18
The eastern passage led to a secret door that came out in a tunnel that connected to the storm drains.
It was not terribly useful for luring back victims—even the most besotted individual tended to wonder why you were leading them through a sewer grate—but it was conveniently close to an entrance to the Undercity, and thus to the Guild.
Astarion trusted Dalyria more than some of the other spawn, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to verify her story.
“And if it turns out that this is a trap, my dear Yousen, I will cut you into chunks fine enough to drop through the grate into Violet’s bedroom.”
“It’s not a trap,” Yousen assured him, hurrying to keep pace with Astarion’s longer stride. “I want you to win.”
“Why?”
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The gnome mumbled something.
“I didn’t catch that.”
“Because you’re nicer!”
Astarion’s hand shot out, quick as a striking snake, and picked Yousen up by the collar. “I. Am. Not. Nice,” he said, punctuating each word with a little shake. “Understand?”
“Grg!”
Astarion dropped him in a heap. The gnome rubbed his throat, coughing, and climbed slowly to his feet. “Compared to Violet—” He began coughing and tried again. “At least you leave me alone. If I help you win, at least Violet won’t be a true vampire.” Yousen shuddered at the thought.
“Ah, spite. You should have led with that. Spite I understand.”
Yousen looked up long enough for Astarion to catch a glimpse of wry humor in the gnome’s dark eyes. “I don’t expect you to stop Cazador. I don’t expect anyone to stop Cazador. But it’s hard enough to deal with him and then go back to my room and find she’s found a way to dump caltrops in my bed.”
“If you put your bed under a vent, that will happen.”
“I know, I know. But can you imagine what she’ll do with real power? And you may kick me out of the way sometimes, but Petras just kicks me.”
Astarion made a noise that might have been called a grunt if it were less elegant. They started walking again. The tunnel floor was damp and furred with moss, and water dripped somewhere in the distance.
If he were Yousen, he’d have asked for a lot more. But maybe if you were at the absolute bottom of the heap, the hope of being tormented somewhat less was enough to buy your services. Or maybe he’s planning some kind of elaborate double cross: steal the blood at the last minute, and…and…
And then Violet beats him up and takes it and wins. And I’m pretty sure he knows it.
Astarion was aware that he was, by many measures, an evil man, even if Cazador made him look like a paladin of Tyr by comparison.
One of the things that made him better than Cazador was that he was completely uninterested in tormenting the weak.
I never pulled the wings off flies because it seemed boring.
What would I do with a pile of fly wings, anyway?
He had passionate grudges against Petras and Violet, and elaborate fantasies about what he would do to Cazador someday, many involving sunlight and acid and a slow drip of blood to keep him alive.
Yousen, though, was just…there. He’d never once imagined torturing the gnome.
Honestly, being Yousen seems like torment enough.
Anything more would be gilding the lily.
“So why, exactly, do I need you to get into these tunnels?”
Yousen gave him a quick sidelong glance. “My grandfather was a svirfneblin. A deep gnome.”
“I know what a svirf…one of those is. What does that have to do with it?”
“He used to tell me that he could hear the stone singing.”
A coldly wistful look crossed Yousen’s face.
“Sometimes I could hear it, too, a little. Though not since I was turned.”
The gnome reached out and trailed his fingers along the stones of the wall.
“It all feels dead now, just like everything else.”
“Yes, yes, we’re all in torment,” Astarion said testily. “Wait until you’ve been a spawn for over a hundred years.”
“Does it get better?”
“Not remotely. Although you stop expecting it to, which is worth something. Now, what do singing rocks have to do with blood?”
“I can find the way through the tunnels. Even if I can’t hear them sing, the stones will tell me.”
“I see.” Well, if nothing else, I suppose I can use him as bait. Although now that he thought of it, the gnome was remarkably good at vanishing against walls. Maybe there was something to his affection for stone.
The tunnel ended in a metal door with an iron-barred window. It looked as if the hinges should shriek like banshees, but it moved silently. Two skeleton guards, positioned in wall niches just inside it, watched the pair with empty eye sockets.
“Don’t wait up,” Astarion told them. They did not reply, but then again, they rarely did.
* * *
When Astarion was seventeen, Lady Erikinia announced her intention of going on a journey.
“Your great-great-great-aunt is planning on becoming a lich,” she said, “and I must go and make certain she’s taken care of.”
She patted Astarion’s sleeve with her twiglike fingers.
“I shall likely be gone for a year or more. Wendin, arrange to have young Astarion stay in the townhouse, will you?”
Wendin bowed stiffly from the waist. “Forgive me, My Lady, but the townhouse is being renovated. Something to do with the drains, I believe. May I suggest he stay with Sir Lazlo?”
“Lazlo! That prosy bore.” Lady Erikinia clucked her tongue. “Still, he does live in Silverymoon. It will do until the townhouse is ready. Give your great-grandmother a kiss, lad, and pack your bags.”
Astarion kissed her skull-like cheek dutifully and went to pack his bags, seething with secret excitement. Silverymoon! The city! At last!
* * *
—
Bajia served as his guide and bodyguard on the road. They had been on their way for perhaps thirty minutes when Astarion said quietly, “The townhouse isn’t really being renovated, is it?”
“No,” the human woman said, her eyes straight ahead. “It was sold ten years ago so that we could continue paying the servants.”
“I see.”
It was a crisp fall day, and the air smelled like woodsmoke. Leaves crunched under the horses’ hooves. The breeze that tugged at Astarion’s hair had a hint of chill to it.
“When did you figure it out?” Bajia asked.
Astarion stroked a hand down his mare’s neck.
“It was never any one thing. Just small things adding up. The stable is huge, but there are only four horses in it. Most of the house is closed up and either empty or under dust covers.”
He had picked the locks to those wings and spent many happy hours exploring them, but as he grew older, the oddity of it had occurred to him. “How bad is it?”
Bajia shrugged. Years had passed, but her curls were as dark as ever, and there were no lines at the corners of her tawny eyes. “Bad enough.”
Astarion raised a pale eyebrow and waited. He had never outgrown his desire to impress Bajia—was still, in fact, rather hopelessly in love with her, in a hero-worshipping way—but he had also learned to predict her. She could rarely stand an expectant silence.
His escort heaved a sigh. “The Lady of Silverymoon has decreed that Lady Erikinia be allowed to die in her own home, for services rendered long ago. The manor and the few lands entailed to it are mortgaged to the hilt. The moment that she finally dies, her creditors will descend like jackals.”
A smile twitched the corner of her mouth.
“Though she’s outlived a few of them, the old termagant. No one expected her to last this long.”
“How much does she owe?”
“More than you could earn in a dozen lifetimes.”
Bajia gave him a wry look. “You could slay the oldest dragon in Faer?n, sell every scrap of it from tongue to tail, and drag its hoard to market, and you might cover the interest. For a little while. And that’s just the money. There are creditors who deal in more…complex…matters.”
Astarion, who had indeed been harboring the notion of doing something wild and dashing, hurriedly changed the subject.
“So my tutors…” He still felt a fondness for his speech instructor, who had drilled him until the most discerning courtier would swear that he had been raised as a noble from his first breath.
“Paid in other coin. The dwarf woman’s son was a warlock who bargained badly. Your great-grandmother helped disentangle him from his patron. Your history instructor was glad enough for bed and board. Few historians are wealthy.”
Astarion let the silence grow for a time. “Does Great-Grandmother know?”
Bajia sighed. “Sometimes? She’s not senile. She’s sharp as a tack when she wants to be. But I think she chooses not to know. She would prefer the world to be as it was two hundred years ago, so she simply lives in that world, and the rest of us work around it.”
“The rest of us?”
“Me. Wendin. Now you.”
* * *
—
Astarion’s distant cousin Lazlo was a plump man who had inherited his pointed ears from his Ancunín mother, and very little else.
His office was lined with bookshelves and a whole herd of cows must have been skinned for all the leather-bound volumes that filled them.
He looked at Astarion over his glasses and said, “So, what can you do?”
Astarion bridled at his tone but kept it off his face. If he offended this man, there was a chance he’d be sent back to the manor. He’d seen enough of the city on the ride in to make him vow to be courteous to a cockatrice, if that’s what it took. “Sir?”
Lazlo took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Are you a wizard, a warlock, a druid? Any magical talent at all?”
“Not to my knowledge, sir.”
“A fighter? Good at archery? Prone to berserker fits?”
“I’m good with a rapier—” Bajia cleared her throat, and Astarion amended it to “I’m competent with a rapier, sir. May I ask why?”
“You’ll need some way to make a living when the old lady dies,” Lazlo said bluntly. “There are places in the world where being pretty and well-spoken will keep you fed, but not here in the North.” A sudden thought occurred to him, and he grimaced. “Hells take it, you’re not a bard, are you?”
“No!”
“Thank the gods for small favors.” Lazlo polished his glasses. “So, what can you do?”
“I…err…” Astarion found himself briefly flummoxed.