, one of us has to surrender."
"No, one side has to surrender or be completely defeated," he corrected. "In that case I have won on every front except securing a surrender or complete defeat of your military. But that won't be necessary. You only prolong the inevitable with your draconian tactics. You need to think more like a human to win this, but without human limitations.
"Some free advice: stop tormenting the farmers or you will become dependent on outside markets to supply your troops. Arrabar doesn't have the money to support that, especially with the way Eles allows the nobility to raid outside the borders. Buying from Sembia and Sespech at inflated prices puts your money in my pockets as it is. The continued brutality and alliance with Thay isolates the government in Arrabar and buys me increasingly blatant support from the governor in Sespech. If Sespech or Sembia were run by the government out of Silverymoon, I'd have incited them to intervene on behalf of the Chondathan people by now. Such upright and moral people make things simple."
"And you should be a little more paranoid of your allies. Did you never consider how Tan got his hands on that poison? Did you think my hatred of Narbeli precluded using her? She betrayed you to me. You should surrender," Ashrei murmured, her smile fading away. The finely shaped female leaned forward and softly scraped her fingernails along the four pink scars on his face. "There's so much more where these came from that I don't want to give you."
"Bitch," Casteja sighed without venom.
Her fingertips were backed up by the heated contours of her full lips, brushing along the scars. Jarlaxle was unsurprised to see smoky looks exchanged between jewel-green and bright blue eyes right before Casteja turned his head to brush his mouth against his captor's. Amused by the display, Jarlaxle cast a smirk to his side. His glance at Entreri revealed a dark mask tainted faintly with disgust.
"A bet," the assassin scoffed in Calishite. "All this trouble for a simple wager. Though I'm not surprised to hear he was on both Sespech and Sembia's payrolls. My thanks, Jarlaxle; my lack of faith in the world is reaffirmed."
The words communicated the man's slow progression toward finding simple pleasures in life had halted. He doubled back toward paranoid cynicism at an incredible rate. "It isn't as bad as you think, Entreri." Jarlaxle replied in the same language. He eschewed the use of the assassin's personal name in order to avoid feeding the cold burn of the man's anger. "It isn't as if I did not foresee this sort of reception." No, he'd simply thought it farfetched. "Even without our brilliant tactician she would release us; she won't chance making Bregan D'aerthe an enemy. She's only doing this to get what she wants."
"Somehow I do not feel reassured," Entreri stated with little emotion. "Agree to get her a new child and be done with this." He took his dark gaze off his fellow prisoner and back toward Ashrei and Casteja, only to find the two deeply involved in a heated round of passionate kissing. An exasperated sigh filled his lungs despite the strain the cold stone and stretched arms were inflicting on his chest. He doubted Jarlaxle would make a straightforward concession: in dark elven culture such a thing only proved weakness.
If he had continued to watch Jarlaxle, he would have witnessed the male's wry smile. What the female wanted would take time and a certain kind of concession he didn't like to make.
True to form, Jarlaxle decided to divide and conquer: one part of his mind explored the intricacies of the problems he'd brought on himself by pointlessly, habitually, keeping Entreri in the dark. The other part, the part given to finding enjoyment in any situation, observed the lovers against the adjoining wall. The sight made his decisions easier, which he surmised was the idea behind the display.
"Do you have any idea how long I've fantasized about this moment?" Ashrei snickered when there was sufficient pause between open-mouthed kisses.
Casteja's smart remark came as no surprise. "Getting me chained to a wall? Since the moment you laid eyes on me."
She shook her head while combing her fingers through his dark hair. "No, getting a chance to screw you blind without that hideous eye watching."
"Ah. Since the moment you laid eyes on Vritra, then."
Another quiet laugh shook her lithe form, but did not distract her from continuing to slide her fingers through his long hair. "The moment I understood you think like no other creature I have ever met. And here Vritra's power is packed away and you still have the same mind. A lesser male would have lost his sanity after going through the same things, but you came out of it with precious advancements."
"Does this mean you're no longer impressed with my lack of fear for your kind?" He tilted his head forward in order to lightly bite her chin. "Don't waste your breath on that; the question was rhetorical. Answer me this instead: are you just teasing me or do you really plan on raping me with four less hideous eyes watching?"
A delighted laugh issued from her mouth, a pleasant noise if not a pleasant situation to hear it. She lifted her feet from the floor and wrapped her legs around his waist, crossing them at the ankles. "You mean there were no public displays of affection in the old days?" She constricted her legs, pulling their bodies closer together. "You yourself told me that humankind was too short-sighted to enjoy true decadence without destroying itself. Besides, with your knowledge of human ecology, you should know humans can't see in the dark."
"And you don't mind the other?" Casteja murmured, as the female drew Entreri's emerald studded dagger and began to cut open the front of her lover's pale shirt. He knew Entreri's night vision was sharp, but neither understood it went well beyond what was normal. The assassin, even though he did not want to watch, wanted to conceal his advantage and said nothing.
"It isn't shocking for a male to see a female have sex and not participate," she whispered back, sheathing the dagger and slipping her hands under the straight-cut edges of the material covering his chest. "Jarlaxle is a hot commodity where we come from. I'm sure he's turned the tables on drow females in the past and probably pleased himself while they looked on in hunger. However, I can assure you that infravision does not allow much of a show."
"Then put out the lantern…"
Entreri was less than impressed and hoped Jarlaxle, once mentioned, would not remind the general of their presence anymore than necessary by taking a renewed role in the conversation. Of course, Entreri placed no real value in non-starters like hope and for good reason. "Hold your tongue."
Not one to let anyone tell him what to do any more than Entreri would, Jarlaxle almost spoke to spite his ally: then closed his mouth with a sigh. If he wanted to win Entreri back, annoying him wasn't the way to go. For a moment he questioned his resolve in salvaging the strange relationship. As much as it pained him to do so, he knew it would help his situation with Entreri to fill the man in.
When Ashrei blew out the lantern, her eyes shone red in the darkness, just as menacing as Jarlaxle's. She sent an obvious look the mercenary's way before turning back to her human lover. The dark elf smirked at the unnecessary signal; he knew what she was doing and why.
He watched with interest and a rueful expression as her experienced hands unbuckled Casteja's belt, loosened his trousers, and rose up to scratch down his chest. Casteja was hardly unwilling: he brought his face forward to find her neck and followed the hem of her clinging silk shirt until he found the dip between her breasts. From there he made short work of the garment, pulling the top edge out and down with his teeth in order to reveal the full skin of one breast to the frigid air and his heated tongue and white teeth.
"Do they have shows like this in Calimport?" Jarlaxle asked casually in perfect, and quiet, Calishite. "I don't think I ever went to one there."
"Why would you? Surely Sharlotta was performer enough," the human fighter replied in monotone, his gaze trained forward, unseeing. As he spoke he began to scud his chin in a scraping motion across his collar. "Or did she put the whore back in horrible? They have such performances in Calimport, if you know where to look and coin enough to buy the sight. They aren't legal, but legalities only affect price, not availability."
"Of course, this isn't so much a show," Jarlaxle sighed, "as torture. Back when she contracted Bregan D'aerthe for my services, I did all the work. Now I see I should never have collected a fee; it would have been much more fun. No doubt that's what this is about."
"Your services?" The assassin was incredulous despite himself. First he was struck with the repulsive idea that Jarlaxle had taken money for sex, but then the next conclusion hit him like a brick. Soraze was not part of Bregan D'aerthe's slave trade; he was the result of a sexual contract between Ashrei and Jarlaxle. The assassin, despite his perfect control, felt his head spin for a moment. He could not understand why the information would disturb him, but it was like Casteja's pulverizing swing straight to the solar plexus.
"Whore…" the man said, his voice verging strangely between icy and breathy. Entreri was working hard, shutting down foreign emotional impulses as quickly as they surfaced. He thought he'd either answered or killed every stray impulse in regard to his aversion to sexual conduct. Obviously not. Was it lingering traces of Vritra's influence? He seized the idea, preferring it to the possibility of decades-old scar tissue from something he did not think about.
"Whore?" Jarlaxle noted the strange character of the assassin's voice, was surprised by the heat rising and then leaving Entreri's face. He had yet to discern the man's past, but he had ideas and the remarkable reaction fueled his interest. Entreri's professionalism led him to steer clear of sexual liaisons, but perhaps that was nothing more than a convenient excuse. Perhaps Entreri's hatred of Sharlotta's methods, his bizarre loathing for prostitutes, had roots in his past.
The dark elf wondered idly if the assassin had been successfully assaulted on the filthy streets of Calimport when he was young. Did a whore rat him out early in his career, as whores commonly did? Sharlotta had little information on the man beyond his career; for Entreri was only now struggling to be something beyond his nefarious occupation.
It took Entreri a moment to realize that he had stopped rubbing at his collar with his chin. He'd started the motion on the assumption he could get one of the many ornaments on the necklace in his teeth. The chain was similar in design to the one he had lost the night Kadran Gordeon had felt the burning edge of his defiance.
"Come now," Jarlaxle scoffed, "you know of such arrangements. Do not the princes of Calimshan command monumental fees for their stallions' stud services? Do you recall the legendary demand for that brute, Uthegental Armgo? Do you think the lichdrow of Agrach Dyrr, as much as he disdains warm bodies, has overlooked the idea of building a psionic breed within his house since Oblodra was destroyed? In fact, that is the source of young Jakadirek Mi'iduor; a matron mother who bought a wild talent patron from Oblodra. It isn't so strange."
The assassin heard the drow, but his mind superimposed an image of Kohrin Soulez's daughter, Ahdania over terminally bored Soraze. In strange counterpoint, his eyes took in the sight of Ashrei's lithe body and the passionate war she was waging with her captive lover. There was more fire in her eyes than a hundred street walkers could ever fake. The same could be said of crafty Jarlaxle, but he didn't know what that meant. He had seen fire before; in eyes the same shade of gray.
He glanced over at Jarlaxle, suddenly suspicious. Suspicion was much easier to deal with than the conflicting things bubbling deep under his skin. He needed to think of something else and push the unwanted thoughts with all their unnecessary impulses far away. The less he thought about the past, the more he could control his future. Mercilessly, he pressed the turmoil down, as one would compress an iron spring. Suspicion could save him trouble.
"Why are you telling me this?" Jarlaxle had proven his inability to speak straight, if he was revealing information he had kept secret with no good reason, it was strange to suddenly have it given without fuss.
"Better late than never," the mercenary snorted, looking back to the sight of growing heat nearby. Ashrei had failed to tell Casteja the truth of infravision; he could see quite a bit more detail than she had implied. He spared a corner of his mind to thank the devious female's foresight. In the forefront of his mind, he was considering his own foreign emotion. It was locked down again for examination, even as he watched the lovers and contemplated Entreri. Curiously, the nebulous feeling still defied definition and ran mysterious fingers along his defensive impulses.
"Try the truth," the assassin grated, feeling the words hiss through teeth that his tensing jaw sought to compress. He was aware of the dull ache from his bent-back fingers, but more so when they flexed reflexively forward and shot needle pricks of pain up the taut tendons.
At least the man was speaking to him, Jarlaxle noted, turning to openly study the man's profile. Heat patterns, the flow of blood through the body, spoke volumes to drow who were all learned in reading the most subtle movements. He saw an increased heart rate, heat spreading out across his hands as the man reflexively strained at the restraints on his hands. The strange emotion grew with the sight and more thoroughly prodded Jarlaxle's pride. "Why do you want the truth? I thought you had nothing better to do than go along with my flights of fancy."
The narrowing of the assassin's eyes was answer enough. Entreri made no other response, but resumed scraping at his collar with his chin. It was slow going, but he almost had the ornament he wanted. He began to shut everything out, the growing passion across from him, the infuriating drow at his side, the pain of cold stone and constricting muscles and, most importantly, the old and new stacked feelings of betrayal. There was nothing but the necklace; left to him thanks to its lack of magic emanations.
"I tell you now," Jarlaxle finally admitted, feeling things were possibly a step beyond a critical moment, "because you should have more information than our opponents. I didn't tell you before because I didn't think it mattered."
The barrel-shaped ornament was resting in the shallow channel between Entreri's clavicle and shoulder. He had to be mindful not to transfer too much of his heat to the item when he picked it up, lest Ashrei notice the item's non-organic shape. "I had nothing better to do than meet the challenges your flights of fancy brought, but I have better things to do than be a simple tool in Jarlaxle's repertoire."
As far as the assassin was concerned, it was the last word on the topic. It failed to be wasted breath simply because he needed to exhale before taking the ornament in his teeth.
The man's words caused another wave of emotion to slither in the crafty dark elf's chaotic heart. He recognized the direct correlation between the feeling and Entreri's matter-of-fact accusation. The assassin was claiming that he'd been used and that took Jarlaxle's mind off the heated physical conversation he'd been enjoying. He devoted his whole attention to the cause and effect of the alien emotion.
With his undivided concentration once again focused on the question the answer reared up in his mind. It came to him in a sloppy package straight from the Common tongue, stamped with all the alien philosophical implications the concept entailed.
Crimson eyes, not unlike the illicit color of spilled blood, darted to the side to behold the human assassin. Some of the patches of heat that made up the man's form in infravision were akin to the color of Jarlaxle's eyes. A fitting color for a killer to wear, the dark elf thought, Entreri always looked appropriate to heat-sensing eyes. But that was background, the foreground was more direct. The closest word to the bizarre manifestation of emotion was not available to him in his native tongue because it did not exist within the realms of their verbal or nonverbal vocabulary.
In the Common surface tongue it was called contrition and every fiber of Jarlaxle's dark elven being rejected it with full force.
Fortunately for Jarlaxle, he did not limit himself to drow behavior alone. He had transcended chaotic dark elven society on wings of open-mindedness that defied the paradoxically rigid laws of their culture. In embracing a mindset that sought to minimize senseless limitations, the hedonistic third son of house Baenre who was spared Lolth's rapacious jaws, the former leader of opportunistic Bregan D'aerthe, and enterprising male that he was, Jarlaxle had discovered there was pleasure to be had in the happiness of others.
His was not an altruistic heart, for giving pleasure enhanced his own. Nor was his heart particularly kind, for he delighted in the agony of his opponents, but it was still a heart and he liked to indulge it. In this corrupt cultivation of conflicting elements, he found the capacity to form friendships; Zaknafein Do'Urden being one of the first and Artemis Entreri being the most recent. The problem, of course, was that he was suddenly aware that rather than indulging himself with the sweetness of pointlessly annoying the assassin and reveling in unnecessary secrecy, he had brought on a real betrayal of friendship.
Betrayal didn't usually bother Jarlaxle; it was in his blood. It was suddenly unpalatable because he had indulged his heart a bit too much by enjoying Entreri's sour company. He had gone beyond a simple friendship based on mutual profit and into the realm of fond affection. He would call it brotherly affection, but for the glaring issue of dark elven institution of fratricide.
Like the assassin, he was not one for bouts of introspection, much preferring to bask in the attention others gave him. He had an understanding of what he was feeling and he dared hope it would catapult his quick wits in the correct direction to salvage the strange vice he knew as friendship.
Attention divided unequally between the sounds and peripheral vision of Ashrei and Casteja's lovemaking and the more important task of manipulating the deceptive ornament in his teeth, Entreri was unaware of Jarlaxle's epiphany. He had managed to open the jeweled object far enough that gravity released the glass capsule contained therein to the circular opening at the bottom. It did not fall out thanks to the spring encircling it, but the moment he closed the ornament again with his teeth, the spring would constrict and he'd be ready to depress the clasp.
As long as his body heat did not alert Ashrei or soften the metal too much, and his aim was good, he had a potent bead of strong acid to shatter against one of the leather bands constricting his fingers. All he needed was a finger free and he was sure he could slip the rest out of the locking rings and get to work on slipping his hand free of the manacle.
He blew a sigh through his nose; his chances were entirely too dependent on a bit of spring and a bubble of glass. There was always the possibility he could miss completely, or more amusingly, melt off a finger in the process. If he could trust Jarlaxle, it would be simple enough to have the dark elf use his levitation to deliver the acid where it needed to go. Though he doubted the drow had the sort of control the maneuver would require.
Turning the lion's share of his attention away from his project, he tried to gauge the progress of heated sex in order to time his attempt. If things went the way he wanted, he could free himself and get to his dagger in order to force his release. Jarlaxle, as far as Entreri was concerned, could find his own way out. Obviously all the male had to do, the assassin determined, was agree to go after Casteja was finished. Unless the drow female was using some sort of magical protection to ward against an unwanted half-drow child by her human lover.
The thought only drew Entreri back to the deeper issue. It seemed that Jarlaxle didn't feel the slightest bit of loyalty to Soraze. He looked the transfigured male over, he'd defended him against his mother, but there was no other interest in the soldier at all. He wondered how easy it would be for Jarlaxle to kill Soraze. Perhaps he could even torture Soraze, for Jarlaxle was not a stranger to delivering torment as a deterrent. The tightly compressed feeling within the man strained against his rigid control.
Annoyed with his thoughts and useless emotions, he looked hard at the scene before him. In the span of fifteen minutes or more, the two had finally gotten to the crux of the action. Ashrei's hands were gripping Casteja's shoulders for leverage, her short nails undoubtedly digging trenches through his skin with every downward push of her sweating body.
Casteja's left arm was useless and unresponsive; he was doing his right-handed best to support the wild general's gyrations. His teeth, meanwhile, were clamped on the tendons between her neck and shoulder; seeking to throat her like a blue-eyed wolf. Had Entreri bothered to analyze the situation for dominance, he would have called it equal but for Casteja's injury. As it was, he was listening to their gasps and watching the ratcheting tension in their muscles for the moment of release.
Five minutes, he decided clinically, turning his head to the side to inspect the leather straps anchoring his fingers backwards. Carefully, he manipulated the small barrel-shaped ornament to the front of his mouth and held it between his teeth. The necessary calculations began to formulate in his muscles, when his mind let through another thought.
Which was more repulsive; the violence of sex, the need for dominance or the dependency of the resulting offspring?
The assassin's eyes narrowed to slits against the intruding notion. He banished it from his head and focused on the strap holding back his thumb. It was the logical target as an appendage mostly independent from the rest of his hand. Independence was the single most important thing.
Which implied that dependency was the most repulsive option. Dependency opened one up to death or things worse than death. Ahdania might have had a soft life, but her father had thrown her aside for nothing better than love of the sword that hated and killed him. Jaka was a tool, cultivated by dark elven plans and given false affection to bind him slavishly his Matron mother. Ashrei displayed affection for her offspring, but they were probably no better off than the deranged psionicist. Soraze was one of those tools, unwanted by the male that sired him. Abandoned, abused, betrayed, humiliated… things worse than death. The assassin's jaw clenched painfully hard.
Entreri heard the click, but did not make the connection between himself and the noise until pain shocked him out of his circling thoughts. Suddenly the assassin was spitting tiny curved shards of glass, saliva, acid and a dented silver ornament. He hardly noticed the shuddering spasms of the lovers, so concerned was he with his own lapse in control.