“She’s a dragon!” Entreri said, and all three looked at him.
There usually wasn’t much emotion in Artemis Entreri’s voice, but so heavily weighted were those three words that it hit the others as profoundly as if he had rushed across the room, grabbed Jarlaxle by the collar, lifted him from the ground, and slammed him against the wall, shouting, “Are you mad?” with abandon.
“That one is so unimaginative,” Ilnezhara said to her sister.
“He is practical.”
“He is boring,” Ilnezhara corrected. She smirked at Entreri. “Tell me, human, as you walk along the muddy trail, do you not wonder what might be inside the gilded coach that passes you by?”
“You’re a dragon,” said Entreri.
Ilnezhara laughed at him.
“You have no idea what that means,” Ilnezhara promised.
She put her arm around Jarlaxle and pulled him close.
“I know that if you squeeze harder, Jarlaxle’s intestines will come out of his mouth,” Entreri said, stealing Ilnezhara’s superior smile.
“He has no imagination,” Jarlaxle assured her.
“You are such a peasant,” Ilnezhara said to Entreri. “Perhaps you should get better acquainted with my sister.”
Entreri rubbed a hand over his face, and looked at Tazmikella, who seemed quite amused by it all.
“Enough of this,” Tazmikella declared. “It is settled, then.”
“Is it?” Entreri asked.
“You work for us now,” Ilnezhara explained. “You do show cleverness and wit, even if that one is without imagination.”
“We had to learn, you must understand,” added her sister.
“Are we to understand that this whole thing was designed as a test for us?” asked Jarlaxle.
“Dragons.…” Entreri muttered.
“Of course,” said Ilnezhara.
“Then you two do not wish to battle to the death?”
“Of course not,” both sisters said together.
“We wish to increase our hoards,” said Tazmikella. “That is where you come in. We have maps that need following, and rumors that need confirming. You will work for us.”
“Do not doubt that we will reward you greatly,” Ilnezhara purred.
She pulled Jarlaxle closer, drawing an unintentional grunt from him.
“She’s a dragon,” Entreri said.
“Peasant,” Ilnezhara shot back. She laughed again, then pulled Jarlaxle around and released him back toward the door. “Go now back to your apartment. We will fashion some instructions for you shortly.”
“Your discretion is demanded,” her sister added.
“Of course,” said Jarlaxle, and he bowed low again, sweeping off his feathered hat.
“Oh, and here,” said Ilnezhara. She pulled out a plain-looking flute of gray driftwood. “You earned this,” she said. She motioned as if to toss it to the drow, but turned and flipped it out to Entreri instead. “Learn it well, peasant-to amuse me, and also because you might find it possessed of a bit of its own magic. Perhaps you will come to better appreciate beauty you cannot yet understand.”
Jarlaxle grinned and bowed again, but Entreri just tucked the flute into his belt and headed straight for the door, wanting to get far away while it was still possible. He passed by Tazmikella, thinking to go right out into the night, but she held up her hand and stopped him as completely as if he had walked into a castle wall.
“Discretion,” she reminded.
Entreri nodded and slipped aside, then went out into the foggy night, Jarlaxle right behind him.
“It worked out quite well, I think,” said the drow, moving up beside him.
Jarlaxle reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, and in the cover of that shake, the drow’s other arm snaked behind his back, reaching out and gently lifting the flute from Entreri’s belt.
“Dragons.…” Entreri argued.
He shoved Jarlaxle’s arm away, and used the cover of the movement to flash his other hand across and secretly take back the flute, even as Jarlaxle set it in his belt.
“Are you so much the peasant, as beautiful Ilnezhara claims?” asked the drow, moving back beside his partner. “Your imagination, man! Have we ever known wealthier benefactors? Or more alluring?”
“Alluring? They’re dragons!”
“Yes, they are,” said a smug Jarlaxle, and he seemed quite entranced with that notion.
Of course, that didn’t stop him from sliding his hand across to relieve Entreri of the magical flute once more. The drow brought it farther around his back to a waiting loop on his belt-a magical loop that would tighten and resist thieving fingers.
Except that what Jarlaxle thought was the loop was really Entreri’s cupped hand and the man wasted no time in bringing the flute back.
Such was the fog in the friendship of thieves.
The Dowery
"You’re sure this is the building?” Drizzt Do’Urden asked his companion, and he turned from the plain, nearly windowless wooden warehouse to consider Catti-brie as he spoke. Once again, the sight of her knocked him off balance. With her thick auburn shoulder-length hair, huge blue eyes and soft features and lips, the woman was undeniably attractive-to Drizzt, she was the most beautiful woman in all the world-but now, dressed in the revealing outfit of a bowery tavern wench, practically an invitation, it seemed, the dark elf was much more afraid of what the many rakes and ruffians of the great city of Waterdeep’s bowery might think of her.
“Are you sure?” he asked again.
“I have watched them for three days,” she reminded. “And every time is the same?”
“Every one so far has gone into the warehouse,” Catti-brie confirmed in a voice thick with dwarvish brogue. They had been out of Mithral Hall for almost two months now, riding along the wide and wild expanses to the west, past the Trollmoors and the unwelcoming city of Nesme, whose guardian riders would not suffer Drizzt, a dark elf, to walk among them. When they had left Mithral Hall, they had agreed to chase the lowering sun, and so they had, all the way to the Sword Coast and Waterdeep, the greatest city in all of Faerun.
Drizzt was allowed in here, though hardly welcome. But here they could set up their base and await the arrival of one of the few men in all the world who would fully accept this particular drow. They had sold their horses, rented a small flat down by the docks, and learned the lay of the land, the sights, the smells and most importantly, the hierarchy of the various thugs who lorded over their private little domains down here in this forgotten section of the wider city.
Drizzt looked back to the left, to the smaller structure across the alleyway and the hastily-boarded window that faced this structure’s second floor.
“It is empty,” Catti-brie said.
“You have checked that one as well?”
Catti-brie walked up beside Drizzt and led his gaze with a pointing finger to the one window, and Drizzt caught on from the variations in hue along the side panels that a strategically-placed board had been recently removed.
“A clear view into the interview chamber.”
“Right to the leader’s seat, no doubt,” the drow said dryly, and when he glanced at his companion, her wry smile told him that he was, of course, correct.
They were face to face then, and barely a couple of inches apart. The two, human woman and drow elf, were almost exactly the same height, and though he was more heavily muscled, Drizzt’s lean frame put him only a score of pounds heavier than the woman. The connection between them, the almost-magnetic pull, was surely there, but neither would take it farther than friendship, for Catti-brie had just lost her fiancee, Wulfgar, the giant barbarian man who had been Drizzt’s protege in battle, and who had given his life in sacrifice so that she and her adoptive father, the dwarf Bruenor Battlehammer, could escape the clutches of a demon yochlol.
The pain of that loss resonated deeply within the two. With the threat from the Underdark eradicated, they had put Mithral Hall behind them, had physically distanced themselves from the dwarven homeland. But emotional distance was usually measured in time, not miles.