Chapter 2

The sun was just rising as Artemis Entreri unlocked and disabled the traps of the front door of his house. The house was not large as houses in Waterdeep's South Ward went, but it was by far the largest place he'd ever lived. And thanks to Dwahvel it was by far the most comfortable.

He walked quietly into the front hall so as not to disturb her sleep and headed to the back of the house for something to eat. He was starving.

As he opened the door, he saw them. There were drow elves in his kitchen.

Specifically there were two---Jarlaxle and his lieutenant Kimmuriel. Dwahvel sat on a kitchen stool, conversing politely with them. Several plates of crumbs let him know that Jarlaxle at least had raided his larder. Entreri didn't believe Kimmuriel actually ate.

At his glare, Jarlaxle stood and held out his hand to him in a gesture so very human and so very disconcerting in a drow. "Artemis!" he called. "Dear Mistress Tiggerwillies has been filling us in on your recent adventures in Waterdeep. The domestic bliss, the gainful employment and such. It sounds very ordinary."

He ignored Jarlaxle's outstretched hand and instead went to Dwahvel's side to be certain she had not been injured or inconvenienced by the unexpected guests. From the look in her eyes, he believed that she was politely holding back the storm of fury that threatened to rain down on all of them. He contented himself with giving her a kiss, ignoring Jarlaxle's little fond sigh.

"Aren't you two sweet?" the mercenary chief added sincerely to Kimmuriel's almost imperceptible snort of disgust.

Then Entreri turned to face the flamboyant drow. "What are you doing here, Jarlaxle?" he asked coldly.

"That's hardly a welcome for an old friend, Artemis! Think of all we've been through together."

"I have," Entreri returned straightforwardly. "What are you doing here?"

Jarlaxle gathered up his empty plates and placed them out of the way in the sink behind him. "I'll get to the dishes in moment, Mistress Tiggerwillies," he stated helpfully. Then he pulled a small bright green leather sack from his vest pocket.

He carefully tipped out the contents. Entreri watched as a pair of black stones fell onto the white tablecloth. They were so black they seemed to absorb the light around them.

"Shadow," Entreri breathed quietly. He felt Dwahvel stiffen in fear beside him. "Why do you bring these things into my house?"

"Do not worry, Artemis," Jarlaxle replied, but his voice held its own note of quiet awe. "You have protected this house very well. I know because it took all my efforts and those of Kimmuriel here to even find it, much less gain entrance."

Part of Entreri agreed with his assessment. After all, he'd spent easily three times the house's purchase price in hiring Captain Jarrol's new wizard Mellisandra as well as several more of Waterdeep's finest mages to render the house unscryable, insulated from magical intrusion, and safe from magical attack.

However, given Jarlaxle's appearance, it seemed that they owed him a substantial amount of refund money for their guarantee against psionic interference. He was disappointed that their efforts had been in vain, but not entirely surprised. These were, after all, dark elves he was dealing with.

But despite the money he'd spent to protect the house, he'd not had it rendered impervious to shadow. If he had, he might not have been able to enter it himself.

Even now as he looked at the stones, he could feel their pull and the answering echo inside him. He stepped forward almost without realizing it and reached out to take them in his hand. At their touch against his skin he could feel an icy wash of power run over him.

"What are they?" Jarlaxle asked in hushed tones of excitement. "We know they link to the plane of shadow because we took them off a recently dead shade. But what do they do?"

Entreri closed his eyes. The essence of shade that had been infused into him knew the incredible power of the stones, these little pieces of the shadow plane. With them, he could travel freely in shadow, could summon its denizens to do his bidding, could tap the magic of the Shadow Weave directly.

The essence of shade inside him resonated to the thrum and pull of the dark plane. Around him, the flicker of the kitchen lamp grew dim as darkness encroached and the shadows in the corners began to consume the room. All was moving toward shadow, he could feel it. The dark power drew him deeper and deeper into itself.

"Artemis!" Dwahvel's frightened voice cut through his reverie. He opened his eyes and looked down at his hand where it clenched the stones tightly. The gray tinge of shadow overlaid his skin as completely as on the day he'd first taken it into him through his vampiric blade.

He looked at her, her green eyes full of horror, and made his choice. He forced himself to drop the stones and took three steps back from them, each inch of distance reducing the pull of shadow on his soul until he could finally breathe again. Slowly the color of his skin returned to normal.

"You cannot use these, Jarlaxle," he finally managed to say. "Nor can Kimmuriel or anyone else in Bregan D'aerthe. All they'll be is a beacon to help the shadovar find you. I want them out of my house."

"But you can use them, Artemis," Jarlaxle began suggestively. "Perhaps they should stay with you. Perhaps you should study them."

"No," came the response. "I want nothing to do with the shadovar or with Bregan D'aerthe."

"But think of the opportunity you are passing up," Jarlaxle continued in a voice of enticement as he leaned across the table toward him. "The shadovar have come. There's no stopping that. The world is changing. All we can do is change with it, profit from it."

Entreri shook his head. "I have profit enough here in Waterdeep."

Jarlaxle looked over at Kimmuriel and gave a greatly exaggerated sigh then put the stones away. "Then our work here is done," he sighed melodramatically. "Though I don't suppose you'd mind an occasional visit, just for old times' sake."

Entreri just looked at him. Finally, he commented, "I hope the dwarf's absence means you killed him."

Jarlaxle merely laughed. "Not at all. Our good Athrogate is simply on an errand to the north. He's made a fine addition to Bregan D'aerthe. Our first dwarf member."

"I cannot imagine a member of Bregan D'aerthe who wasn't drow," Entreri commented dryly.

"Oh, but what about you?" the mercenary leader responded. "You were our first human member."

Kimmuriel practically glared at Jarlaxle.

"I never belonged to your little group," Entreri declared firmly. "Kimmuriel will vouch for that."

Despite the long-standing animosity between the two men, Kimmuriel nodded his head in agreement even as he took offense at Entreri's description of the group as 'little.'

"At any rate," Jarlaxle continued smoothly, "tell me of your life here in Waterdeep with the oh, so delightful Mistress Tiggerwillies."

Some perniciousness in Kimmuriel made him comment, "He keeps correcting you in his mind, Jarlaxle. The good halfling is apparently Mistress Entreri."

Jarlaxle eyed the golden ring on Entreri's finger, noting a mate on Dwahvel's. "So, you've entered into a state of marital bliss?" he cried joyously. "Allow me to felicitate you, Mistress Entreri." He offered her a deep bow.

Dwahvel wondered at Kimmuriel's words. They were not married, only posing as such. What was Artemis thinking? Then the sight of Jarlaxle's self-serving bow infuriated her.

She kept her peace but inwardly desired nothing more than to squeeze that annoying drow's windpipe until his eyeballs popped out of his shiny bald head. Kimmuriel snorted a little and she realized she'd probably broadcast that thought just a bit too loudly for the talented psion to ignore.

"Many thanks, Jarlaxle," she responded politely. "Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I'll leave you to catch up while I get dressed." Then with a polite nod to her guests, she left the room, her fingers clenching into fists despite herself.

She'd been in the bedroom only a short while when Artemis entered, his shoulders sagging in exhaustion.

"Are they gone?" she asked quietly.

"For now," came his reply as he cast himself across the bed with a groan.

"Is there any way to keep that meddling drow out of your life?" she couldn't help but ask.

"None that I am aware of," he answered, his voice muffled against the pillow he'd pulled under his cheek. "Mellisandra owes me a lot of money right now," he added grimly. "She and her fellows assured me that the house was protected against psionic power as well."

"Short of flooding the basement and asking an aboleth to move in, I suppose there's no way to ward off Kimmuriel's powers," Dwahvel retorted.

Artemis laughed a little at that, then agreed. "Too bad there's not a friendly illithid down the road we could call in for assistance."

"There's no such thing as a friendly illithid."

"Or a friendly drow."

"I don't like him, Artemis," Dwahvel said, coming to sit by him. "When I think of all the things he's put you through, I just want to strangle him."

"You wouldn't be the first," Artemis replied. "Don't worry about Jarlaxle. He'll be back when he's bored or when he wants something else, but I don't think he means us any harm."

Through the invisible portal Kimmuriel had cast into the bedroom, Jarlaxle listened and agreed. He truly didn't intend Artemis any harm. If the assassin wanted to play house a while with the charming little halfling, Jarlaxle could certainly be patient.

Sooner or later the game would pall and Artemis would be ready once again to rejoin Bregan D'aerthe, perhaps to put his new skills with the shadow stones to the test, perhaps to just add his blade to theirs.

"If you truly desire Entreri's assistance in our current project," Kimmuriel was saying, "we can perhaps sway him in another way. We do have the half-elf under our protection. He might be interested in her continued well-being."

Jarlaxle snorted at that himself. Protection was a very polite way of putting the relationship that had developed between Bregan D'aerthe and Lady Calihye. The poor thing had been nearly driven out of her mind before he'd stepped back into the picture and stopped their activities.

She still hadn't recovered enough from her recruitment to be very much use to them as a liaison between Bregan D'aerthe and the Citadel of Assassins. The mere sight of a drow male was enough to put her into palpitations, and she tended to have flashbacks and hallucinations at the most inopportune moments.

"I'm not sure Lady Calihye is very high on Artemis's list of priorities right now," Jarlaxle commented. "Let's just let her rest a while longer."

They observed a while longer as Artemis and Dwahvel talked, then moved from talking to touching.

"How . . . unusual," Kimmuriel commented distastefully after a bit.

"I think it's sweet," Jarlaxle replied. "I never dreamed Artemis could be so careful."

"What about the halfling then? She could certainly be leverage against his cooperation," his lieutenant offered helpfully.

"True," came the thoughtful reply. "We'll hold that in reserve as well. Meanwhile, we have pressing business to attend to in Luskan. I believe we owe the young crow another visit. Let us fan the flames a bit on his aspirations."

Gratefully, Kimmuriel closed the window into Entreri's house and turned his attention to Bregan D'aerthe's newest project in Luskan.

Unaware that they'd been watched and evaluated, Dwahvel lay back against the soft pillows of her bed and stroked Artemis's hair as he lay beside her, one arm cast heavily across her stomach.

He always came home from trips like this exhausted. She suspected he never let his guard down long enough to nap, much less to truly sleep while he was away. In fact, the only place she'd ever seen him fully relax was in this house, where he felt safe.

She sent another round of savage thoughts in Jarlaxle's direction. That wretched mercenary had found a way back into Artemis's life and, even worse, into his house. She wouldn't stand for that kind of intrusion again.

She'd known the unsleeping, ever-watchful assassin Artemis had been for years. But she'd grown used to the man who lay beside her now, the man who slept and dreamed, who was so comfortable in her bed that he didn't stir when she touched him.

She watched him slip deeper into sleep, the cares and the years falling away from him. He looked so young and his face had a smooth innocence she never saw when he was awake. In that quiet moment she could see the man he could have been if life had been kinder, if he had been kinder.

She could imagine the sound of his laugh set free from cynicism, the sound of his voice untouched by self-mockery. But she knew that was not to be.

Artemis Entreri had spent too many years in the dark to come out fully into the light. He'd done and seen too much evil for it to ever completely release his soul.

Perhaps that touch of shade that infused him was fitting, she thought with a resigned sigh.

Then she looked down again at the smooth curve of his face, the way his long, dark lashes lay against his cheek as quietly as a sleeping child's.

No, she thought, shadows might dwell inside him, but they did not own him.

She stroked his hair again, running her fingers into the smooth dark strands. He shifted a little, but didn't wake at her touch.

He had found a measure of peace and rest in her arms and in this house, and she was determined to defend it against anything the world or shadow or Jarlaxle or all the soldiers of Bregan D'aerthe could throw against it.

Then she kissed his forehead and rose to dress, leaving her Artemis to sleep.