Chapter Text
“Hunt’s off.” Holga drops her bag on the floor with a thump as she sits and signals to the barkeep without even looking Ed’s way.
“Off? What do you mean, off?” They’ve been out here for nearly a ten-day, searching up and down the high road--Forge had always been more comfortable in populated areas than the wilderness, so they’ve stuck close to civilization--without much success. Ed isn’t usually the type to turn someone over to the law, not anymore, but he’s making an exception for Forge.
“They found him outside the city. About five days ago.” Holga still seems more concerned with her ale than with the update. “Just heard.”
“Five days ago?” They’ve been out here for nothing this whole time? “Why didn’t we hear about this sooner?”
It should have been bigger news. The reawakened Lord of Neverwinter had put a bounty on the man’s head, and half the adventurers along the Sword Coast were searching for him. If one of them had claimed the reward, they should have been bragging for days. Everyone should know about this.
“Guess the guy who brought him in wanted it kept quiet,” Holga says. “Didn’t take the money, either.”
Ed chokes on his beer. Turned down the five hundred gold? He’s not in this for the reward--he’s not, he has plenty of scores to settle with Forge without it--but he wasn’t planning to turn it down either. He knows Forge, knows how he thinks, knows how he plans cons and where he goes to ground. He’d been counting on the edge that would give him. Who in their right mind would give up that much gold?
Holga’s still not looking up at him, which is . . . odd. The ale’s not that good here, and even if it was, Holga doesn’t usually have much time for concentrating on the finer things in life.
Wait. Who in their right mind--
”Holga,” he demands, “who found him?”
He can see the tiniest twitch of her mouth, and he knows even before she says it. “Xenk Yendar.”
“Yendar?” Ed demands. “Did you say Xenk Yendar did us out of that reward?”
Holga shrugs, a little too casually. “‘S what I heard,” she says.
Ed had been looking forward to finding Forge. Gold aside, the man had sold out an entire city to the Red Wizards, gotten him and Holga stuck in a frozen hole for two years, and taken his daughter. Taken his daughter, lied to her, and then put a knife--
He stops the thought there. He’s not ready to face it, isn’t sure if he ever will be. It’s easier not to remember. He can’t help a glance across the crowded taproom, though, to where Kira is playing counters against someone’s grandmother. She’s concentrating, eyebrows furrowed. She’s losing horribly. She’s fine.
Anyway. Ed has a few things he’d like to discuss with Forge, is the point. And now he’ll never have a chance, because Xenk fucking Yendar found him first and then wasted it.
“I hate that guy,” Ed announces.
“I know,” Holga says.
“I mean, I really hate him.”
“I know, Ed. Everybody knows. You hate him so much you can’t stop talking about it.”
“Smug bastard leaves just when things are getting tough--and don’t try to tell me that he wouldn’t have been able to take on Sofina better than any of us--and then shows back up for the fun part?”
“This is fun?” Holga mutters into her mug.
“Settling scores with Forge would have been fun,” Ed says, and after a judicious moment she nods agreement. “And we could have put that gold to good use. I really need to get Kira some kind of tutor, for one thing, and then there’s the roof.”
“We’ll find the money,” Holga says.
“Well, now we’ll have to.” Ed stares down into his mug, stewing. “He could have at least taken the gold and done something useful with it,” he grumbles. “Tell me a guy like that doesn’t enjoy doing charity. That’s the problem with these paladins, they don’t use their common sense. Stubborn prats think they have the answer to all of life’s problems by being noble and self-sacrificing, never stop to think that all they’re doing is leaving more money in some lord’s pocket instead of taking the opportunity to distribute it where it might do some good.”
“You want some of his charity?”
Ed regards Holga in blank dismay. “Not for us,” he protests.
She shrugs. “You just said we could use the money.”
“Yeah, but not like that. We’re not charity cases, damn it.”
He knows she agrees, that she’s just winding him up. He still can’t stop himself. “Besides, I wouldn’t take money from Xenk Yendar if I were starving on the street. I wouldn’t take money from Xenk Yendar if it were the last gold piece in all the realms. I wouldn’t take anything from that sanctimonious, self-satisfied prat if he were right here on his knees begging me to.” Holga smirks, and Ed decides that’s an image he’s not going to examine too closely. “If he wants to go around rescuing kittens and puppies and, I don’t know, helping little old ladies across the street until the whole world’s convinced the sun shines out of his ass, then fine. All I’m saying is that he missed out on an opportunity to do some real good because he was too busy acting like some kind of perfect paladin.”
Holga’s staring at him. Maybe he’d taken this a bit too far. “You said you’d never take his hand,” she points out. “Then he fought a dragon for you.”
“He didn’t fight a dragon for me,” Ed protests. “You were right there. He fought a dragon for all of us.” It might even have been self-preservation, if someone with perfect hair and armor as shiny as Xenk Yendar ever lowered themselves that far.
“You took his hand,” Holga says. “Twice. I’m just saying, never say never, Ed.”
“Well, never again,” he mutters. “Not now that he stole our revenge and five hundred gold.”
Holga looks at him for a long moment, more serious than earlier. “You know he’s not being a paladin at you,” she says.
“Oh, isn’t he just.”
“He’s a good man. When are you going to figure out that that’s not about you at all?”
“I don’t--” Ed protests, and then gives up. He knows from long experience that when Holga calls him out on his bullshit it’s best to listen. He’s just not in the mood right now. “Not like it matters. We probably won’t ever see the guy again.”
“If we do, you can tell him he owes you five hundred gold.”
“If we do, I’m going to kick his holier-than-thou ass.”
Holga snorts. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
Ed has to admit she’s right. “I’m going to write a really mean song about him,” he amends.
“Sure, have fun.” Holga drains her mug and stands. “I’m gonna go give Kira a ten-minute warning, it’s getting late.”
“You up for bedtime?”
“Sure, as long as you deal with packing in the morning.”
Ed doesn’t know what he’s ever done to deserve Holga. “Thanks.”
He watches her shoulder her way across the room to murmur in Kira’s ear, shaking her head firmly in response to the inevitable argument. She hovers behind Kira’s chair, where she’s probably offering unwelcome and entirely unhelpful advice. Holga is terrible at counters.
Ed settles into his stool and waves the bartender over. He has all night to figure out what rhymes with paladin.