Erin Evans - Lesser Evils

He looked at the letter on top of the stack and sighed. His mother’s neat writing had the delicate slant of wheat stalks in a breeze off the distant Dragon Reach. To have reached him here in Waterdeep, her letters had to have made a long and tortuous journey down into Harrowdale, across the Sea of Fallen Stars to the overland routes from Westgate up to the City of Splendors. And yet every month, another letter came, full of news that wasn’t noteworthy anywhere but at his parents’ small farm in the northern Dalelands-whose daughter had married and whose sheep had lambed, whose crops had come in best and whose children had gone off to other Dales, and farther afield.

It was a world Dahl had left behind a decade ago. And while the litany of his parents’ lives called up something primal in his heart, in his thoughts he marveled at how alien and unfamiliar those concerns were. He didn’t belong in Harrowdale, even if he didn’t belong to Oghma either.

His mother knew he wasn’t meant for the Dalelands. He suspected that she’d always known. She did not ask why he had left Procampur so suddenly, she never asked him to come home. She just closed every letter in the same fashion.

We love and miss you , she wrote, and hope the world treats you well .

Dahl folded up the papers and gulped down enough of the ale to quash the swell of homesickness that rose up in him. He’d write her back later. Tomorrow.

The taproom was still all but empty, and Dahl found himself reconsidering each patron, in case one was the elusive Tam Zawad.

“ ‘The Shepherd,’ we used to call him,” the spymaster, Aron Vishter, had said. “Priest of Selune, but don’t let that fool you. Might have the peace about him, but he was quite the blade when he was a lad. Middle-aged, Calishite. Thinner than you, but about as tall. Got a beard. You won’t miss him.”

Dahl doubted that either of the heavyset men in the corner, decked in lush fabrics, was this “Shepherd.” The other man was too old, and the last three patrons, playing a hand of cards in the corner, were very much female. He sighed and drank some more ale.

The door swung open again, letting in a flash of late afternoon sunlight and two young women.

No, not women. Tieflings.

Dahl tensed. Descendants of fiends and mortals, tieflings were one thing that never came up in his mother’s letters. Dahl hadn’t seen one of the horned, blank-eyed creatures until long after he’d left home. Even in Waterdeep, where you could find everything, one had to go looking for tieflings.

Just as well, Dahl thought, keeping his eyes on the two. That fiendish blood didn’t just wash itself away after all. Perhaps this wasn’t the best place to meet Tam.

The tieflings looked like mirrors of one another. Twins perhaps, or maybe it was just that they weren’t human. Maybe that was what all female tieflings looked like. One stood with her arms folded around a battered glaive, her long tail slashing the floor behind her and her gold eyes fixed on the door to the inn’s rooms. The other scanned the taproom as if searching for someone. When she came to him, Dahl met her gaze-one eye silver, one gold like the other’s-and she turned away with a blush.

“He’s not here,” he heard her say to the other. “We should wait.”

“Fine,” the gold-eyed one said. “Whiskey time.” She laid the glaive on the floor along the bar, pulled out one of the stools, and hopped onto it, signaling to the tavernkeeper. Her twin settled in beside her. “If he isn’t here,” the gold-eyed one said, “then we can-”

“Do exactly what Mehen told us,” the odd-eyed one said more firmly. “A whiskey is one thing. If he comes back and finds out you’ve run off or spent a load of coin or …” She waved a hand vaguely at the taproom. “Started a brawl-”

“I don’t start brawls.” The gold-eyed one grinned wickedly, displaying sharp white canines. “But I’d finish them.”

Her twin snickered. “That’s not better. Get me a cup of hot water, would you?” She bent down to pull a small pouch from her bag while her sister spoke to the tavernkeeper. As she righted, she glanced up at Dahl again, and this time he looked away. Not that he ought to have. He could look where he liked, after all.

“Of course it’s better. I’d win .”

“And spend all the bounty repairing the taproom.”

“So you say. Anyway, I never said I was going to start a brawl. I just think we ought to take the opportunity to have some fun. Maybe we could go back to the market. Try on some nicer cloaks. Mehen can’t argue with that.” She drummed her fingers against the bar top. “We’re going to be in this inn for ages anyway. Why start too soon?”

Dahl kept watching them from the corner of his eye. Whoever they were waiting for-whoever that “Mehen” was-the tieflings didn’t seem dangerous. In fact, they seemed a little foolish to his mind-cloaks and whiskey and arguing about brawling. But who hadn’t heard the saying? One’s a curiosity, two’s a conspiracy, three’s a curse.

“If we don’t do anything Mehen can call trouble,” the odd-eyed one said as the keghand set a small cup in front of her sister and a steaming mug in front of her, “then he has to relax a little.” She dropped a fat pinch of herbs into the water.

The other snorted. “Right. Tell me how that goes.” She sniffed at her sister’s tea. “How is that? Does it do anything interesting?”

The odd-eyed one shrugged. “Makes my sleep a little quieter for part of the night and tastes like old roots. Three pinches together knocks me out. You’re better off with whiskey.” She looked up at Dahl and narrowed her eyes. “Can we help you with something?” she said sharply.

“No,” he said, but he didn’t look away. She should know he was watching.

“ Gods ,” the other said. “Are you listening to yourself? This is probably how you attract such creepers. One fellow-one good-looking fellow! — in this whole taproom is giving you notice, and you jump down his throat.” She grinned at Dahl. “Excuse my sister. She’s better at worrying than enjoying herself, but she’s in the market for a good tutor.” Her sister turned scarlet and hissed something in an unfamiliar tongue.

“I think I’ll decline,” Dahl said coldly.

“No one invited you,” the blushing sister snapped.

The door opened again to admit a wiry-looking Calishite man, his brown skin crinkled around the eyes and his dark curls threaded silver. He looked exhausted and ferociously annoyed, but he was also wearing a small, unobtrusive broach-pinned from the inside of his cloak.

A Harper, Dahl thought. Here was the elusive Shepherd.

He slid the parchments back into his jerkin and started to stand. But Tam Zawad had spotted the tiefling twins and stopped in his tracks.

“Farideh?” he said. “Havilar? You’re supposed to be-”

The odd-eyed one-Farideh-cut him off. “Here,” she said curtly, shoving a folded scrap of parchment at him. “Mehen went to Suzail.

The prices went up on the portal, so he wants you to watch us.”

Tam looked at the paper as if she’d shoved a dead fish into his hand. “What?”

“He’ll be back tomorrow,” Farideh said. “Maybe in a few days.”

“I don’t have time to …” He unfolded the paper and skimmed it. “What do you need watching for?”

“We don’t,” Farideh said.

“So pretend to watch us,” the gold-eyed one-Havilar, Dahl supposed-said. “And we’ll pretend you were terribly strict and never let us out of sight. Mehen will be pleased, we’ll be pleased-”

“And you can go on doing whatever you were planning to do,” Farideh finished.