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If Enver has to hear an aging patriar compose a verbal treatise on something as dull as tariffs one more time, he is going to beat someone to death with his cane. The utter lack of vision, of creativity, of respect for their betters is insulting; they listen to none but themselves, and stuff their ears with cotton when they tire. Worse, perhaps, they insist on adjourning every meeting early when they simply don’t wish to work. Today, it was supposedly because of the bitter cold–-never mind that they were indoors, with a roaring fire and dozens of bustling servants. It is a miracle, he thinks, that anything gets done at all. A miracle which is often, in no small part, orchestrated by his own diligence.
Now that he's outside, he can concede that the weather is abysmal; the biting wind howls around him as he traverses the streets of the Lower City. His winter coat is still black somewhere under the layer of white snow it has accumulated since leaving the meeting. Every structure he passes is alike in that way, trapped beneath ice. At least it hasn’t yet turned to sludge from the city’s filth, even though the snow that crunches underfoot is well on its way to turning road-dust gray.
The way the other counselors talk, it is as if Lathander himself has died or otherwise abandoned them. They scare easily, it seems—it is only winter, although an unusually wicked one. Among the harshest he can recall, though he did miss quite a few. Though this is technically preferable to the Hells, it is still woefully unpleasant. The cold is no friend to the constant, dull ache in his bones. It will remain with him all of his life, a foul reminder of where he began. Of what he has endured.
He will make them see what he is, now. What they so readily doubted.
They will witness his becoming. If he must, he will pry their eyes open himself.
The frigidity does not deter a group of ragged children from wreaking havoc through the streets, undisciplined and wild. A freckled boy with sandy hair, who can be no older than one and ten, tumbles to the icy ground. The Banite expects tears, but the boy sheds none. He laughs, and his rowdy friends—a Tiefling boy, and a human girl—with him.
Enver despises coming down here.
The Chionthar crackles as its waves bash against its icy shell, breaking into millions of smaller pieces. A short ways away from here is scorched land and cursed ground. Decades later, one place in the city remains untouchable to him. It would be best to salt and burn it; it is an obstacle in his bringing the city to heel, one which the Black Hand cannot abide.
Some part of him hopes the cobbler and his wife freeze to death in their shop. Another wishes he could watch whatever cruel fate befalls them. He could, in theory. It should be an easy order to give, but his chest tightens when he thinks of it.
There is a word for such cravenness. Leniency.
He does find himself questioning his own sanity, coming here freely. There is no urgent, plan-ruining matter to address. He only wishes to speak. When he caught wind that Bhaal’s Chosen sometimes lingers in some abandoned house near the water, he was determined to discover exactly where . Call it insurance: with this knowledge, he can keep tabs on her. And visit, if she allows it. Now is a better day for it than most, with his evening freed up. After today’s drudgery, this will be a welcome reprieve.
The streets are uneven and well-worn, like the Lower City buildings themselves. The whole foul slum will need to be razed to the ground, he thinks, in order to usher in the new era. A particularly desolate and clearly empty rowhouse grabs his attention. Its windows are boarded tight, but its door is exposed. Almost inviting, if not for the house’s state of decay. A wisp of dark smoke rises from the crumbling chimney, almost imperceptible amidst the overcast, frosted sky.
Here.
Enver nearly raises his fist to knock out of habit, but stops himself. Frivolous courtesy, he reminds himself. Not unlikely to get him killed. She would surely assume anyone who knocks is a Flaming Fist, here to lecture her about trespassing (of all things, he thinks). That could only end badly for him.
Instead, he pushes the door open and steps inside. Immediately, he is hit with the scent of smoke and blood, which only grows stronger as he proceeds deeper. Dim, dusty light slips in through the cracks in the boarded windows, but it is more a gray haze than an evening glow. The empty, yellowing walls are cracked and water-damaged, lined with barrels and crates. Dark, rotting floorboards creak in protest with each step. He passes a filthy, grime-caked sofa in the first room, buried beneath cobwebs. The sole sign of life is the tiny hearthfire, fizzling orange with fresh kindling.
This house wishes to be forgotten.
It may have been charming, once, in a sad sort of way. The detailing on the doors and window sills is all dark oak, and clearly built with care. Now, it is only fit to function as someone’s storage space. Given the bloody scene he’s walked into, and the stench of fresh death, it is also someone’s tomb.
Ahead, he can see the Bhaalist crouched over what was once a kitchen table, surgical tools in hand. Dappled light illuminates her shape through the boarded kitchen window. In the plainclothes she wears, she could easily blend in with the rest of the city. Hells, with some polishing, she could almost be an Upper City socialite. He tries to imagine it: the heir of murder draped in finery, in silks and furs and gold. He could buy her jewels. Something red and sanguine. Ruby. Garnet. Carnelian.
Red is the only color she seems at home in.
There would be the matter of the blood to attend to, however. It has soaked through sections of her white shirt, likely ruining it entirely. Despite the gracefulness of her movements, she makes no effort to roll up her sleeves. It should be an unnerving sight, finding her like this.
“You’re a difficult woman to track down,” Enver says, supporting himself on the kitchen door frame.
Elbow-deep in a cadaver’s ribcage, Isoldt doesn’t even look up to face him. She’s tied her hair back in a clear attempt to keep it clean. A nice enough thought, but already a failure–plenty of strands have already come loose and dipped themselves in blood. It is especially noticeable where her hair is a white shock, but even the black has garnered a reddish sheen.
“I’m hardly hiding,” Isoldt replies. “I lit a fire and everything.” She gently pries the heart from its place in the chest cavity. When it pops free, she cradles it in both of her hands and carefully lays it on the table, just next to the body.
She is humming a song to herself as she works, but it does not sound like any ballad Enver has heard.
Isoldt is methodical, mechanical as she cuts and saws and examines. Incredibly well-practiced, incredibly delicate with her knives. He is reminded that this, too, is her element. She is no mere butcher, and far more than an assassin. It seems a rare privilege to see her in this state, in some kind of vicious meditation.
“You had no way of knowing I’d come.”
No response. A new tactic, then. He observes the crimson slathers on her skin, some dry, some glistening fresh in the dim light.
“You really should wear gloves.”
Isoldt pauses and shoots him a sharp glare. Just as quickly as it came on, her agitation dissipates once more.
“Of course I didn’t know,” she says, wiping her hands on a ragged towel. “I thought you had Upper City business to attend to, Counselor.”
Her voice is pleasant, informal, even as she pokes fun at his title. Enver shakes his head with a low sigh, tucking his hands into his pockets. He flexes his fingers in an attempt to return some feeling to them. “We wrapped up early. Patriars are already so feeble in the best circumstances. When the weather turns, all they want is to go home and put their feet up.”
“Terrible work ethic,” she tuts.
“Ah, well, you know how they are,” he replies, an easy smile slowly spreading across his face. The levity in her voice is an invitation to stay, for now. He shrugs off his snow-stricken coat and drapes it across an empty crate. “Someone ought to relieve them of all that tedious power.”
“If only.”
Enver casts his gaze at the cadaver and fully processes the scene before him. It is impossible, given the corpse’s current state, to determine exactly how the Bhaalspawn dispatched him. For all he can tell, the unlucky wretch could have still been breathing when she plunged her hands into his stomach. It is vile work—her very best.
He finds himself staring: the dead man is dark-haired, human, roughly middle-aged.
Huh.
“Care to see something?” Isoldt asks. She is watching him watch the corpse, studying him as if he is the one on the table.
“Will I enjoy it?”
“If you aren’t squeamish,” Isoldt replies, beckoning him closer with her stained hands. “If you suddenly were, I’d have to reevaluate some things.”
He steps forward to stare into the dissected body. Sallow-skinned and stiff, its glassy eyes stare blankly at the low ceiling.
“I was thinking about your toy soldiers,” she explains. “And the trouble they’ve been giving you.”
He fights the urge to argue semantics. “The Steel Watch will be worth every measure put into them, when–”
“If you can get them to stand. Look here.” She points to the man’s torso, to the exposed core muscles. “Your metal beasts are heavy on top, but they lack the core to support the weight.”
He can find no obvious flaw in her suggestion, though he is transfixed by the motion of her hands. Her touch is delicate, almost affectionate, as she runs her hands down the lifeless skin. She stops at the hip, tapping her fingers.
“You should probably add more support at the hip sockets, as well, just to be safe.” Isoldt looks him in the eye, almost pensive. “You want to create a new kind of body? Study what we have, first.”
“How long have you been thinking of this?” he asks, placing his hand down next to hers. The carcass is cold, but she gives off some heat. Their fingers nearly touch, though he doesn’t dare close what little gap remains.
“Off and on since you showed me the plans,” she replies.
“You mean since you looked through my private journals without asking.”
She snuck in through the window, he’d gathered. His private study is, at least in theory, under lock and key at all times. All but him are—were—barred from entering. Yet there she was, perched comfortably atop his desk, flipping through his notebooks as if they were novels.
When he found her, he offered her a drink.
Isoldt pulls her hand away to rub the back of her neck. “You didn’t stop me.”
“Yes, well, I certainly prefer to keep my blood inside of my body. And all of my internal organs, unlike your friend here,” he explains, giving the corpse a hearty poke. “When did you kill this one?”
“Just this morning.” She wanders over to the kitchen counter and dips her hands into the washbasin. The sound of her scrubbing underlines the quiet creaking of the house’s beams, the dust-filled stillness in the air.
“My, you’ve been busy.”
“It was hardly any trouble.”
“For you,” he replies flippantly. “It was a world of trouble for him.”
“Compassion doesn’t suit you, Enver.” She is strangely quiet, far off in thought. The splashing pauses while she waits for a response, craning her head to glimpse him over her shoulder. After so much time, it is still a rush to hear her say his name with such familiarity.
He raises both hands, brokering a peace. “A joke.”
A switch flips, and her good humor returns. “I know,” she says. “I know well enough who you are.”
And he knows well enough how she loves to see him squirm.
Isoldt resumes her efforts. Somewhere along the way, she’s become willing to turn her back to him. To leave herself open and exposed. The first time, Enver assumed it was a temporary slip. A one-time mistake. It was not, as it turns out.
“So, what brought you here?"
“Enjoying a winter walk isn’t enough?” He glances at his coat, almost shivering at the mere thought of returning to such bitter cold. She takes notice.
“You aren’t a man of leisure.” Isoldt turns back to him, shaking her hands dry. The blood beneath her nails may well remain another tenday, he thinks, no matter how many times she bathes.
“I wanted to speak with you,” he admits. She leans across the table and returns to her knife, spinning the blade against the rough wood grain.
“We have a meeting tomorrow,” she says, raising an eyebrow ever so slightly. “Is it so urgent?”
“Wholly unrelated, actually.”
Isoldt gives him a look, somewhere halfway between suspicion and a measure of pride. She balances her dagger between the tip of her finger and the table’s surface.
“Go on, then.”
Enver clasps his hands behind his back, flitting his eyes between the dead man and the Bhaalspawn. “Rumors abound regarding Bhaalists, you know. You are one of the Upper City’s most morbid fascinations.”
She nods, laying the knife flat. “It’s part of why our Red Rooms work as well as they do.”
“Certainly.” He steps even closer and examines the heart, but makes no move to touch it. He squints, looking for any sort of flaw and finding none. It is an impeccable organ–the very engine of life itself. “The current question regards Bhaalist dietary habits. Ritual cannibalism, the like.”
“And you’re here to what, exactly? Try your hand at some investigative journalism?” she asks, a bite of acidity in her voice. “Careful. You’ll stain the whole broadsheet black before you can get the news out to your little friends.”
“Assets, my dear, not friends,” he replies. Pawns, not partners. He feels a touch like a Devil trafficking in souls, and twice as clever. “And dull ones, at that. No need to worry about them, this is strictly personal interest. Call it morbid curiosity. A cultural exchange.”
Isoldt only shrugs. “Then I have to disappoint you,” she explains, eyeing him carefully. “You’ve fallen for old Harper stories. They’ll never hire you at the Gazette now.”
He sets his jaw. “Don’t be-”
“My practices are unorthodox.”
Enver realizes that he may have walked into this, but he did walk willingly. “Your practices?” His curiosity piques, and he approaches her with optimistic caution.
She briefly glances at the heart on the table. It is enough to answer a few questions, and reveal a hundred more.
“Ah. I see.”
“It is the most personal way I can make an offering,” she explains. “To nourish myself with death and feast in my Lord’s name. I don’t expect you to understand, but I won’t allow you to interfere.”
It should make no sense. He knows this. Even wicked old Bhaal must have his limits. It should be revolting.
Coming from her, it seems perfectly reasonable.
He is reminded, not for the first time, that she is a piece of a god. She is not meant to be understood by the mundane. She is meant to be feared. Worshiped, even.
Enver needs not remind himself that he is no ordinary man. That they should fear him, too.
“I do understand. Your dedication is admirable, you know.” If misguided. He does not dare say how unfortunate it is that her piety is Bhaal’s and not Bane’s–he has little interest in joining the man on the table.
He refuses to be afraid. Not right now, anyway.
“My faith is everything to me,” she corrects him. Her voice is heavy with sudden unholy fervor, holding memories of a lifetime in service.
He weighs his next words carefully. “Something which I respect. We are allies, if you’ll recall,” he begins. “Perhaps even friends.”
The honeyed words taste bittersweet on his tongue. Friends, yes. He can accept that, and she does not readily recoil from the word. Quite an accomplishment, too: she is a thing of children’s nightmares. Yet he dreams of her.
Isoldt nods, motioning for him to continue. He steps just slightly closer.
“And I would very much like to see how you pray.”
A sharp glint flashes across her eye as she considers. The idea intrigues her, but she does not bend easily. “You don’t have the stomach for it.”
“Try me.”
He can see in her eyes how she considers her choices. Tell him to leave, tell him off, kill him, let him stay, let him watch. Enver knows well that it is an egregious request, to watch her perform the most sacred personal devotion to her unholy father.
The Bhaalspawn looks away from him with a sigh. She drapes one arm diagonally across her chest, firmly digging her fingers into the back of her shoulder.
“I wasn’t going to do this here,” she admits. Her knuckles are white from the pressure. “But if you wish to know, fine. I’ll humor you, if you swear to keep your mouth shut.”
Who would he run and tell, he wonders. His inferiors? The only person worth he'd think to share it with is standing before him, covered in blood.
“You have my word.”
She nods, but she is already far-off, moving as if entranced by some unseen power. The Bhaalspawn closes her eyes, muttering something low and melodic under her breath. When she gathers the heart in her hands, it is truly a holy relic. Her grip on it dances between firm and gentle—too tight and she could crush it. Too light and it could slide from her hands. She chooses where to bite with precision and care, scanning it with her eyes before finally making a selection. Blood drizzles down her neck as she sinks her teeth into the organ-flesh, siphoning what meager life remains in it.
Her hands are a ruin as she drenches them anew. Her arms, too, as it slides down her wrists. She tears it asunder, but not without care. Isoldt holds it as if she could love it, as if it could love her. On her face is the purest distillation of ecstasy he can imagine, a picture of devotion. Enver watches her intently, unblinking. He is mesmerized by how her lips move as she chews, the sweet bob of her throat when she swallows. A kind of feast in itself.
When his eyes finally sting from staring, he blinks away. She catches him just as he does, and her eyes burrow through him. Curious. Hungry, still, for more.
Seizing the moment—or seized by it—she extends an offering to him.
His hands are still aching from his time in the cold as he accepts it. Enver feels her watching as he turns the heart over in his hands. It is stone-still, but warm with the heat of her touch. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine how it might feel beating. Rhythmic. Steady, or steadier than his own. He wonders if Isoldt has ever ripped a heart from a living man’s chest. He wonders if she held it with such care. If she'd thought to share it with someone.
Enver flips his thumb over one of the pulmonary veins, imagining a pulse. Then, he raises the heart to his mouth and bites down, lining his teeth with the imprint she’s left him. He can feel the hot blood spill into his mouth, onto his face, down his neck. The meat is richer than he could have imagined as it coats his tongue, its taste metallic and sharp. It is an old friend.
It tastes like the Hells. No.
It tastes like childhood.
As a boy, the blood in his mouth was only ever his. Spilled freely and hatefully by a closed fist, a belt, a rod. Over and over. He learned to hold it down. He learned to hold everything down. All these years later, the taste should make him retch. Instead, it slakes a dire hunger within him that he previously could not put to name. There is something comforting about it. The taste without the pain is different.
It is power.
Enver swallows it gladly.
Isoldt watches him like a predator, gauging his reaction. She is expecting him to be sick. She is expecting him to be weak, but he does not look away from her, either. He returns the heart, lick-wet and sticky with its own gore, to her care. In the low light, each of their hands are stained much the same: so deep a red it could be black. A near-sacrilege for her. A sign of victory for him.
A promise and command from his Lord. Conquest.
Looking at her and the horror smeared across her face, he is overcome. He feels as much a god as she is.
Isoldt returns to herself, her pale eyes wide as saucers as she takes in the scene. Bhaal’s Chosen, his scion, steps even closer still, and draws a breath.
A bloodied hand comes to lay on his chest. The hand of Bhaal, he understands. More even than the hand of death, it is the hand of dying. Surely she can feel the rapid thrumming just beneath the surface, just out of reach from her monstrous touch.
“Remember this,” she says quietly, as if speaking directly to his drumming heart. He thinks she might dig her nails into his flesh, but she makes no move to claw him. Instead, she taps her forefinger on his breastbone once, twice. “It is not so different.”
There is a tinge of warmth in her voice. Something sweet. Something dangerous. She pulls her hand away and smiles wistfully. Her mouth is the color of murder.
A god, he thinks once again. She has made him a god. We will be gods together.