4:21 The longer way around.

Bahlzair peeked over the top of the brand new, leather bound spell book that he held in his right hand as his target entered the laid-back tavern. 

With short-cut, salt and pepper hair and a strongly set bearded face, the target appeared to be a Human man.  The long ears and lilac colored eyes were the only physical traits that directly pointed to his Elven heritage.  The target's name, Bahlzair already knew, was Kagran- no one used the married variant of the name, so Bahlzair assumed he was uncoupled.  For the dark Elf's purposes, it didn't matter whether said uncoupling was due to tragedy, preference, or simple lack of opportunity.  What mattered was that for whatever reason, despite collecting temporary friends, being on first name basis with most of his fellow temple-goers, and getting along well with all of his coworkers, Kagran lived in an empty home.  His trade- basic hauling and fetching on the College of War Wizard's behalf, was hardly exciting, but it necessitated access to the width and breadth of the campus- access that was valuable to Bahlzair.

As most bar patrons of a certain tenure and age did, Kagran had a specific stool that he almost always occupied at the end of his workday, and about a half hour prior to his arrival, Bahlzair had chosen a perfect corner table and readied himself for the careful work of middle distance observation.

Or readied herself, as it appeared.

Bahlzair had done some careful thieving from a few dressmakers since his bold public attack on Mi'ishaen.  Part of his purpose had been to try his skills on his still-pained ankle, but part of it had been to update his wardrobe.  This night, he had wrapped his hair up into a ponytail with a long central braid, and chosen a deep blue gown, which he'd slightly tailored to hug his muscular midsection and toy with the fact that he did not have breasts.  Its lovely, breezy fabric, a small swatch of which had been used to make a covering for the lower half of his face, flowed freely down to the floor.  His pact blade was neatly peace-bonded at his side with the ribbon that had once held back the extra train, and the runes that were visible gave a low pulsing glow.  He lazily flicked pages in the spell tome, which he'd 'borrowed' from an abjuration student, but that was just to complete the picture of "lovely and intelligent."  It had been obvious that the student knew less, far less, about protection spells than the Drow did.  If that hadn't been the case, said student would have lowered their chances of being referred to as a victim.  As it was, the kill hadn't been challenging, which meant it wasn't satisfying, or even amusing.

Kagran, Bahlzair warned himself, will be different.

While Bahlzair kept a careful soft focus on the half Elf, another male Drow who had been slowly making his way back from the bar to the corner in which Bahlzair sat finally made his own move.

"Good evening, miss," the man said gallantly, unabashedly moving close to Bahlzair's left side.  "You don't mind if I sit here, do you?"

The meat speaks before spoken to.  And uses Common to do so.  How very... surface... of him.

Bahlzair put a finger in the spell tome and looked up from it to the Drow man.  His white hair had been sliced off at the midback, and allowed to flow freely.  His face and visible body was wrinkle-free, lacking facial hair, and unmarred, making it impossible to determine whether he'd seen many years or any disagreement that had been more than verbal.  His build was solid, but not musclebound- a careful, cultured balance between "sheltered gentleman" and "possible plainclothes guardsman" that made Bahlzair just slightly suspicious.  His eyes were a deep rose, which was unusual in a full-blooded Drow, but flawless skin the color of midnight made it doubtful that he could be anything else.  He didn't affect any flowing robes or armor, but instead the breeches, rolled-sleeve shirt, and unpolished shoes of a common workman.  Bahlzair tried not to rest his eyes too long upon the man's peace-bonded dagger, a simple piece whose unscuffed blade didn't look as though it had seen much use.  Whatever else the man was, he was cautious, and so may have put as much effort into his appearance as Bahlzair had put into his.

After a sizing up that took nearly a full minute, Bahlzair wordlessly nodded, then reopened the tome and picked up where he left off- a miserably written sample spell.  Kagran, he immediately noted, had ordered his first flagon of something just by looking at the tavern owner, who had smiled and nodded as though actual words had been exchanged.  It would take closer observation to know precisely was in the flagon, but such opportunities could only be afforded once the proper groundwork had been laid.  And that groundwork would be greatly strengthened, Bahlzair knew, by allowing himself to be the subject of some man's attention; people tended to suspect a woman who would not be wooed.

The man sharing Bahlzair's small table turned his head slightly to notice the cover, then righted himself.

"Ah, the private sanctum spell.  Studying for finals?"

He speaks again, Bahlzair thought.  I suppose I should have punished him somehow for his first show of insolence.  But, no surface trash here, Human or else, would have stood for that.  And perhaps he has had no one to teach him how useless he is.  And, after again putting his finger between the pages of the tome, he looked up and nodded.

"Well, I don't mean to disturb you," the Drow man smiled warmly.  "I just noticed the book.  Don't do much magick-ing myself, but I did do some repair work on the evocation hall.  Heard that one of the last things the head of the night watch did before he was temporarily barred from the campus was scour all of the halls for any remnant of- well, whatever it is that killed that one magister.  So the study halls should be safe now.  Or at least safer; I suppose one never knows, with magic."  He took a comfortable pull of the substance in his mug, which- from smell alone- struck Bahlzair as a barely passable ale of some sort, in dire need of more cellar time.

Since you're going to talk so damned much, worthless meat-sack, let's play, Bahlzair thought.  He finally used the index finger of his left hand to- apparently- draw on the table top.  The man watched the motion quizzically, but when Bahlzair finished what he was doing and moved his hand, his message glowed via the prestidigitation spell.

"I thought the talk of his barring was mere heresay."

"No, it's real as taxes," the man replied, watching as the glow faded and disappeared.  Once it had, he looked up at Bahlzair and realized he hadn't returned to his 'studies'.  "They're stuck with whatever draconian idiot pulled security tighter than a parson's purse for another few days at best, and even when the regular nightwatch lead comes back, it'll probably still be rough going for the likes of me."

"His superiors are foolish to bar him," Bahlzair wrote.  "If a slave of mine were to bring it to my attention that there was a lapse in my work, I wouldn't punish them for telling me by sending them away.  By all means, they'd be by my side every moment, if for no other reason than to ensure that they weren't telling anyone else."

The man watched until the text disappeared again, but didn't start or shrink away as Bahlzair suspected he might.  "You know, that's an interesting use of that spell," he smiled as he looked up.  "We're close enough that you wouldn't have to yell, and this is about as loud as the crowd here will ever get."

Bahlzair smirked gently, amused by the sharp change in subject.  I still smell your weakness, he thought.


At last, the bartender made her way over to Kagran, who sat at the far left side of her bar, in order to personally address him.  The clairaudience spell that Bahlzair had cast while walking past Kagran's favorite stool some time ago paid off, aided by the fact that the tavern really was rather quiet.

"Kaggie!" the healthy woman exclaimed.  "Forgive the wait; I told the girls to let me see to you- a mug of Suzale and a few sausage rolls for you?"


Bahlzair flicked his eyes over to the bar in a feigned response to the bartender's entirely unnecessary holler, then looked back down at the table, purposefully delaying his response to the male Drow's indirect question.  The Drow, for his part, took another slow pull of his drink while casting his own glance toward Kagran.


"Sounds good, Braunie," Kagran nodded, matching the bartender's volume for no good reason.  He tossed his head over to a clutch of young people at the other end of the bar, most of whom had placed orders.  "And bless that young one over there with another one of whatever he's having."


"That's Kagran, if you were wondering," the man next to Bahlzair said quietly, putting his mug all the way down.  "He's as responsible for most of the regulars around here as Braundlae is- and her cooking is damn good.  If you'd have sat anywhere else but as far away from the bar as possible, he'd have ordered for you.  But since you are way back here, I hope I'll do."

Bahlzair looked up at the male Drow and allowed a small smile to just barely crinkle the corners of his eyes.

"You should tell me your name," he wrote.


"He hasn't ordered yet," the bartender huffed, making no secret of her opinion.  "Mooching his friends' food like a vagrant.  And none of them have much anyway.  The lot of them making noise and taking up space."

"Ah, they're whelps yet- squires, stable hands, or apprentices without a solid footing around here.  Ask the boy what he wishes he could have," Kagran smiled warmly.  "Be charming; wheedle it out of him.  And when you have, put it on my tab."


A fathering sort.  Interesting, Bahlzair thought as he allowed the fingers of his left hand to continue doodling on the table long after having finished his gentle command.

"Berghuszt kulg Rauvanma'lust," the male Drow replied, watching the doodles glow and fade.

Bahlzair turned and tilted his head slightly, allowing just that much of his actual surprise to surface.  When he straightened up, he wrote, "The first son.  I can't imagine what possessed you to leave your matron's service."


One of the bar maids appeared from the tavern's kitchen with two mugs.   One she delivered to Kagran, and the other she walked to the other side of the bar, to set in front of the young man who had been accused of mooching.  Bahlzair hadn't cast any spells on that side of the bar, and so had to guess at the resulting conversation, but from the look of it, the young man made question about where the drink had come from.  Kagran was indicated, and once looked upon, the half Elf waved in a friendly way.  This sparked a few waves back, and some conversation within the clutch of young people.



 "That," Berghuszt said as he graced Bahlzair with a coy smile, "is a second-mug-of-ale tale.  I would be honored, of course, and pleased to know my lady's name."

Bahlzair righted himself and raised an eyebrow before signing, "Halkiaran'lar."


Back at the bar, the young man, accompanied by the small circle of friends who were with him, moved toward Kagran like an ungainly cluster of puppies.  Bahlzair had the sudden, but not unexpected, urge to slit every one of their throats.  He picked his left hand up from the table and stuck its index finger into his mouth to press his teeth upon.  The faint tingle of his poison and the pressure of his teeth helped him to refocus himself upon the matters at hand.


Berghuszt took his turn to slightly tilt his head as he watched Bahlzair nibble at his slender, well-groomed fingers.  "I hope my lady won't think me too forward, but I see no matronymic, patronymic, or even a house of any kind.  Does that happen to be a second-glass-of-wine tale?"

Bahlzair paused, took his hand out of his mouth, and purposefully turned his head almost all the way away from Berghuszt.  Out of the corner of his other eye, he saw that Kagran had received two plates of sausage rolls, but a single bowl of sauce.  The half Elf ate healthily from one plate between pulls of drink and laughter with his new temporary friends.  Bahlzair turned his head back after a sigh, and leaned his chin on the back of his right hand as he slowly signed, "There is no tale.  I call myself third born in expectation that at least two of my elder sisters survived the destruction of my house."  

Although a few of the words and phrases were supposed to use two hands, Berghuszt seemed to understand the response just fine.  He pursed his lips and nodded- just once, and slowly- an admission of loss.  "So may it be," he said, briefly raising his mug and taking a sip of the drink within.  Once done, he put the mug down and inched it toward Bahlzair with the tips of his fingers.  "Here- you can try it, if you'd like.  Its proper name is Purple Dragon Ale, but everyone around here calls it Suzale.  Humans are fond of puns."

Bahlzair, presented with what he knew to be a dangerous choice, put the spell book all the way down and slipped the index finger of his right hand into his mouth.  That done, he took that finger and dipped it into the mug, then stuck it back into his mouth.  As he suspected, it was nutty but light, like a watered down coffee, and in terrible need of more cask time.  He took his finger out of his mouth and looked over at the bar to watch a tired-looking barmaid deliver Kagran another mug.  The first one disappeared into the kitchen with her when she left, and she didn't even bother to check the mug that the young man had received.

"That brew is young," Bahlzair signed honestly, once he'd wiped his fingers.  "Whoever tapped the barrel should be fired for either negligence or ignorance."

"Not a forgiving mistress, are you?" Berghuszt smirked.  "Westgate boasts some heavier stuff; they get things by hook and crook down there.  But here- no.  It's pure Cormyrean spirit, and no drink of ours is ever going to cross that threshold."

At last the meat remembers that he's different, Bahlzair thought, amused.  "The Pirate Isles are similar," he signed, a bit faster than before.  "You can't ask anyone where anything is from- even the fish are suspicious."

Berghuszt chuckled and took his mug back to sip at it, and Bahlzair allowed himself to be proud of the mercy that only he knew he'd shown.  Such a small dosage of his natural poison wouldn't do anything but make the drink seem unusually strong- which, in Bahlzair's opinion, was doing the piss-poor brewmaster an unmerited favor.

"You were in the Pirate Isles before you were here?" Berghuszt asked, now obviously making idle conversation.

"As much as you were in Westgate before you found yourself in this place," Bahlzair signed back, an eyebrow raised.

"Ah, point taken," Berghuszt admitted.  "I'm not from Cormyr at all; I spent the first few years of my life in Lith My'athar, but there was some sort of assault there that sent my parents running like fugitives.  There aren't many surface settlements that Drow live together in the traditional way, so my understanding Undercommon is just about all the 'Underdark culture' I have.  My father went into stone masonry, at my mother's behest, and while it's not glamorous, it's kept us fed.  I say us because I'm a stone carver myself.  Came here because of an expansion to a temple some... oh, what was it... about thirty odd years ago now?  I've gotten steady projects since.  Nothing huge, but enough to make traveling away from here seem like a bad idea."

Well, that explains the physique, Bahlzair reasoned to himself. 


The scene at the bar wasn't as useful as it could have been, since the clutch of useless puppy people had moved so that they were surrounding Kagran.

"I'm not going to finish all these, my lads," Kagran said grandly to them.  "Do your uncle a favor and make them disappear, so that none're wasted, eh?"

"Lind can have them!" one of the earnest puppies said immediately.  A pale, lean, short haired thing.  Pocked as though he'd survived some illness when he was younger.

"We'll share them around," said another, who either was Lind himself, or at least had a bit more discretion than his compatriot.


"I studied ritual healing, but didn't finish," Bahlzair signed.  "I have few others skills, and it's only by the goddess's guidance that I learned about this place.  I've not yet been able to find a tutor, but I expect to change that, after this testing."

 "An admirable course of study," Berghuszt nodded.  He finished his ale, then raised his hand when one of the barmaids looked over at him.  It wasn't the tired one who had served Kagran, but a handsomely shaped woman with suspiciously sharp ears.


Some surface breed, Bahlzair thought.  At least this specimen is acceptable.  Some products are less so.

"I wish I was a magical sort, from time to time," the Drow man sighed.  "But alas, I couldn't even manage a ward.  I just know mage-work when I see it, and admire it."

The barmaid who had been signaled made her way over to the table, receiving some unfortunate attention along the way.  She did her best to smile at everyone, but sighed and fussed with her rumpled skirt when she arrived.  Bahlzair smiled at her- he was smiling at her discomfort, but there was little chance of her knowing that- and picked the spell book up again, easily flipping to the page he'd stopped at before.

"Another suzale?" she asked, clearly wanting to keep the interaction brief.  Her lilt betrayed an Eladrin heritage, and Bahlzair found the idea that anyone with even a drop of high Elven blood deigned to work in a tavern owned by a Human absolutely hilarious.

"Yes," Berghuszt said, with an upward inflection that, while not indicative of an actual question, still told the barmaid to hang around for a moment.  Bahlzair could feel his gaze, but kept his eyes firmly pinned to the top line of the page that he was 'studying'.


At the bar, Kagran had finished his second mug of whatever it was he'd had.

"Here, Xiala," he said, handing a barmaid a few coins.  "My thanks to you, and your lady.  Friends, I'm off- mind what I asked you.  Don't let this go in the rubbish, for some vagrant or animal to pick out."

Xiala, the tired barmaid, accepted the coins, picked up the sausage plate that was completely empty, and turned on her heel to move away.

"Don't worry, Ser Kagran; thank you," a long-haired, slender puppy said encouragingly.

"You won't stay a bit longer with us?" the pock-marked puppy asked.

"Oh no; it's to bed with me," Kagran smiled.  "I'm older than I look."

And all the puppies laughed in that hollow, distant way people do when they have nothing to add to a suddenly awkward conversation.


Berghuszt finally ran a gentle finger along Bahlzair's left arm, and the latter put the spell book down immediately.  "Halkiaran'lar, may I buy you a frostwine or a bit of brandy?  It won't match what you might be used to, but either one will be good in its own right."

Stubborn bit of meat, Bahlzair thought.  He reached out and wrote on the table,  "I haven't seen Hospitaler's."  Once he'd finished the thought, he twisted his fingers over it so that the message would turn itself in the correct direction for the barmaid to read.

The barmaid stood reading for a while, then gave a long, close-mouthed sound of understanding.  "Yeah, no, we don't have that," she said in an apologetic tone.  "We have Fletcher's; is that close enough?"


"No, sorry," Bahlzair wrote.  "Both of your offers are appreciated."

"You're welcome, madam- I can ask after Hospitaler's, see what we can do about getting some in here.  Asking doesn't cost anything, does it?  And anyhow, I'll take this and get you your ale," the barmaid said consolingly.  "You've been at this spell for the longest- why don't you two go out and take in the air, and I'll poke my head out when I've got your drink ready and your table wiped down?"

"I really did disturb your studies," Berghuszt said with a touch of actual apology.

"I don't mind," Bahlzair wrote, for the benefit of both parties.  "We can go out and let this woman do her job, and when we return, I expect to hear the story you promised me upon the second mug of ale."

"As you command," Berghuszt said firmly, not even waiting for the prestidigitated letters to fade.  The barmaid smiled genuinely, picked up the empty mug, and dismissed herself back to the bar without another word.  "May I take your arm?"

Bahlzair simply picked up his well-manicured left hand and held it in the air, waiting.  He allowed himself to survey the entire bar, since his play at nobility called for a straight-forward gaze.


The puppies had completely settled where Kagran had been as though he had never been among them, with no one but the one who was probably Lind even touching the sausage plate that was three fourths of the way empty.

"He is really nice," one of them commented.  "I mean, to share his food and buy Lind a drink?  And those are really good, too.  Aren't they good, Lind?"

Lind, whose mouth was full, could only nod.


Bahlzair decided he would have to at least taste the sausage rolls, to determine whether or not they could cover the taste of the poisons he could afford to make.  Berghuszt stood and took Bahlzair's waiting left hand with his right, and watched, pleased, as Bahlzair stood.

"I'd really like to kiss your hand- Humans do that.  As a gentlemanly show."

Bahlzair dismissed the clairaudience spell he'd been sustaining at the bar, and turned his head to look at Berghuszt.

You may carry my spell book, he signed with his free hand.  And there is no need for any 'show'.  Why should you behave as Humans do, merely to make them comfortable?  Have they ever, at any time, done anything to make you more comfortable here?"

Berghuszt smiled a different smile- fox-like, cunning, with a flash of something that interested Bahlzair much more than anything he'd said or done previously.  "No, my lady, never.  I do as you command."