"You bring colnbluth to Sorcere?" Triel remarked, her thin eyebrows angling up in surprise.
Entreri took care to keep his gaze to the floor, though he managed a few peeks at the Baenre daughter. He hadn't viewed Triel in so strong a light before, and he thought now that she was not so beautiful by drow standards. She was too short and too stocky in the shoulders for her very angular facial features. It struck the assassin as odd that Triel had risen so high among the ranks of drow, a race that treasured physical beauty. Her station was testament to the Baenre daughter's power, he decided.
Entreri couldn't understand very much of the drow tongue, though he realized that Triel probably had just insulted him. Normally, the assassin responded to insults with weapons, but not here, not so far from his element and not against this one. Jarlaxle had warned Entreri about Triel a hundred times. She was looking for a reason to kill him— the vicious Baenre daughter was always looking for a reason to kill any colnbluth, and quite a few drow as well.
"I bring him many places," Jarlaxle answered. "I did not think that your brother would be here to protest."
Triel looked about the room, to the fabulous desk of polished dwarf bones and the cushioned chair behind. There were no connecting rooms, no obvious hiding places, and no Gromph.
"Gromph must be here," Jarlaxle reasoned. "Else, why would the matron mistress of Arach-Tinilith be in this place? That is a violation of the rules, as I remember them, as serious a breach, at least, as my bringing a non-drow to Sorcere."
"Take care how you question the actions of Triel Baenre," the short priestess replied.
"Asanque," Jarlaxle answered with a sweeping bow. It was a somewhat ambiguous word that could mean either "as you wish," or "likewise."
"Why are you here?" Triel demanded.
"You knew I was coming," Jarlaxle stated.
"Of course," Triel said slyly. "I know many things, but I wish to hear your explanation for entering Sorcere, through private doors reserved for headmasters, and into the private quarters of the city's archmage."
Jarlaxle reached into the folds of his black cloak and produced the strange spider mask, the magical item that had gotten him over House Baenre's enchanted web fence. Triel's ruby-red eyes widened.
"I was instructed by your mother to return this to Gromph," the mercenary said, somewhat sourly.
"Here?" Triel balked. "The mask belongs at House Baenre."
Jarlaxle couldn't hide a bit of a smile, and he looked to Entreri, secretly hoping that the assassin was getting some of this conversation.
"Gromph will retrieve it," Jarlaxle answered. He walked over to the dwarf bone desk, uttered a word under his breath, and quickly slipped the mask into a drawer, though Triel had begun to protest. She stalked over to the desk and eyed the closed drawer suspiciously. Obviously Gromph would have trapped and warded it with a secret password.
"Open it," she instructed Jarlaxle. "I will hold the mask for Gromph."
"1 cannot," Jarlaxle lied. "The password changes with each use. I was given only one." Jarlaxle knew that he was playing a dangerous game here, but Triel and Gromph rarely spoke to each other, and Gromph, especially in these days, with all the preparations going on in House Baenre, rarely visited his office at Sorcere. What Jarlaxle needed now was to be rid of the mask—openly, so that it could not be tied to him in any way. That spider mask was the only item, spells included, in all of Menzoberranzan that could get someone past House Baenre's magical fence, and if events took the turns that Jarlaxle suspected, that mask might soon be an important piece of property—and evidence.
Triel chanted softly and continued to stare at the closed drawer. She recognized the intricate patterns of magical energy, glyphs and wards, on the drawer, but they were woven too tightly for her to easily unravel. Her magic was among the strongest in Menzoberranzan, but Triel feared to try her hand against her brother's wizardly prowess. Dropping a threatening gaze at the cunning mercenary, she walked back across the room and stood near Entreri.
"Look at me," she said in the Common tongue of the surface, which surprised the assassin, for very few drow in Menzoberranzan spoke the language.
Entreri lifted his gaze to peer into Triel's intense eyes. He tried to keep his demeanor calm, tried to appear subjugated, broken in spirit, but Triel was too perceptive for such facades. She saw the strength in the assassin, smiled as though she approved of it.
"What do you know of all this?" she asked.
"I know only what Jarlaxle tells me," Entreri replied, and he dropped the facade and stared hard at Triel. If she wished a contest of wills, then the assassin, who had survived and thrived on the most dangerous streets of Faerun's surface, would not back down.
Triel matched the unblinking stare for a long while and became convinced that she would garner little of use from this skilled adversary. "Be gone from here," she said to Jarlaxle, still using the surface tongue.
Jarlaxle rushed past the Baenre daughter and scooped up Entreri in his wake. "Quickly," the mercenary remarked. "We should be long out of Sorcere before Triel tries that drawer!" With that, they were through the spidery door, which fast reverted to a plain wall behind them, blocking Triel's inevitable curses.
But the Baenre daughter was not as mad as she was intrigued. She recognized three courses coming together here, her own and her mother's, and now, apparently, Jarlaxle's. The mercenary was up to something, she knew, something that obviously included Artemis Entreri.
When they were safely away from Tier Breche and the Academy, Jarlaxle translated all that had transpired to Entreri.
"You did not tell her of Drizzt's impending arrival," the assassin remarked. He had thought that important bit of information to be the gist of Jarlaxle's brief conversation with Triel, but the mercenary said nothing about it now.
"Triel has her own ways of discerning information," Jarlaxle replied. "I do not wish to make her work easier—not without a clear and agreed upon profit!"
Entreri smiled, then bit his lower lip, digesting the mercenary's words. There was always so much going on in this infernal city, the assassin mused. It was no wonder that Jar-laxle enjoyed the place so! Entreri almost wished that he was a drow, that he could carve out a place such as Jarlaxle had done, playing on the edge of disaster. Almost.
"When did Matron Baenre instruct you to return the mask?" the assassin asked. He and Jarlaxle had been out of Mertzoberranzan for some time, had gone into the outer caverns to meet with a svirfneblin informant. They had returned only a short time before their trip to Sorcere, and Jarlaxle, as far as Entreri knew, hadn't gone anywhere near House Baenre.
"Some time ago," Jarlaxle replied.
"To bring it to the Academy?" Entreri pressed. It seemed out of place to him. And why had Jarlaxle taken him along? He had never been invited to that high place before, had even been refused on one occasion, when he had asked to accompany Jarlaxle to Melee-Magthere, the school of fighters. The mercenary had explained that taking a colnbluth, a non-drow, there would be risky, but now, for some reason, Jarlaxle had thought it appropriate to take Entreri to Sorcere, by far the more dangerous school.
"She did not specify where the mask was to be returned," Jarlaxle admitted.
Entreri did not respond, though he realized the truth of that answer. The spider mask was a prized possession of the Baenre clan, a potential weak spot in its hardened defenses. It belonged in the secured quarters of House Baenre and nowhere else.