Jarlaxle groaned when he entered behind the dwarf, and knew he had greatly over-bribed the clerk. The place was no more than four walls, a roof that showed as much sky as reed, a floor of dirt, and a single table of piled stones so covered by crawling bugs—evil-looking reddish-brown critters with long pincers and an upward-curling tail—that it seemed obvious to the drow that the creatures had called the place home for a long, long time.
Athrogate walked over to the table and snorted, seeming amused. "Back home, we had a name for this," he said, and he extended one fat thumb and squished a crawler flat with a crunching sound. "Buffet."
"Do not dare eat that," said Jarlaxle, and Athrogate gave one of his characteristic "bwahahas" in reply.
Entreri walked in last. He glanced around and gave it all hardly a thought.
"Seemin' a bit too familiar to ye, by me own thinkin'," Athrogate teased.
Entreri looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but just shook his head and turned away. "They have midday services in the square overlooking the docks," he said to Jarlaxle. "I will be there, south side of the Protector's House." He turned and started back out the ill-fitting door.
"You are leaving us?" the drow asked.
"I never invited you here to begin with," Entreri reminded him as he walked away.
"Bwahaha!" roared Athrogate.
"Enough, good dwarf," Jarlaxle said, though he never took his eyes off the door. "This is difficult for our friend."
"Place didn't seem to bother him all that much," said Athrogate.
Jarlaxle turned to face him. "This?" he asked. "I suspect that Artemis Entreri is well acquainted with similar accommodations. But returning to this city, the place of his birth and early life, brings with it some painful memories, I would expect, which is why he needed to come here."
To Jarlaxle's surprise, Athrogate winced at that, and nodded but didn't otherwise reply, a very uncharacteristic response that revealed quite a bit to the perceptive, worldly drow.
"So are ye thinking the time's come to do some drinking?" the dwarf blurted. "I a'weighin' to go hear the prayin', or to make me a treat with these critters to eat! Bwahaha!"
"Is that all there is to Athrogate?" Jarlaxle asked in all seriousness, cutting short the dwarf's outburst. Athrogate stared at him hard, suddenly sobered.
"You are free of all feelings, it seems, other than your own humor," Jarlaxle pressed, and Athrogate's face tightened with every word. "Such as it is. Is there nothing but your pleasure?"
"I might be saying the same to yerself."
"You might, but my answer would involve a long history of explanation."
"Or ye might be telling me to mind me own business."
"Indeed, and which will you do, my hairy friend?"
"Ye're going to a place where ye don't belong."
"Your level of carefree is not attained without cause," said the drow. "Something to drink, something to hit, and a joke to make them groan—is that all there is to Athrogate?"
"Ye don't know nothing."
Indeed, Jarlaxle thought and smirked and decided to keep the irony of that double negative to himself. "So tell me."
Athrogate ground his teeth and slowly shook his head.
"Should I fill you with potent drink before I ask such things?" Jarlaxle asked.
"Ye do and ye'll find the ball end of a morningstar crunched into the side o' yer head."
Jarlaxle took the threat with a laugh, and let it drop. In discussion, at least, for in his thoughts he played it through over and over again. Something had created Athrogate as he was; something had broken the dwarf to that base level, where he had no emotional defense other than a wall of ridicule and self-ridicule, fastened by the occasional rap of a mighty morningstar and hidden by the more-than-occasional drink.
Jarlaxle nodded, thinking that he had just found something interesting, something he meant to explore, despite the dwarf's very serious threat.
The scene was all too familiar to Artemis Entreri and sent his thoughts careening back across the years. Before him, in the wide square that fronted the gigantic Protector's House, by far the largest structure in that part of the city, stood, sat, and lay the rabble of southwestern Memnon. They were the dispossessed, the poorest of the poor in the city, nearly all of them suffering the maladies so common among those who could not find enough to eat or drink, who could not keep clean, who could not find shelter from the rain.
But they were not hopeless. No, the men on the eastern side of the square, richly dressed and bejeweled, would not allow for such a state of despair. They called out in melodic voices of the glories of Selûne and of the wonders that awaited her servants. Their pages went among the crowd, offering good news and good cheer, speaking of salvation and promises of an eternity free of all pain.
But there was more to this than cheerleading, Entreri knew all too well. There were promises of immediate relief from ailments, and even suggestions—normally reserved for grieving parents—that the afterlife for their dearly departed could be made even more accommodating than the promises of their god.
"Would you have your child suffer on the Fugue Plane a moment longer than he must?" one young acolyte said to a tearful woman not far from Entreri. "Of course not! Come along, good woman. Every moment we tarry is another moment your dear Toyjo will suffer."
It wasn't the first time the acolyte had pulled that same woman forward, Entreri could tell, and he watched as the pair shuffled through the crowd, the acolyte tugging her along.
"By Moradin, but yerselfs are calling me kin heartless," Athrogate muttered as he and Jarlaxle walked up beside Entreri. "Such a brotherhood ye got here. Makes me want to be findin' a wizard that'd polymorph me into a human." He ended with a fake sniffle, and wiped his eye.
Entreri flashed him a sour look, but as he was no more enamored with his fellow humans than was Athrogate, he really had no practical response. He looked to Jarlaxle instead—and did a double-take, still not used to seeing the drow with golden hair and tanned skin.
"You know this scene?" Jarlaxle asked.
"They are selling indulgences," Entreri explained.
"Selling?" Athrogate snorted. "These dirty fools got coin for spending?"
"What little they have, they spend."
Athrogate snorted as one particularly skinny man ambled by. "Ye might be better off in buying a cookie, if ye're asking me."
"The priests will heal their wounds for a fee?" Jarlaxle asked.
"Minor healing, and temporary at best," said Entreri. "Most who wish for physical heals are wasting their time. They are selling the indulgence of the god Selûne. For a few silver pieces, a grieving mother can spare her dead child a tenday in the Fugue, or can facilitate her own way when she dies, if that is her choice."
"They are paying for a priest's promise of such a thing?"
Entreri looked at him and shrugged.
Jarlaxle looked back over the throng—and it was indeed a throng of poor souls—then focused on the activity near the temple doors. Lines of dirty peasants waited their turn at the desks that had been set up. One by one, they walked forward and handed over a pittance, and one of the two men at the desk scribbled down a name.
"What a marvelous business," the drow said. "For a few comforting words and a line of text…" He gave an envious laugh, but to the side, Athrogate spat.