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PRELUDE
Y
es, she is beautiful, Artemis Entreri thought as he watched the
naked Calihye walk from the bed to the clothing rack to retrieve her
breeches and shirt. She moved with the grace of a skilled warrior,
one leg lowing effortlessly in front of the other, the soft pads of
the balls of her feet coming down lightly and cushioning her step.
She was of medium height, lithe but strong, and the few scars on
her body did not detract from the graceful image of the tight cords
of muscle. She was a creature of paradox, Entreri realized as he
watched her, a being of ire and luidity. She could be ferocious or
tender, and she seemed to understand how to move between the two
to the greatest effect when they were making love.
And no doubt she did the same on the battleield. Calihye
wasn’t just a ighter; she was a warrior, a thinker. She knew her
own strengths and weaknesses as well as any, but measured her
opponent’s better than most. Entreri had no doubt that the woman
often used her feminine charms on unwitting opponents, throwing
them off guard before eviscerating them.
He respected that; the image brought a smile to his often-
scowling face.
It was a short-lived grin, though, as the man considered his own
situation. On a peg near the clothes rack where Calihye dressed
hung his small-brimmed black hat, the one Jarlaxle had given him.
Entreri had found that the cap, like his drow companion, was much
more than it seemed. It held many beneicial properties, magical and
mechanical, including the ability to chill his body to better help him
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hide from eyes that sensed heat instead of light, and a wire inset into
the band, easily retractable, that allowed the hat to it so snugly that
even a fall from a horse wouldn’t dislodge it.
More than it seemed, Entreri thought. Wasn’t everything?
He had slept soundly after his encounter with Calihye the previous
night. Too soundly? Calihye could have killed him, he realized, and
the thought lickered through his mind that perhaps the woman was
using her charms on him. She had put him into more vulnerable a
position than he had ever known.
No, he assured himself. Her feelings for me are genuine. This is
no game.
Except, he noted, wouldn’t that have been Calihye’s strategy, to
put him so completely off his guard that she could risk an attack
upon him?
Entreri dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his bleary
eyes. He shook his head as he did, and was glad that his hands
covered his helpless chuckle. He would drive himself mad with such
thoughts.
“Are you coming with me, then?” Calihye asked, drawing him
from his reverie.
He lifted his head and looked at her again as she stood by the
rack. She was still nude, though his eyes did not roam her body, but
rather settled upon her face. By all measures, Calihye had once been
a strikingly beautiful woman, with startling eyes that sometimes
showed relections of gray amidst their blue. At other times,
depending on the background—the lighting, her clothing—those
eyes glowed an exquisite shade of medium blue, and either way they
always seemed striking because of their contrast with her raven-dark
hair. Her face was symmetrical, her bone structure impeccable.
But that scar. It ran across her right cheek to her nose, then down
through her lips to the middle of her chin. It was an angry scar, often
inlamed and red. Calihye hid behind it, Entreri knew, as if in denial
of her feminine beauty.
When she lashed her smile, though, so mischievous and
dangerous, Entreri hardly noticed the tear in her lips. To Artemis
Entreri, she remained beautiful, and other than to consider her
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motivations for keeping the scar and the deeper meaning it seemed
to hold to her, he hardly noticed it. It did not detract in the least for
him, so lost was he in the mysteries that simmered in her eyes. She
shook her head and her thick hair rolled over her shoulders, and
Entreri wanted to leap over and bury his face in that warm, soft
mane.
“We agreed to eat,” Calihye reminded him. She gave a sigh and
began pulling on her shirt. “I would have thought you’d worked up a
great and growling hunger.”
As her head came up through her collar her eyes set on her lover,
and Calihye’s smile disappeared.
That lash of a frown clued Entreri in to his own expression. He
was scowling. He didn’t know why. There wasn’t a singular thought
in his mind that might bring a scowl to his face just then. Calihye
wouldn’t elicit such a thought from him, after all, for he considered
her a bright spot in his miserable life. But he was indeed scowling,
as her relective frown revealed.
He wore that dour expression often of late—or had it been
forever?—and usually for no apparent reason at all. Except, of
course, that he was often angry—at everything and nothing all at
once.
“We do not have to eat,” the woman said.
“No, no, of course we should go and get some food. The morning
is late already.”
“What troubles you?”
“Nothing.”
“Did I not please you last night?”
Entreri nearly snorted aloud at that absurdity, and he couldn’t
suppress a smile as he considered Calihye and recognized that she
was simply goading him for a compliment.
“You have pleased me many nights. Greatly. And last night was
among those,” he offered to her, and he was glad to see her apparent
relief.
“Then what troubles you?”
“I told you that I am not troubled.” Entreri reached down and
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gathered up his pants and began pulling them over his feet. He
stopped when he felt Calihye’s hand on his shoulder. He looked up at
her, staring down at him, a look of concern on her face.
“Your words do not match your expression,” she said. “Tell me.
Can you not trust me? What is it that so upsets the humors of Artemis
Entreri? What is it about you? What happened to you, to ignite this
inner ire?”
“You speak in foolish riddles of your own imagination.” He
bent down again to pull his pants on, but Calihye gripped him more
tightly, forcing him to look back at her.
“What is it?” she pressed. “How is a warrior of such perfection
as Artemis Entreri created? What history did this to you?”
Entreri looked away from her, looked down at his own feet. But
he didn’t really see them. In his mind’s eye, Artemis Entreri was a
boy again, barely more than a child, in the dusty streets of a desert
port city that was full of the smell of brine or illed with stinging
sand, depending upon which way the wind was blowing.
The wagons creaked even though they were not moving, as the
sandy breeze sizzled against their wooden sides. A couple of the
horses nickered uncomfortably and one even reared up as far as its
heavy, tight harness would allow. The driver, a thin and sinewy man
of harsh, angular features who reminded the boy of his father, wasted
no time in putting the whip savagely to the frightened creature.
Yes, just like his father.
The fat spice dealer seated on one wagon stared at him for a long
time. Those heavy-lidded eyes seemed to invite him to slumber, as
mesmerizing as a swaying serpent. There was something there, he
knew, some magic behind that gaze, some method of control that
had allowed the pathetic, slovenly beast to rise to prominence among
the troupe gathered for their seasonal caravan out of Memnon. The
others all deferred to that one, he could see, though he was just a
boy and knew little about the world or about the hierarchy of the
merchant class.
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But that one was the boss, to be sure, and the boy lushed,
lattered that the leader of so many would spend time with him and
his mother. That prideful lush became an open-jawed, wide-eyed
stare of disbelief as the fat man handed over coins—gold coins!
Gold
coins! The boy had heard of them, had heard of golden coins,
but had never seen any. He had seen silver once, handed by some
stranger to his father, Belrigger, before the stranger went behind the
curtain with his mother.
But never gold. His mother was holding gold!
How thrilling it had been, but briely. Then Shanali, his mother,
grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and pushed him to the fat
man’s waiting grasp. He wriggled and fought the hold. He tried to
tug away from the sweaty arms, at least so that he could get some
answers from his mother.
But when he inally managed to face her, she had already turned
and started away.
He called out to her. He pleaded with her. He asked her what it
all meant.
“Where are you going?
“Why am I still here?
“Why is he holding me?
“Mama-hal!”
And she did glance back, only once and only for a moment. Just
long enough for him to see her sunken, sad eyes one last time.
“Artemis?”
He shook his memories away and looked at Calihye. She seemed
amused and concerned all at once. Strangely so.
“Are you to sit there with a lute in your hands and your breeches
about your ankles all morning?”
The question shook him, and only then did Entreri realize that
he was indeed holding Idalia’s lute, the magical instrument the
dragon sisters had given to him. And yes, as Calihye had noted, his
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