23
In the end, Astarion was fairly certain that the only reason den Suriel agreed to move was because the paladin wasn’t willing to let him walk away by himself.
He waited until den Suriel had picked his way through the collapsed wall beside the ward, then turned away.
He could feel those pale eyes boring into the back of his neck as they hurried down the twisting corridors.
At last, he found a secluded chamber half hidden by a rockfall and beckoned den Suriel into it.
The paladin took up a position by the entryway, picked up a small piece of stone, and murmured a single word.
It began to glow with soft white light. He tossed it into the center of the chamber, where it fell at Astarion’s feet.
Vampire spawn and knight studied each other in silence.
Without the sickly green illumination of the cavern, the aasimar’s skin was even more golden than Astarion had expected, with coppery undertones like no elf or human Astarion had ever met.
The scattering of marks across his cheekbones gleamed like metal.
He did not comment on Astarion’s eyes. Perhaps when yours were a blank white, you learned not to judge.
Now, how to play this? In more than a hundred years, he’d never had to charm a victim who knew he was undead. Normally, a paladin would be easy—tell them you saw someone kick a puppy in the park, and you’d have to run to keep up. But in the absence of a puppy…
Inspiration struck. Astarion wanted to crow with delight but kept his features somber. “I don’t know about you,” he said, sitting down, “but I am exhausted.”
Den Suriel remained standing long enough for Astarion to wonder if the man was simply unwilling to show any similarity to a vampire spawn, but at last he dropped to his knees.
His unsheathed sword lay across his lap in a distinctly unsubtle warning.
“Well. Now I see why laying on hands didn’t work. More the fool me.”
The bitterness in his voice seemed to be for both of them. “You said there might be a way.”
“There might be. I don’t pretend to know the minds of your gods, of course.”
Before he could go on, the paladin lifted a hand to stop him. “Wait.”
“Oh?”
The aasimar put his free hand to his holy symbol and murmured something. A wave of cool air washed over Astarion, and a lump seemed to lodge briefly in his throat.
“What was that?”
The paladin’s smile was not entirely pleasant. “What’s your name?”
“Petra…Pet…Astarion Ancunín. Oh Hells.” Astarion rubbed his throat. “You did the thing, didn’t you?”
“If by ‘the thing,’ you mean cast a spell of truth over the room, yes.” Den Suriel considered him. “You look more like an Astarion than a Petras. Why did you lie to me?”
“I usually give that name if I’m suspected of doing something illegal.” Astarion could feel the words because I don’t like him on the back of his tongue and clamped his mouth shut.
“Who is your master?”
He tried to sidestep this one, picturing what the old man would do to him. “Telling you could be very dangerous for me if my master found out.” That was certainly true.
Den Suriel frowned, but he didn’t press the matter. “What lies have you told me?”
Astarion actually had to think. Apparently, the spell did not include sudden knowledge. “My name. The bird that eats hedgehogs. The reason I climbed that wall.”
“Ah. I abjured you, did I?”
“Yes, and it was extremely unpleasant.” The magic didn’t compel the last part; he just felt like adding it.
“Do you plan to kill me?”
“Not at the moment.” When den Suriel’s eyes narrowed, Astarion spread his hands.
“I can’t say I wouldn’t try to kill you in self-defense, but I have no immediate plans to do so. You’re far more useful to me alive.”
He paused, then added, “Besides, you’re far too good-looking to be murdered on a whim. I don’t smash priceless vases or burn exquisite paintings, either.”
When the aasimar flushed, his skin acquired a deeper copper tone. He cleared his throat several times. “Did you become a vampire willingly?”
Astarion’s bark of laughter was too loud in the enclosed space.
“Trust me, I had no ambitions of becoming a vampire’s spawn. Some bastards beat me to death in an alley, and as I was bleeding out, someone showed up and offered to help me.”
He didn’t know how much truth the magic required, but his anger was no lie.
“The next thing I knew, I was clawing my way out of a coffin, in thrall to a sadistic bastard who could bring me to my knees with a thought. I didn’t choose this. No one would choose this if they knew what it was like.”
“Then I pity you.” The aasimar drew himself up. “But I would kill myself rather than live such a life.”
“Do you think I haven’t tried?”
Astarion’s cry rang off the stone walls and woke echoes that skittered mockingly in his ears.
Den Suriel stared at him. The aasimar’s eyes might be impossible to read, but the tiny muscles of his eyelids were the same as any other man’s.
Astarion watched his astonishment twist slowly into horror. “Your master prevents you?”
“Of course he does. He’s spent over a hundred years breaking me. Why waste that?”
All the best lies were true. Astarion saw the exact moment that the paladin’s loathing was subsumed by sympathy. Be the kicked puppy you want to see in the world…
“I’m sorry,” den Suriel said quietly. “I did not know.”
“No reason you should.”
“Is it…do you wish me, then, to release you from your bondage? That would lie within the terms of my oath to the Order.”
Astarion’s breath caught in a laugh that made his ribs ache. “No. No, I am afraid that I want to live, no matter how inconvenient it may be.”
“But if the vampire lord torments you so…”
“That’s why I want to live. It’s been a very long time now. If I simply drop dead, what was the point of all that agony?”
He shook his head. “For a decade or two, yes. I only wanted it to stop. But it never did. Now I want to outlive the miserable old bastard.”
He drew a meaningless pattern in the dust with a fingertip, then wiped it away.
“Don’t you see? If I die now, then everything I’ve endured for the last hundred and fifty-odd years was wasted. I might as well have died in that alley. But if I live…”
He spread his hands. “He can’t last forever. And you’d be amazed at how long spite can sustain me.”
“It appears we are trapped, then.” The paladin laughed again, soft and bitter.
“I’ve been trapped for many, many years. You get used to it.”
“My oath is not the same as being a vampire’s spawn.”
“Perhaps not, but from where I am sitting, the difference is currently negligible.” He waited long enough that he heard the paladin’s teeth grinding, then added, “May I offer a suggestion?”
“Go ahead,” den Suriel said warily.
“You aren’t technically an oathbreaker until you allow me to walk free, correct?”
At den Suriel’s nod, Astarion smiled again.
The old feeling was coming back to him, the rush of prying a rule apart so that he could sidle through it.
It had been a very long time. “So don’t. Keep me in your sight at all times. We are allies until we’ve escaped and the blood has been acquired.”
He held up his empty hands. “I don’t have the blood. Do you?”
The paladin narrowed his eyes. “You know I don’t.”
“Once we have that vial, we’ll no longer be allies, and you can kill me with a clean conscience.”
Den Suriel tilted his head. “And you’ll just stand there and let me?”
“No, of course not. I imagine it will be…” The truth spell let him choose his words, at least. He settled on “…interesting. But as long as you plan to kill me, you haven’t broken your oath, have you?”
The paladin shook his head slowly. “I do not think the gods are impressed by legal trickery.”
Astarion, for whom the law might best be described as a series of loosely connected loopholes, shrugged. “You’d find out soon enough, wouldn’t you?”
“Hmm.”
The aasimar’s eyes bored into him. Astarion feigned nonchalance.
“Of course, if you let me live, I suppose there’s a chance you could track me back to my master’s lair. That place where he sleeps during the day. Helpless.”
Was that obvious enough? He is a paladin.
They think subtlety is a type of pastry.
He wondered how pleased Cazador would be if he served up both the blood of a god and a live aasimar paladin, then hastily buried the thought before the truth spell could force him to blurt it out.
Den Suriel gazed at him for long enough that Astarion began to worry he needed to draw a diagram. Then the other man nodded slowly. “What happens to you if this vampire is slain?”
“I remain a spawn, but one in control of his own mind. Not the ideal circumstance, perhaps, but better than my life now.”
“I would still be bound to kill you.”
“Yes. But before that happens, you might die, or I might die, or illithids might invade, or the sky might fall.”
The paladin was silent, clearly weighing his options. Perhaps it was time to give him a little nudge. Astarion let his tongue drift across his lower lip. The aasimar’s eyes riveted on the motion. “Don’t you want to kill me?” Astarion asked.
The paladin flushed and looked away. “Believe me,” he said in that low golden gravel voice, “there is nothing I want mo…mm…” He choked then, as if the words were being dragged out of him: “Killing you feels like such a goddamn waste.”
“Oh.” Astarion cocked his head. “Oh, I see. The spell works on you, too.”
“It does, yes.”
“So, just how attractive do you find me, Hahn den Suriel?” He let himself linger on the syllables of the man’s name, drawing them out like a caress.
“I shouldn’t find a vampire attractive.”
“That wasn’t the question I asked.”
“It’s as much of an answer as you’re getting.”
Astarion laughed out loud. He bounced to his feet. “Come on, then. You help me steal the blood of a god, and then you get to take a stab at killing me…and who knows what else might happen in between?”
A thought clearly struck the paladin then, and he gazed up at Astarion with narrowed eyes.
“Perhaps it would be better to break my oath than to deliver the blood of a living god to a vampire lord.”
His voice was acquiring that ringing timbre again.
“Who knows what evil your master intends to commit with it?”