Note: Many thanks to tzig for their assistance with language in the first scene!
The sun rose bleak and sickly over the icy Luskan cobblestones, washing everything in pale dishwater-grey light. Barrabus the Grey had not slept.
As he had bolted through the streets the previous night, clutching the one book he'd taken, he'd barely paid attention to his surroundings, distracted by the maelstrom of emotions that seemed to lurk at the edges of his awareness. Plans for finding the deserter had been drowned out by a single, pulsing thought.
Jarlaxle is here.
The shingles under his feet were slick with frost, but he didn't notice or care.
The last time he'd seen Jarlaxle, the mercenary had been behind a line of Netherese soldiers. He'd made eye contact with... not Barrabus. Artemis, still. He'd made eye contact, tipped his hat in what might have been a signal or a final farewell. In the decade that had passed, Barrabus had realized it was the latter.
Occasionally he'd wondered if Jarlaxle was dead, but dismissed the idea. And now he knew for certain. No one but Jarlaxle would be keeping Bregan D'aerthe on the surface.
Jarlaxle is here.
A brief flash of relief knocked out his breath before he pushed it away. And then, like a drowning man clinging onto the only piece of wreckage he could find, he grasped the one part of the maelstrom he recognized. It was comforting in its familiarity, and he used it as a shield against more insidious suggestions lurking deeper in the storm. And so his world had narrowed to a single, knife-sharp point—rage.
Jarlaxle is here.
Barrabus had stopped cold, skidded on the icy shingles for a brief moment to the edge of the roof, and looked to the horizon without really seeing the stars.
When the drow next returned to the base he'd found, they would know that someone had broken in. He had the element of surprise, but only for a few more hours, at most. The warehouse wouldn't be the mercenaries' only base of operations, only the most obvious, but now he knew what to look for. He had a window of opportunity and turned around to make the most of it.
It took less than an hour to break the codes, and he spent the rest of the night reading through reports and the ledgers. Contacts, potential sources of information or goods, recent shipments and disturbances to their operations—drow on the surface were still drow. So Bregan D'aerthe kept fastidious records, lest an important factoid be lost with the unfortunate casualty of someone else's ambition.
Barrabus noted that they'd taken interest in a potential Netherese soldier hiding out near the docks. The records said he had a military bearing and an apparent fear of observers—the deserter, perhaps? They'd arranged a meeting to exchange safety for information.
That meeting was at dawn at a bridge by the river; so he hadn't slept, instead getting as much information as he could before sunrise.
And now he waited in the bleak beginnings of daylight. He stood in the shadow of a craggy tree by the riverbank, watching the bridge of crumbling brown stone where the drow and his quarry were planning to meet.
The drow were already there. He wouldn't have seen them if he didn't know where to look, but they had chosen to hide in the longest shadows, where they could approach the bridge without ever having to look into daylight.
The sky warmed almost to a pale yellow before the deserter arrived. He was all limbs and bony angles and had covered his ragged uniform with a brown cloak that was too short for the task. He glanced nervously around, jumping and twisting at small noises and movements from the shadows. He crept along the edge of the river like he wasn't used to being alone and kept craning his head about, fearful of what might be lurking. He was right to be afraid, Barrabus thought with a grin.
The two groups made eye contact, nodded to each other, and started to walk closer to the bridge. Barrabus waited until they were all within twenty feet of him before rushing to intercept. He opted for speed rather than stealth, keeping his hood up. With gloves on and his face in shadows, he could pass as drow for the split second it took to get close enough and drag the man away by his elbow.
"They are not here to talk," he hissed. "It is an ambush." The man's eyes widened as he realized the Barrabus was no dark elf.
Without waiting for a response, Barrabus whirled back to engage the dark elves. It was a risk, hoping his target wouldn't see through the ruse and stab him in the back. Then he was fighting one-to-two and had no time to spare for wondering about it.
"You should have known this trap wouldn't work," he snarled in Common to one of the very confused drow. Then he continued in dark elven. "The Netherese need him alive."
As he'd hoped, the drow reverted to the more familiar language to argue that they had no plans to kill him if he proved useful. Barrabus understood, but the deserter would not. The deserter would only hear rapid arguing in an unfamiliar tongue. Barrabus didn't bother continuing the conversation.
Both of the drow were good, but they were unprepared for a fight, much less with an opponent like the one they now faced. It was over in seconds.
Barrabus turned to face the deserter. He was pale and shaking.
"How did you know it was a trap?" He stared at the bodies on the ground, then looked up at Barrabus. In the fight, Barrabus' hood had fallen back and it seemed to take him a moment to take in the grey pallor. The deserter ran and reached for the longsword that hung from his belt.
Before he could use it, Barrabus had drawn a dagger's edge across his throat.
And now he had three bodies to dispose of. He put the deserter in the river; there were plenty of boats and scavengers between here and the sea, so his body would be found before the sun set. The two drow also went into the river, but these he weighed down with loose stones; by the time they were found, they'd have rotted beyond recognition.
As the sound of activity emerged from the nearby streets and the city woke up, Barrabus sighed and leaned against a tree. His day was far from over.
He wandered Luskan until sunset, talking to merchants and spreading rumors, until he had to stagger back to the inn or collapse where he stood.
As Barrabus the Grey resisted sleep long enough to trap his door again for the first time in ten years, Jarlaxle Baenre was sitting on his floor in the middle of his room on the other side of Luskan, wrapped in a blanket and surrounded by tiny slips of paper that were spiderwebbed with writing.
He'd woken up with his head pulsing in pain and decided that, if Kimmuriel was using this time to arrange a coup, Jarlaxle couldn't wait until he felt better to resist it. So he'd begun planning. Normally he'd have kept all the threads of planning and potential factions sorted in his head, but the steady buzzing made it difficult to focus. After the fourth false start, he'd written names, resources, and tactics down on slips of paper and started arranging them into an impromptu strategy-map which had overflowed from the desk and taken over the rest of the room. He'd only gotten distracted twice, once to close the window and once to start an ill-advised letter of apology. He'd burned the letter, and now the papers were laid in neat lines across the floor.
He leaned back and surveyed his handiwork with a smile as a clear strategy began to form itself in the rows of names. Then the door opened, causing a small breeze that scattered the papers across the floorboards.
Athrogate stood in the doorway, looking concerned and (as he looked at the disorganized pile of scraps) mildly apologetic.
Jarlaxle sighed. "I did not realize you could pick locks," he said, looking mournfully at his scattered papers. "You never cease to surprise me, my friend."
Athrogate blinked. "Did ye float too high and hit yer head on the ceiling?"
Jarlaxle raised an eyebrow and started gathering the sheets of paper that were in reach. "Hardly. Surely I haven't been up here so long for you to worry about a concussion."
"Yer door wasn't locked."
Jarlaxle paused, hand halfway to the sheet that said "Benagio," and tried to review his actions the night before. Then he shrugged.
"You are as observant as ever." Would a confiding grin be too much? he wondered. No, definitely not. "I like to test my soldiers every now and then, to see if they're being properly ambitious. But none tried to kill me in my sleep." He shook his head sadly. "They're getting complacent."
Athrogate looked unconvinced, and Jarlaxle decided to change the subject.
"Have you seen my good co-captain today?" he asked. If they'd been speaking in drow, he'd have chosen the adjective that meant both "goodly" and "doomed," but in Common he had to forgo the private joke. Athrogate shook his head.
"Nah, and good riddance." The dwarf was as mercenary-minded as any of Jarlaxle's associates, but he had no cause to get along with Kimmuriel. (The paper with his name had been in the "reliable allies" pile.)
Jarlaxle let his grin fade slightly. "I would find it useful to know his activities."
"And yer sending me? I ain't exactly the quiet watcher type."
"Which is why he'll never suspect you to be a deliberate spy." And he'd be a good distraction from whoever Jarlaxle sent to be more subtle. He couldn't counter Kimmuriel's strategy until he knew what it was; normally he'd simply ensure that every strategy he employed had a win-condition, but that level of complexity was beyond his current mental resources.
Athrogate gave him one more concerned look, but then he left. Tugging the blanket close around his shoulders, Jarlaxle began to reassemble his papers.
Kimmuriel rubbed his temples, trying to banish his growing headache through sheer force of will. After getting confirmation from Jarlaxle's bodyguards that Jarlaxle had been cooped in his room all day and not, therefore, arranging any sort of retaliation against Kimmuriel, Kimmuriel had turned to keeping Bregan D'aerthe running smoothly until Jarlaxle recovered and could take back control. However, by some cruel whim of the gods, today had been nothing but one problem after another.
First, he'd gotten reports that several of their trade partners were calling in debts and others were refusing to do any business at all. The debts he could pay; Bregan D'aerthe hadn't turned Luskan into a self-sustaining venture yet (something that Jarlaxle assured them would happen eventually), but they had enough funds from other projects to keep this one going for now. But Jarlaxle had put a great deal of effort into maintaining consistent lines of trade between his agents in Luskan and the nobles back in Menzoberranzan. If those deteriorated, Kimmuriel had no doubt that the matrons—who viewed Jarlaxle's surface ventures with suspicion—would revoke their grudging support. If they did, Bregan D'aerthe would have to either withdraw from the city or risk retaliation. Kimmuriel considered deliberately courting failure for a moment—the venture in Luskan was only marginally more tolerable than the failure in Calimport—but Jarlaxle's patience with him was far too threadbare for such a scheme. Perhaps he could engineer a return to Menzoberranzan in eight or sixteen years, but not today.
Just as concerning as the recalcitrant merchants was a sudden wave of hostility from near the docks. Several buildings had been vandalized—not significantly, only a few broken windows, but enough to suggest that more was coming—and one of their local informants—some local two-copper fence—had been shunned by several reliable contacts. He claimed that people were nervous because some drow had arranged a murder under the pretense of recruitment, but Kimmuriel didn't know of any such killing. He had told the fence not to return without more concrete information.
Whatever the source of the rumors, it would mean putting more resources into maintaining the careful reputation that Jarlaxle had cultivated with the people in Luskan who knew that drow were here: intimidating enough to be left alone, but trustworthy enough to do business with. Killing potential informants and letting urchins break their windows would damage both.
Athrogate had come and gone. He'd been strangely inquisitive about Kimmuriel's activities for the day. Kimmuriel had tolerated him long enough to confirm that Jarlaxle hadn't left his apartments on the other side of town, then sent him away to investigate the windows. If Athrogate solved it through less-than-diplomatic means, any ire would fall on the dwarf's head. If he failed, then it would be his reputation for competence, not that of any drow, that took the hit.
With that smallest of annoyances dealt with, Kimmuriel returned to more important problems. He only needed to keep things running smoothly until Jarlaxle recovered. Then he could plan what would come next.