She turned and walked into the cabin, and with another shared look and a pair of concerned shrugs, they moved up side by side, Jarlaxle’s enchanted boots clicking loudly even on the soft ground, and Entreri’s skilled steps making not a whisper of sound, even on the hard wood of the porch stairs.
Inside, they found the facade of the cabin wholly misleading, for the room was spacious-too much so, it seemed-and well-adorned with fabulous tapestries and rugs. Most were stitched with designs depicting the gentler pleasures of life in Damara: a shepherd with his flock on a sunny hillside, a woman singing while cleaning laundry at a stream, a group of children playing at the joust with long poles and the pennants of well-known heroes.… Candelabra and fine, sturdy plates covered the table. Dry sinks lined every wall, full of plants and flowers neatly and tastefully arranged. A chandelier hung over the center table, a simple but beautiful many-limbed piece that would have been more fitting in one of the mansions of the great city, though not in its more formal rooms.
Looking around at the decor, at the distinctive silver flavor, Entreri realized that Jarlaxle’s guess had been correct.
“Please, sit,” the woman said.
She motioned to the simple but elegant carved wooden chairs around the central table. It was hardly inexpensive furniture, Entreri noted, as he felt the weight of the chair and let his finger play in the deep grooves of superior craftsmanship.
“You have moved quickly and so you are deserving of similar effort on my part,” the woman said.
“You have heard of us and wish to hire us,” said Jarlaxle.
“Of course.”
“You do not look like one who would wish another killed.”
The woman blanched at the drow’s suggestion, Entreri noted. For that was Entreri’s role whenever they met a new prospective employer and Jarlaxle posed that very same question. Jarlaxle always liked to start such interviews in a blunt manner.
“I was told that you two were skilled in … procurement.”
“You seem to do well in that area yourself, Lady Taz …” Jarlaxle stopped short, looking for cues.
“Tazmikella,” she confirmed. “And yes, I do, and thank you for noticing. But you may have also noticed that I am not alone in my endeavors in the fine city of Heliogabalus.”
“Ilnezhara’s Gold Coins,” said Entreri.
“It is a name I cannot speak without an accompanying curse,” the woman admitted. “My rival, once my friend. And alas, she has done it again.”
“It?” the two asked together.
“Procured a piece for which she is not worthy,” said Tazmikella, and when doubting expressions came at her, she sat back in her chair and held up her hands to stop any forthcoming inquiries. “Allow me to explain.”
The woman closed her eyes and remained silent for a long while.
“Not so long ago,” she began tentatively, as if she wasn’t sure if they would get her point, “I happened across a woman sitting on a rock in a field. She did not see me, for she was wrapped in memories. At least, it seemed that way. She was singing, her eyes closed, her mind looking far away-to one she had lost, from what I could tell from the few words I could decipher. Never have I heard such passion and pain in a voice, as if every note carried her heart and soul. She touched me deeply with the beauty of her art and song.
“For me, there was simple appreciation, but my counterpart-”
“Ilnezhara,” Jarlaxle reasoned, and Tazmikella nodded.
“Ilnezhara would never have understood the beauty of that woman’s song. She would have cited how the words strained to rhyme, or the lack of proper technique and the occasional warbling in that untrained voice. It was just those imperfect warbles that pulled at my heart.”
“Because they were honest,” said Jarlaxle.
“And thus practical,” added Entreri, bringing it back to the verse that had brought them there.
“Not pretty enough for Ilnezhara, perhaps,” Jarlaxle said, building upon the thought. “But the prettiness of perfection would have tethered the honesty of emotion.”
“Exactly!” said Tazmikella. “Oh, this is a battle we have long waged. Over everything and anything, it seems. Over painting and sculpture, tapestries, song, and story. I have listened to bards, have watched them sweep away entire common rooms in tales of bold adventure, enrapturing all who would listen. And only to hear Ilnezhara, once my partner, tell me that the structure of the tale was all wrong because it did not follow some formula decided by scholars far removed from those folk in the tavern.
“We battled at auction recently, or we thought to, except that I held no interest in the painting presented. It was no more than a scribbling of lines that evoked nothing more than simple curiosity in me-the curiosity of how it could be proclaimed as art, you see.”
“Your counterpart saw it differently?” asked the drow.
“Not at first, perhaps, but when the artist explained the inner meaning, Ilnezhara’s eyes glowed. Never mind that no such meaning could be elicited through viewing the work itself. That did not matter. The piece followed the prescribed form, and so the conclusions of the artist seemed self-evident, after they were fully explained. That is the way with people like her, you see. They exist within their critical sphere of all that is culture, not to appreciate the warble in a wounded woman’s song, but to stratify all that is around them, to tighten the limits of that which meets approval and dismiss all that is accessible to the common man.”
“They make themselves feel better,” Jarlaxle explained to Entreri, who realized that he was either bored or lost.
“So, you would have us steal this painting that you did not want in the first place?” Entreri asked.
Tazmikella scoffed at the notion.
“Hardly! Cut it with your fine sword for all I care. No, there is another piece, a piece Ilnezhara came upon purely by accident, and one which she will never even try to appreciate. No, she keeps it only because she knows it would be precious to me!”
The mercenaries looked at each other.
“A flute,” Tazmikella said. “A flute carved of a single piece of gray, dry driftwood. It was fashioned long ago by a wandering monk-Idalia of the Yellow Rose was his name. He took this single piece of ugly, castoff driftwood and worked it with impeccable care, day after day. It became the focus of his very existence. He nearly died of starvation as he tried to complete his wonderful flute. And complete it he did. Oh, and from it came the most beautiful music, notes as clear as the wind through ravines of unspoiled stone.”
“And your counterpart got it from this monk?”
“Idalia has been dead for centuries,” Tazmikella explained. “And the flute thought lost. But somehow, she found it.”
“Could you not just buy it from her?” asked the drow.
“It is not for sale.”
“But you said she would not appreciate it.”
Again the woman scoffed and said, “She sets it aside, sets it away without a thought to it. It is valuable to her only because of the pain she knows I endure in not having it.”
The two mercenaries looked at each other again.
“And not just because I do not have it,” Tazmikella went on, somewhat frantically, it seemed. “She knows the pain that I and others of my humor feel because no breath will flow through the work of Idalia. Don’t you see? She is reveling in her ability to steal true beauty from the common man.”
“I do not-” Entreri began, but Jarlaxle cut him off.
“It is a travesty,” the drow said. “One that you wish us to correct.”
Tazmikella rose from the table and moved to a drawer in one of the dry sinks, returning a moment later with a small parchment in hand.
“Ilnezhara plans a showing at her place of business,” she explained, handing the notice to Jarlaxle.
“The flute is not there,” Entreri wondered aloud.
“It is at her personal abode, a singular tower northeast of the city.”