Jarlaxle leaned back in his chair to take a long look at his assassin, at the deepening of the man’s ill mood as soon as Jarlaxle had informed him that a journey to Ched Nasad would be unlikely. The assassin had darkened, and that after he had hinted that he really didn’t want to undertake the mission.
So why had he grown so salty?
Jarlaxle’s own mood was souring, too. The assassin’s words about his lack of involvement in recent missions rang true enough. Bregan D’aerthe was growing strong in Menzoberranzan, but that impressive reputation—and rising number of foot soldiers—had forced Jarlaxle to all but abandon the roads beyond the city. Bregan D’aerthe was too tempting a target for the matrons of powerful houses—would he go to Ched Nasad or some other distant locale only to return to discover that the matron of House Barrison Del’Armgo or some other rival of Matron Mother Baenre had seized control of his mercenary band? Jarlaxle had spent fifteen decades building Bregan D’aerthe, whose quarters now sprawled in the tunnels of the Clawrift, the great chasm that split the cavern holding the drow city, and he wasn’t about to lose it.
No, he simply wouldn’t risk that. Not now. Not when Bregan D’aerthe was not yet strong enough to scare away any such attempts. And so he stayed in this city, while Arathis Hune went on the important missions far out in the Underdark.
That alone could not explain the assassin’s mood, though. Jarlaxle had come to entrust Arathis Hune with these critically important kills. That confidence should bring satisfaction to Arathis Hune, he supposed, as the man maneuvered to become a powerful boss within the clandestine organization. So, again: why was he sour?
Could he know the significance of this occasion? Could Arathis Hune know why he was summoned to the Stenchstreets? If so, the man’s barely disguised scowl would be understood.
It was an unnerving thought.
Jarlaxle rarely second-guessed himself, but he was doing so at that moment. This was a special night for him, more important to him than he had anticipated, because he was meeting another old friend and associate, one he had barely seen over the past thirty years. Someone, he realized, he missed fiercely.
Not that he could blame his friend for the long absence. As the weapon master of a rising drow house, he’d been instrumental in helping his matron climb the ranks of Menzoberranzan’s difficult hierarchy. As such, his reputation had grown large—even though that reputation did not do justice to his true skill with his swords—and so Zaknafein Do’Urden was not often seen outside of House Do’Urden of late. He had made too many enemies, and made nervous too many matrons of houses that might be next in line or those hindering the ambitious Matron Malice Do’Urden’s determined climb toward her seat at the spider-shaped table of the city’s Ruling Council.
Even rarer was Zaknafein outside House Do’Urden alone, and rarer still would the weapon master venture to the Braeryn, the Stenchstreets, the underbelly of a city whose finest neighborhoods often knew murder.
Jarlaxle cherished the fact that Zaknafein would risk all that to meet up.
“I had thought you would enjoy a night of respite,” Jarlaxle apologized. “If you would prefer otherwise . . .”
“A hundred years, is it?” Arathis Hune interrupted.
Jarlaxle started to respond, but held back the words. A hundred years indeed, he thought, since he had first pulled Zaknafein—then Zaknafein Simfray—from a battlefield littered with the bodies of two warring drow houses.
Arathis Hune glanced at the bar across the room, where an impressive silver-haired woman leaned back against the far wall, a drink in her hand, several men listening to her every word, clearly enraptured and hoping for a night in her bed.
“A hundred years for priestess Dab’nay Tr’arach, as well,” the assassin remarked.
“Just Dab’nay,” Jarlaxle corrected. “She has abandoned her familial name, and no longer openly professes herself as a priestess. But yes, ten-eighteen was a good year for Bregan D’aerthe. We doubled our number, fattened our coffers, and added some very powerful associates.”
“Some?”
“Three.”
“Now just that one,” Arathis Hune said, nodding his chin toward the former noble daughter of House Tr’arach.
“More than one,” Jarlaxle argued, but he left it at that. Duvon Tr’arach, Dab’nay’s brother, had been all but lost to Bregan D’aerthe, for Jarlaxle had sold him to House Fey-Branche, to become their weapon master until one of Matron Byrtyn’s own children could become proficient and veteran enough to assume the mantle. He had done so with Duvon’s blessing, however, and so Jarlaxle had made it clear Duvon had a home when that time came.
And Zaknafein was simply too busy with his duties to Matron Malice, and too “hot” to be out often on the streets, given Malice’s growing list of powerful enemies, to be of much use these days. But he would always be welcome among the Bregan D’aerthe.
Regardless, Arathis Hune, again, wasn’t wrong. There was no doubt in Jarlaxle’s mind about which addition had made that year, 1018, so special.
As if reading Jarlaxle’s thoughts, Arathis Hune snorted and moved across the tavern to join Dab’nay and some others. Jarlaxle watched him all the way, though he wasn’t too concerned with anything regarding the man. This rogue could be quite the charming fellow, laughed as often as he scowled, made love as often as he made mischief, and could drink more than any drow ought. While that could surely aggravate Jarlaxle, and sometimes even concerned him, in the end he trusted that he understood the assassin’s loyalties enough to feel secure about Arathis Hune.
“Perhaps I have been too severe with you of late,” Jarlaxle whispered under his breath. The mercenary leader nodded and took another sip of his liquor. Although it hadn’t been a constant, Jarlaxle had watched a rising melancholy within Arathis Hune ever since that long-ago day when Zaknafein Simfray had been taken from the battlefield, a melancholy that seemed to diminish whenever Zaknafein was absent for extended periods. Of course they were rivals, these two magnificent killers, and so of course Hune would remain skeptical and cautious regarding Zaknafein. But this seemed even more than that, a level of jealousy that surprised Jarlaxle.
Jarlaxle didn’t like to be surprised.
He sighed, took another sip, and turned back toward the door—and nearly jumped out of his chair to find a very dangerous drow standing right beside him. With a nod, Zaknafein took a seat next to Jarlaxle, looking past the mercenary to the bar and the other two powerful members of Bregan D’aerthe.
“Priestess Tr’arach and Arathis Hune? They plot your demise, of course,” Zaknafein said.
“They would not be the only ones, nor the most dangerous,” Jarlaxle answered, and waved to the barkeep, another man he had taken from a battlefield a century before, and whom he had only recently installed in the Oozing Myconid. He signaled for a drink for his friend and a refill of his own. “And we call her Dab’nay now. There is no Tr’arach.”
“Not even the one behind the bar?”
Jarlaxle just grinned and tipped his drink in salute to the observant weapon master.
“You seem in fine spirits,” Jarlaxle remarked.
“I soon will be.”
“Even now.”
“I am . . . relaxed,” Zaknafein admitted with a shrug.
“Matron Malice has stolen all of that angry edge?”
That brought a smile to Zaknafein’s face.
“She is all that her reputation claims?”
“I would have thought that you would have learned that for yourself by now.”
“Truly?” Jarlaxle asked, and grasped his chest as if taken aback. Zaknafein started to respond, but held back as the barkeep came over and placed a glass before him, then refilled Jarlaxle’s cup. The man met the stare of Zaknafein, who thought he detected a bit of resentment there.
“Long are the memories of foolish drow,” Zaknafein said as the former Tr’arach warrior moved back across the tavern.
“I would think that a good thing.”
“Surely you do not wish to kill that one, or any of them, else you would have done so that long-ago day when they attacked House Simfray. That one in particular,” he said, pointing at the barkeep. “You had Harbondair beaten on the bridge between the towers, an easy kill. Yet one Zaknafein did not take.”
“He was riding a lizard,” Zaknafein said, nodding. He didn’t remember the warrior specifically, but he did remember knocking a lizard and its rider over the rail.
“His beloved mount, one he had raised from a hatchling. Your Simfray fellows gutted it above him. He rode its unwinding entrails to the ground.”
“That explains the stench,” Zaknafein said dryly. He lifted his glass to drink, but paused. “Should I imbibe some antivenom first?”
Jarlaxle laughed. “Harbondair could not afford to replace you, and would not dare invoke the rage of Matron Malice. And no, to answer your question about Malice, I would not cuckold my dear friend.”
“You might be the only drow in Menzoberranzan who has not, and so I would hardly consider it thus.” He said it with a laugh and quaffed the drink in one great gulp, then held the glass up for Harbondair Tr’arach to see.
“She is all that you claimed,” Zaknafein continued. “Insatiable . . . and insane. If Malice could fight like she ruts, she’d prove the finest weapon master in Menzoberranzan.”
“Well, then, you’re welcome.”
“From what I have seen, I did not need to join her house to learn the truth.”
“What of the boy, then?” Jarlaxle asked.
Harbondair approached with the bottle, but Zaknafein just took it from him and waved the man away.
“What of him?” Zaknafein replied.
“Dinin, yes? Is he . . . ?”
“Is he what?”
Jarlaxle heaved a great sigh and sat back in his seat, staring.
“No,” Zaknafein answered. “He is not my son.”
“You have been with Matron Malice often. How can you know?”
“Not mine,” Zaknafein insisted. “It was likely Rizzen who sired him. I had wondered if it was you, but you’ve already said otherwise.”
Jarlaxle’s expression turned curious.
Zaknafein shrugged. “He is a worthy enough boy, and one who would do Rizzen proud, surely, after the mediocrity of Nalfein. Did I tell you that Nalfein actually challenged me to serve as House Do’Urden’s weapon master?”
“Truly? So Matron Malice once again has but one son?”
“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even fight him, really, just disarmed him before he could even draw his weapons.” Zaknafein took another drink. “His pants fell down, too. Again, and as expected, unimpressive.”
“Ah, yes,” said Jarlaxle, “I did hear whispers that Nalfein Do’Urden had returned to the Academy, though I didn’t bother to confirm them.”
“But to Sorcere, not Melee-Magthere,” Zaknafein replied. “In our one-sided contest, it seems that I convinced him to try his hand at wizardry.”
“And?”
Zaknafein shrugged. “He is better at that than at fighting. But then, were he not, he’d have turned himself into a squiggle newt by now.”
“To feeble wizards, then,” said Jarlaxle, lifting his glass for Zaknafein to tap his against it.
“To dead wizards,” Zaknafein agreed.
“And this secondboy?” Jarlaxle asked as he refilled his glass. “The one you claim is not yours. Is he, too, bound for the winding corridors of Sorcere?”
“Melee-Magthere.”
“Like Zaknafein,” Jarlaxle slyly observed, but Zaknafein shook his head.
“He is clever enough to be a fighter, but he favors one hand. More like Arathis Hune, I expect, or perhaps like Jarlaxle.”
“I have warned you many times not to underestimate me.”
“And I have warned you many times not to think you’ve been underestimated.” Zaknafein drained his glass again and quickly refilled it. “I expect Dinin is the son of Rizzen,” he went on. “And if so, then that is the best that Malice will ever get from that one.”
“And from Zaknafein?”
The weapon master just stared at him from over his glass as he drained it a third time, then poured a fourth. “Who would even know? Even with Dinin. Perhaps he is a cambion, or the result of some dark magic. Malice spent nearly two centuries riding partners twenty times a tenday, and yet produced nothing but a horde of exhausted lovers.”
“She had already birthed two children,” Jarlaxle reminded. “She is not barren.”
“Would that she were,” Zaknafein mumbled under his breath, and if Jarlaxle weren’t wearing a tiny magical ear horn to heighten his already keen drow senses, he wouldn’t have caught the remark, or the continuing, “Would that they all were.”
Jarlaxle let it go at that, and sat quiet, considering his friend. Zaknafein had come into the Oozing Myconid full of cheer, but the mood could not ever hold with this one, not against the reality of Menzoberranzan.
The only answer, Jarlaxle knew, was a challenge. He grabbed Zaknafein’s arm as the man lifted his glass for another drink.
“Cavern jumping?” he asked.
Zaknafein stared at him from over the rim of the glass, incredulously at first.
But a grin began to spread, and it carried him out of the tavern and partway across the city, until he stood with Jarlaxle on a high ledge along the West Wall of the cavern, not far from the balconies of House Do’Urden. Directly east of them loomed the timeclock obelisk of Narbondel, dark now as the night grew long.
“The risk,” Zaknafein chuckled, shaking his head.
“That’s what makes it fun,” Jarlaxle answered with a wry grin of his own.
The pair stripped off their weapons, magical items, and armor, hiding them away. They now wore only the simple pants, shirts, and soft padded boots that were their custom. Here they were, out alone in the Menzoberranzan night, fully two miles from the Oozing Myconid.
The two exchanged a glance, then shrugged in unison, and Zaknafein leaped away. He fell just a few feet to another ledge, caught himself softly by absorbing the drop with a deep bend, then launched himself outward, spinning and somersaulting to come down in a run across the roof of a nearby structure. He sprang up high in a vault, his hands planting on the top sill of the jutting window of the structure’s guard tower, then flowed into a cartwheel above that window, landing on the far side, letting his legs roll out under him, then tumbling right off the far side of the roof to a lower roof. He landed, flipped once, then again, came up straight, and launched himself into a gainer, backflipping to stem his momentum so that he could plant a landing on the street below.
Jarlaxle dropped down to Zaknafein’s right, landing in a roll that kept him moving eastward. He went off farther to the right of a large stalagmite, while Zaknafein sprinted around the left of the imposing mound.
They came around with Zaknafein a step ahead of the mercenary, another stalagmite looming before them. Up the side ran Zaknafein, springing from a ledge, then a second, catching a third with his hand, then spinning to reverse his grip and put his back to the wall. He pulled up and tucked his legs, throwing himself right over backward, clearing that section of rock and dropping down the other side. He hand-walked to secure his landing, then threw himself outward, and on he ran.
He hurdled the low wall of a minor house, ignoring the shouts of some guards over in the darkness to his right. He sprang from the bank of a small decorative fish pond, somersaulting and stretching his legs out far before him to catch the lip of the far bank. He worked his arms, nearly pitching backward into the water, then cursed even as he regained his balance, for Jarlaxle came rushing past him.
“Just in time to catch their crossbow bolts,” the mercenary taunted.
> Zaknafein took it more as a prudent warning than an insult, though, and ran, dove, rolled, zigged and zagged over the next open avenue. He thought he heard a quarrel fly overhead, but he could not be sure, and he did not care.
He had been stuck by the darts before in this game he and Jarlaxle played.
When they passed the open ground, around another wall, up over the outcropping on another natural mound, Zaknafein began to perfectly mirror Jarlaxle’s movements, leaping, vaulting, hurdling, rolling, to mimic the lead runner exactly. He remembered the route well enough to know where he wanted to make his move to overtake his opponent.
Getting to the door of the Oozing Myconid first wasn’t critical and didn’t determine the winner, but it was a matter of pride.
On they went, past Narbondel and through the section of the city known as the Narbondellyn, running, springing, climbing, flowing from one jump to a tumble to another roll, to a leap-and-spider-scramble maneuver up a nearly sheer wall. They passed the long courtyard and structures of House Fey-Branche, even going up atop the north wall of the compound at one point, scurrying along like a pair of giant rats fleeing the purring pursuit of a hungry displacer beast.
They neared the northeastern corner, where the wall cut back at a square angle. Even as the guards began to shout, Jarlaxle bent down in his run, planting his right hand on the wall’s top, then flung himself around and over, landing on his feet on the eastern wall, facing into the compound, that he could wave to the shocked Fey-Branche sentries before backflipping away to the east.
Zaknafein was similarly in the air before Jarlaxle ever touched, turning about as he descended, as had Jarlaxle, to hit the ground running. Right behind his old friend, the weapon master leaped up to a wall in a narrow alleyway, splaying flat out as his feet kept moving, with his hands slapping the opposite wall to keep him horizontally aloft until he had rounded a corner.
There, still mirroring Jarlaxle, he dropped back to his feet and ran to the northeast down the bending alley. He couldn’t help but smile when he heard a hand-crossbow quarrel strike the wall at the corner he had just smoothly turned. He stayed right on the mercenary’s heels as the pair crossed into the Braeryn, now being seen and quietly cheered by some of those who knew about the challenge and were out spotting from the Oozing Myconid.
Boundless Page 4
