With her red and silver hair pulled up into a neat bun high on her head, Dark sat on her knees and the balls of her feet with her hands on her thighs. Before her on the stone floor spread an area map that depicted Cormyr, Sembia, and the Dalelands. Different coins all over the map indicated operative locations- copper coins were good guesses, and silver coins were confirmed or planted operatives. Behind her stood Stone, his musclebound arms crossed and his brow furrowed.
"A-ma," he suggested.
"I don't even suggest jobs to A-ma," Dark laughed. "She tells me what she's going to do, and I say, 'okay, A-ma.' She tells me when she's needed; it's never been the other way around."
"Spark, then," the Orc suggested.
"Spark is very talented, but she can't multitask between countries," Dark replied.
Stone raised an eyebrow and tensed his arms momentarily. "You do it."
"The cost of my international multitasking runs me hundreds of gold for normal travel, potions, and illusion spellwork, and has put several bounties on my head," Dark argued, looking over her shoulder briefly. "The newest one is something like two thousand gold. That's not an operating cost I'd like to pass on to anyone else."
Stone grunted, and Dark refocused herself on the map lying before her. It was difficult for even her to tell whether the sound had been annoyance, an admission of defeat, or pure anger. Outside the office, rolling in the hallway like an untamed dog, was Stitches. The ungracious thudding of his bare flesh on stone floors and halls caused Dark's jaw to clench and Stone's bones to itch, but neither of them wanted to ask the Drow to stop.
"Honorbow," Stone said, shifting so that only his left shoulder leaned on the back wall of the office.
Dark shook her head. "She took a few others on a religious quest of some sort. Headed for a monastery, I think, and... I... don't actually expect any of them to return."
"Standing Tree," Stone said, remembering. "She'll be back."
"Why didn't you go?" Dark asked, turning over her shoulder to look at the Orc behind her. "You get on so well."
"We can talk about religion as equals," Stone corrected, turning himself around to fully face Dark again. "Doesn't mean we 'get on well'."
"You're a highly spiritual man. She values that sort of thing."
"You're an honorable woman."
Dark turned her head straight and closed her eyes. "That's..."
"The truth," Stone finished in a tone that would not be countered. "She values that, too."
For a few moments, the two listened to the terrible slapping and thudding of ash grey flesh on stone.
Dark put both hands on her face and pulled them up over her head, lacing her slender fingers together and resting there. "Did he eat today?"
"Didn't stay down," Stone admitted quietly. "He got upset."
Dark sighed deeply as she unlaced her fingers, opened her eyes, and gazed at the map. "He hates the Fringe."
"It's Dhuurniv magic that hates him," Stone corrected. "But he wants to be here."
Dark sighed again, but said nothing else. She put her hands flat to the floor and allowed her head to simply hang between her shoulders.
"Thorn."
The red bun bobbled precariously as Dark shook her head yet again. "In Daerlun. Family business. I didn't ask, but I'll get around to prying in a bit."
"C'mon, she's alone," Stone growled.
"Alone?" Dark echoed, incredulous. She picked her head all the way up and let it hang backward, so that she was staring at the ceiling. "Some fifty odd contacts, one of which is a madly dedicated partner, hardly qualifies as being alone."
"Two times the contacts and however many lovers don't keep you from being alone, sometimes," Stone countered, the sudden tenderness of his voice hardly softening the brutal bluntness of his words. "Don't say you're not. I can smell it."
Dark sat back on her heels first, then stood all the way up and turned around to face the Orc. "I don't have a right to feel alone with Stitches to look over and you to fight with."
"Feelings don't wait on rights."
"They certainly don't." The freckled Tiefling walked over to her desk, which had a few sheets of paper on it. Collecting a few, she turned and held them in front of her. "These are for Sapphire. If you'd get them out to him before the week is out, I'd very much appreciate it."
"Boats and I don't work," Stone warned, ambling over to the other side of the table and leaning over it, on the inside of her arm.
"If Kord is disposed to teaching his adherents to fly, I'll help you petition him," Dark said with a tired laugh as she put her arm down. "If you suspect he won't help you with that, there are always horses and carriages. I'm sure some trader will head that way if you pay them enough to try."
Stone pushed out two soft, low chuckles that could almost be mistaken for scoffs. In the gentle candlelight thrown by the sconces that pierced the walls, Dark could see his harshly carved facial features soften just slightly- just long enough to relax with her. She felt her eyes start to sting and willed herself calm.
"Sure," Stone breathed.
"Perhaps put yourself somewhere where you might get pickpocketed?"
"That's stupid."
"It's not stupid to want to know that your friends are doing well."
Stone shifted his jaw and swallowed hard. According to the findings of multiple studies, Orcs, unlike most other civilized races, had not yet fully evolved past feeling physical hunger pangs as a response to some emotional desires, much like Humans tended to tremble or faint in response to others. In that moment, Stone's stomach twisted and growled as though he had been starving for days. He watched Dark bite the backs of her lips, watched the blood flush in her freckled cheeks, and felt his untamed soul pulling away from his rigorously disciplined spirit. He leaned up from the table and gently eased the papers out of Dark's grasp, leaving without another word.
For a few moments, Dark noticed that Stitches had finally stopped slamming himself down onto the floor of the hallway outside her office. Then, she noticed a small pulsing glow that eminated from the far corner of the room.
"I assume you heard that entire fight," she breathed, her tone too heavy to make the statement as much of a joke as she would have liked.
"That wasn't no fight," Spark soothed. "He fixin' to make you feel like a chieftain, more like."
"You don't say," Dark smiled sadly. "I don't think I'm his-"
"He do. He think you plenty his type. I agree with him. And it ain't just 'cause you Human lookin'."
Stitches peeked his head around the entry way to the office, then loped all the way inside on all fours, resting wearily on the right side of Dark's desk. He reeked of blood and vomit, but Dark managed not not to gag. Instead, she immediately began plucking at the twine that held his own hair back.
"I'll bear that in mind, Spark. Did you get any solid evidence on my suspicions?"
"You ain't really needed to hear that you was right about them Sakoda girls, but yeah, you was right," Spark noted. "It's somebody after them; Zhenties, Sunfire, good old fashioned slavers, somebody. And it ain't just them, neither. They want Sparrow, too. Makes me worry, 'cause they tried to get her afore this. Semnemac wasn't havin' it then, and Lady Perth wasn't havin' it yesserday. That little druid hussy took off on them men- whoo doggie!- I didn't do nothin' but sit up there an' watch. Could smell burnin' flesh clear up the street. Bunch of people came 'round to see wasn't the house gone up, that's how powerful it was. Can't even tell you who it was, 'cause it wasn't enough of 'em left. Bunch o' guards fit the ashes an' parts o' the both of 'em in a rice pot, an' that was it. Next time, they prob'ly gonna send more'n just two."
"Lady Perth and Lady Sakoda are friends, just as their husbands are, I hear," Dark mused as she ran her fingers through Stitches's loose hair. "And all of them are age mates. So it's strange that there's such an age gap between their children."
"You right about all o' that," Spark nodded, the illusion spell that made her outline visible twinkling and folding in on itself as she did. "The age gap go like this: Perth had his children afore the war, but Sakoda waited 'til he was discharged. You a swordsman, patience don't always pay, but you a bowman, you time them shots. Anyway, them two fell outta touch afore the Sakoda babies come, owing to Luvec quittin' the crest an' Pohatkon goin' crazy, but when the menfolk got back workin' with each other, well, them ladies was together like no time had passed at all."
"It's interesting that Lady Perth is so powerful despite being so long out of practice," Dark said thoughtfully. She tied Stitches's hair back freshly, then gingerly opened a drawer to wipe her hands on an apron stashed inside. "She must have been getting a bit of sneaky practice in somehow. Let's count her as blind help."
"She ain't fully blind," Spark encouraged. "Lady Sakoda a little suspiticious. Lady Perth showed her a couple tricks that're supposed to keep me from breakin' stuff or puttin' it where it don't go, but she also told Lady Sakoda that she don't think I'm no ghoulie like how the neighbors think. Wasted her breath, though. I does a couple things here and there, an' Lady Sakoda talk to me careful-like. Like I was a half-dead god or an angel or a fairy or somethin'. Lady Perth just shake her head when she do that, 'cause she know better, but she ain't gonna keep making a fool outta her friend in front of her girlies."
"Superstitious," Dark corrected laughingly as she went through the rest of the papers on her desk. "Oh my, that's cute- charms to keep you from breaking things, oh my. Let's upgrade Lady Luvec to 'cautious help.' Now, about how often are Sakoda's children in her company?"
"It's her putting herself in their company," Spark explained. She watched Dark get out her ink and quill, then squatted to see what Stitches was doing. "Long as she don't got no house business to manage, she come on over Lady Sakoda's house, and they sit and sew, or she teach the girlies somethin', whatever they gonna do. Sometimes she has 'em over at her house, but that ain't often."
"Do the girls go out to play with any one other than Sparrow?" Dark asked.
A few quiet scratches told Spark that she had begun writing something, but the mage decided to sit down and wipe at Stitches's face instead of watching the writing. The Drow, just as unable to see what Spark may or may not have been using to clean him as anyone else, gave small yips of discomfort at the gentle touches, but didn't move away from them.
"Usta be another little girlie by the name of Tirabet, but I ain't seen her for a while now. Dale's friends with Circe, but unless Lady Sakoda go up to market, they don't see each other. Kids don't got no kinda sorry 'bout how they think they feel, but grown ups can be real sneaky 'bout their hate."
"That's a shame; I'm sure if Daiirdra had all her health, she'd have a talk with Lady Sakoda," Dark frowned, looking up from her paperwork momentarily. "She's very calm and law abiding, but she's never been one to take racism meekly."
"Sure you right," Spark agreed. "Lady Sakoda would prob'ly sit there and listen, 'cause she don't wanna look bad. You know them people who got 'one Tiefling friend,' so they can't be racist? Yeah, that's how she is. Lady Perth diff'rent, and that's how come her natural boy's 'bout to marry him a half-Elf wife. Skinny little barmaid, sweet and cute's she can be."
"That's Wendre, who will be the Lady Wendrane Perth, as soon as she's healed enough to actually walk in heels without those two toes, because Varris really is an honorable man. And Lady Perth is a Dark Quarter druid who could have been burned at the stake years ago. She knows what it is to be distrusted." Dark looked back down at her desk and wrote a few more lines before she spoke again, with some degree of unmistakable disdain. "I imagine that somewhere in her heart, Lady Sakoda also thinks she doesn't have anything against wild magic. Any other outings for those girls?"
"Either they stays in the house, or they plays 'round about it, or they goes to the market, or they goes to temple, but that's it. Pohatkon's good at making friends of the neighbors, and so's Circe. His lady ain't, and Jana just plain uncomf'table with ev'rybody right now, even her own self."
"Well, watch Circe particularly closely, since she's out and about, giving the most opportunity. Perhaps see if you can strike up an angelic relationship with her, since her mother's looking for pixies or sprites or whatever else she was taught to be afraid of. Tirabet can be found either with The Only or Vhalan. I'm loathe to count a child as blind help, but Tirabet is now an unusual child. She and Vhalan tend to visit Amilie's old garden plot twice or three times per week, and in the process, they occasionally spend time with her still-living friends."
"I ain't never seen 'em," Spark wondered, finally satisifed with how Stitches's face looked. She very gently kissed his head, then stood up.
"You, unlike any vampire, need sleep," Dark smirked, watching the spell that made Spark's outline glimmer come back into her view over the edge of the desk. "Silent gave Eagle a tip off about Vhalan's movements, and Vhalan- well, he may have simply decided not to challenge the curious eyes of his own."
"I ain't tryin' to be a hypocrite, but all these vampires startin' to make me nervous," Spark puffed. "Tirabet got magic now?"
"Only the form change, for the moment. But Tirabet, Vhalan, and the rest of The Only's entire court are dire wolf vampires. Those sharpened senses and pack mentalities mean that those girls are as well attended at night as they are in the middle of the day. Which temple does the family attend?"
"They Cuthbert people, which is strange, considerin' how Pohatkon seem more like an Afflux person, or maybe even Shar. But that's how the Sakodas know the Caemeth folk at all. And Pohatkon been askin' Ser Caemeth a whole lotta questions about where his little girl gone to. Not all of 'em are soundin' real nice."
"Of all the things Pohatkon can be called, nice is not one of them. I'll see about that right away." Dark finished working with the papers on her desk and laid them out separately to dry. "Thank you for lending me your time. Have they put your room to use, or are you still safe there?"
"Ev'ry time Pohatkon or Lady Sakoda come in there, I turn 'em back out," Spark shrugged. "I let the girlies come and go as they please; they look around, but they don't move nothin'. I'll be alright. Better get back, afore Lady Sakoda try to put up that gawdawful needlepoint she musta like to lost a finger tryin' to make. Or them rocks Jana like to have next to her. She keep takin' 'em, 'cause she don't like Jana bein' so tomboyish, but it ain't the kid's fault. She a boy, is all. One day she gonna tell her mama her own self that she a boy, and I don't know what that woman gonna do. Jana like rocks, though, so I keep finding diff'rent kinds and puttin' 'em un'er her bed or in her shoe or wherever I think she'll look afore her mama finds 'em."
"Oh," Dark said thoughtfully. "Well, that gives me an idea of who to ask to stick around the temple. Jana could use someone she- or perhaps he, as the case may be- relates to. Do me a favor, please, and see if... hmm... they like frogs just as much."
"Frogs?" Spark's glimmer spell momentarily faded out, then sharply reappeared. The outline of her hand scrubbed on her head as though short hair were being ruffled, and Dark wondered just how short Spark's hair actually was. "Well, alright, I'll see can't I scare up a frog or two. Illusory frogs just don't act the same, y'know. That all you want?"
"For the moment, yes- and thank you again for lending me your time. I'll get your payment out to you when the looters come back from the Semmite roads."
"They don't gotta hurry; I ain't hurtin'," Spark agreed, heading out of the doorway. "Bye, Stitchie-baby. You feel better soon."
A bit of sound burbled up from the floor. Dark first watched Spark's glimmering outline leave the room, then looked down at Stitches, who had decided to bend at the waist and lean on his forearms, so that it looked as though he were a resting dog.
"Your willpower is growing stronger and stronger almost every time I look at you," Dark encouraged. "A few more letters, and then it's back to the Forge, how's that sound?"
A rasp that morphed into a hiss was Stitches's only reply.
"Mama has some moss water way in the corner, if you want to try to at least keep yourself hydrated. If you want to lap it instead of drinking it, please let Mama know, and she'll find you a dish. It's a little concerning when you try drinking straight from the floor."
Stitches made a burbling-clacking sound at the back of his throat that Dark knew should have been a derisive laugh, but didn't move.
"Well, that's how we think. We think, 'Oh, the floor is dirty, oh, he'll be sick'- doesn't matter when last anybody cleaned it. It's not a comment on how well you clean or how poorly I do. I'm just going to worry about it. I'd never do as a matron, having you eat and drink from there just as a matter of course. That, to me, is abuse."
Stitches looked over at Dark, and finding that she had been gazing at him, sat up and turned himself to look at her.
"It's alright. I don't think of those days every time I say that word. But that's another thing we Tieflings do, because we're descended from Humans. Humans' attachment to other planes, if they exist at all, are very weak. So most Humans, and those races descended from Humans, can only achieve empathy by filtering what we understand of others' experiences through our own. If we don't, we... well, we can try to be sympathetic, but empathy... we're just too... separate. From what's around us. From each other. That's why we're so good at fear and hate."
The two looked at each other for a while, Stitches's eyes flitting rapidly from one facet of Dark's face to another while Dark's attention moved slowly over each one of Stitches's tiny twitches.
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