Chapter Text
The fires of Avernus burned searing light into Wyll’s eyes.
He was used to that by now, of course. There was nowhere in Avernus where one could go to avoid heat or flame or the burning scent of ash in one’s nose. But Wyll did not think it was merely his imagination that the fires burned hotter and brighter here in Zariel’s forge, as he and his friends fought for their lives.
At his right, Karlach’s axe rose and fell as she bellowed her battle cries. On his left, Gale cast spell after spell, some designed to damage their foes, others to protect their small team. And in the middle, Wyll’s blade danced and eldritch blasts flew from his palm. But still the imps kept coming, and behind them he could hear the cackles of cambions, and behind that, an unfamiliar but frightening snarl that he somehow knew was Zariel herself.
He did not see how this particular prayer could possibly be answered, not with the dire straits they were in. But still, he prayed that somehow, the gods would be kind today and they would escape with…
“Wyll? Are you listening?”
Wyll startled and drew a sharp breath—one blessedly free from ash and hellfire. He was, of course, not in Zariel’s forge any longer. He was sitting in the Ravengard dining room, with a full dinner spread in front of him and a glass of wine in his hand. The temperature was comfortable, even verging on cool, for it was early spring outside and the evening still held some of winter’s chill. The only flames in the room, the ones he had been staring into, came from the merrily crackling fire at the other side of the table.
“My apologies, Counselor Florrick,” Wyll said, for he knew his reaction had been too obvious to deny. “I fear my mind was back in Avernus for a moment.”
“Understandable, given what we just asked of you,” the Counselor said easily, waving away Wyll’s lapse in manners. “I know it must be tedious, recounting your stories for these audiences at every function. But the ton have hung on your every word since your return, young Wyll.” Her sharp, intelligent eyes focused on Wyll’s face. “We need that sort of attention if we are to achieve our goal.”
At the other end of the table, Wyll’s father, Duke Ulder Ravengard, nodded and sipped his wine. “The Blade of Frontiers does the Ravengard name credit. I would not ask you to make a spectacle of yourself under ordinary circumstances, my son.” A shadow crossed his face. “But Lord Gortash has made far too much progress in convincing the city’s leaders to invest in his Steel Watch. He claims it is a matter of safety. We must remind them that Baldur’s Gate has heroes ready to defend it.”
Wyll flexed his hand half unconsciously. He knew that, no matter how he tried, he would no longer be able to summon the eldritch blasts and dark gateways from his days as Mizora’s warlock. He did not regret that loss; he had braved Hell itself (or one of the Hells, at any rate) to be free of his patron. But as a fighter, he felt a shadow of his former self.
A hero. He could not say he felt like one. But if his time as the Blade of Frontiers could be of use, he would use it.
“Has Lord Gortash given the city a price tag for his Steel Watch creations?” Wyll asked wryly, sipping his own wine.
“He has not,” Counselor Florrick replied, her tone dry. “He continues to claim that no one can put a price on safety. I take that to mean the cost is extremely high.”
“I believe that is a safe assumption.” Ulder shook his head, a scowl on his serious face. “Enver Gortash is a self-interested social climber. A frivolous man, one not to be taken seriously. But he has the potential to do real damage to our city’s coffers if he gets his way. And he has been making every effort he can to win the city’s most influential voices to his side.”
Counselor Florrick chuckled suddenly. “Did you know he has apparently been making calls to Cerise Towerfell?”
Wyll could not help letting out a loud, genuine laugh at that news. “In the hopes of winning her approval, or of courting her?”
“Courting, it seems,” replied the Counselor. “My housekeeper tells me that the Towerfell housekeeper had to bring in three dozen roses from him the other morning.”
Ulder shifted in his seat uncomfortably. Wyll’s father did not approve of gossip. But Wyll was rather with Florrick on this matter. It would be important to keep track of where Gortash was making his efforts. A few dozen roses could be nearly as good as a bribe, if placed in the right drawing room.
Fortunately, Cerise Towerfell’s was not the right drawing room for such an attempt. Cerise and her daughter Alys had been friends with the Ravengards since Wyll was in his cradle. Many suitors had attempted to catch Cerise’s eye over the years, drawn to both her beauty and her massive fortune, and none had succeeded. Wyll could not imagine that Gortash, of all people, would be the one to turn her head now.
He said as much to Florrick, who nodded her agreement. “With Alys’s name now on the lips of every fortune-hunter in Baldur’s Gate, I imagine Gortash thinks Cerise will be flattered by the attentions of a younger man.” Florrick shook her head. “A foolish notion. Cerise is not the sort to be jealous of her own daughter.”
“And even if Cerise were interested, I cannot imagine Alys tolerating that man as a stepfather.” Wyll smiled fondly at the thought of his old friend, a woman who tended not to mince words when she thought little of someone. During his time away she had grown into one of the ton’s most sought-after heiresses, with a list of suitors even longer than her mother’s. But to him, Alys would always be the solemn teenager with ink-stained hands who read eight-year-old Wyll stories of adventure while the adults talked wine and politics long into the night.
“Perhaps Alys’s popularity might be an asset,” Ulder mused. “If she were to drop word here and there with her suitors that she does not favor Lord Gortash's proposal, and she hinted that they might gain advantage with her by agreeing… ”
Wyll could tell that his father was merely thinking out loud, but he still felt his hackles rise. Alys’s life was her own, and he did not think she would like giving false hope to people whose hands she had no intention of accepting. “Alys has never been one to conceal her opinions. About politics, or about her suitors’ chances of success,” he told his father.
“True, true.” Ulder sighed thoughtfully. “Which brings us back to you, Wyll. You must continue to burnish the Ravengard name. I trust you have the Towerfells’ ball in your diary?”
“I would not miss it,” Wyll promised.
He wished he could say he was looking forward to it. But he had promised himself that he would never lie to his father.
Astarion’s appointment was over an hour late.
As the clock ticked loudly in the background, Astarion had to fight the urge to throw the damned thing against the wall just to watch it shatter. He was not a patient man at the best of times, but really, this was almost enough to put him over the edge. He wanted to storm out, to lock his door and hope that this “lord” found himself waiting abandoned in the hall, but the unfortunate truth was, he needed the money and could not afford to abandon a job that might pay.
He looked over at the small wine rack at the side of his sitting room. It held only two bottles now, bottles he had looted from Cazador Szarr’s wine cellar following his late and unlamented sire’s gruesome demise. They looked quite tempting at the moment.
I should not. They are the only ones left.
But even as he thought that, Astarion stood and reached for a wine opener.
There really wasn’t much point, he thought as he pulled the cork free. Alcohol did not affect vampires the way it affected mortals. At first he had thought this a delightful discovery, the one and only positive change in his ghastly new life under Cazador’s thumb, but he had quickly grown to miss the sensation of being drunk. He could have used a source of numbness and oblivion for the past two hundred years.
But the wine still tasted pleasant on his tongue, dark and rich, and it was a splendid ruby red in the glass. More importantly, it was expensive. A reminder of what life could be like, if he could only secure the right amount of coin.
He took a sip and tried to recall his most pleasant memory: the moment when a fanatical paladin of Lathander had put a mace through Cazador’s skull. He could still recall the sound it made, that sharp, wet thwack. Cazador, he thought, had looked shocked. But only for a moment. Divine magic on a blunt weapon could bring even Cazador low. Rather quickly, too.
But enjoyable as that memory was, there was no denying that Cazador’s death had created more than a few difficulties for Astarion. As one of Cazador’s spawn he had been abused and mistreated, but he’d also had a roof over his head in one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, and Cazador had provided him with the sort of clothes he needed to blend in amongst the city’s richest crowds. Now, however, Astarion needed to pay a landlord for his lodgings, as well as the tailor and cobbler and everyone else who enabled him to look presentable.
He also needed to get the fuck out of this wretched city and start over in someplace where Cazador had never been.
Which meant he needed money. Cazador’s bank accounts had been thinner than they’d all hoped—apparently many of those fine clothes had been secured with threats and magic rather than coin. Astarion’s one-fifth share was certainly not enough to keep him in the style to which he hoped to become accustomed.
A few of his surviving “siblings” had taken a look at their paltry new fortune and decided to continue living in the mansion. But Astarion would rather starve alone in a shack than spend another night in Cazador’s hell-hole, even if he knew his pathetic “inheritance” would stretch further if he did.
Come home, Dal had said to him the last time they’d crossed paths.
Home. An absurd notion. Astarion had had a home once, a lavishly furnished set of rooms that overlooked a running river. Cazador had taken that from him. Home was a concept that lay beyond him now.
Luxury, though… now, that might still have some meaning.
As Astarion took his second sip, a knock came at his door. He had the momentary, petulant thought that he ought to ignore it. His visitor was now seventy-five minutes past the appointed hour, and Astarion did not care for being treated as though he were too unimportant to merit punctuality. But a glance around his half-furnished set of rooms soon changed his mind. This address was just on the edge of respectability, the sort of lodgings that a third son with an unfortunate gambling problem might occupy. And right now, he could not even afford them.
So he stepped to the door and opened it, wine in hand. “Ah. There you are. I was beginning to feel quite forgotten.”
Lord Enver Gortash smirked at him. “Let me in, and quickly,” he said, his voice silky and low. “Not that your building isn’t charming, but I’d prefer not to be seen here.”
Astarion stepped back to admit him. Gortash looked around the apartment with a raised eyebrow. Astarion pretended not to notice. He also did not offer to pour Gortash a glass of wine, even though he noticed the man casting an appreciative eye at the label on the bottle.
“I’ll keep this brief.” Gortash turned to face him and crossed his arms over his black suit. It was, in Astarion’s opinion, an ugly garment, everything about it out of proportion and too pointed in all the wrong places. But he was still learning this generation’s fashion rules. Perhaps he could persuade himself to grow accustomed to such jacket lapels, if the fabric was of sufficient quality. And at least Gortash’s clothing spoke of expensive bad taste.
Gortash’s next words pulled Astarion’s attention from matters of fashion. “I need information. I’m told you can get it for me. Or, rather, I was told Cazador Szarr could get it for me. And then I learned that he had met a most unfortunate end.”
“You’re better off for it,” Astarion said glibly, shoving down all of the hatred he felt every time he heard that cursed fucking name. “He was a difficult sort of fellow. More importantly, he wasn’t the one who did the actual work. He’d take the coin and then send me out to gather his intelligence.”
And oh, how successful he’d been at it. For the past two hundred years, Astarion—and, all right, his “siblings” too—had charmed and threatened and seduced their way into learning most of the important secrets in Baldur’s Gate. They’d had to be careful; if there was any risk of someone noticing a spawn was not aging, they would be pulled off duty for a few decades, reemerging only when those who knew them before were dead or too elderly to be believed. Astarion himself had just returned from a forty-year exile in Cazador’s hovel when his wretched sire had died.
That scheme had secured Cazador enough wealth and power to occupy a mansion, commission ghastly paintings of himself, and eat as many of the lower classes as he liked with few questions. It had also been a life that left Astarion with exactly one skill: luring people into his bed and then selling their most intimate secrets to the highest bidder. Often, the person who bid the highest for a secret was the one who wished it to be kept. Blackmail was a particularly lucrative variety of Cazador’s activities.
“Ulder Ravengard is making my life difficult,” Gortash continued, pulling Astarion’s attention away from the past. “I need a scandal.” He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and slapped them against his left hand, as if thinking. But there was something calculated in the gesture; Astarion got the sense that Gortash had been practicing this on the way over.
“Ravengard himself is incorruptible, the old stick,” Gortash said finally. “But his son—his son, I believe, has things to hide.” He snorted. “How could he not? He vanished for a decade and came home a devil.”
Astarion took another sip of his wine, mostly to hide his expression. “Just so I don’t misunderstand. You want me to ruin the reputation of the Blade of Frontiers?”
He’d noticed the young man, of course. It was hard not to. A crowd of people followed Wyll Ravengard around at every ball Astarion had attended since his return. But Astarion had thought him the sort of person best admired from a distance. His speciality was luring unfaithful husbands or wives into compromising positions. A young unmarried man with many friends but no particular sweetheart was not the kind of person Astarion usually tried to ply his trade with.
Particularly when that young unmarried man told stories of battling goblins and devils and undead. They were probably all lies, of course, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
“Surely you don’t think it’s beyond your abilities?” Gortash arched an eyebrow. He probably thought he was being provoking, that if he issued a challenge Astarion could not refuse it. But Astarion had always been planning to accept the job.
“Of course not. I mean, just look at me,” Astarion said flippantly, gesturing towards his face. It had been centuries since he’d seen it, but he was still rather confident it was a handsome one based on how easily he’d been able to talk his way into various beds. “I’ll learn the man’s secrets, never fear. And if he doesn’t have a scandal in his past I’ll make one in his present.”
Gortash nodded approvingly, his eyes glinting at the possibilities.
“But naturally, it will be a horrendously expensive job.” Astarion paused for effect. “Ten thousand. In advance.”
He did not expect to get ten thousand in advance. He’d be haggled down to eight thousand to be paid at the end of the job. But eight thousand gold would be more than enough to leave this stinking pit of a city and go to Waterdeep. What he’d do in Waterdeep, he did not yet know. But he was quite certain it had to be better than here.
“Hm. I’ll give you five thousand in advance,” Gortash said smoothly. “But if you succeed at bringing the Ravengard name low? Fifteen more at the end.” His mouth twitched in amusement. “A ridiculous sum. But I consider it insurance against being outbid by other parties.”
Only two hundred years of hiding his feelings kept Astarion’s face neutral in that moment. Twenty thousand gold. And all of it mine.
Gods, what I could do with twenty thousand. I’d never have to return to this wretched city again.
“Acceptable,” Astarion agreed, raising his glass. “I look forward to our partnership, my Lord.”
“That is gratifying to hear, Mr. Ancunin.” Gortash’s smug smile could have rivaled Cazador’s. He picked up the bottle of wine and poured himself a glass. “So do I.”