18 #2
He’d learned a great many things in Lady Erikinia’s care, but he wasn’t sure how to turn any of them into a living.
Nine Hells, I am not cut out to be a deportment teacher.
He was very good at arguing and at finding loopholes in any rule applied to him, but he was fairly certain that you couldn’t eat loopholes.
Bajia cleared her throat. “He can read and write a fair hand.”
“Can he, now?” Lazlo looked suddenly interested. “My scribe went off to have a litter of kits. Sit over there at her desk and copy this.” He plunked a piece of parchment in front of Astarion. “Now, come with me, Mistress Bajia, and tell me how the old lady fares…”
They went away, closing the door. Astarion found paper and an inkwell in the desk.
Also a quantity of cat hair, which led him to suspect that Lazlo’s usual scribe was a tabaxi.
He set to work copying the parchment in his best hand.
It seemed to be a proposed amendment to a law regulating… city flowerpots?
Astarion shrugged mentally and bent to his writing.
When he had finished, he rose and went to the office window.
The window overlooked a street that was not terribly impressive by Silverymoon standards, but to Astarion, it was a feast.
Ivy climbed the walls and twined around windows like a lover.
Over the roof of the far building, he could see towers and treetops, thin spires and branching duskwoods.
Even the cobblestoned street was beautiful, the stones set in undulating curves, the walks studded with tiled mosaics for no reason except to be beautiful.
He was here. He was in the city. And it was still full of people: people wearing a thousand colors, in fabrics he had never dreamed of; people with jewelry that dripped from their hair and necks and fingertips; people with painted lips and eyelids and hands.
Smells from nearby food carts promised meats he’d never tasted and spices he’d never imagined.
On the walk to his cousin’s home, they had passed a mural painted on the side of a building—outside!
Where weather could get to it and wear it away, and no one worried about it!
The wealth on display was so extraordinary that Astarion didn’t even register what it was a painting of, merely that it was vast and colorful and luxurious.
And there was something else, too, something he hadn’t noticed as much at seven but which he noticed very much at seventeen.
In that sea of people, there were youths with kohl-darkened eyelashes and women clad in sheer silken veils, slender people who moved with the boneless grace of serpents and curved women with breasts and hips like earth goddesses.
Astarion wanted all of it. He wanted to drown in it—eat everything, drink everything, fuck everything. The city was a banquet, and for years, he hadn’t known that he was starving.
“Finished?” Lazlo asked, coming back into the room.
“Let’s see…hmm. Not bad. Clear and readable. You could stand to space the lines a little closer together—parchment’s not cheap, you know—but serviceable. Very well, I’ll try you as my scribe for now.”
He frowned over his glasses. “It’s hard work, mind you. I’ll expect you to keep the same hours I do. You might be used to lolling around on velvet pillows for the old lady, but here, you work.”
Astarion might have taken offense at his tone, but he dared not risk being sent back to the manor.
So he lifted his chin and said, “I’m willing to work hard, cousin. I know I have a lot of ground to make up.”
(The last bit was even true, although he was thinking about all the exotic foods he hadn’t tasted and the luxuries he hadn’t tried, not to mention all those fascinating people wearing very little clothing.)
Bajia nodded in approval. Lazlo grunted. “You speak well enough, I’ll give you that.”
“Thank you, sir. May I ask a question?”
“Just one?”
“What is it you do, exactly?”
The half-elf’s face cracked in a smile, and Astarion suddenly saw him differently—not as a sarcastic man making light of a country cousin but as a tired one beset by responsibilities, to which another responsibility had just been added.
Lazlo clapped a hand to Astarion’s shoulder. “Why, I study the law, of course.”
* * *
“The entrance is this way,” Yousen said, pointing into the darkness.
“Ah, but first we are going this way,” Astarion said, strolling in the opposite direction.
“We are?” Yousen hurried to catch up with him. “Where are we going?”
“To a very exclusive private club that specializes in, among other things, the buying and selling of unusual information.”
Yousen rolled his eyes. “You can just say it’s the Guild. I’m not going to faint with shock.”
“One certainly hopes not.”
The Thieves’ Guild of Baldur’s Gate was located in the nicer part of the Undercity, which meant that it didn’t smell too much like raw sewage, and the rats were the size of only large rats, not small dogs.
Astarion was aware of eyes on him as they approached the entrance.
He could see at least one watcher, crouched silently on an overhead beam, but there were doubtless others.
None of them seemed hostile; they were simply…
watchful. The guildmaster liked to know who was coming to visit and, furthermore, that her guests would be polite.
That was fine. Astarion was not so lost to reason that he would hunt at the Guildhall.
That would be an excellent way to discover exactly how easily a vampire spawn could be eaten by sharks.
Which reminded him…“Yousen, if you ever come back here without me, these people will kill you. If you even think about hunting here, I will kill you, and I will do so in a remarkably original fashion. Perhaps something involving silver wires inserted under the skin. Do we have an understanding?”
“Completely.”
They stopped at a door in the wall. Astarion slipped his glasses on, straightened his cuffs, and knocked. After a moment, a slot in the door opened, and a gruff voice said, “?‘They’ll be fine’…?”
“?‘We left them trail rations.’ Who comes up with these pass phrases?”
The clunk of a bar being lifted echoed through the narrow corridor. The door swung open. A slim ginger tabaxi sat at a table just past the entryway, playing solitaire. He looked up as they entered, eyes flicking to Yousen, who was trying to hide behind Astarion.
“He is…temporarily…with me,” Astarion said.
“So long as he doesn’t cause problems.”
“If he does, I will solve them myself.”
“See that you do.” The feline slid a book across the table, and Astarion signed it with a flourish. The tabaxi took it back, wrote and guest next to Astarion’s name, returned Yousen’s coin purse, and waved them on.
The main common room of the Guild was quiet this evening, probably because most of the thieves were at work under cover of darkness.
Oil lamps provided a smooth golden light, and incense chased away the faint odor from the sewers below.
It was better lit than many pubs Astarion had been to, and arguably safer.
You did not start shit in the Guildhall unless you wanted to be dangled headfirst over raw sewage while Nine-Fingers cleaned her remaining fingernails with a knife and spoke at some length about the perils of antisocial behavior.
The bar near the entrance was polished oak, gone mellow with age. The bartender gave Astarion a nod, lamplight gleaming off his tusks. A game of cards was going on in one corner, but the players had the quiet, focused air of serious gamblers.
The Guild functionary keeping an eye on the place gave Astarion a nod.
Since she was a minotaur, her nods were a rather impressive production.
Minotaurs came from the Underdark and tended to be brutal, bestial, and male, but in the Guild, you didn’t ask where someone came from, and they extended you the same courtesy.
“Haven’t seen you for a bit,” the minotaur said in a distinctly feminine baritone.