With a deep, steadying breath, Entreri steeled his gaze once more and watched coldly as the invader threw a staggering old man to the ground and tore open the wretch’s threadbare purse. Apparently unsatisfied with the meager take, the young man yanked a half-rotted board from the uneven edge of the nearest shack and whacked his pitiful victim across the forehead. The old man whined and pleaded, but the tough struck him again, flattening his nose. He was on his knees, face covered in bright blood, begging and crying, but got hit again and again until his sobs were muffled by the mud that half-buried his broken face.
Entreri found that he cared nothing for the old wretch. He did care, though, that the man had begged this newcomer, had pleaded with a master who had come uninvited to Artemis Entreri’s place.
Entreri’s hands went down to his pockets, slipped inside, feeling the only weapons he bothered to carry, two small handfuls of sand and a flat, edged rock. He gave a sigh that reflected both resignation and the tingling excitement of impending battle. He started out from the corner, but paused to consider his own feelings. He was the hunting cat, the master here, so he was rightfully defending his carved-out domain. But there remained a sadness Entreri could not deny, a resignation he could not understand.
Somewhere deep inside him, in a pocket sealed away by the horrors he had known, Entreri knew things should not be like this. Yet the realization did not turn him away from the battle to come. Instead, it made him even angrier.
A feral growl escaped Entreri’s lips as he stepped around the shack, out into the open and right in the path of the approaching thug.
The older boy stopped, likewise regarding his adversary. He knew of Entreri, of course, the same way Entreri knew of him.
“At last you show yourself openly,” the newcomer said confidently. He was bigger than slender Entreri, though there was very little extra weight on his warrior’s frame. His shoulders had been broadened by maturity, by an extra few years of a hard life. His muscles, though not so thick, twitched like strong cords.
“I have been looking for you,” he said, inching closer. His caution tipped observant Entreri that he was more nervous than his bravado revealed.
“I’ve never lived in the shadows,” Entreri replied. “You could have found me any day, any time.”
“Why would I bother?”
Entreri considered the ridiculous question, then gave a little shrug, deciding not to justify the boastful retort with an answer.
“You know why I’m here,” the man said at length, his tone sharper than before-a further indication that his nerves were on edge.
“Funny, I thought I was the one who’d found you,” Entreri replied. He hid well his concern that this thug might be here, might be on Entreri’s street, with more of a purpose than he’d presumed.
“You had no choice but to find me,” the invader asserted firmly.
There it was again, that implication of a deeper purpose. It occurred to Entreri then that this man, for he was indeed a man and no street waif, should already be above staking out a claim to such a squalid area as this. Even if he were new to the trade, this course would not be the course for an adult ruffian. He should be allied with one of the many thieves’ guilds in this city of thieves. Why, then, had he come? And why alone?
Had he been kicked out of a guild, perhaps?
For a brief moment, Entreri feared he might be in over his head. His opponent was an adult, and possibly a veteran rogue. Entreri shook the notion away, saw that his reasoning was not sound. Young upstarts did not get “kicked out” of Calimport’s thieves’ guilds; they merely disappeared-and no one bothered to question their abrupt absence. But this opponent was not, obviously, some child who had been forced out on his own.
“Who are you?” Entreri asked bluntly. He wished he could take the question back as soon as the words had left his mouth, fearing he had just tipped the thug off to his own ignorance. Entreri was ultimately alone in his place. He had no network surrounding him, no spies of any merit, and little understanding of the true power structures of Calimport.
The thug smiled and spent a long moment studying his opponent. Entreri was small, and probably as quick and sure in a fight as the guild’s reports had indicated. He stood easily, his hands still in the pockets of his ragged breeches, his bare, brown-tanned arms small, but sculpted with finely honed muscles. The thug knew Entreri had no allies, had been told that before he had been sent out here. Yet this boy-and in the older thief’s eyes, Entreri was indeed a boy-stood easily and seemed composed far beyond his years. One other thing bothered the man.
“You have no weapon?” he asked suspiciously.
Again, Entreri offered only a little shrug in reply.
“Very well, then,” the thug said, his tone firm, as if he had just made a decision. To accentuate that very point, he took up the board, still dripping with the blood of the old man. Decisively he brought it up to his shoulder, brought it up, Entreri realized, to a more accessible position. The thug was barely twenty feet away when he began his approach.
So much more was going on here, Entreri knew, and he wanted answers.
Ten feet away.
Entreri held his steady and calm pose, but his muscles tightened in preparation.
The man was barely five feet from him. Entreri’s right hand whipped out of his pocket, hurling a spray of fine sand.
Up came the club, and the man turned his head away. He was laughing when he looked back. “Trying to blind me with a handful of sand?” he asked incredulously, sarcastically. “How clever of a desert fighter to think of using sand!”
Of course it was the proverbial “oldest trick” in sneaky Calimshan’s thick book of underhanded street fighting techniques. And the next oldest trick followed when Entreri thrust his hand back into his pocket, and whipped a second handful of sand.
The thug was laughing even as he closed his eyes, defeating the attack. He blinked quickly, just for an instant, a split second. But that instant was long enough for ambidextrous Entreri to withdraw his left hand from his pocket and fling the edged stone. He had just one window of opportunity, an instant of time, a square inch of target. He had to be perfect-but that was the way it had been for Entreri since he was a child, since he went out into the desert, a land that did not forgive the smallest of mistakes.
The sharp stone whistled past the upraised club and hit the thug in the throat, just to one side of center. It nicked into his windpipe and deflected to the left, cutting the wall of an artery before rebounding free into the air.
“Wh-?” the thug began, and he stopped, apparently surprised by the curious whistle that had suddenly come into his voice. A shower of blood erupted from his neck, spraying up across his cheek. He slapped his free hand to it, fingers grasping, trying to stem the flow. He kept his cool enough to hold his makeshift club at the ready the whole time, keeping Entreri at bay, though the younger man had put his hands back in his pockets and made no move.
He was good, Entreri decided, honestly applauding the man’s calm and continued defense. He was good, but Entreri was perfect. You had to be perfect.
The outward flow of blood was nearly stemmed, but the artery was severed and the windpipe open beside it.
The thug growled and advanced. Entreri didn’t blink.
The thug stopped suddenly, dark eyes wide. He tried to speak out, but only sputtered forth a bright gout of blood. He tried to draw breath, but gurgled again pitifully, his lungs fast-filling with blood, and sank to his knees.
It took him a long time to die. Calimport was an unforgiving place. You had to be perfect.
“Well done,” came a voice from the left.
Entreri turned to see two men casually stroll out of a narrow alley. He knew at once that they were thieves, probably guildsmen, for confident Entreri believed only the most practiced rogues could get so close to him without him knowing it.
Entreri looked back to the corpse at his feet, and a hundred questions danced about his thoughts. He knew then
with cold certainty that this had been no random meeting. The thug he had killed had been sent to him.
Entreri chuckled, more a derisive snort than a laugh, and kicked a bit of dirt into the dead man’s face.
Less than perfect got you killed. Perfect, as Entreri soon found out, got you invited into the local thieves’ guild.
Entreri could hardly fathom the notion that all the food he wanted was available to him with a snap of his fingers. He had been offered a soft bed, too, but feared that such luxury would weaken him. He slept on his floor at night.
Still, the offer was the important thing. Entreri cared little for material wealth or pleasures, but he cared greatly that those pleasures were being offered to him.
That was the benefit of being in the Basadoni Cabal, one of the most powerful thieves’ guilds in all the city. In fact there were many benefits. To an independent young man such as Artemis Entreri, there were many drawbacks, as well.
Lieutenant Theebles Royuset, the man whom Pasha Basadoni had appointed as Entreri’s personal mentor, was one of these. He was the epitome of men that young Artemis Entreri loathed, gluttonous and lazy, with heavy eyelids that perpetually drooped. His smelly brown hair was naturally frizzy, but too greased and dirty to come away from his scalp, and he always wore the remnants of his last four meals on the front of his shirt. Physically, there was nothing quick about Theebles, except the one movement that brought the latest handful of food into his slopping jowls, but intellectually, the man was sharp and dangerous.
And sadistic. Despite the obvious physical limitations, Theebles was in the second rank of command in the guild, along with a half-dozen other lieutenants, behind only Pasha Basadoni himself.
Entreri hated him. Theebles had been a merchant, and like so many of Calimport’s purveyors, had gotten himself into severe trouble with the city guard. So Theebles had used his wealth to buy himself an appointment to the guild, that he might go underground and escape Calimport’s dreaded prisons. That wealth must have been considerable, Entreri knew, for Pasha Basadoni to even accept this dangerous slug into the guild, let alone appoint him a lieutenant.
Entreri was savvy enough to understand, then, that Basadoni’s choice of sadistic Theebles as his personal mentor would be a true test of his loyalty to his new family.
A brutal test, Entreri realized as he leaned against the squared stone wall of a square chamber in the guild hall’s basement. He crossed his arms defensively over his chest, fingers of his thick gloves tapping silently, impatiently. He found that he missed his street in the city outside, missed the days when he had answered to no one but himself and his survival instincts. Those days had ended with the well-aimed throw of an edged stone.
“Well?” Theebles, who had come for one of his many unannounced inspections, prompted again. He picked something rather large out of his wide and flat nose. Like everything else that fell into his plump and almost baby-like hands, it quickly went into his mouth.
Entreri didn’t blink. He looked from Theebles to the ten-gallon glass case across the dimly lit room; the chamber, though fully twenty feet underground, was dry and dusty.
Swaying with every step, the fat lieutenant paced to the case. Entreri obediently followed, but only after a quick nod to the rogue standing guard at the door, the same rogue who had met Entreri on the street after he had killed the thug. That man, Dancer by name, was another of Theebles’s servants, and one of the many friends young Entreri had made in his time in the guild. Dancer returned the nod and slipped out into the hall.
He trusts me, Entreri thought. He considered Dancer the fool for it.
Entreri caught up to Theebles right in front of the case. The fat man stared intently at the small orange snakes intertwined within.
“Beautiful,” Theebles said. “So sleek and delicate.” He turned his heavy-lidded gaze Entreri’s way.
Entreri could not deny the words. The snakes were Thesali vipers, the dreaded “Two-Step.” If one bit you, you yelled, took two steps, and fell down dead. Efficient. Beautiful.
Milking the venom from the deadly vipers, even with the thick gloves he wore, was not an enviable task. But then, wretched Theebles Royuset made it a point to never give Entreri an enviable task.
Theebles stared at the tantalizing snakes for a long while, then glanced back to the right. He stymied his surprise, realizing that silent Entreri had moved around him, toward the far end of the room. He turned to the young rogue and gave a wry snicker, that superior chuckle that reminded Entreri pointedly of his position as an underling.
It was then that Theebles noticed the quarter table, partially concealed by a screen. Surprise showed on his pudgy, blotchy features for a moment before he caught himself and calmed. “Your doing?” he asked, approaching the screen and indicating the small and round glass-topped table, flanked on either side by a waist-high lever.
Entreri turned slowly to glance over one shoulder as Theebles passed him by, but didn’t bother to answer. Entreri was the milker of the snakes. Of course the table was “his doing.” Who else, except for his taunting mentor, would even bother coming into this room?
“You have made many allies among the lower members of the guild,” Theebles remarked, as close to a word of praise as he had ever given to Entreri. In fact, Theebles was truly impressed; it was quite a feat for one so new to the guild to have the infamous quarter table moved to a quiet and convenient location. But Theebles, when he took the moment to consider it, was not so surprised. This young Artemis Entreri was an imposing character, a charismatic young rogue who had ruffians much older than him showing a great degree of respect.
Yes, Theebles knew that Artemis Entreri was not an average little pickpocket. He could be a great thief, among the very best. That could be a positive thing for the Basadoni Cabal. Or it could be a dangerous thing.
Without turning back, Entreri walked across the room and sat down at one of the two chairs placed on opposite sides of the quarter table.
It was not a wholly unexpected challenge, of course. Theebles had played out similar scenarios several times with the youths under his severe tutelage. Furthermore, young Entreri certainly knew now that it had been Theebles who had sent the rogue out to the shantytown to challenge him. Dancer had told Entreri as much, Theebles guessed; he made a mental note to have a little talk with Dancer when he was done with Entreri. Laughing slightly, the fat man sauntered across the room to stand beside the seated young rogue. He saw that the four glasses set in the evenly spaced depressions about the table’s perimeter were half-filled with clear water. In the middle of the table sat an empty milking vial.
“You understand that I am a close personal friend of Pasha Basadoni,” Theebles said.
“I understand that if you sit down in that chair, you accept the challenge willingly,” Entreri replied. He reached in and removed the milking vial. By the strict rules of the challenge, the table had to be clear of everything except the four glasses.
Theebles shook with laughter, and Entreri had expected no less. Entreri knew that he had no right to make such a challenge. Still, Entreri breathed a little easier when Theebles clapped him on the shoulders and walked about the table. The fat lieutenant stopped and peered intently into each of the glasses, as if he had noticed something.
It was a bluff, Entreri pointedly told himself. The venom of a Thesali viper was perfectly clear, like the water.
“You used enough?” Theebles asked with complete calm.
Entreri didn’t respond, didn’t blink. He knew, as did the fat lieutenant, that a single drop was all that was needed.
“And you only poisoned one glass?” Theebles asked, another rhetorical question, for the rules of this challenge were explicit.
Theebles sat in the appointed chair, apparently accepting the challenge. Entreri’s facade nearly cracked, and he had to stifle a sigh of relief. The lieutenant could have refused, could have had Entreri dragged out and disembowelled for even thinking that he was worthy of making such a challenge
against a ranking guild member. Entreri had suspected that cruel Theebles would not take so direct a route, of course. Theebles hated him as much as he hated Theebles, and he had done everything in his power over the last few tendays to feed that hatred.
“Only one?” Theebles asked again.
“Would it matter?” Entreri replied, thinking himself clever. “One, two, or three poisoned drinks, the risks remain equal between us.”
The fat lieutenant’s expression grew sour. “It is a quarter table,” he said condescendingly. “A quarter. One in four. That is the rule. When the top is spun, each of us has a one-in-four chance of sipping the poisoned drink. And by the rules, no more than one glass can be poisoned, no more than one can die.”
“Only one is poisoned,” Entreri confirmed.
“The poison is that of the Thesali viper, and only the poison of a Thesali viper?”
Entreri nodded. To a wary challenger like the young rogue, the question screamed the fact that Theebles didn’t fear such venom. Of course he didn’t.
Theebles returned the nod and took on a serious expression to match his opponent’s. “You are certain of your course?” he asked, his voice full of gravity.
Entreri did not miss the experienced killer’s sly undertones. Theebles was pretending to offer him the opportunity to change his mind, but it was only a ruse. And Entreri would play along. He glanced about nervously, summoned a bead of sweat to his forehead. “Perhaps …” he began tentatively, giving the appearance of hedging.
“Yes?” Theebles prompted after a long pause.
Entreri started to rise, as though he had indeed changed his mind about making such a challenge; Theebles stopped him with a sharp word. The expression of surprise upon Entreri’s young and too-delicate face appeared sincere.
“Challenge accepted,” the lieutenant growled. “You cannot change your mind.”
Entreri fell back into his seat, grabbed the edge of the tabletop, and yanked hard. Like a gambling wheel, the top rotated, spinning smoothly and quietly on its central hub. Entreri grabbed the long lever flanking him, one of the table’s brakes, and Theebles, smiling smugly, did likewise.
The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt (forgotten realms) Page 6