She was still smiling sweetly and whispering to the man in tones so low his companions apparently couldn’t hear, and she had angled the ruffian so they couldn’t see her walking stick, either. She released him and stepped away, and the man staggered and nearly tumbled then reached up and grabbed his chin, coughing to accompany his friends’ laughter.

“Bah, thought she’d deck ’em all,” Athrogate grumbled.

“She’s too smart for that,” said the voice in the darkness, “though if they pursue her now, she’d be more than justified in putting that weapon of hers to good use.”

There was no pursuit, however, and the elf made her way up the road, toward Athrogate.

“She’s seen you,” the voice commented.

The dwarf blew another smoke ring, and walked across the alley and continued on his way, his work done.

The elf moved up to where the dwarf had been standing, and with a quick and subtle glance both ways, slipped into the alley.

“Jarlaxle, I presume,” she said when she saw the drow standing before her, with his great, wide-brimmed, feathered hat and purple jodhpurs, his flamboyant white shirt opened low on his black-skinned chest, and his assortment of rings and other glittering accessories.

“I like your hat, Lady Dahlia,” Jarlaxle replied with a bow.

“Not as ostentatious as your own, perhaps,” Dahlia replied. “But it gets the attention of those I wish attentive.”

“Osten—“Jarlaxle stammered as if wounded. “Perhaps I use mine to distract the attention of those I wish to harm.”

“I have other ways of doing that,” Dahlia was quick to answer, and Jarlaxle found himself smiling.

“That is quite an unusual companion you keep,” Dahlia went on. “A drow and a dwarf, side by side.”

“We are anything but common,” Jarlaxle assured her. He grinned again, thinking of another pair he knew, drow and dwarf, who had forged an amazing friendship over many decades. “But yes, Athrogate is an unusual creature, to be sure. Perhaps that is why I find him interesting, even endearing.”

“His words do not match the cut of his clothing.”

“If one can call ‘bwahaha’ words” Jarlaxle replied. “Trust me when I tell you that I have civilized him beyond my wildest expectations. Less spit and more polish.”

“But have you tamed him?”

“Impossible,” Jarlaxle assured her. “That one could fight a titan.”

“We’ll need that.”

“So Athrogate has told me, as he told me that you’ve found a place of great dwarven treasures, an ancient homeland.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“Why would you come to me? Why would an elf seek the alliance of a drow?”

“Because I need allies in this endeavor. It’s a dangerous road, and underground at that. As I’ve considered the powers that be in Luskan, it seems that the dark elves are more reliable than the High Captains, or the pirates, and that leaves me with … you.”

Jarlaxle’s expression remained unconvinced.

“Because the place is thick with dwarf ghosts,” Dahlia admitted.

“Ah,” said the drow. “You need a dwarf most of all. One who can speak to his ancestors and keep the hordes at bay.”

The elf shrugged, not denying it.

“I’m offering you fifty percent of the take,” she said, “and I expect that take to be considerable.”

“Which fifty?”

It was Dahlia’s turn to wear a puzzled expression.

“You take the mithral and I get a mound of copper coins?” Jarlaxle explained. “I’ll take fifty, but my preferred fifty.”

“One to one,” Dahlia argued, meaning alternating picks on the booty.

“And I pick first.”

“And I, second and third.”

“Second and fourth.”

“Second and third!” Dahlia demanded.

“Have a fine journey,” Jarlaxle replied, and he tipped his hat and started away.

“Second and fourth, then,” the elf agreed before he’d gone three steps.

“Yes, I need you,” she admitted as the drow turned back to regard her. “I’ve spent months uncovering this place, and tendays more narrowing down my first choice as guide.”

“First choice?” Jarlaxle said.

“First choice,” Dahlia replied, and again the drow wore that doubting expression.

“Not Borlann the Crow?” Jarlaxle asked with a derisive snort. “Do you truly believe that one as striking as you can move about the city unseen?”

“Borlann served in the search, but was never the goal of it,” Dahlia replied. “I’d sooner take the drunks down the street with me.” She returned the drow’s sly grin. “He doesn’t think much of you, by the way, or of your many black-skinned comrades. He takes great pride in having driven you from the City of Sails.”

“Is that what you believe?”

The elf didn’t answer.

“That I am driven from the very city I now stand within?” Jarlaxle elaborated. “Or that my … associates would fear the wrath of Borlann the Crow, or any of the High Captains—or all of the High Captains should they band together against us? Which they would never do, of course. It would not take much of a bribe to turn two of them against the other three, or three of them against the other two, or four of them against Borlann, if that was the course we wished. Do you, who claim to have learned the secrets of power in Luskan, doubt that?”

Dahlia considered his claims for a moment then replied, “And yet, by all accounts, drow are more scarce in the city of late.”

“Because we’ve used it up. We’ve long ago emptied Luskan of all the treasures that interested us. We remain in the shadows, for the city remains a marginally useful source of information. Some ships still dock here, and from every port on the Sword Coast.”

“And so Borlann the Crow and the other High Captains are the true power after all.”

“If it serves us for them to believe so, then let it be so.”

That reply had Dahlia shifting uncomfortably for the first time, Jarlaxle noted, though she did well to hide it. He would have to play his hand carefully with her. She had ulterior motives, and he didn’t want to scare her off by making her fear that she would be getting herself in too far over her head with him. Still, the elf intrigued him, and the mere fact that she had so beautifully and thoughtfully engaged Athrogate to get to him showed him that she was not ill-prepared—in anything she did, he presumed.

“My associates’ interests in Luskan are minor in these times,” Jarlaxle clarified. “Their network is vast, and this but a minor endeavor.”

“Their network?”

“Our network, when it serves me,” Jarlaxle replied.

“And my proposition?”

The drow pulled off his great hat and swept a low bow before her. “Jarlaxle, at your service, dear lady,” he said.

“Jarlaxle and Athrogate,” Dahlia corrected. “I need him more than I need you.”

Jarlaxle straightened and met her stern gaze with a wicked little grin. “I doubt that.”

“Don’t,” she said, and she walked out of the alley.

Carefully scrutinizing her every alluring movement as she walked away, Jarlaxle’s grin only widened.

“The power in the west mounts,” Sylora said to Szass Tam. “The tremors grow stronger. There is great danger and great potential to be found there.”

“You have spoken with our agent?”

Sylora propped the mirror she carried up before her and closed her eyes, bringing forth its scrying magic once more. The shiny glass dulled, as if with a mist within and only a small circle in the middle of the looking glass cleared. It no longer showed the reflection of the Dread Ring, but a clear image of a single object, a skull-shaped crystal.

“There is much more to the skull gem than to serve as a phylactery for a lich,” Sylora explained. “It serves me as conduit to our agent, and when the time comes, as a guide on my journey.”

“You wish to leave at once.”

“It would have been better had I gone instead of Dahlia,” the Thayan sorceress replied.

“You question me?”

“Neverwinter is thick with Netherese.”

“A cult of the upstart Asmodeus is there, at my bidding, to … trouble them.”

“But not to defeat them. There is a Dread Ring to be created, to be forged from the secrets that Dahlia seeks to uncover, a power of uncontrollable catastrophe, and exquisite beauty.”

“More credit to Dahlia, then,” Szass Tam reminded. “It was she who identified the signs of approaching peril, and sought to exploit them.”

“They are beyond her,” Sylora insisted. She could hardly see Szass Tam through the haze of ash in the Dread Ring—and that was a good thing, given the archlich’s horrid features—but it seemed to her as though his posture showed indiflerence to her excitement.

“Dahlia is not alone,” Szass Tam assured her. “She thinks she is, and that is to our benefit. It is my hope that she will need us not at all to accomplish what she has set out to do. But you will watch her, and you will know, and we will … support her as we deem necessary.”

“Am I to travel to Neverwinter Wood, as we discussed?” Sylora asked, not willing to push any further. She knew when Szass Tam had heard enough, and knew, too, that arguing with him was a sure way to be invited into his dark realm—as a slave.

“Not yet,” Szass Tam instructed. “The cult—the Ashmadai—will keep our Netherese friends occupied. The greater prize will come from Dahlia’s work, so I would have you learn as much as you can, both through your work here in our libraries and through your regular contact with our agent. This is of utmost importance. Should we succeed, we will have another Dread Ring, and better, it will come in no small part through the suffering of those ancient relics, the Netherese.”

“This is my charge?”

“It is.”

“And my credit?” the wizard pressed.

“In your rivalry with Dahlia?” Szass Tam responded with a sly cackle, one that ended abruptly as he continued, his tone much more severe. “Dahlia suspected the link between the rising catastrophe and the fall of the Hosttower of the Arcane, not you. She has performed wonderfully, though it pains you to admit that. My suggestion to you is that you perform equally as wonderfully, for our greater purpose and for your own well-being. I have granted you this opening for redemption and excellence because of your history with Dahlia—if anyone in Faerûn will watch over that one’s every movement, it is you.

“But you serve me, Sylora,” Szass Tam reminded. “You serve my ends and not your own, or your own will come quickly, I assure you. My desire is that Dahlia succeeds, and you will work toward that end. Our enemies are the Shadovar.”

His tone left no room for debate.

“Yes, Your Omnipotence,” Sylora replied, dipping her head in a scant bow.