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Counselor Enver Gortash pulled his simple cloak tighter and carefully turned his face from the checkpoint guards as he entered the Lower City’s streets. He was dressed down without his trappings of office, and bare of all but a few baubles of his faith and personal necessities, leaving himself almost unrecognizable.
For the first time in years, he was alone outside of his office and estate. No peasant crowd gathered to hear him speak, not one guard or attendant at his heel. He felt vulnerable without them, but no one could know what their lord was about to do.
He had not slept in a tenday. Food would not sit right, so he resigned himself to black coffee and smoking tobacco just to remain upright. The ever-present bags beneath his eyes had sunk even deeper and darker, leaving his face gaunt and looking bruised. The purpling served only to emphasize the spiderwebs of broken capillaries that reddened his eyes. Black stubble across his cheeks had gone untended and now sprouted in unruly growths that framed cracking lips.
Enver felt a shell of himself, and his Dark Lord was beginning to notice. During the too-long blinks that served as whispers of sleep, his Lord would sow his mind with doubt. To rule over Banites was to rule over constantly circling sharks. A faltering ruler was doomed to be torn apart, as he had torn apart so many before him. He could not go on as he did - he had reached the breaking point. Something needed to change. He would purge himself of this weakness before it could be preyed on by his lessers.
The streets of Baldur’s Gate were dimming as the sun sank lower over the Gray Harbor. He had planned this excursion for when the City would be empty enough for him to pass unrecognized, but not enough to raise suspicion. Children rushed through the streets to answer calls to dinner. Fisherfolk and other tradesmen slowly ambled their way home. Shopkeeps closed up street stalls, and newspaper hawkers rushed their unsold supplies back to the Mouth.
No one paid him any mind. He was no lord today, just another weary man.
As he made his way over cobblestoned streets, he favored his good leg the best he could, but recent rains made the ground damp and his gait slow and awkward in turn. More than once his boots skidded too wet across uneven stones. A bad ankle made it hard to brace against looming falls, and he had to pause and will himself steady anytime the threat arose. So he resigned himself to trudge onward, tentatively shifting his weight from side to side as his body allowed. His Master’s blessing kept him from aging as Chosen, but on these days when Bane’s favor waned and the Black Hand’s grip loosened, the reminders of mortality reared their spiteful heads.
Enver paused a moment, the effort made just to walk corroding his resolve. With his back pressed against the wall of a house, he rubbed the swollen joints of his fingers. He left most of his rings at home, the Netherstone stowed carefully in a pocket close to his skin. Exposed to the world now, his fingers swelled red, ugly, and noticeably crooked. He hated the sight of them. Too many injuries and too many years past now, he could not remember exactly what caused each of them. A fracture left untreated. Too many sloppy resettings. A mishap while tinkering. Maybe he had hit an underling too hard. Perhaps they swelled simply as a warning of another storm on the horizon. It didn’t matter. He was all aches these days. The worst of them penetrated through his flesh, past his bones, and into the core of the man beneath. He exhaled a slow, steadying breath and scanned the emptying street.
He had plotted his route meticulously before he deigned to take this trip. Save for the rare crossroads, he would only pass residential buildings. By design, this would keep his business secret. In his hard-won experience, Baldurians did not care what their neighbor did, as long as it did not inconvenience them or feed the gossip mills. If he did not give them a reason to care about him, they wouldn't.
Across from his brief shelter stood a bulletin board decorated with local announcements and requests long left unanswered. Amongst them, he was greeted by the shining smile of the man he had been a month ago. The image of that man mocked him with its vibrancy. He could not now bear to look at himself, be it in a mirror or these false fragments he had too diligently plastered across the city. The consequences of his successes and plots weighed heavy on him. With a silent snarl, Gortash pushed his pains and self-pity down, swiftly paced across the street to the board, and tore the poster down. His body groaned at the effort, but he drowned its protests out in rage. Piece by piece he ripped through the printed façade of his own wretched face and let the remnants fall away limply into the mud. A hero's smile and shining halo faded as the dampness claimed the shreds.
That man who was in those posters did not know hurt as he did, not the gaping wound of loss, not hungering maw of words unspoken and deeds left undone. That man did not know what was to come and, oh, how he envied him now.
There has been no body. No evidence. No closure. Just another seated where his companion should have been. That was all the evidence Enver needed. He was not fool enough to hope.
He ground the last bits of paper into the mud with his dressed-down boots. Filth splattered over the freshly waxed leather. His face twisted down into a sneer at them. Perhaps he would make that his parents' problem before the end of the evening.
With a sharp flex of his fingers, he cracked his knuckles and returned to his path. His momentary show of weakness had only impressed on him the importance of completing his mission tonight.
Enver passed an iron fence and crossed a low bridge, arriving finally at the House of Grief. He had never been here himself - it was a refuge for men weaker than him. The House’s reputation and skills had reached him through idle chatter at a meeting of counselors, and with no current confidants to discuss such sensitive matters with, he determined then and there to make an appointment.
He paused before the stoop to the main entrance of the House. Hesitation was not like him, but the rashness that brought him here wasn't either. Doubt crept like a cold hand up the back of his neck, raising his nape hairs and setting his empty stomach in knots.
A Griefguard paused their patrol across the House’s gardens to address him somberly, “I am afraid we are closing for the evening.”
Gortash looked up from his brief contemplation. “I sent a letter ahead with a generous donation. An exception will be made,” his reply terse.
“Ah.” A dull sense of recognition sparked across the Griefguard's face. “Very well. The previous client’s appointment is running long. Please take a seat in the garden, and we will inform you when the Inquirer is available again.”
Their flat and practiced tones only served to infuriate him. He did not require the coddling of their typical clientele, only their services rendered on schedule as promised.
Still, he complied and took a seat at the small table in the far garden. At this spot, he was comfortably away from the bumbling patrons who hadn't enough mind to survive the delving of the so-called Inquirers and return home after their appointments. The garden was as peaceful as the Lower City could get. A waterway that framed the garden on two sides, and the lush shading trees and trellis of vines, made the spot seem like an oasis in the urban sprawl. Fine smooth brick buildings and the dividing wall of the Upper City left the garden fairly private and gently separated from the noise and stench of the Foundry and Fishmarkets only a stone's throw away.
Enver did not like being here.
Inaction did not suit him. He sat stiffly, his torso held upright and off the back of the chair. Beneath the table, the foot of his good leg tremored and tapped impatiently against the slate walkway. His right hand, the worse of the two, was stashed away from the growing evening cold beneath layers of woolen cloak. Bulging knuckles clenched together to find some semblance of relief. The other hand flipped idly at the book left on the marble-topped table, an enticingly named tome with contents that served only to disappoint: some sloppily printed and useless dribble about self-improvement. Yet the points within on obedience may’ve held some merit. The place seemed perfectly constructed to lull visitors into false security and reliance.
He scanned the garden, his raptorial mind desperate for something to focus on. Windows from the House itself stared down into the garden. Inside, silhouettes of figures moved lazily about, but he could not make out exact shapes. A deep, loathing frown etched its way onto his face as he thought bitterly on being made to wait. His time was precious and precarious – the city, Faerun, and Toril itself relied on his time being well spent. Now it was being wasted in this damnable garden with its artfully overgrown yard.
He bristled at the sight of the flowers: poppies for remembrance, valerian flowers for a sedative, bixa as a cure-all and aphrodisiac– information he had learned unwittingly while babbled at in his youth by Lady Jannath – or perhaps it was Lady Hullhollyn, he would check his notes later.
With dimming eyes he squinted at the rooftops of the buildings that framed this place. It was paranoia that drove him to search the rooflines, yet he could not help but think of the man who was his cause of being here today.
On idle evenings the two would sit on a balcony outside of his office or at his estate. Enver would give the man a theoretical starting point somewhere in the city or outside of it. The Bhaalist would point to rooftops and with his fingers trace an imagined path across them. All the while Enver would listen, a drink in his hand, while the other man articulated aloud the exact route he would take to arrive where they stood and kill them both without ever being seen.
When he felt roguish, Enver would attempt to break the other man’s plan by throwing complications into the scenario: the structure of that house is failing, the roof can’t support him; the lady of that house suspects her lord of adultery and has been watching all night; that house had a warding alarm; that house has a pigeon problem and has spiked the roof. Then he would watch in awe and delight as his Assassin’s mind would spin its gears and adapt to his challenge.
In the morning, Enver would update his security or mandate proposals to handle the prior night’s winning scenario. The next time they played, he would increase the difficulty for his companion just to make it to him on the balcony: traps placed at blind corners, light-sleeping visitors, a change in patrols, and even once an ill-fated endeavor with guard dogs.
Each time, the man would surprise him by finding an unexpected route around the new obstacles: static sent in questing tendrils over stone walls, a paranoia-induced argument started between two guards as a distraction, a seamless joining of the patrol, or the dogs rallied and set loose on the rest of the house. When he arrived finally at his goal, Enver himself, his eyes would be ablaze with delight.
It was a game for them and though neither ever mustered the will to say it: they relished the precious moments it let them linger together.
Never again.
Hurt welled behind Enver’s eyes and threatened to spill down his face. He frowned ugly and deep. The lines of a life not lived well, but lived thoroughly, cut his features into a grim mask. It was bad enough he was at this House of Grief, he would not let this weakness show more than necessary.
The secrets that threatened to be revealed here if he was not careful would leave him vulnerable and a dead man, but he would be dead anyway if his feeble affliction was not cured soon. He did not like this plan – but he did not have to like a plan born of desperation. It was necessary.
In their Absolute Plot, he had prepared for every inevitability but one: the death of his god-born associate. A being sculpted from such power did not die easily, and at the time it seemed impossible.
Maybe when the pain passed he would let himself see the potential and ambition in Orin. For now, the thought was vomitous. She was a feral dog that had eaten its better and nothing more.
Lesser beings had done more calamitous deeds. That fact he was certain of. Yet, try as he might, he could not think of what could be worse. This calamity affected him. His world was cracking at the seams and threatened to fall apart entirely.
As he remained in this garden, the gusto and determination that drove him here faded. In their absence, he yearned for the presence of another. For the confidence and safety he brought. For the wild but ever-present warmth of their love.
He pondered that word, love. He had cast it at debutantes and dilettantes alike who demanded to hear it in the throes of his performative passions. But here it threatened to mean something more than those placating lies. It made the saliva on his tongue curdle at the taste of it now. It was true that he had loved the man as simpletons would understand it, but there was a depth of meaning there that could not be contained within that simple word.
What is it to love more than ‘love’ could contain? Adoration captured his affection, but it could not grasp a sliver of their grotesque intimacies. Exaltation captured his devotion, but it felt too sterile for a bond made hands deep in sinews and viscera.
No, it was not enough. It would never be enough. They were two beings on the cusp of ascension and they loved like gods: well beyond the paltry lexicon of any mortals. They were first at the altars of each other—two gods-to-be in tandem veneration—equal parts in a singular whole.
His left hand slid idly to the trinket remnants of their promise, kept safe with him on his belt even dressed down as he was. The open maw for him, at once Infernal and Banite, and the spiraling wyrm for the man he lost. The symbols united, just as they were by an unbreakable bond. By the time they had sworn their oaths to each other, it had been only a formality, the symbols themselves were mere tokens of affection.
These solid, simple reminders were one of the few things he had left as worldly evidence of the man. When he realized the loss of his companion, he had swept through his saved papers like a machine. Without the man there he was vulnerable. Each letter that could not be twisted to mean Orin was physical proof of his weakness. Systematically he burned the evidence of the man who was. Anything that would not grace his memoirs was turned to ash and left to the wind. He regretted it now, in the depth of his sentimentality. The only other remnants of his Bhaalspawn were their plan and his grief.
That grief was the last and lingering gift from the one man he could not help but love. The last wound that dug as deep as his Assassin’s blades ever did in life. Each ragged breath dragged against the hollow in him, sending reverberations from his core skinward where they threatened to shake the tears loose from his eyes.
They would not take his grief from him. This pain was his.
Enver wrapped a covetous hand around the unified tokens at his belt, his sudden rage driving him as he squeezed until the pointed metal cut into the meat of his palm and sent a crimson trickle through clenched fingers. The sharp pain made him feel alive again. It broke through the dull and longing ache and fueled him enough to stand.
On forcefully steady legs, he determined then and there that he would dig his fingers into the wound in his heart, bore it deeper, and make it scar. A hole in him, borne of them both. He would fill that aching hole with malice and let it fester. He would not let their machinations become what could have been, they would still be. If his love could not live, he would spew the combined remnants of them both across the world and have the weak and unworthy suffer for it.
Where tears had once threatened to pool in his eyes, they now burned with fury. A smile stretched across his worn face, all teeth and no eyes. He recalled an idle fancy of his belated beloved, jovial musings shared in the dead of night, at the time when great and terrible feats are birthed to those who dare listen to wicked whispers. His love and their plans would live on through his deeds.
The first of his love letters to a dead man would be written tonight, painted across the Outer City in bits of refugee.