She smiled fully, an expression that illuminated her face, and said, "You first."
"Business," Cale replied. To ensure that she didn't take him for a slaver or worse, he added, "I'm looking for someone."
"Aren't we all," she said, but otherwise had the sense to ask nothing more. Cale appreciated that.
"And you?" Cale asked.
She waved a delicate hand in the air and said, "Where else would I go?"
Cale could think of nothing to say to that.
"Where are you from?" she asked.
To his surprise, Cale thought first of the Plane of Shadow but he immediately righted his thinking.
"Westgate," he replied. Her face showed no recognition. Surprised, he wondered if she had been born in Skullport. "A large city overlooking the sea," he explained. "Far from here."
He put his hand to Weaveshear's hilt as two ogres plodded by. Only their stink proved offensive.
"It's sunny in Westgate, I expect?" Varra said.
Cale supposed it was, at least sometimes. Of course, he had done most of his work in the night.
"Yes," he replied.
Her expression grew wistful, even as she absently stepped over a body that was either drunk or dead.
"I haven't seen the sun in ... a long time," she said.
Again Cale found himself with no words. The silence sat between them as they passed one rundown, rickety building after another, and one rundown, rickety human being after another.
After a while, he asked, "Why do you stay?"
She gave that same quick laugh then said, "I was born far away, too far to easily return." Her voice dropped and she added, "I've nowhere else to go. This is my home now."
Before Cale could respond, she pointed to a dilapidated, moisture-swollen flophouse leaning dangerously against the cavern's wall. A rothe pen stood to its right; a fungus garden to its left. Unlike most of the structures in Skullport, another building was not built atop the flophouse, though Cale could see movement in some of the caves and recesses higher up the cavern wall.
"That's it," she said. She stopped and turned to face him. "Thank you for the escort."
Cale thought again how pretty she was, how beautiful she might have been with appropriate food, dress, and a softer life under the sun. Tempting though it was, he knew he could not help her with those things, at least not just then. He had other, more pressing business.
"My pleasure, lady," he said.
He gave his best bow, smiled, and turned to leave. She caught his cloak sleeve.
"I have a fire pit inside," she said, with only a hint of self-consciousness. "It's warm. I share lodging with two other women, but they're probably still. .. out."
At that moment, under Varra's gaze, Cale didn't need a fire pit to warm him. He felt an inexplicably powerful compulsion to take Varra in his arms and it almost overcame his better judgment. Almost. He smiled at her and gently took her hand. It was soft and feminine, despite the harshness of her work. He noticed for the first time that only a few shadows were leaking from his flesh. It was as if she kept his darker nature at bay.
"This is not a good time," he said. "I have something important that I must see through to the end."
A coffle of slaves trudged past, chains ringing. Cale noticed a ragged looking human staring at him, all the while wearing a crazed smile. The human looked familiar, perhaps the same madman who had accosted him on the street when they had first arrived in the city.
Varra pulled him back to himself by touching his cheek and staring into his eyes. She smiled, the first smile he had seen that touched her eyes. Seeing her face light up like that, he almost changed his mind.
"A man of secrets," she said. "But with a darkness about you that is plain."
Cale could not deny it.
She held her smile and said, "Does the man of secrets have a name?"
Cale flushed, feeling the fool. He had failed even to introduce himself. He started to say his name but quickly caught himself.
"Vasen Coriver," he said, making her one of the only people still living on Faerun who knew his given name.
One less secret, he thought.
She withdrew her hand from his and brushed a stray hair from her face.
"Vasen," she repeated. "I like that. Well, Vasen, will we see each other again?"
He answered her honestly, "I don't know."
She seemed to accept that, though her smile faltered.
"I think we will" she said, "But until then relain il nes baergis."
Cale had never before heard the language.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
She winked at him and said, "I'll tell you when I see you next."
Without another word, she turned and walked into the flophouse.
Cale could do nothing but watch her go, thinking how important the briefest of encounters sometimes felt, and how he had a new reason to stop the Sojourner and his slaadi.
* * * * *
At first, Azriim did not believe his eyes-his own eyes, which he retained despite being in the form of Thyld. He peered through the darkness at the two humans. Was it possible? Awkward in Thyld's pathetic skin, he picked his way through the slaves and other street traffic to draw closer to the pair of humans. He eyed the male.
The height, the bald head ... it could only be him.
Azriim drew in a sharp breath, and flexed his hands as though they were his natural claws.
Though Azriim could not imagine how, not more than a block away stood what looked like the priest of Mask, Erevis Cale. The same Erevis Cale who had followed Azriim and his broodmates all the way to the Fane of Shadows, who had wounded Azriim, killed Elura, and whom Azriim had thought drowned at the bottom of the Lightless Lake.
Azriim stared at Cale, afraid to move, thinking that if he did the image of the priest must reveal itself as an apparition conjured by his imagination and boredom.
For the first time, he noticed that the dusky skin was not a play of the dim light. He saw too the shadows that flared at intervals from Cale's skin like black fire. That took him aback at first, causing him to doubt what he saw, but then he took its meaning. He was indeed looking upon Cale, and Cale was a shade. The priest had undergone the transformation that Vraggen had sought for himself. That transformation had somehow allowed Cale to survive the dissolution of the Fane. And there he was. Azriim wondered if any of Cale's comrades had also survived. Certainly Serrin would be interested in re-acquainting himself with the one-eyed assassin.
Azriim smiled and almost laughed aloud. The boredom that had until then afflicted him vanished. Cale had tracked him to Skullport. A hundred questions ran through his mind-most importantly, how?-but he pushed them all aside. It was enough that he had a challenge.
As though feeling Azriim's stare, Cale looked away from the human female who stood near him and made eye contact with Azriim. Azriim looked away quickly, though he could not contain his grin.
When Cale looked away, Azriim withdrew into the darkness and softly whispered an arcane word. His body wavered for an instant and he knew that he had become invisible to onlookers.
Azriim reached out his consciousness and established contact.
I have news, he projected.
He sensed curiosity from Dolgan and Serrin. Both were preparing the final stages of Azriim's plan.
Erevis Cale, the priest of Mask, is here, he said.
Silence. It was as though Serrin and Dolgan had broken the connection.
Serrin recovered himself first.
Are you certain? he asked. What of his companion, the one-eyed assassin ?
Azriim fought down his irritation with the question and answered, Of course, I'm certain. I'm looking upon him even now. I do not know of his companions.
We should kill him, Serrin offered.
Obviously, Azriim answered again, though he had begun to conceptualize a way in which he could first use Cale to further his plan. But with some style, of course.