Boundless

by R. A. Salvatore

  “What?” the mercenary leader asked.

  “You bought him back.”

  “Who?”

  Zaknafein’s expression hardened.

  “Yes,” Jarlaxle admitted with a shrug.

  “And I cannot kill him, I suppose.”

  “I would greatly prefer that you do not. The coin to repurchase Duvon Tr’arach was not insubstantial. Matron Byrtyn Fey drove a ferocious bargain.”

  “Then why didn’t you let her keep the fool?”

  “She was done with him and I feared she would sacrifice him to Lolth, and that, I believe, would be a waste. He is not without talent.”

  Zaknafein snorted.

  “He gave you a finer fight than even you expected! Admit it, my friend.”

  “In Menzoberranzan, the second-best swordsman is usually as dead as the worst of the bunch,” Zaknafein dryly replied.

  “I did not wish to see him dead,” Jarlaxle admitted.

  “So you bring him back that he will try to kill me?”

  “He will not,” Jarlaxle insisted.

  “Ah, yes, Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe. So sure of himself, the puller of strings.” He waved for another drink, then turned back to lock stares with Jarlaxle. “Until a puppet’s dance goes awry, and then there is blood.”

  “Duvon will not seek revenge,” Jarlaxle reiterated.

  “If he does, your money will be wasted, do not doubt.”

  “I do not.”

  Zaknafein laughed, and it wasn’t meant to comfort the man sitting across from him.

  “And what of you, then?” Jarlaxle asked.

  “I would have you pay for my drinks this night.”

  “Indeed, and fair enough. But what of you, Zaknafein?” he repeated.

  “What of me?”

  “Duvon returns. Perhaps it is Zaknafein who will seek to finish that which Duvon started on that long-ago day.”

  “Not so long ago.”

  “Zaknafein?”

  The conversation paused as Harbondair moved between the two, placing a glass before each and offering a quick and less-than-friendly look at Zaknafein as he did.

  “I will not kill Duvon,” Zaknafein promised, and Jarlaxle lifted his glass to toast to that.

  But Zaknafein wasn’t finished.

  “The other one will satisfy me,” he added.

  The unexpected request put a blank stare on Jarlaxle’s face and he slowly lowered his glass. “Other one?”

  Zaknafein glanced over his shoulder at the man walking away from them, the barkeep who had tried to poison him that night when Duvon had attacked.

  “Harbondair?”

  “Harbondair Tr’arach,” Zaknafein reminded him.

  “He is a good barkeep.”

  “When he isn’t trying to poison his patrons, you mean. Besides, how hard is it to serve this swill?”

  “Yet you trust him enough that you come in here and drink that which he placed before you,” Jarlaxle reasoned.

  “Because he is afraid of me and has no support should he anger me. That will change when Duvon returns, perhaps.”

  “No, it will not. I will not—”

  “I gave you a choice,” Zaknafein interrupted, and lifted his glass to his lips. After a small sip, he stated flatly, “You choose or I will. Or perhaps I’ll just take both.”

  “You forget your place in Bregan D’aerthe.”

  “I forget nothing. You owe me this.”

  Jarlaxle glanced from Zaknafein to Harbondair and back again. He shook his head, but then blew a heavy sigh, tremendous disappointment clear upon his face.

  “It still seems a waste.”

  “With House Ben’Zarafez defeated, Matron Malice will lie low, and so you will find me at your side more often.”

  “If I grant you this, you will need to learn how to properly prepare drinks,” Jarlaxle warned.

  Zaknafein offered no smile at the poor attempt at a joke.

  “Do not kill Duvon,” Jarlaxle flatly ordered, and he rose and left abruptly.

  Zaknafein nodded as he watched the door close behind the departing mercenary leader. Then he went back to his drink, which he knew was not poisoned.

  He remained in the Oozing Myconid throughout the night, sitting, just sitting, with his back against a wall. When all the patrons had departed, he focused his gaze upon Harbondair, who was clearly growing increasingly uncomfortable.

  “Would you like another drink?”

  “No.”

  “Some food, perhaps?”

  “No.”

  “The morning is come,” Harbondair said. “I must take my leave.”

  “Who is stopping you?”

  “Well, I am to lock—”

  “You know who I am; you know who I, who we, serve.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Take your leave.”

  The man moved deliberately, his gaze never leaving the seated Zaknafein until he was through the door.

  Zaknafein lifted and drained his glass—the same one he had been sipping with Jarlaxle hours before. He rose and threw on his piwafwi, then moved to the door.

  A glance left, a glance right, and off he sprinted, up the side of a stalagmite mound, leaping, spinning, somersaulting, to hit the ground in perfect balance and at a full run. At the next bend in the lane, he went up the side of another mound, then backflipped off of it, turning as he soared to land on the roof of a lower structure. Three running strides took him across to a parallel road, and there, without even looking, he leaped and twisted again, dropping lightly to the street, facing back in the direction of the Oozing Myconid.

  Facing Harbondair.

  “Draw your weapons,” Zaknafein told him.

  “I . . .”

  Out came Zaknafein’s swords. “Now! Or I will take my time with your flesh.”

  Harbondair drew out a sword and a long dirk with unsteady hands. “I wish no fight with you,” he said.

  “Truly?” Zaknafein taunted, and he held his swords out wide to either side.

  As he expected, Harbondair took the bait and charged ahead. He stabbed hard, and with surprising accuracy, but Zaknafein seemed to somehow melt away, falling to the side, supported strangely by one turned leg. He came out of the bend with a hop and a somersault, landing facing the man in a low crouch, from which he exploded up and forward, his left-hand blade working furiously in a slap-and-roll movement to take the sword from Harbondair’s grasp and send it flying, his right-hand blade coming under the man’s dirk arm and lifting it up high.

  Zaknafein turned under it, dropped his right-hand blade, and slapped his free hand over Harbondair’s fist. With tremendous strength, the weapon master bent the barkeep’s hand at the wrist, turning it down painfully—so painfully that the dirk fell free.

  And in that instant, Zaknafein jerked the man’s arm up higher, rolled back underneath it, and came face-to-face with the horrified barkeep, his sword coming in across Harbondair’s neck, pinching the tender flesh. With that blade and his free arm, Zaknafein guided the man across the road to slam hard against the side of a building.

  “Please, please,” Harbondair gasped.

  “Do not beg,” Zaknafein told him.

  Harbondair closed his eyes.

  “You poisoned me that night when Duvon first returned to the tavern,” Zaknafein said.

  Harbondair’s eyes popped open wide. “No, no!”

  “Admit it,” Zaknafein said calmly, too calmly, and the barkeep began to slump, and would have fallen over if Zaknafein had not been holding him so tightly.

  Harbondair was fighting back tears, Zaknafein knew. He stared at Zaknafein, trying to slightly shake his head, but carefully, so that his own movements didn’t do the sword’s work.

  “I am a patient man,” Zaknafein whispered.

  “I did,” Harbondair blurted. “Just to slow you. I feared for Duv—”

  Zaknafein pulled him from the wall and slammed him back against it, hard.

  “You poisoned me again this night,
” he said.

  “No!” the barkeep gasped.

  “Why not? Would it not have served your purpose to simply kill me? Or did you fear that you could not?”

  “I would not. I have no call,” the man sputtered.

  “I killed two men who did not deserve to die this night,” Zaknafein explained, his voice going suddenly somber, and truly, it pained the weapon master to even speak of it. “And so . . .”

  He stepped back, retracting his sword as he let go of Harbondair.

  “They didn’t deserve it, but you do,” Zaknafein said.

  Harbondair just stared, frozen by uncertainty.

  Zaknafein shook his head. “But no. I cannot bring them back. For you, then, I grant reprieve, and I’ll not ever threaten you again, barkeep . . . unless you force my hand.”

  Harbondair didn’t move, didn’t even appear to be breathing, and clearly did not trust anything he heard.

  But Zaknafein simply bent over and retrieved his dropped sword, then slid it and the other into their scabbards.

  “Fare well, Harbondair Tr’arach,” he said, and he walked away.

  The ghosts of the dead Ben’Zarafezes followed him through the mostly deserted streets of Menzoberranzan. Soon, behind him, the light of Narbondel just began to hint of the coming day, while before him loomed the city’s West Wall and the compound of House Daermon N’a’shezbaernon, House Do’Urden.

  As he walked those last steps to the lair of Matron Malice, he considered the difference between Jarlaxle and the others, between Bregan D’aerthe and those who followed the edicts of evil Lolth. He remembered the fateful battle with House Tr’arach that century before. He had tried to keep as many of the invaders alive as he could. Harbondair had been one of them!

  This time, though—and in all these new battles in which Zaknafein found himself—he could not hope to offer mercy. To do so would leave witnesses of the aggression of Matron Malice. In their adventures at removing rivals and houses above them in rank, House Do’Urden could take no prisoners.

  Zaknafein had never felt so trapped by the misery of Lolth.

  Perhaps, he thought, that was why he had not killed Harbondair this night. Maybe he just needed to show mercy to someone, anyone, and know that there wasn’t someone directly behind him who would spoil that clemency.

  Even if that meant sparing someone who had once tried to kill him.

  Chapter 17

  Trapped

  “My patience thins,” Matron Soulez told Dab’nay nearly a year to the day after House Do’Urden’s elimination of House Ben’Zarafez. “Matron Malice has been quiet long enough for her to be up to trouble once again, and I would not prefer that.”

  Dab’nay nodded but said nothing. House Do’Urden was nearing the upper echelons in rank now—soon fifteenth, by her calculations—an amazing climb since the addition of Zaknafein a century and a year previous. That number was significant, Dab’nay knew, because in that range, Matron Malice would become an attractive ally for the ruling houses, mostly so that she would choose her conquests to climb higher among her enemies. At the point where House Do’Urden moved into the top fifteen houses, Matron Soulez’s plans for House Do’Urden would become much more complicated.

  “Your gain will be considerable, both in my house and in Jarlaxle’s little gang, when they are both dead,” Matron Soulez added.

  “Not so easy a task,” Dab’nay replied.

  “Oh, this time, it will be,” Soulez replied. “Do your part, priestess, and I will do mine. How blessed will you be to call Soulez Armgo your matron mother?”

  “Blessed beyond my furthest dreams, Matron,” Dab’nay replied, and it was a sincere response.

  She was surprised, then, at how difficult this task was proving to be for her, emotionally. Because it involved something—someone—else she coveted, more than she had ever thought possible.

  The choice was made for her, however. If she didn’t do as Matron Soulez had demanded, Dab’nay held no illusions that she would survive the year.

  “You will watch them,” the withered, ancient Matron Mother Baenre told three of her children. “Closely.”

  “The Armgos?” asked Triel, Matron Mother Baenre’s eldest daughter and the second-oldest child of the great woman, behind only Gromph, and who stood beside Matron Mother Baenre this day, a rarity. “Is that even their name? Are they even considered a singular family?”

  “They are,” Matron Mother Baenre answered curtly, her desiccated lips curling to show her old and worn teeth. When she had been younger, Yvonnel the Eternal, the Matron Mother of House Baenre and of all Menzoberranzan since beyond the memories of the oldest drow, had been considered quite beautiful, on par with Quenthel, her third daughter, who also stood before her. Other elder matrons and priestesses often remarked that Quenthel looked very much like a younger Yvonnel.

  A pity that Quenthel couldn’t think like Yvonnel, Triel often thought, but would not say to anyone other than Gromph. Quenthel was Triel’s closest advisor, mostly because the clever Triel could manipulate her quite easily. Quenthel served as a fine buffer between Triel and two of their other sisters, Bladen’Kerst and Vendes, a pair of the cruelest and most dangerous priestesses in the city.

  “Are they, these Armgos, even given a rank?”

  “Forty-three,” answered Gromph, “though many put it at forty-seven.”

  “And yet there are not fifteen houses in the city who could stand against the legions of House Barrison Del’Armgo and survive,” Matron Mother Baenre added. “Perhaps not ten.”

  “So you would have me watch them?”

  “I would have you—all three of you, and with any support you might need—watch them,” the old matron mother clarified.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Matron Soulez Armgo will move against some powerful house, not in a full war, but to show that she can,” Gromph answered.

  “So intelligent for a man,” Matron Mother Baenre said in open admiration of her son. “Yes, she will.”

  “Matron Malice Do’Urden,” Gromph added.

  “That would be my guess.”

  “And what would you have us do, more than watch?” Triel pressed.

  “It will not be a war,” her mother replied. “It will not be anything of monumental or highly visible scale. Matron Soulez will seek to slow the ambitions of Matron Malice, likely. She is not pleased that House Do’Urden finished off House Ben’Zarafez. Matron Soulez was holding Matron Decliz as her big play. There were even whispers that Matron Decliz Ben’Zarafez would have invited House Barrison Del’Armgo to join with her, instead of simply letting them move beyond the rank of Matron Decliz’s house, as so many others had. And truly, were that the case, would any house lower than House Ben’Zarafez pose a threat to Matron Soulez?”

  To the left of Triel, Quenthel began to nod, while Gromph on her right tried hard to look very bored, as if he had already sorted all of this out long ago.

  “She will go after Malice’s pet weapon master, no doubt,” Triel reasoned. “The one who runs with Bregan D’aerthe.”

  Matron Mother Baenre shrugged, a curious motion from her, and one that had her old shoulders crackling loudly. “Do not be so sure of anything, for that will blind you to anything else.”

  “Yes, my matron mother,” Triel said with a deep and respectful bow. “And you would have us interfere with Matron Soulez’s plans, should we uncover them?”

  “Make it harder for her. Make it cost her.”

  Yvonnel the Eternal waved her three children away, and they went out into the great Baenre compound, moving far from any curious eavesdroppers.

  “It will be the weapon master,” Gromph said when they were alone.

  “To hear you credit me so!” Triel replied, gasping as if she might swoon. “The great archmage!”

  Gromph scowled at her, then at Quenthel when she giggled at Triel’s sarcastic taunt.

  “Matron Soulez Armgo’s most precious toy is not so different from Matron Mal
ice’s,” Gromph explained.

  “Uthegentel,” Triel agreed, nodding. “That beast.”

  “Except that Soulez does not play with her toy as Malice does, by all whispers,” Quenthel added.

  “When you speak of matrons, you title them as such,” Triel scolded. “If Sos’Umptu heard you, she would demand a grueling penance.”

  “Sos’Umptu isn’t here, though, is she?” Quenthel answered. They were speaking of yet another sister, the most devout Lolthian of the lot, and one who was likely to someday lead Arach-Tinilith, the drow academy for priestesses. At the very least. Of all the daughters of Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre, Sos’Umptu was the least seen about the house, and the most knowing and powerful in the ways of Lolth. She was far down in the birth order, but many quietly whispered that she, not Triel, would succeed the Matron Mother.

  “But I might tell her,” Gromph warned, and his expression, that typically bored and angry affect he always wore upon his face, showed that he was not casting idle threats.

  The subject of the conversation reminded Triel in no uncertain terms that she should not take this task lightly. Matron Mother Baenre was testing her here, and to fail would be dire.

  “I will set eyes all about the city,” she told her two co-conspirators. “I will seek word of this weapon master Zaknafein, or anything else concerning the Armgos. We three should speak daily.”

  “My days are filled with duty—important duty to the city and not the house,” Gromph reminded.

  The other two scowled at him.

  “Yes, I know,” he replied to those looks, and he heaved a great sigh. “When the expected incident occurs, my actions alone will determine the outcome.” He sighed again.

  Triel wanted to argue with him, but in truth, she suspected that he was right. Even so, she was the first priestess of House Baenre, the oldest daughter. Not that it mattered for Gromph, for even the youngest daughter outranked him, whatever titles he might don. The archmage’s actions might certainly prove crucial, but they would be directed by Triel, and that was something she was determined never to let her older brother forget.

  “You cannot know truth from lies,” Dab’nay whispered, leaning over the table so that her voice was very soft, but so that Zaknafein surely heard every word.