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Staying at Elfsong Tavern has its perks and its drawbacks. For once, they are sleeping in actual beds, a welcome change from the usual bedrolls. They need not cook every night. There are people, regular city folk, drinking their worries away just a floor below. There are liquors flowing, always.
But there is also visibility. They are known, their faces having become recognisable. After the coronation, the mundanely bizarre event that drove a wedge between them, their anonymity was gone.
So now, a courier waits with a parcel addressed to their leader.
Lae’zel, who insists on keeping patrolling duty despite them staying at an inn in the middle of Baldur’s Gate – or maybe for that very reason – lets him go after Gale talks her out of slitting the poor chap’s throat. The wizard approaches Saelnys and they exchange surprised glances. She can almost feel Astarion curiously peering at the package from his chair.
This timing cannot be coincidental. Her recent nights were mostly sleepless, as she racked her brains trying to remember something, anything of substance. The Elder Brain. Orin. The Temple of Bhaal. Lord Enver Gortash.
Surely, she must have used to receive letters and parcels. However far she was from being a regular Baldurian, perhaps that bit of normalcy she might have been accustomed to? She is overjoyed now.
Saelnys grabs the bundle from Gale’s hands, unwraps it carefully. Inside is a carved wooden box, light and smooth. It is small and cannot possibly hold much. She unclasps it open to find a note on a piece of parchment. The oddly familiar handwriting says very little and just enough at the same time: A sweet memory. Perhaps to you, too.
Under the note sits a pressed flower. Thin orange petals form a small crown. Instinctively, she knows that it is honeysuckle.
She looks up to Shadowheart’s amused expression and realises she must have been staring at the flower for quite some time. Saelnys excuses herself, suddenly embarrassed, and climbs onto the inn’s rooftop.
She leans against the balustrade, holding onto the little box tightly. It does not hold anything else, only the note and the flower. Only or perhaps much more than she could have asked for. She is afraid to touch the honeysuckle and admires it nested in the box, sniffs the parchment, traces the letters with her fingers. Then she notices scratches and indentations in the vellum. A quill seeped words without ink.
She runs back inside and lunges at the nearest candle. Carefully, she holds it to the parchment. There is another word. Repeated multiple times.
Beloved.
Beloved. She holds her breath and a small fire ignites deep down. The honeysuckle. A favourite of hers. They grew close to her childhood home. She found comfort in their scent and saw grace in their shape. She still appreciated them as an adult.
When they retire for the night, Saelnys keeps the box next to her pillow and stares at it in dim candlelight until she falls asleep.
Her patron willfully grants her a dream of sentimental yearning. She is in a decorated hallway of an estate in Upper City. A guard greets and instructs her to proceed to the master’s chambers, but she ignores them and heads down to the servants’ quarters, because an exquisite, overpowering smell drags her in. She realises that she cannot recall her own name, but she knows the house so well she could navigate it in complete darkness.
Some staff regard her with obvious dismay, but they all act as if her presence is no surprise. She ignores them. The long table where the servants usually work is covered in honeysuckle flowers, its scent taking over the room, drowning out everything else. She breathes in deeply. It is a nectar with a tinge of the sweetest vanilla, a memory of summer evenings. Oddly fitting for this mansion, she thinks to herself, feeling her body settle into the aroma.
An old woman, unknown to her, is hunched over at the side of the table, gathering some delicate-looking items into a basket. The Urge sits down on the bench. When the old lady is done, she covers the basket with a piece of faded cloth. She turns around and the Urge catches her empty stare. She is blind.
"I suppose you were not trying to be exceptionally stealthy tonight," the woman says, chuckling quietly.
"If I wanted to stab you, there were chances aplenty. Who are you?" The voice coming out of her mouth is her own, but alien.
"A perfumer. Nobody important."
"Poison-maker, you mean."
"One man's pleasure is poison to another. I know your scent, girl. This house has a heavy iron tang, but yours doesn't begin to compare. It brings in... nothing I would personally like to experience."
"Why thank you," she frowns, even though the woman obviously cannot read her expression.
"I wonder who the true danger here is. You or Lord Gortash."
She scoffs. Poor, disillusioned old hag.
"You have no idea."
"He paid a hefty sum for these particular flowers, because they are out of season," the perfumer continues as if she was not interrupted. "It's of utmost importance, he said."
The woman turns her head towards the biggest bunch of flowers, the Urge following. It is a weird sight, but the longer she enjoys the smell of the honeysuckle, the more sense it makes to her. Enver handpicks and surrounds himself with beautiful items, beautiful people.
It still is a fascinating coincidence.
“Is something happening tonight that I haven’t heard about?” She asks no-one in particular, but the old perfumer shakes her head.
“Just you, I'm afraid.”
Before she gets to ask another question, there is a wave of excitement in the room as Gortash enters. He looks somewhat unserious in his homely, loose robes, visibly tired from long hours spent at the desk.
His eyes focus on her. Suddenly very aware of herself, she looks down and realises she is wearing a narrow, crimson-coloured dress. Inexplicable.
“Come now, there is work to be done,” he summons her without as much as a greeting, then waves his hand in the air. “And that goes for everyone. It is not yet time until you are dismissed for the day.”
Without delay, she follows him out of the room. Gortash is now walking with a slight spring in his step and he is telling her about the progress he has made on the contraption he wants to have the Elder Brain equipped with.
He closes the office door, immediately walks across the room to grab his drawings to show her, the ink just barely dried, but she is distracted.
“Who was that?”
“What are you talking about?” Gortash almost seems to be feigning ignorance. Yet he knows that until she has received a satisfying answer, she will not show interest in his schematics.
“The poison-maker that you let into your estate.”
“Oh, that,” he shrugs, “she calls herself Tea Rose. Only the best perfumer in this city. I had commissioned her work and invited her here to deliver it.”
She bangs her fingertips on the desk and he gives her a look of amused disbelief.
“Please don't tell me you threatened her. She's aged. She's blind.”
“Your point being? Death doesn't discriminate. Besides, you'd be surprised what some blind assassins are capable of.”
“My point being, as if I would let another assassin into my home. But no matter. She's left in one piece, so I appreciate your cooperation.”
“Why honeysuckle, Enver?”
“Ever so impatient, my dear. I said we have work to do.”
“Honeysuckle has no toxic properties. It is cultivated solely for its visual and olfactory features. The obvious conclusion would therefore be, she made something else and brought the flowers in to mask the poison.”
He sighs and puts the drawings away wearily, then opens a drawer from which he produces a bundle wrapped in dyed silk.
“Here’s your poison,” he passes it to the Urge who quickly finds a small glass bottle with an ornamental stopper hidden in the silk. She uncorks it.
The sweet smell of honeysuckle fills her nostrils.
“What is this supposed to be?”
“Perfume.”
“Perfume...? But wouldn’t this make for such clever poison–”
“I had it made for you,” he cuts her off sharply. “It is nothing but an essence of the flower itself that you can apply on your skin. It gives off a pleasant aroma. That is what a perfume is.”
She is left speechless. What luxury, what vanity. Nothing that common folk could afford or easily obtain. In Baldur’s Gate, such privileges come to nobility and swindlers alone.
“And you had it made for me?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I noticed a while back, you know. The way you mask the scent of the kill. Flowers in little sachets that you keep close to your body.”
Wasn't he perceptive.
“It’s lovely, but I have nothing to give you in return.” The bottle weighs so much in her hands now.
“Do you understand the concept of a gift? You don’t need to give me anything.”
She stands still, unsure what to do with the present, so Gortash takes a step forward. He gently pries the perfume bottle from her, grabs her hand, tilts the bottle and dabs the liquid on her fingertips, pops the stopper back in. He then brings her palm up to her neck and collarbone, guiding her into a round motion. She is surprisingly stationary and patient.
“I’ve never been given anything like that. Only offerings in my Temple, but they were offerings to Father, really.”
His expression turns sombre for a brief moment, as he seems to be at a loss for words. He turns back to his drawings.
“Why?” she asks again, in a whisper, approaching him. She puts her hand on his lower back.
“Because people do these things,” he scoops her body into his own, “for their beloved.”