“Ye’re going into the shadows?” Athrogate said and he sat so quickly that he nearly knocked over the poor Bedine girl.
Jarlaxle laughed and waved for him to settle back. “We will utilize a scrying device,” he explained. “Nothing more.”
“Ah,” Athrogate said, slumping back and nodding an apology to the startled girl. “And ye’re not wantin’ me face in the crystal ball, I see. Fearin’ I’ll embarrass ye, eh? Bwahahaha! Thought that was me job!”
“If so, then know that there is no amount of treasure I could bestow upon you to properly compensate you for your efforts.”
Athrogate thought about that for a few moments then let loose another, “Bwahahaha!”
Jarlaxle sighed.
“Stay here,” he instructed. “And do bathe.”
Athrogate sniffed at his armpit, crinkled his long nose, shrugged, and nodded.
Jarlaxle poured himself another glass of wine, working hard to keep the grin off his face. He couldn’t deny it: he had grown very fond of his competent and ferocious companion. When he had thought Athrogate dead in Gauntlgrym, the notion had terrified him. Obviously, by heritage and breeding, the two could not be more disparate, but those were the things that made the passing centuries interesting for Jarlaxle.
He thought back to his time with Artemis Entreri as he sipped his next glass of fine wine. He chuckled out loud as he recalled Entreri’s short tenure as King of Vaasa, a disastrous farce that had landed Entreri in the dungeons of the legendary Damarran King Gareth Dragonsbane.
He thought of the dragon sisters, and that notion had him reflexively tapping his waistcoat, and a secret slot along its side stitching where he kept the reconstituted Idalia’s Flute. He had almost freed Artemis Entreri from the emotional trappings of his sordid past with that magical instrument.
Almost.
He looked over at Athrogate, the dwarf now with his hands behind his head, eyes closed, thoroughly relaxing under the press of the foot massage. Jarlaxle pictured the two of them on the open road, hunting adventure and changing the course of kingdoms, and with Artemis and Drizzt beside them.
It was not an unpleasant thought.
But for now, he was Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe, and he drained his glass and went to dress for his next meeting with Lord Parise Ulfbinder.
“Your dwarf friend will not be joining us today?” Parise Ulfbinder said when Jarlaxle was announced in the Netherese lord’s lavish private quarters a short while later.
“I can go and retrieve him if you so desire.”
Parise laughed at the thought. “He is your foil, not mine,” he willingly admitted. “Have you become so comfortable here that you no longer need your bodyguard?” He paused and looked at the drow with a coy expression. “Or has Jarlaxle ever needed a bodyguard?”
The drow removed his wide-brimmed hat and sat down in a comfortable chair.
“Or is Jarlaxle ever without a bodyguard?” Parise asked, and he moved to offer Jarlaxle a glass of brandy.
“That is the more pertinent question,” Jarlaxle replied.
“And the answer?”
“Is known only to me.”
Parise laughed and took a seat opposite the drow.
“Are we to peer into your crystal ball this day?” Jarlaxle asked.
Parise shook his head. “My fellow lord is … otherwise engaged,” he said, and Jarlaxle clearly registered a measure of weight behind that word choice. Something important was going on, likely in the Shadowfell, where this other lord, Draygo Quick, resided.
“Do we have further business, then?” the drow asked. “Or is this to be a social gathering?”
“Are you so eager to leave?”
“Not at all,” Jarlaxle cheerily replied, and he rested back and lifted his brandy in a toast to his host.
Parise, too, settled back. “If our bargain is approved by your compatriot Kimmuriel and by my peers, then I suspect that you and I will find many such occasions to sip brandy and simply discuss the events of the day. You have given me your assurances, after all, that you will personally see to many of the exchanges.”
Jarlaxle nodded. “Perhaps we will become great friends in the years to come.” The way he spoke the sentence made clear that he recognized something was going on here, in the greater scheme of things.
“Perhaps,” Parise agreed, and his tone showed that he understood Jarlaxle’s inflection, and didn’t seem to wish to disavow Jarlaxle of his suspicions.
There was more to all of this than a trade agreement, Jarlaxle believed. That agreement had, after all, been fairly settled in the first days of Jarlaxle’s visit, and most of the “concerns” and “issues” that held back the inevitable handshake had appeared to him as nothing more than delaying tactics.
Jarlaxle had seen this type of negotiating many times before, in his early years in Menzoberranzan, and almost always before a traumatic change-a House war, typically.
The Netherese lord refilled his cup and Jarlaxle’s.
“Do you miss the Underdark?” he asked. “Or do you venture there often?”
“I have come to prefer the surface,” Jarlaxle admitted. “Likely, it is more interesting to me because it is not as familiar as deep caverns.”
“I have not been to the Shadowfell in a year,” Parise admitted with an assenting nod.
“Well, you and yours have done a grand job of bringing the darkness here, after all.”
That brought a chuckle.
“We did not facilitate the Spellplague,” Parise said more seriously, and Jarlaxle perked up. “Nor the link between the Shadowfell and the sunlight of Toril.”
Jarlaxle thought he heard an admission there, that perhaps the celestial alignments and the fall of the Weave were not as permanent or controllable as some had postulated, and he tried to put the curious remark in the context of the earlier conversation regarding the years to come.
He didn’t respond, though. He let Parise’s words hang in the air for a long while.
“You are not as you pretend,” Parise finally said, as he moved for the third glass of brandy for both of them.
Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.
“An emissary of Bregan D’aerthe?” Parise clarified.
“Truly.”
“More than that.”
“How so?”
“I have been told that the band is yours to control.”
“It’s far more complicated than that,” Jarlaxle admitted. “I abdicated my leadership a century ago to pursue other interests.”
“Such as?”
Jarlaxle shrugged as if it hardly mattered.
“You are more than a servant of Kimmuriel.”
“I am not a servant of Kimmuriel,” Jarlaxle was quick to correct. “As I said, it is complicated.” He took a sip of his drink, his one eye that was not covered by the ever-present eyepatch staring at Parise unblinkingly. “Yet I am here in service to Bregan D’aerthe.”
“Why you and not Kimmuriel?”
Jarlaxle took his time digesting that question, and indeed, this entire line of questioning, for this was the first time such matters had come up so blatantly.
“Trust me when I tell you that you would prefer me as a houseguest to that one,” Jarlaxle said. “He is more comfortable in a hive of illithids than in the good graces of a cultured Netherese lord.”
Parise managed a laugh at that. “And your ties to Menzoberranzan go beyond your leadership of the mercenary band, yes?” he asked.
“I lived there for most of my life.”
“With which House?”
“None.”
“But surely you were born into a House-one of the more prominent ones, likely, given your stature in the society of that hierarchical city.”
Jarlaxle tried not to reveal his growing annoyance.
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Tell you?”
“That you were a son of House Baenre.”
Jarlaxle stared at him hard, and put down his glass of brandy.
“I am not without resources, of course,” the Netherese lord reminded him.
“You speak of centuries past. Long past.”
“But you still have the ear of Menzoberranzan’s matron mother?”