1:5 Euphemisms, rich men, and other wicked things.

Mi'ishaen doesn't care to tell this part of the story, for reasons that will very soon become clear.  I try not to enjoy it too much, for her sake.

Apparently, she had always been a very early riser.  Your handmaiden has never been likewise blessed.

The ancient witch woman of dawn had hardly reached her bloody fingers into the sky before I heard Mi'ishaen begin to shuffle around.  Although I was still tired, I made sure to get up and gather all my weapons and findings together, so that I could go with her.  Since there wasn't a door to open any longer, it wasn't difficult for us not to make any noise as we left the abandoned home.  

The windows of the dirty stone buildings all around were still dark, without a soul moving to even draw water or light a hearth within them.  In the streets, a half-naked beggar snored, and a few weary women prepared themselves and their children for a hard day's labor in someone's field or kitchen.  I was hardly conscious at all, and moved nearly automatically toward the water barrel that the women were using to wash their children's faces.  Mi'ishaen stopped me with a single hand laid on my upper arm, which thrilled and scared me at once.  

"I'm not an entertainer," she quietly explained.  "People see a Tiefling woman in armor, they don't wonder what tricks I do.  Better they just not see me."

I had grown used to being stared at, since I was usually the first of my kind that common people saw, but had no idea what those same common people might think of Tieflings.  Before meeting Mi'ishaen, I had only heard tales of her demon-touched race, and they had been so fantastic that I'd dismissed them as false.  Thinking of this, I felt alarmingly ignorant, and couldn't manage to make any answer to her at all.  Thankfully, she turned and moved along without waiting for a verbal response.

I recognized the road she was taking out of the town as the one I'd traveled not long before, behind entirely different people, for an entirely different reason.  Half-awake and hustling, my head bowed, my imagination replayed the shouts of those people again- the crimes of which they had accused him.  The curses they had hurled at him.  That morning, each bloodcurdling shriek and harrowed cry had filled my heart with a horrible delight.

I bumped into Mi'ishaen's back when she stopped suddenly.  Being well-trained, I didn't allow myself to even think to look up to see what was the matter.

"There's a miscreant about," a gruff female voice said.  "A guard went missing last night, and many of the traveling merchants are complaining of having been robbed."

"I myself was robbed not two days gone," Mi'ishaen replied, the strains of practiced humility in her voice.  "I thought it best not to bring it to anyone's attention.  Well you must know what others might suspect."

"Well, you're not doing yourself any favors, walking around with a slave cowed behind you like that.  I see you've evolved beyond using chains or binding spells, but consider allowing her to at least lift her head like a free woman," the voice replied.  "Most places, slavery's illegal... Bhairoset included."

Mi'ishaen paused, but only briefly.  "I thank m'lady very kindly.  Surely I would do well to heed your advice."  She turned to me slowly, and I picked up my head ever so slightly, to acknowledge the fact that she had turned her gaze upon me.  It didn't occur to me to simply lift my gaze to meet hers, so I was outright shocked when she put a firm first knuckle under my chin to lift my head for me.  I caught my breath, ripped from my passive acceptance of the conversation and presented with the threat of having to participate in it.  I was overwhelmingly relieved Mi'ishaen turned back around smoothly, and fought hard to keep my feelings away from my face.

"A little better," the guard noted.  I realized with a nervous tremor that she was a Dragonborn.  The tales of the war between those races, in bloody, terrifying glory, had even burrowed down to the Shadowfell.  Since I'd seen with my own eyes that Tieflings were just as real as Dragonborn, I had to accept the idea that the battles I'd heard of weren't wicked stories meant to scare my sisters and I.  Also, having fought Mi'ishaen so recently, I knew that simple scale and government-sanctioned armor would be little match for even a second's worth of actual anger.  When she had just met me, she had wielded her blade as though we were the bitterest of enemies.  And my heart, for some reason, had thrilled within me as though it had been enchanted.  Just the remembering of the first time she challenged me made it beat faster.

"May I pass?" Mi'ishaen asked, her tone respectful and light.  I wondered if she was smiling that brimstone smile with which she had told me of her grief for her mother, then felt a bit embarrassed for being so hopeful about it.

"Of course; I mean you no harm," the guard replied grandly, as though she were doing Mi'ishaen some great favor.  "Beware the gallows; the last batch of wretches to feel Bhairoset's justice have not yet been cleared from them."

"I shall mind them," Mi'ishaen replied, moving off at a steady pace.

We both remained quiet for a time after that, as the sky grew more red and orange with each passing moment.  By the time the sun had fully risen, I could see Bhairoset's "gallows," which seemed inconvenient, since they all had more leaves than hanging space.  In front of one stately trunk, I sat down in the middle of the street and looked up at the bloated, bruised body that swung above.

"This one?" Mi'ishaen asked as she turned to look at me, bewildered.  "Is this one your best friend?"

"He was," I replied happily.  "But now it's over.  I will be forever grateful to the peasant who accused him."

Mi'ishaen looked at the body carefully from her distance, seeming to want to tattoo the image of the shame in her mind.  "What was he doing?"

"Nothing but his custom," I replied.  "Unfortunately for him, his custom was flagrantly illegal here.  He was a master of arcana.  His family was powerful, and rich, so he was spoiled and full of self-styled wit.  He could have helped so many, both before and after he left the Shadowfell.  But he didn't care to.  He just manipulated people into buying false potions, or poorly enchanted items, or spells that were nothing but gibbledygabble.  When he thought the populace wasn't deserving of his 'arts,' he'd stand me in the center of town and have me dance while he burned my clothes off with spells.  He liked it when people applauded him- it never mattered why."

"Wait a minute," Mi'ishaen said, her tone deepening considerably.  "You're saying he cast actual, dangerous fire spells at you?  Not just prestidigitation foolery?"

I looked at her momentarily, and continued when I realized that her anger wasn't for me. 

"He said those wouldn't draw the crowds.  I've survived offensive fire spells by the hundreds; been singed and outright burned more times than I can count.  That's not what he was hung for, though- he tried to market a false love spell to a farmer's wife here who knew more about the ancient magics than he did.  Not wanting to be exposed as a fraud, he tried to petrify her."  I snickered at the memory of the wrinkled woman's face when he'd spoken his magic words.  "He either misspoke or miscalculated- I'm not sure which- but she corrected him as gently as if she were his mother, then properly cast the spell herself.  He went stone solid with this, 'How dare you' look on his face.  She told the guard that he'd tried to kill her, and they promptly forced him out here and hung him.  No trial, but plenty of people came to watch him swing."

Mi'ishaen looked at the body again, a slow and sour recognition crossing her face.

"May we never meet another such friend.  They won't survive me."

"I will believe it," I replied, getting up to shuffle myself behind her.

"And don't skulk around as though I were going to- befriend you.  No."  She turned and began walking again, leaving me bewildered and rather confused.  "If you're coming with me, then you keep your head as high as you see mine, and your gaze as steady.  The way you speak of him- and that thing that guard had- that shouldn't happen to anything, not any living thing.  You're a solid pickpocket, a pretty good fighter, and a very good dancer.  You're not some... worthless beast."

I wrapped my arms around myself for a few moments, looking over my shoulder at the man who had dragged me behind him like an inane beast for longer than I cared to remember.

No more.  Hanging, bloated, on a branch of Bhairoset's justice.

"What, do you want the farm woman to come and bring him back to life?" Mi'ishaen asked sharply.  She'd stopped in the road up ahead and had turned back to look at me.  For a moment, I thought she was angry with me- then I recognized that she was smiling.

Ah, that grim hellfire smile.

 I'd always been fascinated with the way the denizens of the Nine Hells were always painted smiling amid the flames that so tortured the souls that they enslaved.  I'd also wondered how those souls had been so careless as to end up in the Nine Hells in the first place.

I said nothing, but hustled up the road after Mi'ishaen, pleased to have been the cause of that twisted and quite possibly wicked grin.

1:4 Sundown in Bhairoset.

The guard made a huge fire and an awful stench.  I was glad for the hole in the roof, and Silveredge seemed interested by the bits of stuff he had in the various pouches and pockets we'd stripped before we got him in the hearth.  A bit of gold here, a vial of poison there, and an inexplicable spiked circlet- much too small for a head, and much too big for a finger.  She handed it to me as though I should have known what to do with it, then went on rummaging through the other junk strewn on the floor.  I sat and contemplated the strange trinket for a while before she stopped and really looked at me.

"You don't know what that is?" she asked me quietly, with a distinct note of disbelief.  

I briefly mused on how good of an ally she'd be, then decided it would be better to keep our baby-fresh relationship honest.  I shook my head.  

"I was in the skin trade- as part of the merchandise," she explained.  "Some of the buyers, they used to wear those to punish their friends for- um, well- misusing their goods.  It- um- it would have gone on his- um-"

It was a fine time to get tongue-tied.

I flew into a rage immediately, and threw the thing into the fire.  The sharp clank of metal on the fireplace's stone made Silveredge jump slightly, and she turned over her shoulder to see where the wicked object had gone.

"I could have washed it for you," she offered slowly, turning to look at me.  "Unless there are certain ceremonial-"

"My mother was in the 'skin trade,' as you put it," I replied firmly.  "Also as a part of the merchandise, except no one paid her.  They just took her.  She did magic and danced, too."

Silveredge looked at me with those placid platinum eyes of hers, and I stared right back at her, feeling my anger cool even without my really wanting it to.  There was something in her look- a searching, I suppose- and within me, I truly hoped that she would find whatever it was that she was looking for.

"She's dead, isn't she?" she asked after what felt like an age had passed.  "Your mother?"

"Yes," I replied, still staring determinedly into her radiant eyes.  "See how I weep for her."

The corners of Silveredge's mouth twitched first, as though she might sneeze.  Then they edged upward slowly into a wry smirk.  I felt a similar expression begin to creep across my own face, and pretty soon, we were both giving each other grim smiles.

"Surely your grief runs deeply and bitterly in your blood."

"Deep as a puddle in the desert, and bitter as an overripe fruit," I replied.

In that moment, I felt both that I could have gone on looking at her for hours, and that I absolutely shouldn't look at her for even another second.  I obeyed the second urge, being much more used to it than its opposite.

"Listen, I'll be leaving before sunrise, so-"

Silveredge gave a small hum of agreement as she continued rooting through the guard's few belongings.

It was only after a few minutes that I noticed that she had scooted closer to my side.  I felt within myself that I hadn't quite successfully established the fact that we would be parting ways in the morning- and I also felt that I really didn't want us to, anyway.

1:3 Silverhag.

An overly curious rat woke me up, and was rewarded with a crushed skull.

It has never served anyone any good to surprise me.

I climbed out of my hiding space and carefully dusted myself off in the noonday sun.  The decent back down to street level wasn't difficult, given the fact that the roof of the house had caved in before I got there, and one could easily simply slide carefully down into the tatty little bare shack.  What I wasn't expecting- especially since there wasn't even a chair to sit on in there- was that the place was occupied.

A pair of silver eyes looked up at me immediately. No sooner than I'd seen them, I was dodging two wickedly serrated spike shuriken.  I moved from one side to another while each one whizzed close enough to my ears that I heard them whistle in the air.

"My hair's short enough, I thank m'lady so very kindly," I said flatly, drawing my dagger.  "If you're going to throw any more of those, you better not miss."

And wonder of wonders, the joyless, silver eyed dancer smiled.

"The handmaiden will do her best not to miss," she whispered joyfully, as though she had received the most precious thing in the world.  "I am for you, mistress."

She hurled two more shuriken at me, and, true to her word, she got one of them to nick my shoulder.  Seconds after, the lithe thing had leaped up from the dark corner, which seemed to suddenly get a little brighter when she moved, and posed herself to do hand to hand combat.

  

I carefully edged toward her, my blade at the ready, expecting her to ball her fists.  Instead, she reached over her shoulders and drew two beautifully ornamented katars that looked as though they belonged in a museum, instead of in a live fight. I wondered briefly where on earth in or outside of her bodice had she managed to cram them, and then got angry at myself for caring.

  

I edged toward the shadows of the caved in roof, but suddenly found the dancer behind me, jabbing both katars into my back.  Without another thought, I hustled over to the place that she herself had been two moments ago.  Quickly, I sent a blazing shot of balefire toward her, and it engulfed her totally.  I expected to hear at least a cry of surprise, but instead I was greeted by genuine laughter.

I've never been good at magic- actually, I hate the stuff- but fire spells aren't supposed to tickle.

The dancer gave a small, wordless cry as she dropped to the floor and rolled around, but it sounded as though she were begging for a new toy or a bit of coveted candy.  The flames went out completely within a few moments, apparently without doing any damage at all.  Her hair wasn't so much as singed, although the small place did smell horribly of smoke.

"I guess you're having fun," I said breathlessly as I watched her get to her feet without any difficulty at all.  "Your turn- attack me now, come on."

With a smile, she became a flurry of thrusts and parries, challenging my every block and dodging my every blow.  Metal sang on metal again and again- I wasn't even thinking of the town outside, the marketplace or the guards.  I could focus only on the swirling steps of this slender, graceful warrior as I made sure to give her no advantage, no ground, no bit of flesh.

So the guard who broke down the door and surprised me was rewarded with a dagger to the center of the head.  For a split second, even I didn't realize what I'd done.  Then I turned to the dancer.

I noticed her one empty hand over her mouth, and would have laughed at her wide, shining eyes, had I not felt suddenly strange when I really looked at them.  The laugh came when I turned to retrieve my weapon, and found her missing katar nestled quite comfortably in the poor fool's neck.  A small noise squeaked out of the dancer behind me, and I turned over my shoulder to look at her.

"Is he...?" the dancer dared, her silvery eyes gleaming with a strange fear.

"Long gone.  To whatever god will have him," I replied, tugging her katar out of the idiot's bleeding throat.  I wiped it off on his tunic and tossed it to her.  For however badly she may have felt about the situation, she easily snatched the hilt right out of the air, then sheathed the clean weapon safely behind her.

"We'd better do something about this," I prompted, pressing my approval of her dexterity down within myself.

"Unless you've got good coin, they hang even for an attempt at murder, and well do I know it.  I don't think the birds have so much as thought to land upon my best friend as yet."  She walked over to the guard, sighed and squatted down next to him to take a good look at his face. "I could at least have hoped this was his hangman, but no such fortune."

"You traveled here with your best friend?" I asked, looking about for something with which I could dig.  Not a twig could be spotted in the room, so I headed toward the cold hearth.  Again I felt awkward for caring anything about how she'd come, with whom and for what.  But I did, all the same.

She, for her part, sighed and hummed as she shifted to sit down on her behind.  "We practically grew up together, back in the Shadowfell.  He left because he was bored with it, bored with the darkness, the fighting, Shar's slow pull down to into her nothingness.  'No one laughs,' he always said.  'No one dances.  Everyone kills and is killed, all anyone wants is power.'  I didn't fully understand why he should tell me how he felt, but I... didn't have much choice but to listen.  Besides, everyone in the commune avoided me because they thought I was... strange-"

I found nothing in the old ashes of the hearth, and dusted my hands off with a sigh.  "Strange?" I asked simply.

"My eyes are unusual for a Shadar-kai," she replied quietly, lowering her gaze when I turned to look at her.  "People thought I was blind, sickly, or somehow cursed at birth- something.  Warriors wouldn't train me.  Artists refused to touch me.  The only tattoo I have was done in the Underdark.  Even mages avoided me- I could only learn spells secretly, when my best friend wasn't watching-"  She looked up from the body to me, and must have suddenly realized what I was doing.  "The guard broke down the door- we can use the pieces."

"For kindling, to burn him?" I smiled wickedly.  "I like the way you think.  If you stand watch, I'll see if fire works better on him than it does on you."

She got up and began to gather the pieces of door carefully.  "If the handmaiden might advise her mistress, it might be a miscalculation of the necessary potential force against the efficacy..."

When she turned around and noticed that I was staring at her blankly, she pressed her lips between her teeth, allowing the edges of her mouth to pull down sharply for just a second.  I wasn't sure whether that meant she was disappointed or truly unhappy, but she didn't give me time to guess.

"I mean... you might not have put enough willpower into the spell to make it work as you intended," she finished shyly, holding out the pieces she'd gathered to me.

The walk across the room to get them seemed to me to be the longest, most uncomfortable trip I'd ever taken.

We both stood in silence for a few more moments before she turned and grabbed the guard by his hands.  I threw the pieces of door into the cold hearth, then walked over and grabbed his feet.  Together we slid him to the foot of the hearth, then paused to breathe.  The jerk wasn't light.

"It'll be a pain for me to lie down to sleep, though; It was quite warm."

"I'll bet," I spat, much more roughly than I intended.  "I'm Mi'ishaen, by the way."  In order to avoid the awkwardness of that introduction, I got to work on the man's elbow joints with my blade without looking up at the dancer.  "You can call me any derivative of it that you can say."

"It's not so tough," the dancer smiled, putting one of her katars to use on the other elbow.  "Mine is Jyklihaimra.  Neither my mother nor anyone else back home could say it properly, so absolutely no one actually called me that.  They called me what it meant instead."

I dug my dagger in the guy's shoulder and raised my eyebrows at the rogue dancer across from me.  "You do realize what the next question will be, I trust?"

"Silverhag," she shrugged.  "I don't know why she let- anyway, I'm not even a good witch, let alone a hag.  I only know a few spells."

"I'm not calling you either one of those," I decided, lighting the fatty flesh of the man's lower arm with a weak bit of balefire.  "We'll just have to find you a new name."

"Oh, it's not that-" the girl began slowly.  "I mean, I've... I've had that name for all my life.  It hardly matters now."

We worked for a while in silence, finishing the cutting and heaving.  The guard's trunk was the worst part- heavy, bloody, and leaking other things I'd rather not talk about.  When the dancer started gagging, I shoved her out of the way with my hips and heaved the slab of former Human being as far into the hearth as I could by myself.  It was about a solid minute's worth of struggle- maybe more, since I wasn't immune to how disgusting it was.

"How's Silveredge, instead?" I managed, once I'd finished.  "That second set of shuriken almost got me, you know.  I've a good mind not to help you find them, whatever they're stuck in, in here.  I'm lucky I've got good armor, or they'd have been in me."

She didn't have to say anything to agree to the name.  The glistening platinum gaze she turned on me said it all.

1:2 A little light entertainment.

Now, a lot of rogues will tell you that every day is another fight for survival, or some other such bullshit.  I say that if you have to live hand-to-mouth that way, all the time, you're a pretty pathetic excuse for a rogue.  Everybody needs to take a day off.

And on one crisp autumn day in Bhairoset- the luckiest day of my life, I'll remind you- I was doing just that.  There I was, sitting atop a low adobe roof, and enjoying the watching of the populace just for pleasure's sake, instead of looking for purses to snag or houses to rob.  

This day, there was a strange, light blue-skinned woman that attracted my attention as she danced in center of town; I hadn't seen her, nor any creature like her, anywhere before.  Around her, some weary Human farmers had set down their woven bushels, clean wool, and fruit provisions in order to clap their hands in time as she danced.  They were sights to behold themselves, for the exact opposite reason- clothes that had more patches than original cloth, filthy hair, battered bodies.  There arose from them a collective smell of field, cow or sheep manure, sweaty Human stench, and rotting fruit.  Amazingly enough, though, most of the children that danced and played around the knees of the gathered adults were clean and healthy.  Though they seemed to almost all be barefoot and poorly clothed, they weren't missing toes or fingers like those of the older generation.  Soaking in their happiness, I allowed myself to play at figuring out the various stories of each one of the families.

In the center of this ring of musty peasants spun the light blue skinned woman, her platinum silver waist length hair shimmering in the early morning sun as she turned again and again.  Her long skirt flared around her, and her blouse flapped freely around her bodice.

I was genuinely amazed that she could dance at all in a bodice.  Perhaps she could dance in plate mail, as well, I thought to myself- and I discovered that wasn't displeased with the idea. 

There were no instruments playing, but there seemed to be music in her every step.  Each dip, each careful toe touch was so absolutely perfect that it was as though she were the result of some master wizard's spell.  I was irresistibly drawn to her- so much so that I left my perch to watch from a closer vantage point.  When I did, I noticed something slightly disturbing- the dancer seemed to take absolutely no pleasure at all in her own talent.  Her face was a still as a stone, and I could not see her eyes at all, since the lids were lowered.

A few minutes after I first noticed this, some middle class merchants, flanked by awkward, shambling guards, began to make their way toward the town center.  They had to pass by the dancer to get to the market, and the common people began picking up their things to move in that direction as well.  As soon as the rented muscle got too close to me, I slipped away and scaled a tree to get to the top of an abandoned building a little ways away.  Once settled there, I looked for the blue skinned woman again.

She, now surrounded by a different clientele, actually picked up her head and opened her eyes all the way.  While her face was still a stoic mask, her brilliant, silver eyes were stunning, even from my distance.  I put my head on my arms, as I laid there on the roof, and watched her lithe body, her quick feet- and her sneaky hands.  I was amazed at the ease with which she caught a trader's eyes, swirled past them and dropped loose coin into her sleeves.  Even my trained eyes only caught her in the act once or twice, so those poor, fat saps didn't have a chance.  She was so good, I felt like applauding her vicious pickpocket work instead of her dancing.

A few traders moved on into the market place, and I suppose it took them a few sales before some of them found their purses light.  I managed to tear my attention from the dancer to watch as a few merchants began to holler at a few peasant traders who were suddenly suspected as thieves.  Soon, trained town guards began to roll in to the scene.  They were armed with bludgeons and coated in either plate armor or chain mail, and easily shuffled the supposed "thieves" out of the area- most with their goods, but some without.  A few shouts of protest rang out from those latter folks, but they went ignored.  I watched as other peasants picked up the abandoned goods, and wondered briefly whether it was to simply take them for themselves, or to reunite them with their rightful owners.

When I turned my attentions back to the dancer, who had been left without audience, I noticed that she'd sat down on the bare dirt ground at some point.  She bowed her head, as if in perpetual deference to an invisible master, but when the mistreated peasants stopped to speak with her, she looked up at each one and briefly took their hands in her own.  They each seemed to speak a few words to her, then let her go; when they went away, she would lower her head again.  Only once, after some time of squinting and straining, did I notice the gleam of gold passing between herself and her visitors.  Neither party seemed overly emotional about the transaction, which was more than strange, to me.  As I wedged myself into a shady, broken down part of the roof for a nap, my mind worked at creating an explanation why the dancer would simply give away coin that she'd worked so hard to steal.