"Artemis Entreri is in the Bloodstone Lands."
"The most dangerous man in all of the Bloodstone Lands," the dragon reiterated, and with a surety that Jarlaxle did not lightly dismiss.
"Grandmaster Kane, then," he said. "He will deliver my message, I am certain."
"He does not fail King Gareth," Ilnezhara agreed, and warned: "Ever."
Jarlaxle sat there nodding for a few minutes. "Perhaps he will be interested in some information regarding Gareth's dead niece, as well." The dark elf rose and offered a disarming smile to the dragon. He tried very hard to appear appreciative of the information she had just shared, and tried even harder to keep his supreme disappointment hidden.
He turned to go, but stopped in his tracks when the dragon said from behind him, "You weave webs that entrap. It is the way of your existence, from your earliest days in Menzoberranzan, no doubt. You play intrigue with characters like Knellict and Timoshenko, and it is a game in which you excel. But hear me well, Jarlaxle. King Gareth and his friends ride hard and straight, and bother not with the meandering strands of webs. Your weave will never be strong enough to slow the charge of Kane."
Out in the street, Jarlaxle quickly regained the spring in his step. He had gone to Ilnezhara hoping to enlist both her and her sister in his plans. Certainly he had to adjust his thinking and his immediate aspirations regarding Vaasa. Absent the dragons, his position was severely compromised—and even more so when he considered the mischief Artemis Entreri had apparently begun.
Caution told him he might do well to go to ground, perhaps even to take that holiday Ilnezhara had offhandedly advised—step away and reassess his opportunities against the seemingly mounting obstacles.
Never did Jarlaxle laugh louder than when he was laughing at himself.
"Caution," he said, letting the word roll off his tongue so that it seemed as if it was ten syllables instead of two. Then he offered the same treatment to a word he considered synonymous: "Boredom."
Every sensible bone in Jarlaxle's body screamed out at him to heed the advice of Ilnezhara, to remove himself from the web of intrigue that grew ever more intricate in the Bloodstone Lands. Truly, Jarlaxle realized that the current tide was pushing against him, that shadows gathered at every corner. A wise man might cut his losses—or winnings, even—and run for safer ground. For such «wise» men, Jarlaxle reasoned, though they didn't know it, death was irrelevant, redundant.
The tide swelled dangerously, to be sure. When facing a losing combination in sava, the wise player sacrificed a piece or surrendered.
But Jarlaxle, above them all, moved boldly in a way that seemed incongruous, even foolish. He bluffed harder.
" 'Let a roll of chance's dice alter the board, " he recited, an old drow saying that exalted in chaos. When dangerous reality closed in, so went Lolth's edict, the goal was simply to alter the reality.
His heels clicked loudly on the cobblestones—as he willed his enchanted boots to do—as he made his way down the cul-de-sac, with one name rolling through his thoughts: Grandmaster Kane.
Jarlaxle slept with dragons.
"Hang from the ceiling by yer toes, do ye?" Athrogate harrumphed. "Ye're bats!"
"They should not know?" the drow replied innocently.
"They shouldn't be knowing how Athrogate's knowing!"
"You believe that Spysong knew nothing of Canthan and his dwarf friend who accompanied him to the castle?"
Athrogate pursed his lips and seemed to shrink down in his seat. He alleviated his mounting fear with a mug of ale, dropped straight to the belly.
"Are you so naive regarding your enemies?" Jarlaxle pressed.
"They ain't me enemies. Ain't done nothing against the crown, nor anyone else who didn't make me do it."
Jarlaxle smiled at the familiar words, spoken with Dwarvish flair but so similar to the claims of Entreri.
"The reckoning is coming fast," the drow warned. "Gareth's niece Ellery is dead."
"I'm still wondering how that might've happened."
"The details will matter not to Gareth's friends."
"Could say the same o' Knellict's friends if I'm doing what ye're asking me to be doing."
"The opposite, I would venture," said Jarlaxle. "The complicity of Ellery will mitigate the blow to Knellict. You will be doing him a favor."
Athrogate snorted, and a bit of ale spurted from his hairy nose.
"My little friend, you have thrived by remaining outside the web woven by your spidery friends."
"What in the Nine Hells are ye babbling about?"
"You are part of them, but removed from them," Jarlaxle explained. "You serve the Citadel of Assassins, but you do not plot with them. There is nothing in your past for which you will answer at the Court of King Gareth, else you would have been called to answer long ago."
"Would I, now?"
"Yes. You walk the edge of a coin, as do I, and now heads and tails are ready for a fight. How tight will our edge become when the blows begin to fall? Too narrow to tread, I expect, and if we must fall to one side or the other, which shall it be?"
"If ye're thinking Knellict's the tail, then yer friend's already jumped to the head," the dwarf reminded.
"This is not about Artemis Entreri," the drow replied. "It is about Jarlaxle, and Athrogate." He slid another mug Athrogate's way, and as per usual it never even stopped sliding before being scooped up and overturned into the dwarf's mouth.
Jarlaxle went on, "There is an old saying in my home, Menzoberranzan. Pey ne nil ne-ne uraili."
"And here I'm thinking that ye looked funny. Next to the way ye talk…"
" 'In truth, the bonds are shed, " the drow translated. "You feel the chains of worry now, my friend. Shed them."
"He won't be likin' the truth."
"But he is wise enough to lay blameless the messenger."
Athrogate took a deep breath then swallowed another ale. He slammed his hands on the edge of the table and pulled himself to his feet. "He's payin'," he said to the serving wench who turned his way, and he pointed to Jarlaxle.
"Pey ne nil ne-ne uraili," Jarlaxle whispered as Athrogate embarked on his mission to find Kane. His translation of the drow saying had been exact, if incomplete, for the bonds referenced were not the chains of worry, but the limiting boundaries of the flesh.
Announce yer arrival, Athrogate silently and repeatedly reminded himself. Surprising a grandmaster monk probably wasn't a wise choice. He placed the rickety wooden ladder before the wall of the inn and banged it loudly in place against the eave of the roof.
"Ye buy a room in the inn," he grumbled as he started up. "That's why they're callin' it an inn. Ye don't rent a bed on the durned inn. Ain't called an out!
Every bootfall rang more loudly than the previous as the dwarf clumped his way up to peer over the edge.
A dozen feet from the lip, his back against the stone chimney, sat the monk. His legs were folded under him, his hands on thighs, palms upright. He sat with perfect posture and balance, and seemed more a fixture of the building, like the chimney, than a living creature.
Athrogate paused, expecting a response, but when the limit of his patience slipped past with no word or movement from the monk, the dwarf hauled himself up again, rolling his upper body awkwardly onto the slightly-sloping roof. He belched as his belly—grown more ample in just the few days he had been in Heliogabalus—wedged against the soffet.
"Are ye sleeping, then?" he asked as he pulled himself up to his hands and knees. One of the bouncing heads of his twin morningstars swung in and bashed him off the side of his face, but he just blew out the side of his mouth as if to push it aside. "I'm thinking a friend o' King Gareth'd have himself a better bed. King ain't paying ye much these days?"