Athrogate pursed his lips and nodded his appreciation. Whether he wanted to get entangled with Jarlaxle or not, the dwarf wasn't about to turn down those offers!
"Eat well and drink well, good Athrogate, my friend," Jarlaxle finished, and he bowed.
Athrogate grabbed him hard by the arm before he could straighten, though, and pulled his ear close. "Don't ye be calling me that, ye durned elf. Least not when ears're perked our way."
Satisfied that they understood each other, Jarlaxle straightened, nodded in deference to the dwarf's demands, and left the tavern. He didn't look back because he didn't want Athrogate to see the sting of disappointment on his face.
He went out into the street and spent a moment surveying his surroundings. He tried to remain confident in his decisions even in the face of Athrogate's doubts. The dwarf knew the region well, of course, but Jarlaxle brushed it off as the dwarf underestimating him.
At least, he tried to tell himself that.
"You heard?" the drow asked the shadows, using the language of his Underdark home.
"Of course," came a reply in the same strange tongue.
"It is as I told you."
"As dangerous as I told you," the voice of Kimmuriel Oblodra replied.
"As promising as I told you."
No answer drifted to Jarlaxle's ears.
"One enemy is manageable," Jarlaxle whispered. "The other need not be our enemy."
"We shall see," was all Kimmuriel would offer.
"You are ready when the opportunity presents itself?"
"I am always ready, Jarlaxle. Is that not why you appointed me?"
Jarlaxle smiled and took comfort in those confident words. Kimmuriel was thinking ahead, of course. The brilliant psionicist had thrived on the treachery of Menzoberranzan, and so to him the games of humans were child's play. Entreri and Jarlaxle had become targets of the Citadel of Assassins and curiosities of Spysong. Those two groups would battle around the duo as much or more than they would battle with the duo. And that would present opportunities. The citadel was the less formidable, by far, and so it followed that they could be used to keep Spysong at bay.
Jarlaxle sensed that Kimmuriel was gone—preparing the battlefield, no doubt—so Jarlaxle made his way through Heliogabalus's streets. Lights burned on many corners, but they flickered in the wind and were dulled by the fog that had come up, so typical of that time of the year, where the temperature varied so greatly day to night. The drow pulled his cloak tighter and willed his magical boots to silence. Perhaps it was better that he blend in with his surroundings just then.
Perfectly silent, nearly invisible in his drow cloak, Jarlaxle had little trouble not only getting back to the stairs leading to his apartment in the unremarkable building, but he managed to do a circuit or three of the surrounding area, noting others who did not notice him.
A tip of the right side of his great hat lifted Jarlaxle's feet off the ground and he glided up the rickety, creaky staircase silently. He went inside, into the hallway, and moved up to his door in complete darkness.
Complete darkness for a surface dweller, but not for Jarlaxle. Still, he could barely make out the little dragon statuette trap set above the apartment door. He couldn't tell the color of its eyes, though.
He had told Entreri to keep it set at white, but was he to trust that?
Not wanting to bring up any light to alert the many suspicious characters he had noted outside, the drow reached into his hat and pulled forth from under its top a disk of black felt. A couple of roundabout swings elongated it enough and Jarlaxle tossed it against the wall beside the door.
It stuck, and its magic created a hole in the wall, revealing dim candlelight from within.
Jarlaxle stepped through to see Entreri standing in the shadows of the corner, at an angle that allowed him to peer out through the narrow slot between the dark shade and the window's wooden edge.
Entreri acknowledged him with a nod, but never took his eyes off the street outside.
"We have visitors gathering," the assassin whispered.
"More than you know," Jarlaxle replied. He reached up and pulled his disk through, eliminating the hole and leaving the wall as it had been before.
"Are you going to berate me again for angering Knellict? Are you going to ask me again what I have done?"
"Some of our visitors are Knellict's men, no doubt."
"Some?"
"Spysong has taken an interest," Jarlaxle explained.
"Spysong? King Gareth's group?"
"I suspect they've deduced that the fights with the gargoyles and the dracolich were not the only battles at the castle. After all, of the four who fell, two were to the same blade."
"So again, I am to blame?"
Jarlaxle laughed. "Hardly. If there is even blame to be had, by Gareth's reckoning."
Entreri moved closer to the window, slipped the tip of his dagger under the edge of the shade and dared to retract it just a bit to widen the viewing space.
"I do not like this," the assassin said. "They know we're in here, and could strike—"
"Then let us not be in here," Jarlaxle interrupted.
Entreri let the shade slip back into place and stepped to the side of the window, eyeing his friend. "To the dragons?" he asked.
Jarlaxle shook his head. "They will have nothing to do with this. Gareth's friends unnerve them, I think."
"Wonderful."
"Bah, they are only dragons."
Entreri crinkled his face at that, but wasn't about to ask for clarification. "Where, then?"
"Nowhere in the city will be safe. Indeed, I expect that we will find strong tendrils of both our enemies throughout all of Damara."
Entreri's face grew tight. He knew, obviously, what the drow had in mind.
"There is a castle where we might find welcome," Jarlaxle confirmed.
"Welcome? Or refuge?"
"One man's prison is another man's home."
"Another drow's home," Entreri corrected, eliciting a burst of laughter from Jarlaxle.
"Lead on," the assassin bade his black-skinned companion a moment later, when a sound from outside reminded them that it might not be the time for philosophical rambling.
Jarlaxle turned for the door. "White as we agreed?" he asked.
"Yes."
The drow opened the door then paused and glanced back. Holding the door wide, he stepped aside and motioned for Entreri to go first into the hallway.
Entreri walked by, over the threshold. "Blue," he said, and reached up to retrieve the dragon statuette.
Jarlaxle laughed all the louder.
"It's Gareth's boys, I tell ya," Bosun Bruiseberry said to his companion. An incredibly thin and wiry little rat, Bosun seemed to move through the tightest of alleyways and partitions as easily as if they were broad avenues—which of course only frustrated his hunting partner, Remilar the Bold, a young wizard whose regard for himself greatly exceeded that of his peers and masters at the citadel of Assassins.
"So Spysong, too, has taken an interest in this Artemis Entreri creature," Remilar replied. He bit the words off short, nearly tripping as his rich blue robes caught on the jagged edge of a loose board on the side of Entreri's apartment building.
"Or an interest in us," Bosun said. "Seems that group across the street're watching Burgey's boys in the back alley off to the left."