For the twisted and broken young warlock, it would be, after all, a double victory.
“Don’t you think they are coming for you?” Draygo Quick asked. “Or lying in wait, should you ever leave the defenses of this place?”
Alegni shrugged as if it hardly mattered. It wasn’t as if Barrabus the Gray could actually hide from him, after all, though he did wish that his magical link to the dangerous man was more informative and more continual.
“Do you not think they will come into the city after me?” he asked.
“Do you?”
“I count on it,” Alegni said with a grin. “I hope for it.”
“Don’t underestimate-”
“I do not underestimate anyone,” Alegni interrupted. “Even you.”
It was not often that Draygo Quick could be put back on his heels in a conversation, but Herzgo Alegni had obviously done just that, and the warrior tiefling did well to hide any gloating at that moment.
“Effron is young,” Draygo Quick said, and Alegni could hardly believe that the stubborn and fierce warlock was actually changing the subject. “He is full of promise.”
“And full of conflict,” Alegni added.
“Indeed,” said the warlock. “Particularly in this delicate situation.”
“I didn’t bring him here,” Alegni reminded. “I didn’t want him here.” He paused and stared hard at the withered warlock for just a moment. “I do not want him here.”
He thought that he might have pushed just a bit too far, though, when Draygo Quick stiffened and hardened his gaze.
“And yet he is here,” the warlock stated flatly. “And he remains here by my command.”
Alegni’s face tightened, but there was no room for debate in Draygo Quick’s tone.
“There are proper punishments and there are excessive punishments,” Draygo Quick warned. “I take it personally when one of my minions is excessively punished.”
“And there are reparations,” Herzgo Alegni offered, and Draygo Quick cocked his head curiously. He seemed so decrepit and withered that, had he been reclining, Herzgo Alegni might have thought that he had just died.
“Sylora Salm is dead and the Thayans in disarray,” Alegni explained. “But they are not yet fully defeated. And there are other interests in the region, including these Neverwinter citizens I have subjugated, and some agents, I presume, of other interested parties. Now is the time for a full show of force.”
“You’re asking again for more soldiers.”
Alegni shrugged. “It would seem prudent.”
“The best thing you might do to secure your hold here is to destroy these assassins who hunt you,” Draygo Quick replied.
“That will be done,” Alegni assured him, and he instinctively grasped Claw’s hilt, though the sword had offered him little of late regarding Barrabus the Gray. “But still… to minimize the damage done by Effron…”
“A hundred,” Draygo Quick agreed.
“Three,” Alegni started to bargain, but Draygo Quick cut him short with a sharp reiteration.
“A hundred.”
After a courteous-and wise-bow, Herzgo Alegni took his leave.
“You understand your role?” Draygo Quick spoke in the apparently empty room.
From behind a tapestry stepped an elf Shadovar, dressed in fine breeches and an expensive waistcoat, and with a flat top hat adorned with a ribbon of gems. He wore his blousy white shirt open to the waistcoat, showing a shapely neck and a small tattoo to the right of his windpipe: the letters CD, for Cavus Dun, intertwined.
“We have a great opportunity here,” Draygo Quick said.
“And a great risk,” the elf, Glorfathel, replied, his words carrying more weight in light of the recent losses Cavus Dun had realized.
“You are my hedge against that,” said the old and powerful necromancer.
The elf bowed low. “How will I know?”
“I trust your judgment,” Draygo Quick assured him. “This region of Toril, Neverwinter Wood particularly, is of importance to us, no doubt, but not with the urgency that drives Herzgo Alegni. And I will not be embarrassed by chasing that hot-humored tiefling on a fools’ errand.”
“I understand.”
“I knew you would.”
“Did you think it would be any different?” Arunika asked Jelvus Grinch when she found him with some other prominent citizens of Neverwinter, all standing with hands-on-hips, staring dumbfounded at various points along the city walls. Portions of the wall were cloaked in deeper gloom. For at those locations, shadowy magical gates had appeared, like doorways into the void, and Netherese soldiers, shades one and all, were coming through.
“Is it an invasion?” Jelvus Grinch asked the red-haired woman.
“If it is, then ye’d be wise to be thinkin’ o’ leaving,” answered a voice from the back, and a female dwarf, quite dirty from the road, stepped out into the open.
“And who might you be, good dwarf?” Jelvus Grinch asked.
“Amber Gristle O’Maul, at yer service,” she said with a low bow. “O’ the Adbar O’Mauls. Me and me friend just come in from the road to yer fine city.”
“Your friend?”
“Sleepin’, ” Amber explained.
“Came in from where?”
“Luskan, and what a mess that place’s become!”
“A paradise compared to Neverwinter,” another man remarked, and several laughed-but it was an uneasy bit of mirth, to be sure.
“Aye, ye got some problems, and I’m thinkin’ that me and me friend’ll be wandering on our way quick as can be done.”
“You should be on your way now,” Arunika said, rather coldly. “This is none of your affair.”
The dwarf eyed her curiously for a few heartbeats, then just bowed and walked off.
“Why would Herzgo Alegni invade that which he already owns?”
Grinch turned an angry look over Arunika. “You played no small role in his ascension,” he reminded. “Early on, when first he came to us, you teased with words that he might be our great hope.”
“We could not have foreseen the fall of Sylora Salm,” Arunika admitted. “Not in the manner in which it happened, at least. With the counterbalance of the Thayans removed-”
“There remain only Alegni and the Netherese,” Jelvus Grinch finished.
“That is not necessarily true,” said Arunika. “There is more to play out, I am confident.”
“When you decide that I am worthy to hear your information, do tell,” Jelvus Grinch sarcastically replied.
Arunika didn’t bother answering the man, and she really had nothing definitive to tell herself, never mind tell him. She believed that Dahlia and this drow ranger, Drizzt Do’Urden, were coming for Alegni, perhaps with Alegni’s own champion in tow, but she couldn’t be sure. And even if they did come after him, she mused as she watched the dozens of new Netherese recruits pacing the city walls, what might three do against this force? For unlike the overconfident Sylora in her forest fortress, Alegni was obviously on his guard now.
Patience, the succubus reminded herself. The Abolethic Sovereignty was gone for now, but they would likely return. Or would they?
Her own thoughts gave Arunika pause. She had assured Brother Anthus that the Sovereignty’s departure would prove a temporary thing, but how could she know anything for certain regarding those strange, otherworldly fishlike creatures? They would come and go as they pleased.
And did she even truly want them here? Arunika thought that she had figured out the Sovereignty, at least to the point of understanding their passion for order, one that even outdid her own. But there was something else here, something more, and the succubus couldn’t deny a bit of relief that the aboleths had apparently departed the region. For within their promise of order loomed the threat of enslavement-perhaps even for a being as powerful as Arunika.
The succubus considered the cityscape around her. She had invested much here, years of her time on the Material Plane. Glasya had only grudgingly allowed her to come to this place and remain for so long, and only because of Arunika’s passion and insistence that the desperate settlers of the ruins of Neverwinter could be subtly coerced toward the will of Glasya through the teachings of Glasya’s loyal Arunika.