Night fell quickly in Thay, with no extended sunsets to wax poetic about. The evening crept along lazily, the days still warm enough for people to carouse outside until late in the night. In the wee hours, after the docks had cleared of their daily bustle, Bishop and Rafa crept back to the river. Rafa's personal vessel, a coracle just big enough for two men, or a man and a decent cargo, was waiting at the slip. They climbed in, Rafa more graceully than Bishop. Rafa was armed with a dagger, Bishop more heavily with his bow on his back and his skinning knife. They poled slowly across the river, Rafa providing the power, Bishop scanning the bank. The moon was half full, giving enough light for a man with keen eyes to see, but enough cover for two vagabonds to steal into a rich man's home.
"Keowan," Rafa asked, "I'm frightened. What if they catch us?"
Bishop's first instinct was to call him a pussy and shame him, but remembered his own past. Rafa wasn't that much younger than him, probably eighteen or nineteen, but he'd led a comparably charmed life, he imagined. Then again, next to my own, most lives look fairly charmed. "They won't catch us."
"But what if they do?"
"We'll be hanged," Bishop said, "Or I suppose I'll have to make a quick exit, and you'll be hanged. Or we'd have to bash in a few heads and skip town."
"That's not very comforting," Rafa said.
"Then perhaps you'd best make sure they don't catch us," Bishop said, "And just ask yourself, would you rather die tomorrow, or live sixty more years under the heel of Hayat Ensaan, knowing that he sleeps every night next to the woman you love?"
Rafa was silent, "I don't know. The thought pierces my very heart right now, but I wonder if it's not something you would learn to live with."
"It's not," Bishop said, "You can take my word for that."
The two men were silent for a long moment. Bishop had had a couple of stiff drinks before coming out to the dock, and he was feeling rather magnanimous. For the first time since he had lost her, he felt a sense of purpose. He was accomplishing something, returning Shiren to her fiance, and handing over the riches of the Ensaan household to his crew.
"Who is she?" asked Rafa, "The girl?"
Normally, Bishop would have held his tongue, but the drinks he'd had – a strange clear liquor distilled from potatoes that the Rashemi were fond of – thought otherwise. Still, he kept his words measured. "Adahni?" Bishop asked, "What do you mean?"
"You act like you know what you're speaking of. What happened? How do you know that it is better for us to rescue Shiren?"
"When I met her," Bishop said, chuckling, "I was an apprentice assas... hunter. An apprentice hunter. I was under the tutelage of a sadistic son of a bitch named Dayven Elhandrien. She was his wife."
Rafa guffawed. If the peeping of frogs had not been so loud, Bishop would have scolded him, "So you do know what you're talking about, then. You were in the same situation I was in. So how did you gain her, your master's wife? Did she leave him?"
"Yes," Bishop said, "Like I said, he was sadistic son of a bitch. He beat her, hard, and frequently. Eventually, she ran away. I didn't see her again for nearly a year."
"And then you became lovers," Rafa said.
"Eventually," Bishop replied, his face going red with embarrassment as he remembered drunkenly trying to kiss her in her room in Sunken Flagon back in Neverwinter, and her rebuffing him soundly.
"And if she had not left him?" Rafa asked, "Would it still pain you as it did then, as it pains me now to know Shiren has been taken from me?"
"I spent that year trying to forget her face," Bishop replied, "I bedded every whore in Neverwinter and a few in Luskan and Port Llast. I even kept company with another woman for some time, for all the good that did. I drank myself into oblivion every night. I killed off every soft or warm feeling I had left, and I succeeded, for a good long time, in being a bitter little bastard and convincing myself I neither needed nor wanted anyone."
"You don't act like a man who wants for human companionship," Rafa said.
"That sounds like a nice way of calling me a prick," Bishop said, "And you're right, I am a prick. But I'm the prick that's helping you rescue your fiancee and demanding nothing in return, so if you want to hear the rest of the wisdom I'm about to impart, I suggest you be a little nicer."
"I didn't actually call you a prick, Keowan," Rafa said, "Nor did I mean that. Tell me, how you got on."
"People need people," Bishop said, "It's not in our nature to be alone. I suppose if it had not been her, I would have found some other woman to make miserable with my constant unhappiness, but I wonder if it would have been the same..."
"Did you make her miserable?"
"Sometimes," he said. After he'd caught her in bed with Sandr, the Rashemi sailor, he'd carried on loudly with a whore in the room next to hers. She hadn't looked him in the eye for days, "But apparently not miserable enough to leave me."
"Until now," Rafa said, "Otherwise she'd be here with you, no?"
"Asshole," Bishop said, "You have no idea what happened."
"You haven't told me," Rafa replied.
"I'm a pirate, like you said. Before we came upriver, there was a storm, she was knocked overboard less than a mile from land. I've reason to believe she survived. I'm going to Rashemen to look for her."
"Rashemen is miles and miles inland. How would she have gotten there?"
"I don't know," Bishop replied, "But I have it on good authority that she's there."
"Who's authority?"
"Our dog," he said. He thought a moment, realizing how utterly ridiculous that sounded, "I just know, all right?"
"Far be it from me to question your sanity," Rafa said, "After all, I'm only paddling alone with you on a boat on a half-lit night alone and you are armed to the teeth. It seems that if I truly thought you crazy, I would be all the crazier."
"Sanity is relative," Bishop said. He could make out the outline of the house in the moonlight now. There were two lights lit, one in what he imagined was the front hallway, the other in a room upstairs. Somebody was still up.
"I just... I wonder if it would not be better for Shiren to be the wife of a rich man, rather than a simple boatman like myself," Rafa said, "He can provide for her, far better than I ever could."
"Ah, so that's what's bothering you," Bishop said. He turned to look the boy in the eye, "A man who thinks he can buy a woman like he buys a cow is not a man. A man who looks at his wife as something that can be bought or stolen looks at her as a thing. Not the finest house in the world can make up for being treated as property."
"You are very sure of yourself, Keowan," Rafa said.
"I've made mistakes," Bishop said, "But there are a few things I am sure about, and this is one of them."
"Still, it is rather a strange feeling, going to ones death," Rafa said, "We can never be really sure what waits on the other side."
"Nope," Bishop said, "Only the highly religious have some semblance of surety in that. And they tend to be... well, stupid."
Rafa guffawed, "I suppose we'd best not be going to our death then."
"There's the spirit," Bishop said.
They arrived on the opposite bank and began to move upriver to where Rafa said that Hayat had diverted the river to make a moat around his great house.
"There's a dock out back," Rafa said quietly, "Nobody guards it, but just inside that door there will be two watchmen. A friend of mine has taken deliveries to this house since he built it five years ago. None of the townsfolk have ever been inside, though, so I don't know where the rest of the guardsmen will be."
"Two men I can deal with," Bishop said, "Take me to the dock, but don't leave the boat. Take it downriver and tie it up. I'm going to go in, take out as many guardsmen as I can. When you've secured the boat, I need you to come back. Can you swim?"
"I'm a boatman," Rafa said, "Yes, I can swim."
"Good," Bishop said, "Wait for me at the dock."
Rafa nodded, "I hope you understand exactly what it is you're doing."
"I always have," Bishop replied. They reached the dock. The current of the river followed the water into the moat, and he was able to leap from the coracle onto the dock without making Rafa stop. He waved at the boy as the river carried the coracle away downriver, away from the eyes of the watchers in the house.
"All right, Hayat Ensaan," Bishop muttered, "Let's see if you have anything worth stealing."
The door was locked but not bolted. Silly man probably thought he was safe with his manufactured moat and guards. That none of the downtrodden denizens of Kiria Jazareen would dare rob him. Bishop made short work of the door, sliding his hunting knife through the lock and jiggling it until it clicked open. He eased it open, and relaxed a bit as the hinges proved to be well-oiled and it opened quietly. The lamps in the corridor were not lit. Bishop could see straight down into a foyer, where two guards stood. One appeared to be drunk or asleep, slumped over a table. The other was sitting with his back against the wall.
Something's amiss here, Bishop thought, There's something wrong with them.
He walked up, as quietly as he could. Sure enough, upon further inspection, the guards were out of it. Alive – the blood still pulsed beneath their throats – but they didn't even stir as he put his fingers to the pulse points. He scanned the room for signs of what had put them in this situation. The air did not smell of any drugs, there were no liquor bottles anywhere. There were the remnants of a meal on a table by the door which lead further into the house, but a sniff of the cups revealed only water. Utterly preoccupied by the state of the residents, he put aside the mental list he was making of all the paintings, statues, and expensive furniture he was passing, until he could figure out what in the hells was going on.
He ventured further into the house. At the base of the stairs, which he imagined led up to the living quarters, were two more guards, both passed right out like the two in the foyer. At this point, he was officially on his guard, and kept his hand on the handle of his knife as he climbed the stairs.
At the top of the stairs, he noticed only one room lit. He followed it, slowly and quietly, until he came to a great dining room. Staying in the shadows, he looked around. There was one person at one end of the table, a great fat git in his mid thirties, dressed in expensive-looking robes of brocade trimmed with some kind of fur. That must be Hayat Ensan, he thought. The man had his head in his plate, his arms sprawled in front of him. Bishop looked from one end of the room to another, and walked slowly up to the figure at the table. Like the guards downstairs, he was alive, but soundly asleep. A check of the plate and glass in front of him also revealed nothing alcoholic.
What in the hells happened here? Bishop thought, Do all Thayans just pass out on their dinners? That just seems bad manners...
He heard a clank behind him. He whirled, just in time to see a frying pan, glinting in the candlelight, being brought down hard on the crown of his head. He saw the colors of the world start to run together, and then all was black.