"It turned you down," Shale observed.
Zevran watched Dal walk away before he turned his attention to the golem looming over his shoulder. "It is all going according to plan, my friend."
"Your plan was to proposition it to do squishy things," Shale's distaste could not have been more evident if she had actually been capable of looking nauseated, "and have it say no?"
"Yes," Zevran said simply. "He is not a man of casual appetites, I see this now. I shall bank the fires and bring out a weapon better suited to the occasion."
"You are going to stab it?"
Zevran wondered yet again how this mage collected such unlikely companions. The walking wall of rock sounded almost eager to see the theoretical stabbing take place, and he—well he was the sort to do such theoretical stabbing, was he not?
But no.
He told himself that it was in his interest to maintain the Warden's curiosity and to encourage his (brasca, why so faint?) faint attraction to something more advantageous.
"No, my dear Shale, I am not going to stab him." He leered because he was supposed to, even if he was not really feeling it. "At least not with a knife."
Before Shale could ask for an explanation, Zev continued. "For now, I will use the smolder. He will see the heat in my eyes and it will not be as lurid as I profess. He will wonder. He will consider. And there will come a time, when curiosity brings him to me. He is a man who must touch the fire to know if he will be burned."
"So you plan to burn it," Shale said, sounding strangely satisfied.
Zevran let his eyes turn back to the Warden and wondered – just who would get burned in this?