Erik de Bie: Downshadow

"You're sweet," she said. "But with that much poison in you, you won't even be wakeful but for a few more heartbeats-and your heart will stop in a ten-count. Hardly time for-"

He started to rise. He came away from the needles, leaking trickles of blood, and rose before her like a black specter. She saw, in the folds of his stained gray cloak, the edge of a watchsword, which he drew into his bare left hand.

"There's-there's no way you could fight off that poison," said Fayne. "Unless-"

"Unless I managed to restrain myself"-he rose fully to his feet and kicked the table aside-"took Rath to the Watch instead of killing him"-with a flick of his wrist, he laid the watchsword across her throat-"and retained the favor of my three-faced god."

And thus speaking, Kalen began to glow with silver-white light, as though his skin itself was aflame, as though a deity had chosen that moment to smile upon him-and gaze through him. In the face of that divine radiance, the other patrons stared, transfixed.

"Well." Fayne trembled a little bit, then smiled. "Well played, Kalen-you really are a cold-hearted bastard." Her eyes flicked down to the steel he held at her throat, then up to him. "And you saved your soul to spend on me? I'm flattered."

He looked at her impassively.

She smiled bewitchingly. "I've waited many years for someone as clever as you-a foe who could defeat me. I'm glad he was so handsome, too."

Kalen's eyes were cold.

"Come now, lover-don't you want me?" She stepped forward, letting his blade cut a tiny red trail along her throat. She purred. "Don't you want to hurt me? I've hurt you, haven't I-killed your little sister and chased off your blue-haired tart?"

Her face was almost against his. Only the sword, keen enough to slit her throat with a twitch of Kalen's arm-one false step-stopped her from kissing him.

"When you think about that," Fayne said, "when you look at me-you don't have even just a little hate in your heart?" She tapped Kalen's chest. "That big, strong, dying heart?"

Kalen tightened his hand on the sword hilt.

He shoved her back. She fell to the floor and looked up at him, eyes and hair wild, sneering as he stepped forward. Her heart was pounding and she knew this was the end.

"No," he said. He sheathed the sword at his hip and turned his gaze aside.

Fayne trembled. She didn't dare move-he could whirl and open her throat at any instant. But he just stood, silent and still. Death might as well have taken him as he stood-his sickness crept up and slain him. She panted on the floor behind him, blood trickling down her heaving chest from the wound she had inflicted on herself.

Fayne rose. She dusted her leathers and smoothed her hair.

"Well, then-farewell, Kalen, though I don't expect you will." She winked. "Cellica's dead, Myrin has undoubtedly left, and you just pushed away the only other woman who could have made you happy. But I suppose you'll always have the memories."

She started to walk away.

"Fayne," Kalen commanded. "One last question." She turned. His back was to her. "Yes, lover mine?" "What's your real name?" She pursed her lips. "I told you, it's-"

He whirled and smashed her nose with a left hook. She landed on her backside, dazed and dizzy and coughing.

"Just because I don't hate you," Kalen said, "doesn't mean I'm letting you go."

Fayne tried to retort, but her face exploded in pain.

Kalen pulled a set of manacles out of his belt. "You and Rath might just share a cell," he said. "Perhaps you'll have a nice conversation about how you betrayed him-but I doubt it."

Fayne only moaned on the floor, clutching her bloody face.

"No clever quip?" Kalen sheathed his sword. "Fayne, I'm crushed."

Drizzling blood from her broken nose, she smiled up at him with surprisingly sharp incisors. Her eyes drifted up his frame, lingering in places.

"I've had better, you know," she said.

Kalen smiled. "So have I."

Fayne hadn't stopped smiling all day. She'd smiled silently when the Watch stripped her of her possessions, including her mother's wand and her ritual amulet, crippling her magic. She'd pressed herself hard against each of them in turn, inviting with her eyes, but none of them had taken her offer. Pity.

She'd smiled silently when they asked for her name-then again when the stuffed peacock from the Watchful Order of Magists had threatened to call the Blackstaff to interrogate her personally. He didn't realize that the red-haired half-elf was a false face, though, so he had not tried to break her transmutation. Thank Beshaba for small blessings.

She'd smiled silently, regardless of how much it hurt, when the gray-faced priest of Ilmater set and bandaged her broken nose. She did lick his hand once, because it amused her. She loved the look in his eyes-desire warring wirh faith.

The Watchmen, the mage, and the priest probably got the impression she was laughing at them, but that wasn't true. Granted, she had not the slightest esteem for the Watch, but today, she felt like laughing only at herself.

Only after they led her into her cell, dressed in her blood-spattered doublet and breeches, and after the door had slid shut behind her, did she finally give voice to the laugh that had been building inside her. It was all so amusing. She was the one, after all, who had trusred a paladin.

She laughed loud and long for quite a while, until the other prisoners-cutpurses and swindlers, hungover nobles and the likeslapped the bars, trying to get her to be silent. But it was just so funny, this whole ludicrous situation, and she was the lead comedienne.

"Oh, Ellyne, Ellyne," she mused. "You're such a gods-tumbled fool! Such a. fool!"

The Watchman on duty thought she was simply mad, and he made the mistake of asking her to be silent. That man-a bulbous-nosed fellow of thirty winters or so-became the target of her lewdest and sharpest barbs. She threw herself into her mockery with a passion, pantomiming the jests and prompting more than a few cheeks around the prison to redden.

For she was Fayne, the Trickster of Waterdeep, and who would she be if she weren't the center of attention?

The Watchman gave up and stopped paying attention to her after a while, and she turned to tease her fellow deviants. Rath dwelt among the prisoners, sitting silently-mostly wrapped in bandages-in the cell opposite hers. He said nothing, no matter how she teased him.

After an unsuccessful hour of teasing anyone and everyone, Fayne grew bored. And thirsty, too. Not for the pond-scum water they'd given her-which she'd emptied on the guard's head-but for good brandy. Enough to make her face stop hurting.

Another hour passed. Having run out of breath to voice her japes and too proud to beg outright for attention, she contented herself with fuming at times, weeping at others.

Then, in the space of a heartbeat, all went silent.

Her sensitive ears could no longer hear the quiet murmur of the Watchmen at the front of the prison. She looked around, and her fellow prisoners all seemed asleep-or dead. Her heart started racing. What had happened?

"Aye!" she called. "Water, sirs! Please, goodsirs?"

No response.

The door swung open at the end of the hall, quiet and calm as soft death, and her heart almost froze. What was coming for her?

She sensed a presence-someone standing not a pace away from her at the door-and she shrieked and fell to the floor. She scrambled backward on her hands and feet and cowered against the wall.

Then came laughter.

"Mercy, child," a familiar voice said out of the air. "You are just like your mother."

A figure materialized before her, invisibility fading around it.

Relief flooded Fayne when she recognized her rescuer. "Gods," she said. "Did you leave me here long enough?"