"You presume to bargain?" Christine asked indignantly.
"If I do, it is not without barter." Jarlaxle slowly pulled open his waistcoat and slid a parchment from its pocket. Kane shifted near as he did, and the drow willingly handed it over.
"A map to the hideout of the Citadel of Assassins," the drow explained.
"And how might you have fashioned or found such a thing?" Gareth asked suspiciously as his friends bristled.
"Clever by more ways than a human king could ever count," the drow explained. As he did, Jarlaxle shifted his great hat, turning it opening up. "Clever and with allies unseen." He reached into the hat and produced his trophy, then set it at the foot of the dais.
The head of Knellict.
After the gasps had quieted, Jarlaxle bowed to the king. "I accept your judgment, indeed," he said. "And would pray you to accept my trade, the map and the archmage for the dwarf, though I have already turned them over, of course. I trust in your sense of fair play. It is time for me to go, I agree. But do note, Gareth Dragonsbane, King of Damara, and now King of Vaasa, that you are stronger and your enemies weaker for the work of Jarlaxle. I expect no gratitude, and accept no gifts—other than one annoying dwarf for whom you have little use anyway. You wish us gone, and so we will go, with a good tale, a fine adventure, and an outcome well served."
He finished with a great and sweeping bow, and spun his feathered hat back up to his bald head as he came up straight.
Gareth stared at the head, his mouth hanging open in disbelief that the drow, that anyone, had brought down the archmage of the Citadel of Assassins so efficiently.
"Who are you?" Christine asked.
"I am he who rules the world, don't you know?" Jarlaxle replied with a grin. "One little piece at a time. I am the stuff of Riordan Parnell's most outrageous songs, and I am a confused memory for those whose lives I've entered and departed. I wish you no ill—I never did. Nor have I worked against you in any way. Nor shall I. You wish us gone, and so we go. But I pray you entrust the dwarf to my care, and do tell Riordan to sing of me well."
Neither Gareth nor Christine nor any of the others could begin to fashion a reply to that.
Which only confirmed to Jarlaxle that it was indeed time to go.
CHAPTER 17
OF LOVE AND HATE
Entreri looked up as his cell door swung open and Master Kane entered, bearing a large canvas sack. "Your possessions," the monk explained, swinging the sack off his shoulder and dropping it on the floor at the man's feet.
Entreri looked down at it then back up at Kane, and said not a word.
"You are being released," Kane explained. "All of your possessions are in there. Your unusual steed, your dagger, your fine sword. Everything you had with you when you were captured."
Still eyeing the man suspiciously, Entreri crouched down and pulled back the top of the sack, revealing the decorated pommel of Charon's Claw. As soon as he gripped the hilt and felt the sentient weapon come alive in his thoughts, he knew that this was no bluff.
"My respect for you multiplied many times over when I lifted your blade," Kane said. "Few men could wield such a sword without being consumed by it."
"You seemed to have little trouble picking it up," Entreri said.
"I am far beyond such concerns," Kane replied. Entreri pulled the piwafwi out and slung it around his shoulders in one fluid motion. "Your cloak is of drow make, is it not?" Kane asked. "Have you spent time with the drow, in their lands?"
"I am far beyond such questions," the assassin replied, mocking the monk's tone.
Kane nodded in acceptance.
"Unless you plan to compel me to answer," Entreri said, "with this sickness you have inserted into my being."
Kane stepped back, his hands folded causally at his waist before him. Entreri watched him for a few moments, seeking a sign, any sign. But then, with a dismissive snicker, he went back to the bag and began collecting his items, and kept a mental inventory all the way through.
"Are you going to tell me more about this sudden change of mind?" he asked when he was fully outfitted. "Or am I to suffer the explanations of King Gareth?"
"Your crime is not proven," said Kane, "since there is an alternative explanation of intent."
"And that would be?"
"Come along," Kane said. "You have far to go in a short amount of time. You are freed of your dungeon, but your road will be out of Damara and Vaasa."
"Who would wish to stay?"
Kane ignored the flippant remark and began walking up the corridor, Entreri in tow. "In a tenday's time, Artemis Entreri will enter the Bloodstone Lands only on pain of death. For the next few days, you are here at the sufferance of King Gareth and Queen Christine, and theirs is a patience that is not limitless. One tenday alone."
"I've a fast horse that doesn't tire," Entreri replied. "A tenday is nine too long."
"Good, then we are in agreement."
They walked in silence for a short while, past the curious and alert stares of many guards. Entreri returned those stares with his own, silent but overt threats that had the sentries, to a man, tightly clutching their weapons. Even the presence of Grandmaster Kane did not free them from the dangerous glare of Artemis Entreri, the look that so many had suffered, a foretelling of death.
Artemis Entreri was not in a generous mood. He felt the vibrations of Kane's indecent intrusion into his body, a swirling and tingling sensation that seemed like strange ocean waves caught within the uneven contours of his corporeal being, rolling and breaking and re-gathering as they swept about. Emelyn's explanation of an elven cord of energy pulled taut seemed very on the mark to the assassin. What he knew beyond that description was that this intrusion seemed in many ways as awful as the life-draining properties of his own prized dagger.
Entreri's hand subconsciously slipped to the jeweled hilt of that trusted weapon, and he considered the possibilities.
"Pause," Entreri said as the pair neared the king's audience chamber.
Kane obeyed and turned back to regard the man. The guards flanking the door leaned forward, hands wringing tightly around their adamantine-tipped halberds.
"How am I to trust in this?" Entreri asked. "In you?"
"There is an alternative?"
"You would have me walk out of here, judgment passed and rendered, and that judgment being banishment and not death, and yet you hold the cord of my life in the single puff of your breath?"
"The effects of Quivering Palm will wear away in a short enough time," Kane assured him. "They are not permanent."
"But while they last, you can kill me, and easily?"
"Yes."
As the monk spoke the word, Entreri swept into motion, drawing forth his dagger and closing the ground between them. Kane was not caught unawares, as Entreri had not expected him to be, and the monk executed a perfect block.
But Entreri wasn't trying for a kill, or for the monk's heart. He got what he wanted and managed to prick Kane's palm with his vampiric blade. He held the dagger against the monk's torn flesh.
He stared at Kane and smiled, to keep the monk curious.
"Am I to facilitate your suicide, then?" the monk asked.
In response, Entreri called upon the life draining abilities of his jeweled dagger. Kane's eyes went wide; apparently the monk wasn't beyond all such concerns.
Behind Kane, one guard lowered his halberd, though he wisely held back—if Grandmaster Kane couldn't handle the assassin, then what might he do, after all? The other turned to the door and shoved it open, shouting for King Gareth.