Someone screamed. The auctioneer ducked behind the podium. The intellect devourer dashed around it. Her guards converged and so did a contingent of others, but not to help.
One of their number made a grab for the sapphire. Another swung at her. Most of the people in the room were human.
He cast out a hand and the candles and lamps snuffed out, plunging the room into darkness. Attacks were made and missed, or became glancing blows instead of fatal wounds. Aestith darted forward and snatched the stone from the podium. He looked around him, watching the warm bodies as they panicked, yelled, fled. He dropped the jewel into his satchel.
He turned and escaped down a hallway, bursting into the lit kitchen. Someone followed behind him. He dashed into the garden through the open door and took a deep breath, headed toward the garden wall so his back was against something.
“Wait!” the auctioneer yelled. “Stop!”
He held up his hands. “There’s an intellect devourer in there! No!”
“My guards will handle it.”
“How do you know that?” He could still hear fighting from inside. He stepped away from her and eyed the height of the wall. He could levitate over it. She was bleeding heavily from a wound on her shoulder. A cut marred her cheek. He raised a hand and a wave of healing washed over her. Her limp ceased.
She seemed, after the gesture, less aggressive, but no less adamant. “Do you have my jewel?”
“Yours?”
“Yes, it belongs to the auction house.” She advanced on him.
He weighed his options. “What’s so special about it that people would act like this?”
She grabbed his arm. Her grip was like being held by an animated statue. “Do you have it?”
Inside, the fighting seemed to have ceased. He reached into his satchel and removed the sapphire. He handed it to her. “I saw them descend upon you and I didn’t know what else to do, so I grabbed it. I was going to come around the other side of the house, hopefully after things had calmed, and return it.” He tilted his head. “This wasn’t what I came for.”
She looked over the jewel, set in gold wire. She looked back at him quizzically, as if trying to understand, but he could read it on her face like a book; drow were thieves and murderers. Her grip on his arm relaxed. “Thank you.”
He shrugged out of her grasp. “You look unwell, my lady. Would you allow me to heal you?”
She nodded, slightly reluctant. He healed her more grievous wounds and helped to stop the bleeding. He walked with her back to the auction house. When they returned, blood was on the floor and the intellect devourer had been skewered. Tables were overturned. Frightened servants picked up broken glass. Tim was being questioned, but Tirowan and Eilora were gone. So, too, were the other guests. They had either used the opportunity to flee after their plans failed, or had been frightened away.
The auctioneer seemed irritated. “What a bust,” she muttered.
Aestith pointed at Tim. “I’m afraid that’s my mess. My lady, if you please?”
She gestured. “Release him.” She set the gem into a wooden box and flipped the lid closed. She frowned at Aestith. “You don’t know what the sapphire is?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
She smiled warmly. “They say that it’s Poseidon's Tear.”
He laughed. “Do you believe it?”
“No, but enough people do.”
He shook his head. “It’s pretty.”
She handed the box to a guard. “Well, I noticed you hadn’t been bidding, so what did you really come for?”
He glanced at Tim, then said, “You have a set of armor from a cleric of Desmaduke.”
She smiled. “I do. It was set to come out at dessert. Are you interested?”
“Yes.”
She looked around the ruined hall. “Well. I’ll be losing money storing it until I can arrange another auction. I’d be willing to let it go for the right offer now.”
“Five thousand gold, in a mixture of gold, platinum, and gems,” he said.
She nodded in thought. “I could make more at auction, but I have to thank you for helping me somehow. Though I wish you’d been after the sapphire; I fear I’ll suffer many more such difficulties before I manage to sell it.” She beckoned him to follow her.
“Why is it so special?”
She opened a door. “A god’s tears are magical. A panacea for illnesses and disease, it has been said, maybe a key to immortality. I think it’s just a jewel. We’ve had it tested for magic, and have found nothing of value.”
“Then why is it called that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Some noble a number of centuries ago just wanted a fancy name for their fancy jewels. They claim that it’s part of a set, and it will grant some boon if you bring them all together. Problem is, the noble that had the whole set was assassinated, so a lot of good that brought him right?”
“Some people will believe anything, I suppose.”
“Indeed.”
It was the way legends and stories grew, bigger with each retelling. It didn’t have to be true, so long as enough people wanted it to be. If the illusions were never shattered, they would go on believing forever. Belief, to many, brought them hope and it kept them going. It was a curious thing, how so many people chose to believe a lie because they wanted it to be true, and would even kill for that lie. The lies they chose to believe as truth blinded them.
She led Aestith past the auctioned items. The sold ones were in a roped off area, little tags on them. The armor was displayed on a mannequin and polished to gleaming. “I won’t ask what you’d want with it, but it is very pretty.”
He smiled. “It is.” They made the exchange and he had her deliver the armor to his establishment and ordered a carriage to take him to the townhouse. Aestith was not able to slam the carriage door in Tim’s face before he climbed on.
Aestith banged on the side of the carriage. “Driver!”
The sliding panel opened. “Yes?”
“Change of plans. To the night market, please.”
The carriage dropped them off and despite Aestith refusing to make further conversation with Tim, declining to settle on a place for dessert, and all around being obstinate, Tim belligerently stuck around. Tim blathered throughout in blissful ignorance. Aestith barely tolerated this and milled around in shops. Tim followed until Aestith hopped into another carriage while Tim was speaking to a merchant and managed to get away. He got out a few blocks from Zelvier’s townhouse. The horse pulled it around, and it trotted off the other way.
The gatekeeper opened the gate for him. It wasn’t Eiranish this time. “Zelvier is in the garden. I’ll show you the way.” He closed and locked the gate. Aestith followed him along the garden path to the back of the house. The other said, “Have you considered going to Neverwinter? You might like it there better.”
Aestith scowled. “I’m doing fine.”
The other said, “You might not have to hide.”
Aestith glowered, but he didn’t know why he was surprised. Zelvier seemed like exactly the sort of person who bragged about their sexual conquests. Why should he have refrained from mentioning Aestith’s condition? Aestith had certainly never even hinted that Zelvier should keep it to himself. He would have thought that should be obvious though, so he couldn’t help his irritation at the older drow’s immaturity. “Hiding? I might be the only drow in Waterdeep who isn’t hiding that I am.”
He flinched as if Aestith had struck a bruise, but changed the subject. “How was dinner last night?”
Aestith’s irritation dwindled to a smirk. “I wouldn’t know.”
The man’s lips pressed together and Aestith imagined that he’d see the other’s face heat if it were dark.
The back garden had flower beds of poppies and calla lilies. Foxglove had been planted against the ivy-covered garden wall. There was a painted archway and a small pond that probably had fish. Bloodroot sat flush against the wall of the house. Purple wolfsbane grew in a pot. Come morning, the spiderwebs would glisten with dew.
Zelvier stood on the back porch in a human guise. He smiled when he saw Aestith and exhaled a plume of smoke from a long wooden pipe. “Eiranish hasn’t come back yet, so either you failed, or you return triumphant. Either occasion calls for wine.”
Aestith smiled and followed the other into the parlor. Zelvier had two goblets sitting out. He uncorked a bottle and poured. Aestith picked up the first goblet and drank deeply, waiting impatiently for Zelvier to finish pouring the second.
Zelvier switched to Deep Drow from Common. “How did it go?”
Aestith shrugged one shoulder. “One of my co-owners tried to make friends with an illithid, which was interesting. Said illithid attacked the establishment, everyone else left. You didn’t suspect something like this would happen, did you?”
He shrugged. “I was certain that you would handle yourself, and you proved yourself competent.”
“Things could have gone quite poorly for me.”
He glanced at Aestith, perhaps to estimate how irritated the cleric was. Zelvier said, “It would have been worse if I had gone with you.” He lifted his goblet to his lips. “I suppose I could have sent some of my men with you, but it would have pulled resources from elsewhere.” A pause. “Which would not have improved the situation.”
Pulled them from where? Probably moved the city guards away, for one. Could they have also kept the Desmaduke temple out of it? Aestith tilted his head. “The good news is that you don’t owe me more money.”
“All of the five thousand?” Zelvier frowned. “That’s unfortunate.”
Aestith’s lips quirked in a sardonic grin. “Ah, words oft repeated from my past lovers.”
He chuckled. “I’m not certain I’ll be around long enough for the insurance claim.”
“But worth not having guards after me,” Aestith said. He sipped the wine.
“It’s a price I was willing to pay.”
The trouble with the ambiguity of the statement, and the other’s expression behind the human guise, was that Aestith wasn’t sure if he meant that he was willing to lose the money, or if he had been willing to let Aestith have to run from guards.
Aestith hated that damned hat he wore. He set the now-empty goblet down and plucked Zelvier’s goblet from his hand to set it beside his. He knocked the hat off of his head and it fell to the floor.
Zelvier’s fingers slid over Aestith’s hips. “I like that hat.”
Aestith’s arms wrapped loosely around the other’s neck and shoulders. “It does nothing for you.”
He grinned. “Some of us like to not be under suspicion from the neighbors, or be charged more at merchants.”
“And some of us aren’t ashamed of being drow.” Aestith rose on his toes to kiss Zelvier. His fists twined in Zelvier’s shirt. He tasted like wine and pipe tobacco. He hadn’t known it could taste so good as on another’s lips.
There were others that came and went in the house. Doubtless they thought less of Aestith for taking such a stupid risk, but probably more of Zelvier. Or did they just think it was typical behavior for him?
Zelvier must have sensed Aestith’s hesitance, for he smiled and bent to lift Aestith. It was an odd feeling--being carried. He couldn’t remember a time anyone had carried him. Once he was able to walk, no one had picked him up again. It should have been frightening, to think that Zelvier could trip and they would both fall, or that Zelvier could so easily simply drop Aestith and he would have even a moment of helplessness. It was what made sex so dangerous, and so much fun.
Aestith’s legs wrapped around him and he ground his erection against the other. He kissed Zelvier’s neck, bit and nibbled. He licked along Zelvier’s pointed ear and whispered, “I want you to fuck me.”
Zelvier shivered, but stayed intent on managing the stairs despite Aestith’s best attempts to distract him. He shoved the door open then kicked it closed behind him. Aestith did not slide down; he clung harder, pressed to the other. Zelvier went to the bed and fell upon it, crushing Aestith under his heavier body.
“I want you in me,” Aestith whispered.
The male’s hand cupped the side of Aestith’s face and his lips pressed hard against his. He pulled back to answer, “How could I ever refuse the wishes of a cleric of Lolth?”
“You might remember that I’m imperfect and deformed, and so are able to refuse.”
“Yet perfectly suited to my taste.”
They wrestled one another out of their clothes, and wrestled again on the floor. Zelvier was stronger, heavier, and had an easier time pinning Aestith. Aestith had to rely on tricks or suchlike to escape, but didn’t want to once Zelvier pinned him long enough to slip inside him.
Aestith would miss him when he left.
#
The heavy full-length mirror would have been somewhere between a commodity and a liability in the Underdark, a sheet of cold to infrared with its only value lying in exposure to light. A gray dawn elongated the shadows. Wind ruffled the hand-painted silk robe. The silver comb Aestith used, plucked carelessly from Zelvier’s dresser, had an embossed image of swirling water and seashells. The armor had been delivered, for lack of a better word, a few hours ago.
“Most drow have straight hair,” Zelvier mused.
Aestith plucked the stray hair from the comb’s teeth. “Does it surprise you that I’m an anomaly?”
A chuckle, then, “In some places, it denotes particular lineage.”
The comb clinked on the polished table as he set it down. His hair was still quite damp after their bath. “A rather outdated custom.” Aestith stared at the mirror, at Zelvier behind him as he lit his pipe. “Only one of my sisters had curly hair. We probably have the same sire, but it’s hard to say, given my mother’s habits.” He turned back to him. Aestith crawled into the bed beside him. Zelvier’s arm curled comfortably around his back.
“If we’re going to continue this, I suppose I should admit that Zelvier isn’t my real name. That’s a persona that I fabricated.” he said. He inhaled deeply, then expelled smoke. “It’s Xaiviryn Everh’lylraeth.”
Aestith’s brow furrowed. “Should that be relevant to me? Beyond what you’d prefer I cry out during sex?” A joke in itself, as Aestith was perfectly silent in bed, the way one had to be silent in a cave lest the echoes carry.
He smiled, as if amused, and shook his head. “No. I suppose not.”
Aestith made a face. “Xaiviryn. I must say, while I don’t especially care if you brag about getting into bed with me beyond that I find it immature, I do not appreciate your apparently graphic depictions of my body, if you understand me.”
Xaiviryn smirked. “Aestith. I hardly had to say anything.” He sucked on the pipe. “We stripped in the damned dining room and I carried you up the stairs.” Aestith smoldered. Neither trip up the stairs had been a quick one, and it had hardly only been him carrying him. Worse, Aestith had already considered that and he hated the other telling him what he already knew. “I’m not the only one in the house at any given time, and you were—well, preoccupied. It’s difficult to keep those kinds of secrets in a situation like that.”
Aestith sighed, pained, but it was his fault. “Oh, fuck right off.”
He snorted in amusement. “Did you think you were the only one?”
The younger drow reclined on the bed. “The only drow cleric on the surface with both male and female parts? Yes, probably.”
He laughed. “I’ll grant you the cleric part.”
“Do you know them? These others like me?”
A long pause. “Not as… intimately, but yes.” He scowled. “He doesn’t like men.” Xaiviryn tilted his head, as if this genuinely offended him. “From my limited understanding, he may not be entirely like you, but I believe it is a spectrum. I’ve never bothered to study the phenomenon.”
The young drow settled against the other. Eyes slid closed. “Could you tell me his name? Where he is?”
A long pause. “I’ll see if he wants to meet you first.” He set the pipe aside. A hand traced Aestith’s cheek. He said, “Do you want to stay in Waterdeep?”
He opened his eyes. “No.”
“Come with me.”
Aestith hated him for suggesting it, for putting him into this position, and wanted him too badly to slap his hand away. But he felt a call to the World Below like a leash going taught. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He flinched. “I’m going to meet my sisters. In the Underdark. Perhaps if I survive—and if I come back—maybe I’ll contact you.”
Xaiviryn laughed, as if to ease the tension in the air. “Aestith, you could die.”
Neither said that it could be from the journey there, the journey back, or that he could be walking blindly into a trap and wouldn’t survive his sisters. Aestith knew all of that--knew, and was going anyway.
How could Xaiviryn breathe in this surface alien air and not miss the faerzress? How could he stand to be so far from it? “I don’t have a choice,” he whispered. “I have to go. Why would I stay with you, unless you can get me to the Underdark?”
As if pulling teeth, he said, “I can get you to the Underdark.”
“When?” Aestith raked his fingers through his hair then regretted the action when it tangled. “I hate it here. I don’t belong here--on the surface, not just Waterdeep. Everywhere on the surface is as bad as the next place. I do not belong here. I’m a cleric. And I don’t belong on the surface.” Now that he was finally giving voice to these ideas, it seemed to gnaw at him, like spiders through flesh.
Eyes flashed red, then cooled, but the heat crept into his voice, “They won’t accept you. You’ve been on the surface. You’re male.”
Aestith sat up and slapped him. “Look at me!” he snapped. He reached a hand out, tenderly, and healed the bruise he had caused, his eyes soft. “If Lolth thinks I’m worthy enough to give me this power, why am I not worthy to go home and make it official?”
The other sighed and sat up. “Because your elder sisters will kill you.”
Aestith shook his head. “I don’t believe they will.” He lifted his head. “None of them are clerics. We’re not nobles either. I’m their only stepping stone toward earning rank and title. Do you think they would kill me? Do you think anyone would be stupid enough to cut off their fingers to spite their hand? Why?”
He stared flatly. “Jealousy. Hate. Culling that which they interpret as imperfect. Seeing their status and rank in the family fall to a younger brother, no less.” He set the pipe down on the nightstand.
Aestith grabbed the other’s shoulders. “How can you look at me and call me male?”
The other’s hand slid between Aestith’s legs. Aestith flinched, then gasped. Xaiviryn pushed Aestith onto his back. “This is how.” Then, he stopped, and pinned Aestith to the bed by his wrists. He kissed his neck, and whispered, “You can’t push me up. You have the body of a male drow, Aestith. You might have a female’s shape, in places, but you’re small, and you’re weak of arm as any male drow I’ve met.”
Aestith turned his head and bit him, then brought his knee between the other’s legs. They fought, wrestled. Xaiviryn forced Aestith, struggling, down. He whispered, “And you keep losing to a male, Aestith.”
“I let you win,” Aestith whispered. “I want you to fuck me, so I let you win.”
“Do you?” He kissed Aestith’s cheek. “Come home with me.”
“Where’s home?”
Xaiviryn pulled back and let Aestith up. “Usually Neverwinter--changing seasons are bothersome--but sometimes Luskan when I’m bored or tired of the charade.”
Aestith frowned. “I own property here. I’m… I plan on going to the Underdark to contact my sisters.”
“That sounds like a good way to die.”
Aestith was silent a moment. “I don’t think so. I’m a cleric. They’re not.”
“That’s not going to stop them. Nor does it make the journey there any easier.”
He sighed, and hated that the other had a point. “Why do you want me to come with you?”
Xaiviryn looked at Aestith, drinking him in with his eyes. “I gather wayward drow.”
Aestith sneered. “I won’t be added to a collection, Xaiviryn. Besides, hats ruin my hair.”
He shrugged. “Then don’t join my crew. You can stay in my villa.”
Aestith looked at his hands. He didn’t want Xaiviryn to leave. He wanted to go with him. He wanted to be with him. What he didn’t want was to be enlisted into the other’s service as if he weren’t a cleric. He was determined to be a priestess one day—he refused to be subordinate to Xaiviryn. “I’ve little interest in being at your beck and call, as much as you’d enjoy that.”
He was silent. Aestith could almost see the thoughts forming. Aestith knew, without reading the other’s mind even if he didn’t know that spell, what the other saw in Aestith. A good lay, maybe, but that was far from all of it. Aestith was a cleric, and his mere existence would keep the other drow under his thumb. Keeping the drow Xaiviryn had as underlings had to be like herding cats. You could put them in a long hallway with catnip at one end, but there was no guarantee that even half of them would go in a straight line. Aestith simply being a cleric would help. Would it help, though? Would they even respect Aestith, knowing he was as male as he was?
Aestith frowned in thought. If Aestith were entirely male, and knew there was a cleric with a body such as Aestith’s present one, how would Aestith feel? Empowered, he hoped. But they were just as likely to be disgusted and resentful. He wanted to ask the other, but was concerned it would come off as naive, young-sounding. He didn’t want to remind the other of exactly how young Aestith was. Or sound as if he were fishing for compliments or praise.
Xaiviryn rolled over Aestith. “You doing anything today?”
Aestith grinned. “Something.”
“It can wait, then.”
Later, when Aestith’s legs were aching and both of them had other things they might need to accomplish, he said, “I really have to be going.”
Xaiviryn responded, “I have things I need to do today as well.”
Aestith paused. “Is it a full moon tonight?” He hesitated. “Tell your lackeys to stay out of the South Ward. There are lycanthropes.”
“Good to know.” Xaiviryn gently plucked a lock of hair from a tangle on Aestith’s head. He pulled it out straight as if testing its length and watched it bounce back when he released it. “I’ve heard you’re having some trouble with a tavern owner.”
“Emerick?” Aestith snorted. “That’s no secret.”
He nodded. “What if he were to go away?”
Aestith smiled. “Xaiviryn, what I’d really like is for him to be ruined and broken. He doesn’t need to die, because then he can’t continue to suffer.”
Xaiviryn’s lips pulled into a satisfied smirk. “That will take time, but I’m sure something could be arranged.”
Aestith’s smile turned to a grin. He squirmed and rolled to face the other. “I thought you needed to do something today. Keep on like this, and neither of us will.” Aestith tilted his head to kiss him.
Aestith stayed long enough to fix his hair and clean himself up, then he went to the brothel to change.
Tim mentioned that his armor had never arrived, and Aestith made some vocalizations about going to the auction house, which he would need to do for the sake of appearances, though not today.
Tim commented, “Aestith, do you know how to reanimate a hand?”
“A disembodied hand?”
“Yes, do you know where I could get one?”
Aestith sighed. He motioned for Tim to follow him to the kitchen. Aestith grabbed Tim’s wrist and set it down on the chopping block. He reached for the cleaver.
Tim jerked back in alarm. “No! I mean, I want to be able to control it afterwards. And maybe not my hand. Like a dragonborn hand or something.”
The cleric stared at him blankly. “Tim. That falls into the realm of wizardry. I am not a wizard.”
“But you can animate undead, right? I thought you were a necromancer.”
“No, I am a cleric.” He trotted up the stairs to his room. He tied his hair into a loose braid and bound his breasts until he looked masculine. He wore men’s clothing and left his face unadorned. When he emerged, the house was quiet and the others had gone.
He had to divine an answer from Lolth, and she only responded to one thing.