Free Archmage by R. A. Salvatore

Jarlaxle.”
    “Yes.”
    “Jarlaxle Baenre ,” K’yorl said pointedly, for she was one of the few who knew the truth of that strange, Houseless mercenary.
    “It is not a name he uses.”
    “He serves House Baenre.”
    “Hardly. Jarlaxle serves Jarlaxle.”
    K’yorl nodded, digesting it all.
    “It is time to pay them back,” she said at length. “Quenthel is a weakling, and she is vulnerable.”
    “She has tightened her noose on the city.”
    “And when it loosens? A dragon is dead, the Darkening has been defeated, and the fledgling city of Matron Mother Zeerith hangs by a single strand of a spider’s web.”
    “I am surprised that you are so informed of the—”
    “I have nothing but time,” K’yorl interrupted. “And Errtu torments me by showing me the turning of Menzoberranzan without me.”
    “Then you know that Matron Mother Baenre will see to Matron Mother Zeerith’s troubles as well.”
    “With demons.”
    “You know much for a slave in the Abyss,” Kimmuriel said again, even allowing a bit of sarcasm into his normally impassive tone.
    “I know much because I am in the Abyss! Errtu does not fear me, surely, and so he does not fear letting me know of Menzoberranzan.”
    “Demons, yes,” said Kimmuriel.
    K’yorl gave a little laugh, a wicked one indeed. “You must be my conduit, Kimmuriel. You must exact the punishment House Baenre rightly deserves.”
    Kimmuriel dismissed that foolish notion even as the matron mother spoke it. He wasn’t about to go against Matron Mother Baenre and her vast array of powerful friends. Still, he heard and sympathized with every word. He hated Quenthel Baenre. Despite any logical protestations to the contrary, a simmering rage burned within Kimmuriel Oblodra for all that he had lost, for all that House Baenre had taken from him. He watched again in his memories the tumbling structure of House Oblodra, pitching over the side of the Clawrift, so many dark elves, his family, tumbling into oblivion.
    For a long while, for many years, Kimmuriel had hated House Baenre. When first he had learned of Jarlaxle’s heritage, he had even considered murdering the mercenary.
    That was a long time ago, of course, but now, hearing K’yorl, Kimmuriel realized that he hadn’t dismissed those feelings of rage quite as thoroughly as he had believed.
    “I do not expect you to expose yourself to suspicion,” K’yorl said, as if reading his thoughts—and she probably was, he reminded himself, throwing up more mental guards.
    “You ask me to serve as your instrument, your assassin against House Baenre, but do so without wishing me to expose myself to their wrath?” he asked skeptically.
    “Not my instrument, but my conduit to my instrument,” K’yorl said with a crooked and knowing little smile, one that took Kimmuriel back across the centuries, one that he had known well in his youth.
    “A mighty Baenre studies under you, I am told,” K’yorl said.
    It was beginning to bother Kimmuriel more than a little just how much K’yorl was being told.
    “The archmage, no less,” she said.
    Kimmuriel remained impassive—there was no need to confirm anything, apparently.
    “And how does Gromph Baenre feel about his sister the matron mother filling the streets of Menzoberranzan with demons?”
    “He thinks it a brilliant ploy to insulate the matron mother from the wrath of the Ruling Council over her . . . choices.”
    “But how does he feel ? Is he pleased by his sister Quenthel’s dangerous ploy?”
    “You clearly know the answer.”
    “He hates her. They all do,” K’yorl said. “She imposes order on a city of chaos. It will not stand.”
    “I will not stop it.”
    “Not directly.”
    “I do not enjoy cryptic conversations, Matron Mother,” Kimmuriel said, and what he really didn’t enjoy—and he knew that this drow in front of him understood it well—was not being able to read her thoughts. Kimmuriel was used to holding a huge advantage in such conversations,