Warnings: So far this fic has included repeated instances of the protagonists killing people, elf torture, a character's eyes eaten by insects, and a description of livor mortis, so I add no further warnings.
—
"...Two adventurers from Crimmor, and a third boy from east of here, the farms of the Lonely Peaks or thereabouts; never came back. A pair of humans who said they hailed from Waterdeep; and that elf—but you found him; and Galtok, the local gnome who disappeared," Ghastkill said. Perhaps it was the boy from the farms that the Cyricists had boasted of ending upon that altar, Prudence thought; but what grains of truth had lain in their words? On all of the fallen ghouls had been scant traces of their former humanity. One of Ilmater would not have longed for vengeance, but had received it.
"No doubt 'twas relief that at last you contacted those capable of ending it," Jaheira said.
A slight nervousness seemed to grow upon the mayor, and his clasped hands twisted against each other; though with Jaheira that emotion was not extraordinary. "That I did, Mistress Jaheira. Will ye be at tonight's celebration?"
It had been uncomplicated work, to aid in the final clearing of kobolds; no further surprises of rogue Cyricists or half-orc priests. Imoen had seemed rather bored.
"Our task is completed; Khalid and I must be away," Jaheira said. "I daresay the children will not object to it."
Imoen's grin was indeed wide, though she turned to the Harpers. "Couldn't you stay just for the party, Khalid? Y'know what they say about Calishite dancing...well, I guess that's not quite...but you two should come!"
"I am a druid, child," Jaheira said gently; "An iron-mining town is no place for us to linger, and we do not labour for public recognition. Better that we depart for other duties, if you say that you would prefer the Greycloak. 'Tis not mine to question your judgement."
Any flushes to Prudence's cheek were not usually discernible. Probably for the best; that she and Imoen did not especially wish to continue to follow in her wake, no reason that they must burden her and Khalid with duty to Gorion's child. Likewise would Xzar and Montaron leave for their own, and undisclosed, purposes; Jaheira had interrogated upon that point.
Khalid claims that you were...adequate, against the Cyricists, Jaheira had said, sounding as if she meant to concede something by the comment. It is your decision. I do wish that it turns for the best, and that you are aware of a way for messages to reach Khalid and I. Perhaps it could have been different; but this future was one choice to make. (Beware of inns; beware of scrying; let them search for the old group of six if they still would.) Unnerving that Jaheira seemed so often to stare at her as if she was about to combust into something despicable, whether it was more her own fault or that of luckless circumstances.
"A party," Imoen said, walking back to the inn, "part of the Heroes of Nashkel—that sounds good—and you'll be able to look respectable, won't you, Pru?"
"Yes, Imoen." Jaheira and Khalid deserved greater credit; but of course it would be fun.
It had taken some efforts to scrub the blood out of Algernon's cloak; Imoen swirled it jauntily around herself. "I knew there was a reason to bring that dress," she said, "the one with the ruffles."
The truth was that the dress represented a month's labour for Imoen, assembled carefully from a pattern all the way from Waterdeep, but it was too easy a point. "You remembered to bring a pretty dress...and only a few arrows? I'm just saying."
"Well, for just saying, you can bring out your sewing kit and help," Imoen declared. "Some of my...y'know, helpful tools in case people lose their keys...got caught in the seams."
—
Two human children. A ridiculous notion, Xan castigated himself. On reflection, they had been subtle about questioning him in return; asking somewhat dextrous questions about his state and plans, assessing his skills. They did not have no vocabulary of the understanding of magic, though the picklock's speech seemed determined to imitate some typical low human criminal.
"To remain here; at least several days to understand the encodings of the documents—" and to regain strength, he did not say, and they were courteous enough not to tell it to him. "My duty has not changed. To the next step implied, whatever impossible foe that may be to torment us next."
"Then we'd accompany you, if you wish," the taller girl said. "My sister and I. Although—Jaheira and Khalid would also do so; and they've far more skill. But I'm capable of swinging a blade and healing, Imoen's accurate with a bow."
"I have witnessed you walking into four Cyricists, and remaining alive," Xan said. The girl's calm gaze could be somewhat unnerving, in conjunction with a smooth voice. "Though that sort of thing is likely to cause suicidal overconfidence the next time fortune fails to favour one, of course."
"There's a price on my head, for reasons I don't know," she said. "They killed my stepfather. He was once an adventurer; I can only imagine it related to something he did in the course of that. There's nothing I've done that would make anyone want to... Well, except to investigate this, of course, but the bounty existed before it. Still: three might stand more chance than two, for battles ahead." A frank and foolish admission. She gave the impression of a candid directness, whether or not the surface was in reality the entire truth. Nor did she try to look with the dangerous eyes attributed to the profession; no doubt to a human they considered it a great display of restraint.
"And you choose to split the group?" Xan said; the halfling he could hardly be expected to be fond of, nor a human necromancer who without doubt failed to use the discipline in a responsible fashion, though the half-elves appeared by a slight degree more respectable.
"They were my father's friends; good people. But I don't think we merge well, and one may choose to end such a thing," she answered; and, "Think I've heard you saying that line before, Pru," Imoen added in an undertone.
"It seems you offer to help avoid dooms you bring," Xan said. Was it that as humans they could see the basic reasoning that the Cyricist foulness deserved ending, and wished to rely upon his better-informed investigation? Or some bizarre sense of responsibility, as if unpicking the chains and so happening to slay his captor was sufficient reason to continue with him? Or still worse, that he was interpreted as some divine sign by a paladin's fanaticism. "I could not stop you from attempting to aid me," he told them, in the end. "Or that consequences would be significantly worse than otherwise."
A fool's act. He had noted the half-elf pair eyeing him as if a replacement guardian of sorts. He supposed it was likely enough that they were as capable as the humans claimed; he had no obligation to seek them as sentinels for himself. Perhaps he had much the same instinctive reaction as Prudence to that particular tone of Jaheira's voice, though he suspected she would be guilty of much the same domineering air herself if given half a chance. Such minor factors were ill-considered reasons for decision.
"I can heal a little more than I should be able to by prayer," the girl admitted suddenly, as if having decided to confess a crime rather than boast of prowess.
"A slight utility that I cannot imagine would reverse the likelihood of grievous failure," Xan said. Trivia, minor human irregularity; he was sure he had read that even the ones with the most barbaric prejudices against magic made less objection to healing spells. He thought he saw unseemly levity in her face at his reply, a slight smile. The pair of them were blatantly guilty of a pointless and ill-advised optimism.
"You do your research," she said; "and know as much of the ways of magic as any man, Greycloak. Let's find the people responsible—and agree to disagree on chances of success." She stretched her right hand out to him, speaking clearly and easily. It was the human deception of the suicide-monger to cloak innate doom by a superficially convincing voice. He thought it almost patronising that she should speak of his abilities in that fashion when he had studied longer than she would have lived, graduating from both Evereska's college of magic and the Greycloaks' teaching, serving for several full years of local missions before this dispatch south to human lands.
"You are aware enough of duty and reality," Xan said; and surely that was all that needed to be spoken. He had known it was the girl's nature to draw others to her like moths to a dark fire, or weavings into a spider's manipulated web. He briefly sealed the bargain in a human fashion, his weakened hand held by a firmer grip.
"Would it interest you to come to the town's celebration? You found the cause of the troubles," Prudence said.
Xan looked to the document-stuffed chest at the foot of the room's wide featherbed. "I would rather not attend such frivolities," he said; precisely the problem of the elves who failed to give attention to creeping decline and eventual doom whilst the guardians did their work. The opposite of a devotion to duty, but he accepted that such ceremonies existed in elven and human societies alike.
"Then rest in your own way," she said. He supposed the room was the peak of luxury relative to this human frontier: the bed with clean sheets and neatly arranged blankets, a thick if partly threadbare carpet, heavy hangings and a fireplace bringing warmth to the room, a lividly coloured painting of a horse leaping from a cliff and a bookshelf of a few human histories as ornaments, a porcelain hip bath behind a crimson screen. He would not have purchased this for himself, as crude as it was compared to the fine arts of his home. Spacious; quite solitary; windowed to the air, different enough from previous lodgings that he would recover within. "One can't lay plans without it." She produced a scroll from a cloak's pocket: a map of the coast wilderness, where mercenaries had demanded iron from the group, where a probable connection to this plot.
"Useful," Xan said, halfway meaning it; some attempt at forward planning was valuable. "Try not to lose your senses or your head at this provincial occasion," he bothered to caution.
"Instructions to keep you well-behaved, Pru," Imoen giggled; "you'd better come and keep your promise to help fix the seams."
Petty entertainments for petty... He did not think them entirely stupid, though no doubt some of the layers of thought below the paladin's calm and collected mien were dangerously suicidal human fanaticism. Walked into four Cyricists and away... They left him to his own thoughts and rest as he would have wished, themselves in transient cheer.
One day another Greycloak shall happen upon the Moonblade and reflect that Xan was right in the end, Xan thought; and sat at the oaken writing-desk provided, the first of the encoded documents in his hands. While fruitless and vain to try, it was not boredom that would kill him in this incursion to the Sword Coast.
—
"—It was a half-green-piebald-dragon—" came from Imoen's mouth; she'd embroidered the tale into multiple exaggerated versions, each told with a wink and a smile, at the moment to a young man she danced with. A farmer's lad, Prudence would have guessed, a shock of straw-coloured hair and a face as freckled as Imoen's own above a light brown tunic and breeches. In fact the effect of the festivities was somewhat subdued, Imoen's red hair and bright cloak and dress the most vibrant colouring within the crowd of dancers. The town had been troubled for some time, and a month since had lost their garrison commander. Yet there was quiet hope for all that; two fiddlers and a man playing a hurdy-gurdy gave the folksongs of the region, the dance steps called out for the benefit of all; scented smoke hung warmly in the air of the wooden hall, and beer and mead flowed consistently. She'd danced with miners and farmers and guards herself, trying to defuse pride in herself over what they all had done, and yet glad that it was a deed with meaning for this town. They celebrated that their own work would continue.
Stronger for what lay ahead; willing to face it, perhaps as willing as to smile and dance in physical entertainment. She still carried the scimitar at her side, bound to its sheath in the style of Northern peace-bands used at festivities, white ribbons borrowed from Imoen and tied in elaborate bows that could swiftly fray open. Just people of Nashkel, here, faces belonging to the town; for the moment a rest.
Her glance fell to Montaron: drinking with two other halflings of the town, scowling briefly at her in return, returning to his well-filled cup. Couldn't possibly deny that she'd glimpsed for a moment what he was like (in none too much detail, controlled at least against that painful usage). And still she'd worked with that, used it; cooperated with him. She didn't even seem to feel surges of righteous anger, simply disappointment. Couldn't travel with him. Xzar was late here.
"A word with you—they call you Prudence?" The man's voice was soft, and his pose stiff and straight despite the well-worn crutch he rested upon, his right leg twisted and withered. The symbol of Helm's gauntlet at his neck and the light pauldrons across his shoulders made his role in Nashkel clear. "Nalin of Helm. I intend to tell you more of our former commander."
Killed his wife, son, and two daughters, and three of the guards trying to apprehend him... "And yet the right path is that Brage face atonement, not punishment. Return him to the temple rather than his head to Oublek as others would wish; I would call it your duty, but only you can know that."
Already. A serious matter; but another target at which to aim, a chance to fulfil duty. Her mind could not help shying at the problem it suggested, likely causes of a man to change suddenly, an indirect approach to capture rather than kill.
"When you come to Helm's temple ask more of it. I won't speak further here." Nalin turned swiftly and limped his way back to the hall's broad wooden doors. He forced them open without a backward glance, a blast of cold air released against the warmth of the fires.
"Nalin's a good man, but odd about Brage; and calls for duty all the time," said Efrain Alejo; a merchant's tall son met that evening. "They say that's good for none—not even heroes of Nashkel?" He held out a broad hand.
Agreed; one could dance in the warmth, the called set of the Lord Goblin's Chase; celebrations of change. Hearing tales of a merchant's travels.
Late, she thought again, a gap in the music, leaning against the wall; she caught Imoen's eye once again as her sister told another tall tale, "—A horned skeleton bigger 'n this barn, secret vulnerable spot the exact size of a lump of dried Berculs cheese on the left ribcage like—like all horned skeletons do—"
Prudence hoped the subtle mental communication between them was something along the lines of Don't do anything to cause Winthrop to kill me; Hey, you can trust me, Pru!, as Imoen danced with one of the mine guards.
She slipped out; a quieter exit than Nalin's, into the cold night, walking back to the inn.
—
Two doors to the right; closed. She knocked without hesitation;
"Enter," she heard; and speaking aloud to clarify—
"It's me—" she said.
"High knock. I know," Xzar said. She opened the door, unlocked, to the room lit by his soft green magelight. The spellbook floated open in the air, in front of a barrel-shaped tub, filled by water; out of which rose his bare chest, sketched black tendrils coiling about shoulders and arms as if creeping from his back. Wiry, corded muscle rather than bulk; underfed; tanned; arms folded across his body, aware eyes looking across at her.
"A million strange shadows on you tend; of what substance?" The vivid green eyes narrowed, as if he asked a riddle; she let the door close quietly behind her.
"None that I haven't shaken away; none that I won't." One chose to set high goals. And to spare time for other purposes; it was natural to look. He was a light honeyed brown, lean and—one would not necessarily call him handsome; striking, a lopsided half-smile below the black line around his lips; harlequinlike in different moods, quicksilver and changing.
"And shouldn't you ask of me whether I am truly of the Mad God?" he said quickly, words tumbling over each other in a volatile flow.
Prudence leaned back against the wall, folding her own arms. "I'm afraid I don't think you're a very good liar, Xzar." There were things he violently refused to speak of rather than to tell an easy falsehood; allowed rich words to pour from his mouth of whatever he felt to be true at the time; decried illusion. And she had seen his frightened dismay of that very thing.
He moved his shoulders, rivulets of water dripping from his skin, the book still bobbing lightly in the air in front of him. "Oh, 'tis true I lack the natural talent of some," he said. "Truth may hide itself under a skin but it is always there below the scratch of a scalpel."
"Then allow no illusions," she replied. He had not betrayed for whom he and Montaron worked; and she did not speak of the sorcery that could have given her hands as red as Mulahey, if doing that was not against her code.
"How can that be true when your pulse changes not a beat between words?" In fact she felt it had changed, now; warm blood thrumming through her veins. "But I'm not. I won't be," Xzar said. "Really. Never let them take you! Cyric's an absolute bloody lunatic. Absolute. Bloody. Lunatic," he repeated, punctuating each word with a snap of his fingers, his mouth curling into a satisfied smirk. She made no comments on any ironies. "They don't find you; when the rabbits don't even know you exist they don't trouble to come after you. You escape when there's not enough for them to care whether you chase zygomorphed flumphs or kaleidoscopic ghazal verses or the viridian wax-winged raven. If you don't matter to them," he repeated.
It was Gorion's strategy of hiding by obscurity; it had failed him.
"And yet I've learned; studied the scrolls and know more than I did," Xzar said, and gestured to the spellbook floating before him. "More powerful. This—from the old tomb. My own school. Negative energy at the fulcrum, then the spell makes it split and resolve, bound by ice... Water's gone cold," he added, glancing down at the bath. "The shape can't be a perfect circle because that's too much energy. One has the final form decided from the first of the syllables: increasing radii in wheels, archimedean spirals so the tangent angles change and converge toward a perfect turning—not easy to unravel, they don't spare a step, it's art not patchworked craft, you'd see it—" He actually chanted it, moving his hands into precise gesture, fragments of a cold blue light seeming to skip and spark along his bare arms. She'd not have imagined a scene beginning as it had only to continue like this; but Xzar's eyes were bright and his voice joyous when he spoke of magic, the exuberance a soaring counterpoint to his melancholies. One who was intensely cheerful about crafting necromantic abominations, as Jaheira would have termed it.
A red sphere grew between his hands, then a pale blue core formed around it, cold ice. It hung suspended in the air; the chant strengthened. A negative core; the ice called around it, not by component... His hands stretched evenly apart, echoing the sphere's shape in the space between them. At the last syllable of the spell he touched, lightly, the surface of the sphere with the glowing red heart. The simple circle multiplied itself at that last moment, in growth that had seemed to appear from the air rather than organically metamorphose. It was a web of glowing strands. Strings of blue ice surrounded the red below, growing as a barrier that stopped neatly against the walls and floors of the inn's room. Small icicles hung from the structure like tiny pins. It seemed to tremble with internal contradiction, the red bound to the light blue that held it; and yet it remained in place, a spiderweb shield. Behind which he stood, drops of water running down his body.
"The cold is...displaced?" Prudence said; she stepped forward, and careful not to touch the structure itself reached out a hand. She'd worn no gloves to the dance. The air around the web's strands was warm on her skin, pleasantly so. Xzar nodded enthusiastically, his hand also by the web from his side.
"No components required; only necromancy and temperature displacement, that's why it's so elegant. And yet what I do is unravel things, change and destruction and transformation..."
Prudence lowered her hand a little further, and felt the chill of the ice; the magic separated the natural forces in the air, bringing this manifestation—no doubt of limited duration, for the way the flows of the universe tended to strive to balance themselves. Presumably evaporate rather than melt to damage the wooden floor, the practicality flashed across her mind. "So its purpose is defence," she said, and made as if to reach for his hand on the other side; then withdrew in time, for slim needles of ice spiked across the gap in the web. The red animation flowed inside them, the shapes much less fragile than mundane ice; a sharp tip had caught the cuff of the linen shirt she wore, and cloth rather than ice seemed likely to give way. The space between the points was small enough that few projectile weapons would pierce. The shards withdrew to their branch some moments after the immediate threat was taken from them, sliding back to their normal form.
"...And the necromantic energy within would hurt normal weapons trying to break through, of course!" Xzar said with pride.
"And would it take other forms?" Prudence said, her intellectual curiosity balanced against simpler drives. It wouldn't be notably useful if an enemy could step around it in a space larger than the inn's bedroom.
"There's elements in the spell that shape it to environment—I think it would wrap around somehow, in the open, but it needs hills or trees or things to hang to. I'm...still working on that," Xzar admitted, leaning forward in the bath.
Prudence looked once more at the structure; "So the key must be its symmetries," she said. "I don't doubt it protects its own core. But imbalance, I'd think multiple disturbances..."
Xzar's eyes widened; he nodded. Prudence reached to a gap at the top of the web, provoking the ice's defence but reaching back in time; to the lower left by a half-hearted kick, upper right... It could not convey its energies in time, drawing too much upon the web's core; provoking its defences far apart from each other quickened the dissolution. She found herself near him.
"The reason why I came," Prudence said, standing close to his naked chest, looking across at his face, "was to remind you of the celebrations." The spell parted them no longer, and he watched her calmly; they stood eye-to-eye. "You've done a good thing, you and Montaron, and I think it would be good for you to see that," she said honestly. "Besides, you'll likely catch a cold from standing there so long."
"That? —Ah, pass me that robe..." It was closer to a dressing-gown; Prudence raised a hand overelaborately before her eyes, blocking very little. Candlekeep was quiet, but she'd had some extra study of anatomy—call it by true name, brief relationships predicated on transience, that she expected to leave as much as travelling visitors to it.
He sat on one of the beds; fresh ink stained a twisted pillowcase wrapped around a silver vial. The covers of the spellbook flew into his wet hands, to be folded and hidden under the pillow. You still won't explain who you work for, Prudence reminded herself; bittersweet, this ending. She liked him, and wouldn't have wished to change that; unusual insights and cutting wit and excited energy; iconoclastically and and thoroughly himself; to an extent in need of looking after, though he had Montaron. Perhaps it was better for one to set one's eyes to the future; she knew she did not often brood on pasts and surrendered possibilities. Duties and goals of travel had been more important to her, and remained so whether or not it was cold to think it. "There's dancing," she said, and sat beside him. "You might enjoy it."
"Numbered as one of many knightly skills?" Xzar said; he leaned slightly toward her, a mocking glint in his eyes.
"No," she said—a thing rather foreign to academic monks; "But it's the kind where they call out the steps, so it's easy to pick up. Do you dance?" He was fleet-footed enough for it; but one imagined him in decorous ballrooms as little as...well, as little as Candlekeep was possessed of decorous ballrooms. (Which had caused the occasional complaint from visiting nobles who probably shouldn't have visited.)
"I don't think I remember," Xzar said meditatively, as if he surprised himself. "In the lumber room of the mind one moves away useless rubbish, pushes aside before it all comes tumbling down. I take it you...danced away the evening?"
"Yes; with a lot of nice townsfolk; it's fun," she said. They were flesh and blood as well as mind; physical exhilaration was natural for one to take joy in. A good, she thought it; certainly not evil to feel.
"How banal," he scoffed; and they'd moved more closely together, almost touching. The room was a bright, natural yellow; a fire was lit behind a grate, glowing, the smoke escaping from a pipe above. "If one were to be sensible and rational..." he began.
"Go on," she encouraged.
"Elaborate difference," Xzar said simply.
"You must know what Montaron's like." It had to be said. She saw his expression stiffen.
"More so than you," he said. "Divinational fallacies see a thing for what it is but believe it negates choice..."
"Always a choice," Prudence said. So often the good was also the practical, if one could see far enough.
"Some things you can't escape from. Some rabbits you'll never shake off," Xzar said, and it seemed a melancholy came upon him. "I did nothing to him; but they made me to feel I lay in the domain once more; and would as his pawn."
The priestesses. "If it helps," Prudence said, "I believe in some form of cosmic justice. I'm rather obliged to. That no finite deed can ever be punished by eternal captivity; that none can claim your soul if you do not choose it. Not even Cyric." Xzar had spoken the name himself; she echoed it. That those who were murdered have gone to their rightful rest, not tormented by that evil deity... "Cold comfort, I know," she realised; "I'd not have seen you dead." She slipped an arm around him. He'd vulnerabilities; she couldn't condemn him on the basis of acts, and especially not to take the Cyricists as absolute truth.
"Imoen can't stand me," he said.
"Parallel to Montaron," she pointed out.
"Never have worked anyway. I can't abide crowds of people. No dancing." The conversational tempo quickened, animated once more.
"I don't care much for isolation."
"Much safer. I'd have said that before the Cyricists," Xzar added, leaning closer.
"Excellently deduced."
"I could also explain that I'm not quite mad enough."
"Careful. I could explain the same thing."
"You're leaving," he said; yet another twist and turn to their words.
"Yes. How sincere does I want you to travel safely and take care of yourself and meet other people who don't want to hurt you sound?" There was a part of her mind conscious of other responsibilities, stepping onward and elsewhere; but what she spoke was true. In the moment she lived it was more than pleasant to sit here, the lines of his body relaxed with hers. You're clever; you won't be alone; you won't be chased...
"Very. You're saying it," Xzar said. "Try not to get turned into non-sapient undead?"
He watched her expectantly, head tilted to the left, as if he thought it a standard benediction. A—characteristic expression of his interests; she couldn't stop herself laughing, her head bent down, realising that it was difficult to seduce someone while madly snickering. "A...kind thought..." she managed; it was perfectly true that none wanted that fate, and yet...
"Unbusinesslike; but this is outside such realms," Xzar said, with relative staidness.
"Unchivalrous of me—" Prudence gathered herself together. "But this is inside a convenient space for it..."
She slowly leaned forward to cover his mouth with her own, and felt response; he kept his eyes open while his face pressed into hers, movement deliberate and fervent and sure.
"You're warm," he said, stopping to take in breath, damp himself and slippery. He looked at her, eyes bright by the fire's glow, fully aware. He raised his left hand to her face, tracing lines of feature as if to study it; he smiled like a contented cat. "Bright light in here. That's good." So that helped him. She liked the warmth; this was the right sort of moment, clean and peaceful and within the inn. They sat on the bed; it was easy to fall to the sheets, let it continue.
It was complicated, gently paced. Xzar's fingers twined around her head, sketching unusual patterns between her ear and neck like quick dancing. She eased the robe away from his chest, lines of muscle and strength on him despite his lean build. Their faces met again; eager, sliding around each other, hardly breathing, tongue slipping. He was alert and fast, fumbling—no; rather deft; nimble in mouth and hands.
Probably ought to...unfasten the swordbelt. She slid it away, leaving warfare behind. She liked this as intimacy separate from violence, mutual attraction; one did not have to swear vows of chastity and it was lively joy. His face was alert, movements purposive, mouth and teeth moving down from collarbone to bared shoulder. She held him closely, her hands moving down his body. She smelt sweat besides soap and dampness, the range of human senses open and stimulated. Wholly awake, wholly alive, wholly focused upon this; this was no dream at all, his green eyes glittering and a host of physical sensations too exhilarating not to be deliciously real. She felt the lines of the black tattoos above his shoulders, hands on damp skin, their bodies willingly shifting against each other—
"...Your elbow's in my ribs."
Practical; undramatic. She moved, and they laughed at each other, fragments of conversation punctuating between—Yes, Rue; Xzar—
—
The sun's light had thoroughly seeped into the inn, covering the room with gold in a morning late for people who worked chores. Imoen spread the cheese across her bread, lazily breakfasting, Arren the maid being very nice about bringing her things. (She could get used to this. She and Pru were adventurers now; maybe they'd never wait on tables and work in the kitchens again like they'd done back in Candlekeep, though since she knew what it was like she'd had a nice chat to the Nashkel girl about pastries.) Somewhere in the course of the party last night it seemed she'd somehow managed to gain the reputation of the Heroine of Nashkel. Single-handed destroyer of a half-piebald-green-dragon-with-paisley-spots; defeater of five horned demons by the clever throwing of a lump of lettuce leaves; cunning rogue unlocking rich young handsome human princes from many chains and laying deadly traps for their captors with nothing more than three feet of copper wire and a piece of string... It was fun to reshape events into something more exciting and laugh and giggle when the exaggerations got too much for even the most gullible to take in, though this time she might have let it get a little out of hand compared to when she teased Puffguts or Parda or Tethtoril back home. Still, if Nashkel town remembered Imoen the Pink Master Rogue rather than Prudence the Bl—Pru the really more of a well-washed dark grey, that'd do her sister a favour. Hmm, Pru the Dark Grey; turn that into the Dark Grey Prune and you'd really scare people away by means of icky fruit. Hopefully including nasty assassins.
Imoen took another bite of her meal and a sip of honeyed milk, trying not to think about...Pru's approximate whereabouts. She'd gone to sleep very responsibly herself, walked with a nice pair of guards going back to their barracks just beyond the inn at some hour in the early morning, had a few drinks and a lot of storytelling. They were different that way; Pru seemed to like it, Imoen had other hobbies and lots of other things to do. Her sister was even usually a bit too cold and practical about it, pointing out in that trying-to-be-sensible way that was much more annoying when she had a point than when she didn't: You're leaving Candlekeep, I plan to leave Candlekeep, we already knew that, I wish you well but we should be reasonable and call it over. Almost as if she picked 'em on the basis of easy-to-break-up-with and not-tempting-enough-to-skip-sword-practice-for, even if she didn't think of it like that. But crazycreepy necromancers...that she talked to.
—and Namer Galvan finally showed me the frog dissection! You can find the intestines and the liver and the lungs, though those are small because frogs breathe differently, through their s...
—Of course I'll stop, Im, but we both clean Winthrop's chickens, I don't see the logic...
—It's where the nerves are under the skin, when they cut... Never mind. Though the reason for studying it's healing people, that's important... How were those cinnamon cookies, Im?
'Course, most of her sister's time was on learning new sword-moves and obnoxiously nagging certain glamorous rogues with better things to do to come jogging, or on reading the boring books on theology and tactics that she'd substituted for the boring books on magical theory they'd both laid aside. And Pru wouldn't have the pair of them: because of whatever she'd seen in Montaron by looking out of the creepy white eyes, because Imoen was looking after her and making sure of it.
But there were voices in the halls; two tall silhouettes leaning into each other in the shadows of the stairwell.
"...Exactly! Any sufficiently complicated metaphor is in retrospect indistinguishable from advice that would have been much more helpful beforehand. So the ultimate rule of divination..."
"For justice, not fate."
"For one's own choices. Can make it up—sable figures crisscross the land, you draw a sword, step into the underworld and slay your own reflection—means anything from underground adventuring to inner Blackguard. Or the dark queen across midnight towers the already dead rippling... No."
"Shush," Prudence said, one hand sculpted around his cheek, and kissed him. For a horribly troubling length of time, Imoen could not help but notice. Perhaps she'd use a standard threat of Stay away from my sister or I'll stab you in your sleep; or more poetically with the first wordy thing that came to mind, She is a tigris lily seared to charcoal by flame and she will rip out your heart and stamp on it again, whatever the original bardsong had meant by the overblown metaphor. Perhaps it meant that a paladin could be as ruthless with themselves as they were with anyone else. She wouldn't really stab anyone in their sleep, of course. So instead Imoen cleared her throat as menacingly as she could, with subtext of That's my sister you think you can do that with, so you'd better think again!
They stepped back, though they still stood together, arms unobtrusively knitted with each other. Imoen could have gone with, You're a creepy dark seductive seducer of my sister's dubious innocence, or with the other way around of She eats lovers alive and spits out their bones except for the part where she tries to be nice and sensible and reasonable and Candlekeep isn't exactly the pleasure capital of the West. She settled for her fiercest glare.
"Where did Monty get to." Xzar patted down the component pouches on his robes as if he'd somehow hidden the halfling in there; maybe she really shouldn't think any more about that comparison, Imoen decided.
"Come, wizard, I'll not miss the witnessing of yer inevitable death." Montaron was as grimy as ever, his pack hung from his shoulders, heavier than when he'd come here. His face was set to a very strong scowl, Prudence included in it. Imoen shrugged. Good riddance. Definitely not the sort of rogue I'm aiming to be. Khalid was nice and he'd been right when he said everyone deserved a chance, but Pru carried that sort of thing too far—or else just thought they were fascinating to watch. "Stick everything where it should be and away from the holy-dunce."
"Take care," Prudence told Xzar, and kissed his cheek that time.
"Ambrosia; I—" Xzar stopped talking for once, patting down his cheek. He looked...surprisingly happy below the tattoos, Imoen thought. Tranquil for once rather than fiddling with some magic he probably shouldn't be fiddling with. And they were gone.
Imoen considered her sister's expression, sitting down with her and passing the oatcakes. Sleek and smug; never deliberately and provocatively smug about this sort of thing, to give her fair due; perhaps slightly subdued, or in any case as subdued as one could be whilst eating buttered oatcake.
Imoen readied her remarks, and let fly. "Let me guess. You thought it would be a good idea to detect if he had evil tonsils. With your tongue," she began.
"Very funny, Imoen." No smile cracked.
"Really lowering your standards—let's say, six feet under?" Imoen hazarded.
"Don't you think that's a little cruel and mean, Imoen?" Prudence helped herself to the honeyed milk, but made a face at the first sip; preferred it separate.
"Well, at least one of you has rotten taste...ew, pun definitely not intended there," Imoen said.
"I'll probably never see him again." Prudence's shoulders slumped; but she dared more of the milk.
Imoen hesitated on claiming that Pru'd used Xzar and dumped him and wasn't that just terrible of her, but decided on what was true for herself: "I really didn't want to go on with them. Reckon that part of it's all right," she said. "Did you...y'know, look at him like you did Monty?"
"Montaron was...part accidental," Prudence declared. "Xzar didn't cast any sights on me, and they helped Nashkel, and us." She looked at Imoen across the table, keeping her voice low and serious. "You're the one I'm dragging into danger, Im. And Xan, but those behind the iron crisis have to know he was there."
"Yer not buffleheaded enough to leave me behind," Imoen said, toasting with her sweetened milk. "Couldn't get along from moving up from gloomy elves to rich handsome princes without me."
"About ninth hour, isn't it?" Nobody could look at all emotional or dramatic while cutting into oatcakes; Prudence sliced efficiently into her breakfasting. "I'll make tea; then go to Nalin. He wants Brage captured... You don't remember any cryptography, do you, Im?"
"The art of writing or solving codes," Imoen quoted glibly, "not more than that definition."
"The same. So the two of us for Brage, then; Xan ought to be safe enough here, and that makes us more difficult to find. We're not trackers, but the Watcher knows that..." Pru was planning something, Imoen thought; looking much more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than she really had a right to. Trying to seek the next quest, go after this thing like she'd fling herself into sword practices that lasted hours into the night or learn pages and pages of anatomical treatises in Old Chessentan. "Grisly detail on Brage: one of the soldiers he killed was cut shoulder to pubis in armour," Prudence said. "The two others in but one blow, and that also severing mail. And he probably wasn't casting."
Imoen had heard the outline of the story; she made a face at the horror. "Strength of a madman," she said—no, better not to go there at all, and to be fair she didn't actually see any icky-yet-highly-mockable twitches about Pru. "Or someone external or the weapon he was using, fine." She knew perfectly well what point of magical theory her sister was trying to run down.
Prudence nodded. "Exactly. Not enough information yet; but why Nalin thinks Brage redeemable, and why Nalin's not been explaining this to Brage's successor and the rest of the garrison..." She shrugged. "Any ideas on rope traps, Im?"
Yeah; that'd be the details of the next crazy adventure running through her sister's deranged brain behind that overly gleaming smile and wide brown eyes, not quiet brooding. "Yep," Imoen said. "See, you'd be all lost without me..." There was noise coming from the first rooms of the inn; voices talking and some mention of a horse to be stabled. The innkeeper, his granddaughter Arren, a third who spoke in a tenor voice that carried well.
"A rider through the night," Prudence said, and Imoen decided reluctantly against reminding her that it was wrong for paladins to eavesdrop. The man entered, presumably the traveller who had spoken. Imoen saw above a flowing dark cloak a pale face and clean, long black hair, very bright red lips below a narrow white nose.
"Too nice-dressed for a messenger," Imoen said, noting the cut and fineness of his clothes, only somewhat muddy at the bottom. One would describe him as wearing the same general colour scheme that her sister claimed made for easier washing, but on him it was a shiny and glossy jet black that probably took much efforts of upkeep instead of Pru's dusty dark greys. It made him look rich enough to afford such efforts, though. He wore no rings on his well-manicured hands, but on his right wrist and half-concealed by the sleeve glinted a wide band that Imoen thought stood a good chance of being genuine gold. Those scarlet lips were the sole spot of colour upon his face and moved wetly, glinting by saliva when he ran his red tongue across them. He wore a lute strapped to his back; perhaps a wealthy bard. An axe was holstered at his side, too.
"And yet an errand that made him ride past bandits comes only here," Prudence said quietly.
"D' you think that's paint he's wearing?" Imoen said, of course discreetly. Heard sermons from Puffguts and Mr G. both on that topic (unfair, of course; with Pru most people just assumed she didn't need lecturing, and yet Imoen Winthrop couldn't hardly get away with anything). But if strange adventuring men got away with it no reason she couldn't brighten herself up, just on special occasions...
"No, I think it's just the way he looks," Pru whispered back, a little absently. The man's expression was casual enough, though when he glanced at them his eyes were dark and icy as Imoen looked back. Prudence continued to slice through her bread with her knife.
"We decided before that it was time to move on," Imoen heard her sister softly repeat. Prudence looked up at the man, smiling brightly; and he stepped toward them.
—
Millions of strange shadows—Sonnet 53, context not relevant
Thanks go to Scarabbug for reading bits from this fic before posting, and thanks to all reviewers for their comments. :)