The loosened boards swung to the side and Aestith ducked through the opening. He rounded the corner to the back of the warehouse. A new lock and a thick worn chain held the pinewood doors shut. He should be able to pick it. A moment later, it sprang open with a click and he shoved the lockpicks back in their case.
He opened the door and climbed in. The furniture Aestith had abandoned had been shoved to one side to make space for some musty boxes, but it was mostly empty. Aestith spent some time moving a few items around and chalking an outline, then crawled out of the cellar. He threw the chain back around it and set the lock, but didn’t latch it. He turned down the sunlit street, stepping over festering puddles on his way to the South Ward.
Along the docks, a ship with bright flags from Chult was weighing anchor. Some of the sailors hailed from the place and wore bright feathers in their hair and clothes. In the light, Aestith almost missed it, but he paused to look at the sailor speaking to the port authority. The feathers looked similar to the plumage he might have found on one of the raptors in Enainsi.
It gave him pause, then he shook it away. He was just homesick, that was all. Chult and Enainsi were separated by an impossible geography; they couldn’t remotely have much to do with one another. Even if they did in the ancient past, how could that be?
Not keeping a written history had led to an endless barrage of questions.
He turned away from the sight, before anyone caught him staring. There were drow in Chult, but they weren’t related to the Enainsine drow. Enainsi was a strange, isolated island compared to the rest. He was struck again by the estrangement of being so far from home.
The orphanage was busy and Meredith equally stressed. She had the children making decorations for some surface holiday out of flowers they had dried and strips of colored cloth. He inquired as to the other children, the goings-on, then finally asked about the sick boy.
This seemed to be the source of Meredith’s main concerns. “I just can’t leave the children to take him to a temple, but I think he needs a healer. He’s only gotten worse.”
“How is he behaving?”
She shook her head. “He’s incredibly ill. His hair has gotten shaggy and his teeth look sharp. He’s become feral when he eats.”
The boy hadn’t turned just yet at least. He needed to be put down before he became a problem. It might as well be beneficial. “Did you restrain him?”
She jumped in alarm. “Restrain him?”
Aestith frowned. “You said he was feral? I’m sorry, Common isn’t my first tongue, so maybe I misunderstood?”
She nodded, then elaborated, “He will take the bowl from me and run to a corner. He hunches over it and eats a bit savagely, but he doesn't actually strike me or anything.”
“Oh, I see.” He paused. “May I see him?”
She left the other children and brought Aestith to see the boy. He was sweating a small pond into the heavy blankets, yet still shivering. His hair was coarse. The boy opened his mouth to groan his pain. His teeth were pointed. When Aestith peeled back a blanket to check the boy’s hands, the fingernails were hardened, turning black. He covered the hand again. “Meredith, I think he needs to be taken to a temple. I understand that you haven’t been able to leave the children to do it yourself, but perhaps I can help. Now, I can’t carry him myself, but do you have a wheelbarrow?”
She nodded in understanding. “I can get one.”
“I’ll watch the children,” he offered.
She smiled, her eyes shining with gratitude. The other children, once Meredith left, began to grow rowdy, but Aestith put a quick end to that with a crossbow bolt fired at a wall. A hush fell over them and they went back to their crafts. He pried the bolt from the wall.
Meredith returned some time later. He requested that she help him carry the boy down the stairs to the wheelbarrow. Aestith kept him buried in the blankets and hurried away.
From a previous hunting trip with Boris, Aestith had a packet of what they had used to bait a manticore cub. The noble had wanted to take it alive, but the cub had not eaten all the meat. Everyone else had left the sleep poisoned jerky, but Aestith had carefully stuck it in a jar for future use. If the boy were turning into a wererat, he would like nothing so much as the meat. He popped open the lid and offered some to the boy.
The kid’s nostrils flared at the scent of the salted meat. He all but snatched it out of the jar and tore into it so ravenously that the child almost bit his own fingers. Aestith watched in quiet fascination. The boy was licking his fingers for the salt when he faded into a heavy sleep. Aestith pulled the blanket over his head.
He had to bide his time on a corner as he waited for someone to pass. He wished he had bothered to convince Meredith that the boy might need a set of manacles. How was he going to get the kid through that fence?
He wheeled the boy over to the fence, spaced several feet back from the street, and considered, briefly, his plight, then he brightened. He laid out the satchel of holding, opened and spread over the ground. He tipped the wheelbarrow into it.
It was too heavy. He might have some of the parts of a woman, but he was male all the same, and the wheelbarrow and the boy were too heavy. He heaved, and it tipped, the wrong way. The boy’s shoulder struck the ground, jolting him from the poisoned sleep. In alarm, the child fought, fell on the stone beside the bag, and turned to run. Aestith’s fingers snagged the boy’s sweat-stained clothes. The boy flailed, broke free in his panic.
Aestith reached out a hand, his crossbow coming to hand before any of the spells he carried in his mind. He shoved the sleeping dart into it, pulled back, shot. It hit the boy in the back, a small dart, barely visible. The boy crumpled and before he had quite hit the ground, Aestith dropped the satchel over him and scooped him up inside the magical space.
He didn’t notice the wide-eyed man until he had the boy in the satchel. Aestith stared at him. “The kid is a lycanthrope. He’s dangerous.” None of which was untrue. Even the guard would have put the boy down, just as they had done with Zack. Why not have him put down to a higher purpose?
“Uh-huh. What are you doing with it, drow?”
Aestith hesitated. “I’ll give you gold to forget what you saw.”
They were alone on the narrow street. The man looked at the bag, looked at Aestith. He held out his hand. Aestith dropped no small sum into his waiting hands. The man stowed his newfound wealth and started to turn. Aestith stepped back and dashed down the street, away from where the man had seen him come from, and ducked around the corner. He strolled into his old guild. He made a show of looking at the bulletin board, humming and hawing, then sauntered back down the street.
The man was gone. Aestith’s heart pounded in his ears. He found the wheelbarrow where he had left it. He squeezed past the gate, and back into the alley. He opened the cellar door and closed it behind him. The boy needed to breathe, so Aestith cast a spell of silence, and brought him out. The boy was gasping, half-suffocated when he did, and terribly ill. Clapping the manacles on him was a simple task. Aestith made a few other preparations.
The scent of incense clouded the air and masked the scent of decay that settled over old, forgotten places. Insects scuttled about. Spiders hunted or lay in wait.
He drug the hazardous boy in the chalked outline, carefully to smudge it as little as possible. It was not a perfect darkness. The door to the cellar leaked in the tiniest shaft of light—Aestith had used to block it with a rag sometimes—but it still felt good to be underground in any capacity.
He clasped his hands in prayer that Lolth should receive this sacrifice. His most fervent wish was that it pleased her, that it brought her even a small victory, a foothold on this surface world. Too, he prayed that it would be himself that would spearhead that foothold.
The boy would wake with the first prick of the dagger, so he used a thin brush and paints he would normally put on his face to make the symbols, like a target for the knife blade. When he was satisfied, he removed his sacrificial dagger from its tailored sheath. It gleamed cold in the dark.
He brought the sacrificial dagger down.
One question occupied his thoughts as the dagger plunged into the boy’s tender flesh: Queen of Spiders, three paths lie before me. In which may I best serve you?
His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell beside the sacrifice. He was aware of his own body, but it was dim as he spiraled away from it. He could see a drow breathing shallowly beside the dead plagued body of a human, then his vision bled and fogged.
The Crossroad at which he stood was somewhere deep in the Underdark, and he did not know how he had arrived at the junction. The paths were not all even on the ground or of similar size.
He looked down the left-hand path, most level with the ground and the easiest to traverse. He saw himself on a surface city street. He handed a bag to Adam, and Adam turned and handed a bag to another child, and it passed onwards, a rippling cascade expanding over the street, flowing into the city.
He turned his head to the path ahead of him, cut at an odd angle in the rock that he would need climbing gear to reach. The vision that greeted him was of Amalette. Her face was stoic as she accepted the bloodmoss. Haeltania stood behind her. His fingers kept itching toward a weapon, and he felt threatened.
He turned from it to the last passage. It was narrow and sloped downward. He would have to slide down it feet-first. In the vision, his hand was around Xaiviryn’s muscled arm. He could feel the linen from the other’s tunic. Below them, chaos reigned in the streets. The temple of Desmaduke burned.
The vision ended and he fell back into his body. He twitched and blinked, staring at the unseeing eyes of the boy. The body had shriveled like an insect after a spider had eaten it.
Aestith peeled himself from the floor, shaken.
He didn’t know what he had expected when he asked Lolth such a question, but he hadn’t expected that. The dagger was in his hand, perfectly clean, despite the hole in the boy’s chest, the seeping wound. The corpse was still warm.
His fingers trembled as he gathered his things. His heart pounded and emotions that were usually so distant and obscure poured through his veins.
His eyes watered with hurt and longing, with a joy he so rarely felt, and wished he could keep. His throat was dry and his lips parched. He swiped at his eyes, surprised when it was wet.
He stumbled from the cellar, into the open air. The wind lifted stray hairs and brushed his cheeks, cold and unnatural. His head swam. He stopped barely long enough to lock the cellar again, and found his way back to the brothel. He took little notice of the world around him on his way north.
He had asked, and Lolth had answered. No, she had done more than that. She hadn’t given him some cryptic message or impossible riddle. She had given him plain answers he could understand. She had shown him what would happen. She hadn’t exactly answered the question, but she had given him so much more than he had ever asked. He could serve her in any path he chose, and he always would.
The house was quiet in the middle of the day, with no one around. He dropped into a seat in the common area of the brothel.
Alone in a dark room with the shades drawn, the door locked, he shook and a tear spilled from his eyes. Not a petulant frustration or tears of pain, but something from either relief or a profound feeling of unworthiness.
The goddess had responded when he called.
She had spoken to him when he was 14 and lost and delirious. He hadn’t imagined that. She came to him now when he knelt to her in submission, and given him so much more than he had ever asked of her.
The flood of emotions hurt and left him raw.
He wept.
#
By sunset, Aestith had yet to move from the chair. No one paid him much heed as they came and went, but it was more or less empty. Eilora trotted down the stairs and spotted Aestith. She said, “Hey, Aestith. There are supposed to be some more doppelgangers in the Yawning Portal. I was going to see if I could find them and convince them to leave. Do you know how to do that?”
“Have you tried asking them nicely?” he suggested.
She scowled. He went with her; he could use a drink.
He said, “So quickly you forgive how a group of them attacked our brothel.”
“I doubt it’s the same group.” She raised an eyebrow. “Drow.”
He smirked, point taken.
He didn’t realize until he was halfway there that he had neglected to change back into his regular attire. By then, it was too late, and he didn’t care enough anyway. Because it was a bar, Kairon, Tim, and Deekin met them there. Deekin brought along Gil, insisting it would be educational.
Gil sat at the bar while the adults discussed the doppelgangers, and the possibility that they were connected to the previous attack on the brothel. The bartender gave Gil a mug of milk and said, “You ever kill a man just to watch him die?”
Gil, by now, was unphased by this. He replied, “You ever raid a catacomb of undead with five drow--that are on your side?”
The bartender grinned and topped off Gil’s milk.
Getting rid of the doppelgangers was as easy as finding them--not a difficult feat when Aestith saw them correct a malformed ear--and bribing them to leave. Deekin did the actual talking and bribing to solve Eilora’s problem. This was heralded by a round of drinks. Aestith went to the privy to unbind his breasts so the wrapping was no longer restricting his breathing. The relief was immediate.
He returned to his drink, but despite that he knew the other’s drunken antics should be entertaining, he wasn’t entertained. The emotions had come and went and left him feeling emptier than he had been before. Eventually, the feeling would fade but he wanted to ignore it.
He stared at the table, and used Sending. Are you doing anything important, or would you like a distraction?
Xaiviryn’s response was punctual. I could use a distraction.
On the way out of the docks, he heard footsteps behind him, in boots. He at first thought it might be Adam or perhaps Zanisernix, but it was a gruff human male. Not Brass Monkey either.
“Drop your purse and you’ll live,” the man said.
Aestith’s eyes narrowed and he opened his palm. The dark city streets were illuminated by the created dim light. He wanted the man to understand what he was doing. “Back off.”
“No one will miss one more drow.”
Aestith smiled.
The man was right; no one would. Not even other drow. Not Arcedi, not Xaiviryn or any of his crew. Not his co-owners. Not his sisters. Certainly not Lolth. It was why his life mattered to him. It was why he clung to it so fiercely; it mattered only to him.
Aestith struck first with a cantrip, and the man advanced quickly. He was fast, a dagger in one hand, a shortsword in the other. Aestith backed, surprised, but the man struck forward.
He found chinks in Aestith’s armor. Blades sank into flesh. Blood stained his clothes. Aestith struck back, powered by a thrill in what should have been a simple street thug, but this one knew how to fight.
As the light winked out and plunged them both into darkness, the man should have staggered from the shock of the sudden loss of light, but Aestith could scarcely parry back blows and match them with his own. His devotion powered each swing, and each time his rapier pierced flesh, the wound seemed to fester. Aestith’s eyes glowed wickedly in the dark. Blood spilled on the ground and filled his ears with a distant roar.
He felt his slender, frail mortal body weaken, and he struck once, viciously through the thug’s throat. He drew back with a slice and the man fell. Aestith panted, touched his own chest and healed the worst of his wounds. He poked the rapier through the bandit’s eye, just to be certain, and checked him over. He had a small coin purse, and a patch from some kind of gang. Aestith cut the patch off and took the purse. He left the body in the street.
He could have died in that fight, he reminded himself. Lolth’s chosen, perhaps, but she would have let him die if he were foolhardy enough to let it happen. This was to remind him that she might like him, but he wasn’t invulnerable. She might favor him, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t knock him low if it pleased her. He respected the lesson as a deserved one.
Why am I always coming all the way here to him? The privacy, mostly. He would probably prefer Xaiviryn not come to the brothel, because he’d never hear the end of it from his associates. There was also that Tim had practically invited an illithid to the brothel. That it kept getting attacked. Any number of reasons, really, that Aestith was generally safer here. And more at home. At least here, he understood the way everyone around him thought.
Though there was something to be said about bringing Xaiviryn to the Skullport room.
Xaiviryn was smoking his pipe on the front porch when Aestith arrived. He grinned and said, “You look like shit.”
Aestith shrugged a shoulder. “I make bad decisions when I drink.”
He grinned. “May I count myself among them?”
Aestith grabbed his shirt and less than gently pulled him inside. Xaiviryn winked broadly at the gatekeeper.
“You look cute as a boy,” Xaiviryn said, eyes far below Aestith’s face as he followed him up the stairs. The bedroom door shut behind him.
Aestith glared at him and plucked the pipe from his hands. He snuffed it out with a thaumaturgic spell and set it aside. “I’ve always thought I looked better presenting female,” Aestith mused, helping the other drow out of his clothes.
Xaiviryn’s lips found his neck, tongue traced along his ear. “You do.” Fingers worked over buckles to remove the armor. It clunked when it hit the carpeted floor. “Shows off your tits better. Accentuates the way your hips sway. But the view of your ass in these trousers…”
Aestith couldn’t bear it any more and fought out of the rest of the armor, scraping off the clothes and boots. They used every piece of furniture as a prop or a brace, then did it again. Against Aestith’s better judgment, and against his previous trends, he fell asleep.
He woke when the bed shifted, suddenly cooler. Aestith’s eyes fluttered briefly, watched Xaiviryn sit, naked in the chair. Morning sun filtered from the window, and the other was so used to it that it didn’t seem to bother him. The light played off of his beautifully dark skin, creating hues of purple and blue, like Arcedi’s tattoo on a dark canvas instead of white.
A knife cut into a fragrant peach.
Aestith heard a muffled voice from his discarded clothing on the floor. The sending stone! He went to it and picked it up.
“Aestith?” Eilora’s voice.
He sighed. “Yes?”
“Did you kill a kid?”
He stared blankly ahead. Someone had found the body. Why hadn’t he done anything with the body? How hard would it have been to make the child undead? How hard would it have been to just shove it in his satchel and dump it somewhere? Why had he left it there? Idiot! He dropped the sending stone into his satchel, pulled it closed tightly. He dropped the satchel back into his pile of clothing and took a long, deep breath. When that didn’t calm him, he took another. He screamed, “Fuck!”
Xaiviryn glanced toward him, but said nothing.
Aestith pinched the bridge of his nose and began pacing back and forth. If someone had already found it and Eilora knew, it was in the papers. Which meant that not only had journalists found it, but the city watch had. And if Eilora had connected it to Aestith, they already suspected drow. He should have killed that bystander instead of bribed him. No, it was more likely the spiderweb on the floor. He needed to find out where they took the body. He needed to remove the jaw before they could bother to perform the spell to speak with the dead. Why hadn’t he done that?
Arcedi could probably break in and do it, if Aestith could just find out where the body was. Probably the Watch? They’d take it to the Temple of Tyr, no doubt.
Aestith stretched, then sighed. “About last night…”
“Hm?”
“Yesterday, I had a vision from Lolth.”
The steady movements of the knife ceased. His bare feet slid off of the mahogany table and onto the floor. He sat rigid with attention. Aestith was quiet a moment, then said, “I’m not certain of what you are planning with the temple of Desmaduke, but in my vision, I stood beside you and watched it burn.”
Xaiviryn’s pale blue eyes seemed to sparkle like light refracted through crystal.
Aestith continued, “The vision came at a cost that I am sorry to say I botched.”
“Oh?”
Aestith made a face. “I killed a human child. An orphan. I was not in a state to think clearly after the vision, and unfortunately, I left the body. I believe it was discovered.”
Xaiviryn did not seem surprised, only disappointed. “Really?”
“I fucked up. I know it was stupid.”
Xaiviryn reached toward the bowl of fruit and plucked something out. He offered Aestith a banana. Aestith took it and stared at the yellow peel. Fruit was so much easier to come by on the surface. The sun-dwellers really didn’t understand how easy they had it. Even something considered exotic, imported from Chult, was inexpensive enough to throw into a fruit bowl.
“The guard, incompetent as they are, already suspect drow.”
Xaiviryn snorted. “Sloppy.”
Aestith glowered. “I already said it was idiotic.”
He went back to the peach he had been cutting into. “I suppose I’ll add bribing the guard to my list of things to do today.”
Aestith stilled. He felt oddly warm, like he was floating in a warm bath. A coy smile graced his lips. He went to the table and dropped the banana back in the bowl. He sunk to his knees. Aestith was quite determined that they would accomplish very little that day.
At some point, Xaiviryn had to, with great reluctance, leave. Aestith made this increasingly more difficult by climbing into the bath with him, then harassing him while he tried to get dressed. “I have to go bribe the guard at some point,” Xaiviryn reminded Aestith.
Aestith made a face, but what finally worked to dissuade the cleric was donning that damned hat that made him, in Aestith’s view, instantly less attractive as the disguise settled over the man. Aestith snorted and left him be. “I may go back to my brothel then. It would allow you to be slightly more productive if I’m not around.”
The other seemed oddly torn by this notion. He moved back toward Aestith, hands rested on the familiar curve of Aestith’s hips. He bent his head to Aestith’s ear and whispered, “I can book you passage to Neverwinter.”
Aestith traced the other’s collarbone with a fingertip. “I’ll think about it.” He wondered how much of that was because Aestith was a perfect sex toy, and how much of it was that Aestith, as quite possibly the only cleric of Lolth on the surface, made an excellent ally. Having a cleric around wouldn’t hurt. Having a cleric like Aestith would, now that Aestith thought about it, be inspiring to a male drow. Why else would he keep offering? And why else was he going to go bribe the guard?
The other started to draw back, seemed to consider, and brushed Aestith’s lips gently with his. If he closed his eyes, he could almost ignore the human guise.
#
The others were just getting ready to leave by the time Aestith arrived.
“Aestith, where have you been?” Deekin boomed. “I need your help with something.” He went to the basement briefly and emerged carrying the deflated body of a beholderkin.
Aestith grimaced. “Yes?”
He raised the body of the beholderkin. “Tirowan and I went on an epic adventure and slayed this. I want to turn it into a set of bagpipes.”
Aestith blinked slowly. The bagpipes couldn’t be worse than his berimbau, and it would certainly be more stylish, with the added bonus of preventing him from singing. “So you need someone to keep it from rotting. Yes, I can assist with that.” He reached out a hand and touched it with a spell to stave off the rot. “I suppose we’ll need to find a wizard and someone who can craft instruments next.”
“Do you know anyone?”
He glanced at Tirowan. “I assume she can’t?”
Tirowan scoffed. “I should think not!”
He nodded and his eyes flicked to Deekin. He began to say that he didn’t, then he thought of Xaiviryn. “I might know someone. I’ll find out.”
He grinned. “Excellent. Thank you, Aestith.” He trotted off to hang the dead beholderkin in his room from the ceiling like a horrifying chandelier. Aestith poured watered wine from a pitcher to a cup.
Kairon and Tim exchanged a nod that Aestith found to be suspicious, and the two turned toward Aestith. Kairon took a breath. “Aestith. There’s no easy way to say this, but we need to know if you’re double-crossing us.”
“What?”
Kairon’s stare could bore a hole through a wall. “Are you cutting the brothel out of funds? Cooking the books?”
Aestith puzzled over the phrase for a moment while he attempted to translate it in his head to Deep Drow, then he shook his head. “No.”
Tim sighed. “Aestith, there’s no use denying it. Impy saw you ‘wrestling’ with someone.”
Aestith stared at them blankly. That warlock bastard had sent the imp to spy on him. When? How long ago? Had they seen Arcedi or Xaiviryn? “Has it occurred to you that I’m not a courtesan, and as such I am not obligated to sign our courtesan contracts?”
Kairon nodded. “That’s true.” He glanced at Tim. “Tim, you said that you thought Aestith was cheating the brothel out of money?”
“Well, potentially. Aestith had five thousand gold to buy armor with from an auction. He got it from somewhere.”
The drow twitched. “That was unrelated.”
“Aestith, where’d you get the money from?” Kairon pressed.
“Wasn’t my money. Someone paid me to get something. So I did. Obviously, it didn’t go well, but it’s not my problem.”
“Was it the same guy Impy saw you ‘wrestling’ with?”
Aestith drained his cup.
“Have you thought about charging for services instead?”
“Fuck off, Kairon.”
“I’m just saying, you could be making a lot of money.”
Aestith’s temper flared.
Tim jumped. “Holy shit!”
Kairon rolled his eyes. “Oh, she does that with magic. I can do it too.” He used a cantrip to turn his eyes red, then blinked and they went back to green. “See?”
The cleric shot him a glare. “Mine do it on their own.”
Kairon raised an eyebrow. “Mm-hm. Sure they do.” He mouthed to Tim, “It’s all show.”
“Excuse me.” Aestith marched from the table.
Kairon tilted his head. Aestith did not miss how his eyes lingered on Aestith’s behind. The tiefling said to Tim, “She really could be making money if she didn’t give it away for free, you know.”
“Oh, I agree. We’re nearly in the red.”
Aestith’s eyes blazed crimson.