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“Well?” Jaheira says. “Do not keep me waiting, Karlach.”
“Huh?” Karlach answers, startled out of her thoughts.
The harborfront street is crowded and lively. Around them, the air rings with shouts as a huge ship begins pulling into the dock, eliciting a scurry of activity from dockworkers, day laborers, and nearby sailors. Hector, ever-curious, stands with Minsc down at the edge of the water, watching the ship drift in; the two of them are grinning widely like little boys with their noses eagerly pressed to a toy shop window.
Jaheira and Karlach stand back by the roadside, leaning up against the wall of a nearby warehouse and dodging the pebbles launched by the wheels of passing carts. Everything stinks intensely of fish; Jaheira can almost sense the stench soaking into her boots, her armor, her hair. The camp will smell like a fishmonger’s for a week, she grouses to herself.
“You want to ask me something, I think,” she says, eyeing her tiefling companion sidelong. “Else you would also be down there watching the show.”
“Oh.” Karlach blinks. She looks somewhat caught out, like a child with her hand in a forbidden jar of cookies. “Yeah. Well, I was trying to decide if you'd thump me for asking it. It's... a pretty personal question.”
Jaheira snorts. “The most interesting always are. I cannot promise you an answer but I can promise you safety in the asking. What is it you wish to know?”
There’s a long silence broken only by the voices of sailors and the screech of a flock of seagulls wheeling overhead. Karlach scuffs her boot toe absently against the dusty cobblestones.
“I want to know what made it easier for you,” she finally says.
It’s Jaheira’s turn to blink, puzzled. “What?”
“When Khalid-- when he died,” Karlach says. She flushes, recognizing the bluntness of the question, but she’s committed now and presses on doggedly. “What made it easier for you? Or what would have made it easier for you? Something-- anything I can do for Hec before I’m gone. I just…” She trails off, frowns and shoves her hands in her pockets, staring at the ground. “I dunno.”
“Ah.” Jaheira leans back against the warehouse wall, her eyes hooding over as she turns to look out over the water.
“I’m gonna die,” Karlach goes on after a while, just to fill the strained silence. “Sometimes I can go a whole hour or so without thinking about it, but it’s always there. Burning me up from the inside…”
“I know this,” Jaheira says quietly.
“And it’s killing Hec, too.” Karlach's fists clench at her sides. “You know how he is; he tries not to show it, or anything really, until it gets so bad he melts down. And I know he’s trying to be strong for me. But I know him too well. I see it in his eyes, how it’s ripping him up.”
A flicker of bright flame rolls along her skin and she groans sharply, hunching over against the surge of pain that goes with it. “Damn it. It’s not fucking fair,” she grinds out. “At least when I die, I’m shut of the fucking pain. Shut of having to be afraid of it anymore. But, what, he just has to go on? Hurting forever, because of me?”
“Not forever,” Jaheira murmurs. “He will learn to live with the scars.”
“Yeah, well, that’s worse,” Karlach snaps angrily. “That’s worse, ‘cause then what’s left of me? Then I’m just fucking gone.” She turns and slams her gauntleted fist into the wall, startling a group of nearby urchin children who scatter in all directions. “Damn it!”
A long pause.
“Damn it,” she repeats, lower. “Sorry. I don't… I don't mean to go off at you. Not your fault there’s no right answer. Not your fault the whole situation is fucked to the hells and back.” She sighs. “And I didn’t mean it, about being gone. I know Khalid isn’t gone for you, either.”
“I knew you did not mean it,” Jaheira says, her voice just the slightest bit dry, “or I really would have thumped you for implying it.” She shakes her head. “Khalid is not gone from me, nor will he ever be. If I lived for a thousand years, my heart would still hold the same space carved out in his likeness.”
She raises and lowers one shoulder in a half-shrug. “One learns to continue to live. It is nature’s way. Hector will too, in time. But he will not forget you, of that I am certain. One only has to see the way he looks at you, to know you are burned into his memory.”
“Yeah,” Karlach says. She fidgets absently with the dent her metal glove left in the stone wall, and the tiniest hint of a smile tugs at her lips. “Sometimes feels almost worth it, all the grief, to have had some time being looked at like that.”
“Yes,” Jaheira agrees, and there is the weight of a lifetime of memories under the words. “It is worth everything.”
She huffs out a heavy breath between her teeth. “There is nothing that you can do that will make it hurt less for him to lose you. Which is as it should be.”
Karlach’s shoulders slump. “Yeah. I know,” she admits. “Gods, that’s fucked, isn’t it? I want him to hurt, in some kind of fucked up way. Because if it hurts, that means it was important, that it meant something, right? But I don’t want him to hurt, because I love him and him smiling is better than anything in the world…” Her voice cracks and she squeezes her eyes shut. “Doesn’t make any fucking sense…”
“In my experience,” Jaheira says wryly, “very few things do. And matters of love least of all.”
She raises an eyebrow at the younger woman and chews the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. Then she pushes herself away from the wall in a sharp motion, dodging deftly around several crates overflowing with dead salmon. “But come with me. Let us leave the boys to their sail-watching for a time. I have an idea; it is no cure, but perhaps you may find it of some comfort.”
By the name, one would expect The Chamber of Illusions to be a well-kept magic shop, elaborately decorated and advertised and perhaps run by a flamboyant wizard at the front desk ready to greet patrons. They would, however, be wrong: the small shop is tucked into a rather dingy corner of the Market Ward, bears no signage, and seems almost as if it is trying not to be noticed.
“It is another Harper safehouse, like Danthelon's,” Jaheira says with amusement, seeing the expression on Karlach's face. “Unlike Danthelon, however, Peyter primarily considers customers a distraction.”
She shoves the door open; it sticks a little on its hinges and a great cloud of dust billows up around them.
“Peyter! Ah, stlarn --” Jaheira sneezes and thumps a fist lightly against the wall, shaking her head to clear it. “Peyter, do you never clean this place?”
“What good? It only gathers the dust again.” His high, cheerful voice has no immediately obvious source, but drifts from somewhere within the massive stacks of battered books and shelves of trinkets that crowd the small room on all sides. “You should know, Jaheira, that people are going around saying you're dead again.”
“I am - I have merely decided to come haunt you in particular,” Jaheira says dryly.
“I should be so lucky.” A small, stoop-shouldered gnomish man with greying hair clambers over a book pile and surveys them from under his thick spectacles. “Well, you still look well-fleshed enough for a ghost,” he says mildly, and raises a curious eyebrow at Karlach. “Who's the bruiser?”
Karlach blinks, then laughs. “Name's Karlach,” she says casually, and matches his expression. “Who's the shortstack?”
That elicits a grin from the old man. “Peyter Everdew, at your humble service. Researcher. Visionary. Unwilling purveyor of the arcane and archaic to the ignorant masses.” He returns his gaze to Jaheira. “If you're here for earmarked supplies, High Harper, I'm afraid stock is pretty low at the moment.”
“I am not. I come to call in the debt you owe me by making use of your skills.”
“Oh, aye?” Peyter’s pleasant smile flickers only slightly. “You'll be looking for a scry, then?”
“No, as a matter of fact. A Magic Mouth spell.”
The gnome squints doubtfully, then laughs. “That's all? What's the catch?”
“There is no catch. My friend has need of the service and you will provide it free of charge. And then you may consider us square.”
Karlach's head tilts slowly to the side as she tries to parse this conversation. “Magic Mouth…” she says cautiously. “We saw that in the creche… that's what Gale called it, anyway. A statue that yelled bloody murder when we walked past.” She hesitates. “It was a message the monks had left. Am I… here to record a message onto something? For Hec, for after I'm dead?”
Peyter’s eyebrows lift in sudden comprehension; the doubtful look vanishes from his face at once, replaced with an air of regret and pity. Jaheira nods.
“Yes,” she says quietly. She reaches into her pocket to brush her fingers across the folded letter she took from her desk in the sanctuary. “You asked me what would have helped me. I have no good answer, but I can tell you this. I have notes written in Khalid's hand, I have things that he owned, and they have comforted me in many dark hours. But there is little I would not give, were it possible, to hear his voice again.”
Peyter provides pen and parchment, and Karlach sits at his battered desk in between stacks of scrolls and a pile of broken wands, glaring down at the paper in front of her as if it was responsible for all her problems. “Fuck. How the hells do I fit everything I want to say to him in twenty-five words?” she says morosely, slouching forward to rest her cheek on one hand.
“I can charm more than one item for extra words!” Peyter’s voice echoes from somewhere among the mess. “Though at a certain point Jaheira will start to owe me. ”
Jaheira laughs, absently thumbing through an old book which spews dust with each turn of the page. “If you wish to pretend the spell is a grievous strain to your abilities, Peyter, it is only a slight upon yourself.”
“Hey, you came to me because you wanted it done right.”
“We came to you because you have discretion,” Jaheira says dryly. “We have a wizard closer at hand, of great skill but known to run at the mouth, and this is a matter deserving of privacy.”
“Yes, yes, the Harper obsession with discretion. No one will know you were here, et cetera, et cetera.” Peyter peers around one of the bookshelves and smiles at Karlach. “Take your time in thinking about it, lass,” he adds, in a kindly tone very different from that he used with Jaheira. “I’m in no hurry.”
“If only I had time to waste,” Karlach mutters. As the gnome ambles off again, she scribbles a line on the parchment, then scratches it out irritably. “Damn it. I'm no good at this.”
“It need not be poetry,” Jaheira points out gently. “That it comes from you is the important thing.”
“Maybe,” Karlach says doubtfully. “Hec's so smart, though. All that time at his monastery, reading all those books.” She leans back in the chair and gives the pen a few agitated tosses into the air, her eyebrows furrowed tightly together.
“If this is the last bit of me he gets, I don't want to sound like a moron,” she mutters. “You know, ‘ Time to pull out that enchanted copper piece and listen to my dead girlfriend sound like a fucking idiot for thirty seconds. Really brings back memories.’ Fuck that. ”
Jaheira's eyes track the pen's slow, repetitive arc through the air. “You know he would never describe you so, Karlach,” she says. “Something else is bothering you. What is it?”
Karlach shrugs, tosses the pen up again - a little too forcefully this time. Its tip lodges in the aged, softened wood of the rafters and sticks there. “Ah, hells…”
She clambers onto the chair so she can reach the pen and pull it free of the wood. Then she just stands there for a long moment, fidgeting with it between her fingertips.
The words burst out of her abruptly, in a sudden rush - ashamed and fearful and sad. “Did you hate him?” she asks. “For dying? For leaving you behind? Not for always, I mean, but just… for a while…”
Silence. Jaheira realizes suddenly that she is squeezing the book in her hands so hard that her fingernails have left deep marks in the aged leather. The question hangs in the air, mingled with the clouds of dust that shine amber in the late afternoon light.
“Shit. Sorry,” Karlach mutters. “Fuck.” She climbs down off the chair and tosses the pen onto the desk, then sits down heavily and slumps her face into her hands. “Damn it.”
Slowly, deliberately, Jaheira sets down the book and folds her arms across her chest. “Do you fear that, Karlach?” she asks softly. “That Hector could hate you?”
“I could live, if I went to Avernus,” Karlach mutters. “And he knows that.”
“You could survive,” Jaheira corrects her. “That is not the same thing as living.” She sits down slowly with a heavy sigh on a nearby stack of books, resting her elbows on her knees. “I never hated Khalid for leaving me, no.”
She scowls as memory demands to be acknowledged. Khalid’s desecrated body stretched across a table, raw and bleeding. The strange, acidic chemical smell that laced the air of Irenicus’s dungeon. The cold emptiness in those bright brown eyes that had always held such warmth…
“When we found him dead, I screamed my throat raw at Minsc,” she mutters hoarsely. “At Caden, at all those around me, though they had committed no greater sin than to be beside me in that terrible hour. I raged, I swore vengeance…I sobbed as though my heart would shatter apart. And I hated, beyond measure, the man who killed him. I hated myself for not being able to save him. But Khalid himself… never.”
She realizes her fingers have clenched into fists, and slowly forces the tension in her knuckles to relax again. “If love is broken by evil,” she says bitterly, “it is the fault of the evil. I knew that. And Hector knows that, too.”
Karlach draws a slow breath and then lets it out. Another wave of muted flame-light glows bright under her armor, flares along her skin, and disappears.
“I bet Khalid felt like I do,” she says softly after a while. “Glad for every moment to have known you, like I am for Hec. Even if it… had to end too soon.”
“He had little time to think of such things,” Jaheira says gruffly. “We did not know the blow was coming before it struck. There was no time to prepare.”
“All the same.” Karlach rubs her thumb distractedly against a knot in the wood of the desk. “I'm a bit of an expert, these days, on what it feels like, sitting on the edge of dying. You see everything sharper than ever, all the good things in life, and how lucky you were to have them. Even just for a little while.”
She looks sideways at Jaheira. The fear has eased from her expression, but for a moment, the Harper is struck by how young she looks, and how earnest, and how terribly, terribly sad.
“Thank you, Karlach,” she says gently. “I take that as a comfort.”
Karlach relaxes, smiles slightly. “Good,” she says. Straightening up, she picks up the pen and spins it deftly in her fingers. “I think I know what I need to say.”
“You'll hold onto them, yeah?” she asks Jaheira as they walk out of the shop an hour or so later. In one hand she's clutching the three copper pieces Peyter enchanted for her, which she holds out to Jaheira with an awkward smile. “Just… see they get to Hec, when he needs them?”
“You have my word,” Jaheira says gravely, accepting the three coins.
She is pleased to see that her idea has had something of the intended effect. Karlach seems just a little less anxious, a little more at ease; she even whistles softly to herself as she sets off down the street. “Let's go see if the boys've accidentally signed themselves off to be sailors,” she says lightly and breaks into a trot.
Jaheira waits until the tiefling has moved a little out of earshot, then looks down at the three coins nestled in the palm of her hand. “Play,” she says softly, triggering the repeatable enchantment with which Peyter imbued the dull metal.
“ Hiya, soldier,” says the first coin, playing back Karlach's voice, tinny but recognizable. “ I love you. I love you… so much. I just wanted to tell you that, so you'd know it forever. I love you.”
Twenty-five words. The next coin lights up in its turn. “ I'm always going to be with you, all right? Wherever I end up… I'll be watching. Looking out for you, best I can. I promise.”
The third coin hums with energy. The recorded voice is shakier now, thick with emotion. “ And I want you to know how much better you made my world, being in it. Don't you ever forget that. I love you. Taters .”
Jaheira frowns to herself and tucks the coins into one of the pockets of her pack. An unfair business from beginning to end, she thinks bleakly. You deserve so much better, just as Khalid did.
Yes - she will give the coins to Hector, when the time comes. And then they will both grieve together, for the loss of two bright stars that burned too fast to darkness.