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She woke to a prodding hand, a lip that felt puffy, and a nose that felt broken. A pale, familiar face greeted her when she opened her eyes, blurry against the dark of the night.
Her head was pounding. To save the effort, she closed her eyes and thought Everyone’s favorite leech in greeting, before remembering they couldn’t do that anymore.
“Evening,” she managed. Her mouth hurt.
“Hello, my dear.” He picked a bit of dirt out of his nails. “What are you doing down there?”
Things were fuzzy, but she did remember a few key details. “…Tried to cave in my skull with a tankard.”
His lip curled. “You’re better than a scuffle with some lowlife in a tavern. Are you drunk?”
“Mm.” Was he still hovering? For a second, she was back in the wilderness, wondering if the camp’s resident vampire had finally decided to make a snack of her in the middle of the night. But it’d been days since the tadpole, hadn’t it, and months since the forests, since the parasite… “If you’re hungry, this is your best chance to catch me off guard.”
He sneered. Offended. “Darling. I am not so desperate as to prey on the infirm I find lying in the gutters.”
She felt the back of her skull, searching for blood, and was relieved to find none, just a small bump. Her face was not all right, but the shape of her nose seemed fine, if tender. Not broken; good. What concerned her more was the pain in her left thigh; it felt wet. She vaguely remembered someone plunging a dagger into her upper quad. Perhaps the smell of her blood drew him here. He must’ve known how to track their whole party by scent alone.
“This is beneath you,” he sniffed. Underneath the words she sensed both judgment and discomfort. She imagined the scene: a swordswoman he had come to rely on, a shield he had often hid behind now laid low, caked in mud and blood like a misbehaving bar patron.
One of the few benefits to being covered head to toe in burn scars was the immunity she had developed to many social weaknesses, or what Astarion might call charms. Nobody approached her in taverns. Nobody slapped her ass. Nobody rifled through her pockets when she was tossed out into the street, assuming her diseased or cursed, or already dead and looted. It was why she always preferred to dress down when hunting for intel; beautiful bodies were more attractive even in death.
They were triumphant defenders of the city now. They didn’t belong on the ground. But she had never pretended to be a hero; he could be as disappointed as he liked.
“Where are the other members of our motley crew to prevent such a scene?” he asked.
“Gone.” At his raised eyebrow, she clarified: “Karlach and Wyll are in Avernus. Lae’zel flew off with the githyanki. Halsin returned to Moonrise. Shadowheart disappeared with her family.”
“I assume everyone’s least favorite chatty wizard is back in his tower in Waterdeep.”
“I assume so as well.”
“Well.” He drew back and looked down his nose at her once more. “Chatting with you has been as stilted and dull as ever, my dear. Shall I offer you a hand or will you crawl off into the darkness on your own, never to be seen again?”
She pushed herself onto one elbow and paused, gathering her breath to sit up. Her trousers felt oddly light; she reached for her pocket with her free hand. “Where’s my purse?”
He lifted it between his fingers.
She grabbed it before it could disappear underneath his jerkin. “I need to get to my hostel across town before they close the doors,” she grunted.
Astarion looked pleased for some reason. “Back to your seedy motels? Color me surprised, but since our misadventure, I appear to have come out the better between the two of—what are you looking at?” he snapped at someone over her head.
“You all right out there?” came a voice. In the background she heard laughter and chatter, a spill of light and sour ale smell from an open door. Someone stood on the stoop of the taverna from which she had just been evicted.
“We’re old friends,” Astarion told him.
“Oh, what’s her name, then?” Older, male, possibly dwarven. Likely the owner. She could have used his help fifteen minutes ago.
“We’re fine,” she said irritably.
“See?” Astarion bared all his teeth at the person.
“Well, then, I’m going to need you two to move,” the voice said. “You’re driving away customers.”
Astarion looked at her pointedly. She didn’t need the tadpole to know what he was asking.
She winced, and slowly, reluctantly, reached her hand up to take his.
Astarion dug for answers on the way to his lodgings, which he assured her were expansive and tasteful and fully suited to her needs (she only started to doubt it after the second time he repeated himself). His strategy was successful, if predictable: spin wildly offensive theories to drag the truth out of her one irritated response at a time. Early in their acquaintance, she had made the mistake of revealing that slights to her character or parentage were one of the few ways to crack her composure. Before, she would have removed herself from the camp to meditate when anyone in the party bothered her. Now, half-carried through the dark streets of Baldur’s Gate and leaking blood, there was no limping away from his damn mouth.
No, she had not succumbed to her base, half-breed urges and picked a fight while drunk. Yes, she had been stupid enough to fish for information in the Elf’s Deal Tavern, fulfilling countless stereotypes about homeless half-elves not finding work anywhere but bars and whorehouses. Yes, she was otherwise managing to beat the odds he had placed against her surviving a tenday on her own.
“You must be finding life without the tadpole difficult,” she shot back when she grew tired of this. “I understand it did most of the thinking for you.”
“You can do better than that, my dear,” he told her as he led her down a residential, cobblestoned alley. They’d been walking through Shepherd’s Garden for the past ten minutes: a quiet, affluent neighborhood on the outskirts of the Upper City. She had begun to wonder if he’d been squatting in a vacant property when he opened a fence gate—left unlocked—and led them into a large back garden of a looming three-story home.
A tiefling in leather armor had been leaning against the interior side of the gate and now jolted upward. They relaxed when they saw who had entered.
“Didn’t expect you back until dawn.” Their black eyes flickered, tracing the scars that covered most of her face. “Who’s this?”
“An old friend from the tadpole days,” Astarion said. “Is Sahara in?”
They were still eying her; had probably clocked who she was by now. “Fraid not.”
“Pity.” Astarion finally shuffled the both of them along the cobblestone path, into the house, and out of earshot. “Introductions would all be much easier,” he said pointedly as he closed the door, “if you gave us a proper name, one of these days.”
“It would,” she wheezed.
He sniffed and peeled her arm from around his shoulder. “The washroom is down the hall.”
She leaned against the wall. Couldn’t entirely blame him for that response. She’d revealed her story piecemeal to their companions, never the full truth to one person.
Wyll had sworn to help her hunt down her quarry, if she ever needed the Blade. Gale had paled to learn of a magic that removed one’s name and apologized for not knowing of a spell that could reverse it. Shadowheart had tried to heal what she could of her scars (which turned out to be very little: expected, so long after the damage had been done). Karlach’s eyes had turned all big and sad. Oh soldier, I’m bloody sorry to hear that, when she found out why she could never go home again.
She hadn’t shared anything more after that. And seeing Astarion reach his long-awaited moment of triumph, after so many loud declarations of vengeance and ascendancy, only to break down into bloody sobs—she had felt justified, then, in keeping quiet. Her victories and failures would be her own. She did not expect or desire catharsis, relief, or freedom, and knew better than to promise it to herself.
She looked down the dark hallway for the washroom, but was saved from painfully stumbling around to find it by the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs.
“And she limps in proudly, like a cat that picked a fight with a bear, as we all knew she would.” Jaheira’s warm, weathered face peered at her over the bannister. “Hello, cub.”
“Hello, old woman,” she said, ignoring Astarion’s smug look. “Are you so desperate for Harpers you’re recruiting the rogue whose idea of an appropriate distracting tactic was to throw a lockpick at Ketheric Thorn?”
Astarion’s smirk dropped.
Jaheira said, “We have enough rogues. This is a new safehouse. You’ll keep your mouth shut about it, yes?”
She crossed her heart with her free hand. And wheezed.
“You should be horizontal on a cot somewhere.” Jaheira eyed her. “Probably with a healing potion down your throat.”
She waited to see if she’d be offered one.
Jaheira met Astarion’s gaze and they shared a wordless exchange; she rolled her eyes and descended. “Come on. Try not to scuff the floors. Our cleric, Sahara, is out on assignment but we have some poultices upstairs.”
She managed to make it to the first floor with Jaheira and Astarion supporting both arms. The manse felt, for lack of a better word, abandoned. Grand and sweeping corridors, elaborate woodwork on the curving stairway, windows framed by enormous, heavily patterned curtains that would undoubtedly take several people to tie up. Yet the paintings were dusty and faded; the air was stale; most of the lanterns were not lit, despite its new residents.
It felt appropriate for a vampire. It did not feel appropriate for Astarion.
She was led into a room at the top of the staircase, a dusty but serviceable hospice. The furnishings and wallpaper were at least a century out of date, but there were signs of recent habitation: ration boxes piled in the corner, a half-stocked potions cabinet, and several clean cots with headboards against the window, one of which she was lowered into.
Grudgingly, she acknowledged the bed was much nicer than the one waiting for her across town. And she was less likely to be woken up here by pounding bed frames upstairs, or have her things stolen in the middle of the night.
Or not. Astarion was eying her boots, likely looking for any new hidden daggers or treasures she might have acquired since their last meeting.
She accepted a health elixir from Jaheira, who then scanned the shelves, clicked her tongue, and departed. Leaving her alone with Astarion.
“What have you been up to?” she asked, because she could tell he was bursting to talk about it.
“Research,” he said primly, and did not elaborate.
Until, as expected, he sighed greatly and continued, “Nobody ever asked, but I have a grave in the city, you know. My family surname, Ancunín, still had a house in the Gate, this house. I kicked out the squatters and moved in.”
“And then you gave it over to the Harpers.”
“Jaheira found me.” She couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or grateful for it. “She needed a hideout, a safe house.” He waved a hand. “Whatever. I acquiesced on the condition that she use her many contacts to help sustain my… appetite. She knows a farmer just outside the city, and there is—the occasional volunteer among her Harpers.”
He’d grown stiff at the last addition. Still unused to owing people, likely thinking of it as charity. She let silence fall between them once more. Her headache was starting to lesson and she could breathe through her nose again; the potion was finally taking effect.
But her thigh still needed more attention. She sat up and unbuckled her trousers, pulling them down until the wound was exposed and ignoring Astarion’s muted protest. The bleeding had stopped, but her thigh was caked in dried blood.
She looked around. “I need a needle.”
“I am not your nursemaid,” Astarion snapped. She looked at him, waiting. After a long moment of annoyed eye contact from both ends, he rose stiffly and went rummaging with a mutter in something Elven. A roll of thick gauze and a sewing kit landed on her bed.
By the light of the dim lamp, she threaded the needle awkwardly, knotted it, and then bent over her wound.
“Oh give me that,” he said after her second fumble, holding out his hand. “You’re courting an interrupted suture.”
She handed him the needle warily. “I didn’t know you knew how to sew.”
He undid her work and began to stitch her up in small, neat knots. “It was none of your business.” Daring her to mock him for knowing a pedestrian skill, perhaps.
To his credit, he had not flinched from the rough, patchy skin under her hands, nor commented on how the burn scars stretched even down her legs, matching the ones on her face. So she decided to avoid the sensitive topic of his ability with a needle in kind.
She leaned against the wall, drew back the curtain slightly, and looked out the window at the moonless night. Exhaled through her nose and avoided thinking about the pinch of the needle.
“Close that once you’re done pining,” he said, head still down. “I reserve the right to walk around in my own home.”
“Regretting not going through with the ritual?”
His hands stilled for a moment. She had not intended to hit a nerve, but she doubted he would believe her.
He surprised her by actually replying. “No. Are you regretting not using our party’s many talents to hunt down your quarry in the Gate while you had the chance?”
“How do you know my quarry is still here?”
“I’m not bloody stupid.” It was the first sign of genuine annoyance she’d seen from him tonight. “You checked every notice board, spoke to every bartender and shopkeeper. Several nights you went out on your own and came back with bloody knuckles. Half of us believed you were being hunted until Wyll informed us that you were trying to track someone down. The consensus was that you were trying to find the person who burned you half to death.”
So they had shared notes about her. She should have expected that.
“Yes and no,” she said, half wondering why she was even answering.
“Oh?” He perked up. “Am I the lucky one to finally get the full story? Do tell, why now?”
Why now. No point in keeping it secret anymore, she supposed. Half of their party was no longer in this realm, and the other half were equally unlikely to betray her, with Gale in Waterdeep, Halsin at Moonrise, and Shadowheart gods-knew-where. Jaheira and Minsc both seemed unlikely to sell her out to a tantruming shogun several continents away, but equally unlikely to sympathize with a borderline suicidal revenge quest.
That left the vampire spawn. The high elf so angered by her declaration of his tactical uselessness that he’d once theorized loudly her extensive burn scars must have been inflicted when she’d been thrown in a fire after childbirth for being born with the wrong ears.
Unknowingly, he’d hit the bullseye. The resulting shock and outrage on her behalf had scattered birds from their trees, Karlach, Wyll, and Shadowheart all leaping to her defense. She had slipped out of the camp to meditate, and to hide her shaking hands.
Now he had her pinned down, and once again, he didn’t even know it.
Gods, she was tired.
“You know, it was starting to feel insulting,” he went on, finishing up the last stitch and scratching off a spot of blood with a nail. “Everyone’s tragic histories all dragged out into the light except yours. Hells, our resident wizard couldn’t wait to share his. ‘Oh, isn’t my magic so charming, won’t you bundle up close and ask why I haven’t shaved in a year?’ But you make Shadowheart look like a chatty schoolgirl. You never told us your quarry was right here in the Gate with everyone else’s. We might’ve penciled in your tale between our fights to the death with the hag and Cazador, if you’d only prepared us.”
He licked the blood from the tip of his pinkie, like a period at the end of his sentence—but weirdly, that wasn’t the thing that annoyed her.
“You never prepared us to fight a full-blown vampire lord,” she reminded him.
“You never even gave us your real name,” he shot back, and she scoffed, which seemed to irritate him further. “You roll your eyes when I’m discourteous or rude, but proper courtesy under most circumstances dictates the standard sharing of names, and you couldn’t even give us that. It was clear you don’t like being called Tav, but without a proper introduction, what else were we to do? ‘Some called me Tavito,’ that’s not an answer, love. I assume your real name is foreign? You assumed we’d mispronounce it?”
“I don’t have it,” she snapped.
He looked at her incredulously.
She scratched at a patch of dry skin on her leg. “I dislike Tav because you mispronounce it. Tabito is what I told Shadowheart. It means ‘wanderer.’”
“Would you prefer ‘Tab’?”
“Not really.”
“You see our dilemma, my dear. I’m afraid Tav has stuck, now, and it will stick until you offer us something else. Will I finally get to hear why you cannot share your real name with us?”
Interesting that Wyll had shared his slice of information, but not Gale. “It was part of the deal,” she said.
Astarion narrowed his eyes, as if to determine whether she was lying. “Don’t leave me in suspense. Go on.”
Figured that of all of their team to annoy the story out of her, it would be the one she least wanted to tell. She had not revealed an inch of her past to Astarion for multiple reasons, the strongest of which was that she had assumed he would not hesitate to use it against her.
But they had no companions anymore, did they? They were the only ones left. “I was tracking down a governor in Candlekeep. I was young, new to this land. Overeager. After being thoroughly trounced in a duel, I was dropped into a ravine by my target’s bodyguards. I was desperate to live. Shar, I believe, heard me in my final moments.”
“It’s a good thing I know what I do from Karlach,” Astarion said slowly, “otherwise I’d accuse you of changing the subject. Let me see if I have this correctly, dear. You left your homeland of Kara-Tur to kill those responsible for burning you alive—”
“That was not why I sought revenge.”
Astarion paused, waiting for her to continue. She didn’t. “What, exactly, have you been running around assassinating people for, if not for revenge?”
“If I was aiming to kill for revenge, it would be murder, not assassination. Assassinations are political.” She decided against saying You should know this, if you’d been a good magistrate.
“Well now I know the proper terminology for our brutal murders of half the Sword Coast over the past five months, as many were decidedly for personal motive, and very little to do with restructuring society. So Shar took your name, then, in exchange for saving your life, which you have since used to run around murdering governors in Candlekeep?”
“Assassinating. I am aiming to kill people in Faerun for political reasons.”
Astarion pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is why we never got on, you know.”
Something about this set her off. She would not be condescended to by the man who’d once nudged her in front of him when approaching the Gur camp like a bodyguard he expected to attack on command. “We never ‘got on’ because you tried to sleep with half our camp to manipulate us into killing a vampiric high lord instead of simply coming forth and asking.”
“Ah! Forgive me, I hadn’t considered this hitherto unconsidered stratagem of just asking.” His voice was acidic. “Perhaps you’ll share how things are done in Kara-Tur. Because you see, for the past two centuries, just asking for help as a vampire spawn has become a bit of a social faux pas in Baldur’s Gate.”
Their conversations always ended like this, both of them at their worst and pettiest. Yes, they had all kept secrets, some more dangerous than others; yes, most of their party had all been forced to reveal them under humiliating or otherwise unideal circumstances. But she had never lied about her past. Even Gale, hiding an apocalyptic bomb in his chest, had confessed voluntarily. Perhaps if Astarion had revealed his secrets of his own volition instead of being caught leaning over Shadowheart in the middle of the night and interrogated at her knifepoint—perhaps if he didn’t continuously provoke her to prove she was capable of emotion—perhaps she would have trusted him with a piece of her story like the others.
Or perhaps if he just wasn’t so godsdamn desperate all the time. For relief, for someone to swan into his decrepit unlife and solve his problems, for the biggest bully around to throw himself behind. Their travels together were full of moments of him sizing up their companions, sharing horrid tales from his past, imbuing every conversation with the implicit question: Won’t you please fix things for me?
She didn’t know what to do on the other side of that question.
He rose and said testily, “I shall leave you to your rest. Have a long and complicated recovery, dear.”
It was barely midnight, but if he was leaving her alone, she wouldn’t fight it. “Goodnight.” And after a beat, because old customs were hard to break no matter how far from home: “Thank you for the accommodations.”
He paused in the doorway. Just for a fraction of a moment. Then he left, not bothering to close the door.
Entering the kitchen the next morning, the first person she saw was a head with pointed ears and pale hair behind a newspaper, made paler by the direct sunlight from the window. For a second she wondered if she had missed an important piece of news from their conversation the previous night, before she realized that the hair was a bit too blonde and the ears were not quite long enough.
“Porridge and bacon,” Jaheira said. A fork appeared around the edge of the page and indicated toward the counter.
She collected a plate and took a polite serving. Hesitating, she wondered if Jaheira would mind if she sat across from her; it was the only table in the kitchen, unless she wanted to eat at a counter overstuffed with boxes of what looked like rations and humanitarian aid.
Jaheira folded her report and gestured at the chair opposite her, which she gratefully took. Her leg welcomed the respite.
“So we have an assassin in our party, not a samurai,” Jaheira said. “I’ve just won several bets.”
She didn’t speak, mouth full of bacon.
“Tav.”
She grunted.
Frustratingly, Jaheira wasn’t discouraged by this sort of childish bullshit; she had several literal children and was more stubborn than all of them combined. “Decency dictates that I split some of my earnings with you, since I bet correctly.”
“Who voted samurai?”
“Wyll and Karlach. Lae’zel claimed you were—the word was githyanki, but I believe she was saying you were too scrappy to have been formally trained. Gale thought you were a samurai with no clan? I don’t know the word.”
“Rōnin. All of them are wrong,” she said. “There are few female samurai in Wa, and none of them are mixed blood, which is by design.”
“Then what do you call yourself? I’ve worked with assassins before, but it’d be nice to get the term right when my kids ask for stories of how we defeated the Absolute.”
She managed to sneak in two bites of her porridge as Jaheira spoke before she had to respond. “When I came to Faerûn, I said I was an onna-musha, but it was too long for people to remember. Tabito means… wanderer. Traveler. It’s just a word.” She wasn’t a citizen of Wa anymore, much less a member of the warrior caste. No word really applied.
“So did you find a heretical master to teach you in Wa, or”—Jaheira paused—“find a more sympathetic instructor after fleeing the country that burned you alive?”
“The latter.”
“All right.” Jaheira leaned back in her chair. “Things are starting to make sense, cub. Can I guess the rest or have you been interrogated enough for one day?”
She stared out the window. It was broad daylight; odd that Jaheira would have the curtains drawn, since Astarion seemed tetchy about being able to walk around his own house freely. But if they spoke openly, at least it wouldn’t be in his company after their tiff the previous night.
“I need to get my things across town,” she said. “And clean out my room there.” If I’m staying here.
“I’ll go with you.” The High Harper took their dishes to the sink, surprising her; perhaps finding an associate beaten up and left for dead in her city had triggered some maternal instinct. “While we’re out, let’s find you a healer. You haven’t looked this bad since our last fight with those shit-for-brains Watchers.”
This time as they traveled across town, the truth came out willingly. Perhaps it helped that Jaheira had known nothing before today, or it helped to tell it to another half-elf, but the Harper had a surprisingly deep well of patience for her silences and short responses.
When they reached the hostel, the owner jolted from his slumped half-nap. “You’re—the Oaken Maiden!”
“Ah, I have a fan. Do me a favor, then, beloved fan: I need my friend’s belongings returned to her safe and sound, and not a coin out of place. She will be spending the rest of her time in the city with an old friend.”
“She—” The proprietor looked to her then back to Jaheira. “The, uh, good lady hasn’t paid her fees.”
“There’s coin in my bag,” she said.
He ran off to collect her things. Free of the owner’s attention, Jaheira observed the common room with open disdain. “You can afford Upper City, cub.”
She sank onto the windowsill ledge, the only available place to sit, to rest her sore leg. “Habit.”
“Some habits are bad for you.”
“Hmm.”
She could tell Jaheira wanted to say, If there are folks after you, it’d be harder for them to get to you at Duke Ravengard’s estate, or the vampire’s. But Jaheira didn’t say things like that, and certainly not in public, which was why she liked her. Jaheira seemed like the type who let her kids make their own choices, for good or ill.
The innkeeper returned with her things: bags, bedroll, swords, scrolls, and purse exactly as she’d left them. Fortunately she had not brought much with her to the bar the previous night. They confirmed everything was accounted for, then paid and left, but not before a bemused Jaheira had scrawled an autograph for the excitable owner’s children.
Stepping back out into the morning air, she asked, “We don’t need to check with the master of the house before I move in?”
“Who, Astarion?” Jaheira raised a brow and led her west, down to the Lower City. “If he didn’t want you there, he wouldn’t have brought you back. Plus he’s lonely.”
She frowned at her. “It sounds like he has company with your lot around.”
“The Harpers are grateful to him for saving the city, but not all are tolerant of vampires. You noticed how our one lookout isn’t posted inside the house? And Astarion is not interested in playing nice, as you well know, which doesn’t gain him many friends.” She paused. “He’s spending a lot of time in the cellar, sorting through his family’s records. They’ve all passed on or left the city.”
“Hm.” If she didn’t know better, she would have suspected Jaheira was trying to get her involved in whatever his new problem was.
Jaheira led her to a clinic in the Lower City run by someone who owed her a favor. The cleric on duty thanked them both profusely for five minutes for their help to the city before healing her face and thigh and offering them poultices free of charge. Jaheira was used to this, but she was not; one reason she’d been antsy for a lead on her next move was to avoid unnecessary prattle separating her from her next target.
“You could use a haircut, cub,” Jaheira said as they left.
“I’ll take care of it.” If this woman wanted her to remain calm as someone navigated sharp blades around her head, she’d misjudged her perceptiveness.
Jaheira looked unimpressed. “Gods preserve me. You need new footwear, at the very least, if you’re planning on sneaking out today.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Oh? Then you won’t mind staying tonight to wait for our delivery of supplies, as I have a graduation to attend and Yelena can’t leave her post.”
She stepped around a rusting Watcher that had apparently not been picked up and recycled yet. “Your secret organization doesn’t use drop-offs?”
“We are the drop-off, cub. We still need someone to sort through it all and make sure no explosives get mixed with the teddy bears.”
She considered telling Jaheira to let Astarion do it, since he was the trap expert and apparently bored enough to let a bunch of strangers into his newfound mansion. But they were housing and feeding her. “Fine.”
“Appreciate it.” Jaheira suddenly pressed a palm to her upper back and drove her through a set of open doors—into the taverna she had been kicked out of not twelve hours ago. Irritably, she settled her tab and tipped the bartender in apology for the previous night. She then asked him to send word to the Ancunín estate if he ever caught wind of the businessmen she had inquired about returning to the city.
The orc eyed her warily. “Look,” he started. His hands stayed busy, wiping a mug with a fading dishrag. “I didn’t want to say it in front of the fellas last night, they work for one of his rivals. But you was right. You didn’t hear this from me, got it?”
She nodded.
“I think it was Alger something? Leowarin?”
“Aramil Leowarin.” She leaned in, heart racing. “He should’ve been here for business with Gortash a month ago.”
“Yes, apparently he wanted to bring those Watcher things to other cities inland. Think he laid low, soon as they started collapsing and Gortash got the axe to his gut. Don’t know if he met with Gortash, but I did hear a Leo-something bought a ticket headed north, up the Sword Coast. Routes’re so backed up that most vessels’re making short trips. And the biggest stop up that way on a civilian vessel is Waterdeep, of course.”
Her first instinct was to groan. But then…
Cutting ties had seemed the easiest route to take, especially with no way to contact those who had flown off to parts unknown; they all had to move on eventually. But, well… she and Gale had gotten along all right. He didn’t entirely distrust her judgment, unlike Wyll, who was always seemingly disappointed she hadn’t turned out to be a grand hero of Eastern legend. Perhaps Gale wouldn’t mind her showing up uninvited, if she kept the visit brief and didn’t piss off his damn cat.
She glanced at Jaheira before she realized she’d done so, only to find her chatting with someone else at the bar.
“Thank you.” She wanted to dig further—surely a nexus of information like the Elf’s Deal would have more—but she’d already pushed her luck here. She could always return later, now that she had not one but perhaps even several contacts in the city. The men on her list were elves, after all, and they would be in this land for centuries to come. She had time.
She considered leaving anyway, of course. She had all of her essentials, and the opportunity presented itself several times over the course of the day, Jaheira turning her back to pay the cobbler for her new boots, and again repeatedly as they shuffled through the streets to attend Harper business. Several times she wondered why she didn’t return to the estate on her own, especially when her headache reappeared. But she stayed at Jaheira’s side and glared on command when someone needed light threatening, and called it repayment for her hospitality.
Reliability had never exactly been one of her defining traits. In the past, traveling with other adventurers, she’d enjoyed their company, broken bread with them, slept with them, argued and made up with them, defeated monsters and ghouls with them, and said goodbye after their journeys ended. None of them were ever that bothered when they split, or if she departed early, and certainly none had ever insisted she move into their houses. But then, she had never defeated a mind-flayer cult and saved a city before, so perhaps she was underestimating the camaraderie of folks who did this sort of thing for a living, or who at least were more socially inclined than she was.
Or perhaps she was just more accustomed to solidarity.
It was midafternoon by the time they arrived back at the manse, and she enjoyed a cup of tea and late lunch with Jaheira and Sahara, the mysterious tiefling cleric who was finally on shift. Astarion, she was told, was asleep upstairs.
“You mean trancing?” She was used to correcting this for non-elves. She preferred to find her targets at their most vulnerable, of course, which often meant in reverie; high elves always preferred to trance.
“No, he’s proper sleeping,” Sahara said, shrugging. “Isn’t it about memories, and stuff? I knew a bloke who preferred to sleep, he’d run himself into the ground till he collapsed ’cause he didn’t like to revisit his memories during a trance.”
To avoid responding to that, she asked if the delivery they were expecting had arrived yet. It had, and so she spent what remained of the day on the floor of a back room, sorting humanitarian supplies and double-checking them for boobytraps or exploding toys.
By sunset, she managed to sort through half of the boxes before getting bored. She meditated in what looked like a large ballroom, practiced her stances, reorganized her bag, and polished her last uchigatana, wondering why she was still here if she already had her next destination, why she felt obliged to say goodbye when they had already parted satisfactorily several a tenday ago. She had no right to consider herself Wanese anymore—she had lived longer in Faerûn now than she ever had at home—and she had disregarded so many old customs and habits that no longer served her here; but the thought of leaving someone’s home without a formal thank-you after being taken in and cared for disturbed her Eastern sensibilities, those that remained.
She returned to the back room for lack of anything better to do. Rummaged half-heartedly into another box, shifting through gauze, health elixirs, and bundles upon bundles of rogue’s morsel.
“Well,” Astarion’s knowing voice drifted from the open door. “I just had a very interesting conversation with our resident High Hero about our other resident High Hero.”
She resealed the box in front of her—it was probably fine—and shoved it aside. “Are you going to help me?”
“You seem to be doing a fine job yourself.”
“Then stand there and don’t contribute.”
Astarion did not stand there, but he did sit on the floor and not contribute. She moved onto the next crate, which contained children’s toys.
“Tav,” he said.
For the slightest moment, she considered not responding. “Yes.”
“I could’ve left you there, you know.”
Did he want a damn pat on the back? “Why did you bring me here, if it was such a hassle?”
“Why did you help me kill Cazador?” he shot back. And then, heatedly, “You refused to kill a single Gur for my safety. But you killed tieflings for Lae’zel and paladins of Tyr for Karlach”—she decided not to mention they were nothing of the sort—“so why go out of your way to kill my tormentor?”
“We were there.” The rocking horse she was examining had an oddly sharp edge. She scraped it against the floor to blunt it. “I’m not heartless.”
Astarion tracked her movements; he narrowed his eyes slightly at the way she was treating his floor. “Forgive me if I doubt your altruism, but this is coming from the woman who once suggested we ‘skip’ the Shadow Curse and assault Moonrise Towers directly. Which I was in full support of, I’ll remind you, but it does not lend credence to your generosity.”
“The Szarrs had dealings across Kara-Tur,” she said wearily, avoiding eye contact. “I don’t have all the details but from my research, I knew Cazador bought from human traffickers who traveled in and out of my homeland, likely for his profane ascension. Is that a more acceptable reason for me to want to kill the man?”
Astarion processed all of this quickly. She was grateful that he did not need to lodge his shock; he had seen far worse in his two hundred years directly under the man’s heel. “How do you speak Kozakuran? Jaheira said you’re from Wa.”
“You knew that.”
“No, I didn’t,” he sniffed. “I only knew you could read that foul ancient language in the manor. We must speak about that, by the way—you know, what, three languages fluently but not one of them is elven? This must be rectified.”
He had the most annoying habit of flipping between disdain for her mixed heritage and offense that she had not embraced her elven side, swapping as it suited him.
“I lived in Kozakura after I left Wa,” she said, if only to avoid a tangent on half-elves losing their cultural identity. “They share a root language, Han.”
“And?” Astarion pressed.
“And what.”
“And you’re aiming to assassinate, not murder, several targets on this continent ‘for political reasons,’ as you insisted yesterday. Was Cazador one of them?”
She blinked. “No. But I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity since I had the chance.”
Astarion looked suddenly amused. “I was wondering if your targets are all vampire lords. Should I feel jealous?”
“They’re not vampires. But they are all elves, so fortunately I’m not in a rush.”
He snapped his fingers. “Let me guess. You’re on a quest to kill your elven parent! Who, hm, dramatically fled Wa after impregnating your mother, leaving you a half-blood fatherless bastard in a land that shuns foreign intervention, which drove others to arsonous cruelty in your childhood and you to vengeance in adulthood.”
She sighed. “Yes.”
A long pause. It was almost comical. “I was joking.”
“You have an annoying habit of hitting the mark when you’re joking.” She peeled off a small splinter-in-the-making from the rocking horse.
He yanked the toy out of her hands and tossed it somewhere. “How in all the gods are you going to track down every possible culprit? Do you plan to just kill any elven man over a hundred on the Sword Coast?”
“Wa has a strict ban on foreign and interracial travel. Only fifty-seven elven men have snuck into the country in the last hundred years, largely through backdoor political dealings or smuggler business. Sixteen of them are no longer breathing, which leaves me some time to track down the next forty-one.”
If she didn’t know better, she’d think Astarion looked—proud. Of her? “Quite the interesting game. It’s a lot of effort for someone you might want to reunite with, by all rights.”
“I don’t. These elves traded and sold people, opium, firearm schematics, and the shogun allowed them in, against his own laws, for his own gain, despite the harm they brought to the country. If I could, I would have killed him first, but he put a bounty on my head to remove any evidence of his own treason so I’m no longer welcome there.”
“And so you fled to Kozakura before traveling here.” He looked thoroughly entertained. “Oh, my dear. How’d you acquire your list of targets, if these men were so hidden and you so scandalously illegal? Just curious, mind.”
She cut open the next box with her tanto. “I can’t give you a new name. Whenever I choose something new to go by, people forget it by the next morning. I suspect it’s part of Shar’s curse. I told her I wanted to live, I agreed to the cost of anything, and she chose to take my name.”
“That’s… fascinating, but not what I asked. Wait, how do we remember to call you Tav, then?”
“Don’t know. Maybe because you lot chose it for me.”
He nodded, then frowned. “Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “you went searching for information about your targets in a pub called the Elf’s Deal? An eatery in the Gate famously known for hosting luncheons and events for businessmen, surely including any workers under your targets’ employ?”
She pushed down a retort to his condescension. “Yes.”
“That really was quite stupid, darling, or desperate.”
She didn’t reply.
“You didn’t think to perhaps just tell us any of this?”
“You enjoyed the mystery.”
“Why, you irritating little—” He threw his head back and laughed. “I do enjoy a good drama, yes. Fine. You would have been significantly less entertaining if you had revealed everything upfront. But you didn’t keep your mouth shut for nearly half a year to stay interesting.”
She stripped open another box and couldn’t help one corner of her mouth twitching. “Your entertainment didn’t factor into it at all.”
He watched her extract a donated bundle of tunics and trousers, flip through them, and then move onto a pair of shoes with peeling heels. She was supposed to throw out anything that looked unusable, but she was not the best judge for this sort of work. Perhaps a child would not want to be seen in these rags, but she had worn things much plainer as an abandoned child raised by monks of the True Path.
“You relaxed,” Astarion said out of nowhere. “When you woke up in the street and saw me.” His red eyes were intent, flickering in the firelight. “You jolted awake, then when you recognized me, you relaxed.”
Had she? Hmm.
“For quite a long time, you didn’t even like me,” he continued.
“I think we have an ambivalent relationship.”
He pointed at her in agreement. “Exactly. I could go either way on you, really. But I never worried about you staking me in the middle of the night, unlike some who threatened to do so whose name may rhyme with mycelle. For someone so mysterious, your intentions have always been blindingly straightforward, my dear. I sensed the instant I met you. For all your composure”—he leaned forward, fingers curling—“you’ve an air of desperation. A dog who bites whatever ankles it can reach, but on a closer look, one can see the ribs. The runt of the litter, cast out into the streets, who learned to fight on her own.”
“Takes one to know one?”
For a moment she thought he’d strike her. She hadn’t said it to anger him, but it seemed she had a skill for it even without trying.
“Quite,” he said coldly. “Peas in a pod, you and I. Which is why I, somehow, have become rather interested in your little… side quest.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I am moderately invested in your success. It’s no comparison to my breaking of chains, but I am quite fond of revenge quests. And to tell you the truth, I quite miss the scent of rich, wanton bloodshed.” He sighed. “A vampire can’t indulge with a steady stream of volunteers the way he can with a tragic victim of the battlefield—”
“Astarion.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d called him by name. Her hands had frozen on the next box lid. “Are you asking to join me on the road?”
Astarion huffed in response.
“Good, because I was going to Waterdeep next.”
His face soured. It was very dramatic and she enjoyed it thoroughly.
She rose, even though she wasn’t done checking everything. “Tell Jaheira these boxes are fine. I’ll get going now.”
He squinted up at her; perhaps confused, perhaps irritated. It was hard to tell. “Really, leaving already?”
“Courtesy dictates I give my thanks and farewell when I’ve been offered hospitality in a time of need.” She banked the fire. “I thought about a gift, but you’d probably pawn whatever I got you.”
“I already know your belongings inside and out, dear; I assure you I wouldn’t have accepted it anyway.”
Her lips twitched, and she decided that was as polite a farewell as they might hope for. “So it seems the best gift I can give you now is a quick and painless departure. Until next time.”
She left, heading for the guest room where she’d stored her belongings. Perhaps Jaheira wouldn’t mind her taking some provisions from the kitchen before she departed for good.
“Tav.” Astarion’s voice stopped her halfway down the large, empty hall, and she turned back to him. He tried: “Tah-ito. Ta-vito?”
“Just say Tav.”
“Where are you really going next?”
“Waterdeep.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re trying to discourage me from coming with you.”
“I’ll send you a postcard from Gale’s.”
If it was possible for someone to stalk irritably, Astarion managed it. He strode past a large, dusty portrait of a cold-looking man who, for all she knew, might have been his great-grandfather. The resemblance as he sneered up at her with all his elven pedigree was amusingly similar. “My—parents,” he began haltingly, “moved to a country house somewhere up the coast after their only son’s funeral. They made regular trips back to the Gate, as if hoping he’d return. But those ended abruptly about twenty years ago.”
She waited, but he didn’t provide more. “You want me to check in on them?”
“I. Don’t.” He stopped, then the rest came in a rush: “Know what I want either. But it’s not to stay here, with these bloody Harpers in this bloody empty house. Do you understand?”
She considered it, out of respect for their sincere, if tumultuous history. Imagined traveling with Astarion again, just him and her diving back in the woods, onto the road, on a ship, and wondered if they could even make it to Orlumbor before killing each other. Wondered what he’d do for food, if she’d have to offer up her elbow or neck nightly to keep his whining at bay.
“I am uncomfortably aware that my little ‘errand’ cost you a sword, and I dislike owing people,” he said primly into the silence.
She exhaled. The memory of her katana snapping in the jaws of one of Cazador’s many summoned werewolves was not one she liked to revisit. “You don’t owe me a sword.”
“A not-insignificant favor of your choosing, then.”
“And you want to cash it in by throwing your weight behind my cause for months, if not years?”
“Darling, you assume I’d tolerate you for that long.” But he looked well pleased. “You just let me know if you ever need a blade pointed east, to the tosser who’s responsible for all of—” He gestured at her face. “I cannot guarantee my participation, but I do want to know if you need an immediate tranquilizer on call, if you get my meaning.”
“You’d be pointing your blade at the shogun himself,” she informed him, watching his reaction carefully. “He threw me into the fire when I was a day old, after his wife gave birth to a half-blood.”
“…Well,” he said after a moment. “That’s a classic revenge tale if I’ve ever heard one. With skills like yours, I’m surprised you decided to head west.”
“So was the Kozakuran imperial family. But I think they were eager for any opportunity to dismantle the Wanese shogunate and their associates, so until my fifty-seven names are scratched off for them, I’ve time to plan my return.” The woman-who-would-be-Tav turned, heading down the hall again to collect her things. “Are you coming or not?”