What Staying Away Costs

Back at the Hall, Rishi cleared the corner table while Elisa unfastened her cloak.

Afternoon light lay across the boards. Someone had brought more linen while they were at the bridge; Rishi moved the folded stack to the bench against the wall and pulled out a chair for Elisa.

Firemind stopped beside it. His gaze passed over the kitchen passage, the stairs, and the door behind them. Rishi put a cup at the place facing that door. Firemind sat there, beside Elisa, and settled the saddlebag between his boots.

A volunteer called Kargun over to the cots. He turned carefully between the benches, the hilt of his greatsword clearing a hanging lantern, and went to help a man who was trying to stand.

Maeril’s hawk left her wrist for a beam. She sat beside Rishi, propped her staff against the wall, and followed Chime with her good eye as they descended to table height.

“A mimir,” she said. “A speaking store of planar knowledge. Routes, cities, things travellers have learned and left for someone else. You ask a question, and it gives you what it has.”

Rishi looked from her to the pearly mimir. “Like asking a book?”

“Usually.” Firemind glanced at Chime. “But Chime doesn’t merely repeat an answer. They can consider it, disagree with it—”

“Ask a better question,” Chime said.

“That too.”

Maeril leaned closer without reaching for them. “And the voice? I can hear a note beneath the words.”

“A bard of the Society of Sensation made them,” Firemind said. “A brilliant woman. They’re someone, not a collection of other people’s answers.”

A few clear notes rose from Chime, soft enough to stay at the table. “Chime also makes songs.”

“Your own?” Maeril asked.

“Very much their own,” Firemind said.

Chime repeated the phrase with a different ending.

Maeril’s fingers moved with it beside her cup. “Oh, that’s lovely.”

Elisa smiled at Chime.

Rishi poured water for them and set the jug down within everyone’s reach. “Elisa told us what happened at Trollskull Manor. She said the Zhentarim took you. Is that how it began?”

“Rika’s old Zhent boss came for her. We fought him outside the inn, in front of witnesses. Elisa killed him. The Watch arrested me later.” He rubbed a mark on the side of his cup. “I thought a cell might keep the Zhents off me long enough to work out what came next. They went to Xanathar’s people instead.”

“Did anyone know where you were being held?” Maeril asked.

“Vajra Safahr came to see me in my cell.”

Maeril sat back a little. “The Blackstaff?”

Firemind nodded. “She wanted to know how much trouble we had brought into her city. Rika, the Zhents, the Stone. She had most of the right questions.”

“What stone do you mean?” Rishi asked.

“The Stone of Golorr. It can lead you to a hidden vault. Gold enough to buy guards, ships, informants. Whoever reached it first would have the means to keep everyone else down.”

“How does it show you the way? Does it have a map carved into it?”

“It holds the knowledge inside it, by magic. Someone who can use the Stone can learn where the vault is.”

“And you were trying to reach it before them.”

“Yes. We had the Stone. We thought reaching the gold would get us clear.”

Rishi looked at Elisa. She was watching Firemind, one finger pressed against the rim of her cup.

“What did Vajra do?” Maeril asked.

“Put a legal knot in the paperwork. Moving me was supposed to draw her attention.”

“Someone bought a jailer?” Rishi asked.

“Someone sold the locks. Someone sold the route. You don’t need to buy an entire prison, only the people whose work the others trust.”

“They brought a very proper paper,” Chime said.

“A forged transfer order,” Firemind said. “Right seals, right names. Wrong destination.”

“They let you through the protections,” Maeril said.

“Exactly. There was nothing for a guard at the next door to challenge unless he already knew the order was false.”

Rishi felt his jaw tighten. “And at the other end?”

“Xanathar’s people. An illithid.”

Chime moved nearer Firemind’s shoulder. Elisa’s finger left the cup.

“It didn’t need me to answer,” Firemind said. “Refusing to speak made no difference. It could take a memory while I was trying to think of something else.”

His voice caught. Rishi waited while he drank.

“Our plans. Hiding places. People who had helped us. Everything I knew about the Manor.”

Chime stayed close to his cheek. “Afterward, sometimes he could not answer Chime either.”

Firemind lifted a hand beneath them, then let it rest on the table. “They took the Stone from us. They told me the Manor had burned and Rika was dead. I thought they were lying until they showed me enough that I couldn’t.”

Elisa lowered her head. Rishi knew how she had escaped; she had told him herself. He would not ask her to tell it again.

Firemind started again. “If I hadn’t known where everyone—”

“You lived with them,” Rishi said. “Of course you knew.”

Firemind looked at him.

Rishi kept his voice low. “Knowing where people sleep isn’t the same as giving someone permission to hurt them.”

For a moment Firemind held his gaze.

“How did you live?” Elisa asked.

He turned toward her at once. “Renaer Neverember didn’t believe the transfer. We’d helped each other before. He went to Vajra.”

“She found what had been done to her order?” Maeril asked.

“She checked the prison wards and found the hole. Renaer found the man who’d been paid. That’s what they told me afterward. I wasn’t there for that part.”

“Chime remembers the sewer,” Chime said.

“Water. Light. Renaer swearing,” Firemind said. “Not much more than that.”

“Chime remembers being afraid he would stop breathing.”

Firemind’s mouth closed. The sounds from the kitchen reached Rishi clearly: a knife on a board, someone asking where the onions had gone. He left the silence at their table alone.

“They got us out,” Firemind said at last. “I was barely alive. And there were people in the Watch willing to sell me again. Vajra couldn’t make my rescue public without telling them where to start looking.”

“So they hid it,” Maeril said.

“There were enough dead left behind to support a false account. Vajra made one. Renaer made sure it reached the right ears.”

“Including mine,” Elisa said.

“Yes.”

Elisa drew her hands into her lap.

Rishi reached for the bread a volunteer had left beside the jug. He broke it and passed the plate, giving Firemind something to accept that did not require an answer. Firemind took a piece. Elisa shook her head.

Maeril waited until he had swallowed. “Where did they hide you?”

“Wherever there was room. Renaer found names and houses. Vajra covered what she could. Then someone else would take us in, or find a place we could use for a few nights.”

“Cellar, loft, another stair,” Chime said.

Firemind nodded as if Chime had supplied a missing turn in a familiar route. “We moved when we were told. A dockmaster put us among his cargo once. Two days in a crate of cheap glassware.”

Chime rose a little. Their voice found the shape of a tune. “A roof for the rain, a floor for the fleas; two days in the glassware, with nowhere for knees.”

Rishi glanced under the table at Firemind’s long legs.

“I rearranged the packing,” Firemind said. “I could turn over.”

“With all the wineglasses,” Chime said.

Maeril pressed her lips together. A small breath escaped Elisa, almost a laugh.

Firemind looked at her, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “The dockmaster lied for us. A laundress burned my bloody cloak. There was a priest who gave us a room without asking what I’d done to need it.”

“That room had a window,” Chime said.

“It did.”

Rishi passed the bread to Maeril. She took a piece, but her attention stayed on Firemind. “Could you work?”

“Too much. I kept going over what I knew of Xanathar’s guild, looking for something I could use. Some way to get the Stone back, or break their hold without bringing them down on everyone who’d helped us.”

“New roof. Same papers,” Chime said.

“I’d find a fault in a plan, change it, find another. Sometimes it really was a fault. Sometimes I couldn’t tell whether I was thinking or just afraid.”

He rubbed a crumb between finger and thumb. “I still do it.”

Elisa looked up. “When did you learn I was alive?”

“Later. Not when they got me out. I heard about a dawn-priest in Baldur’s Gate. A shelter. Then enough about you to be sure.”

“And you let me mourn you.”

Firemind put the bread down. “Yes.”

Rishi’s first impulse was to speak. He had heard her prayers for the dead. Across the table Elisa was waiting for Firemind, not for him, and he made himself keep still.

“I thought any contact might lead them to you,” Firemind said. “They knew what you meant to me. If they found out I was alive, you’d be one of the first places they looked.”

“Renaer could have carried a message.”

“I know. I thought about that. Then I thought about someone following him, or you coming to find me. I could find a danger in every way of reaching you.”

“We carried paper for a letter,” Chime said.

Elisa looked toward Chime, who added, “It came to all the rooms.”

Firemind’s hand lay beside the abandoned bread. “I kept waiting until I could do something about it. Until I could come back and tell you it was over.”

“You could have told me it wasn’t.”

He nodded, once. “I should have.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. She wiped it away impatiently. “I might have come. You don’t know. You never let me answer.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked directly at her. “For that. For leaving you with the story they made.”

“Why now?”

He drew breath, but his first attempt produced no words. “I wanted to see you. I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of trying to make it all come right before I’m allowed to have anything else.”

“I haven’t fixed it,” he said. “I’m still afraid. I missed you.”

“I am glad you’re here,” Elisa said. “Don’t ask me to be glad about all of it.”

“I won’t.”

She gave his forearm a brief squeeze. “No more ghosts.”

“No more ghosts.”

Chime descended to the table’s edge. For a while Rishi drank his water and listened to the Hall around them.

When Elisa reached for the bread, Rishi passed it to her. “You said you’re still trying to work out what to do.”

Firemind looked across at him.

“What would help now?” Rishi asked.

“The Stone. If we could get it away from Xanathar, reach the vault before the Zhents—”

“Do you know where it is?” Maeril asked.

Firemind sat back. “Only where it was. Xanathar had it. I haven’t had anything I’d trust since then.”

“Are the people who helped you safe?” Rishi asked.

“I don’t know that either. Some of them had to take risks just to get word to me. Asking too often could make things worse.”

Rishi set down his cup. “Then we find that out first. Before we start talking about taking on Xanathar and the Zhents.”

“I can’t just leave it.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Renaer and Vajra knew things you couldn’t,” Maeril said. “They’ve been in Waterdeep while you’ve been away. I’d rather hear what they know than build a plan around where the Stone used to be.”

“Vajra will have questions of her own.”

“Good. So will I.”

Kargun came over from the cots, drying his hands on a cloth. He stopped at the end of the table. “You’re thinking of going back?”

“To speak to the people who got them out,” Rishi said.

Kargun looked at Firemind. “What would that give you?”

Firemind glanced at Chime. “Facts I don’t have. I’ve been trying to work without them for too long.”

“Things we cannot hear from a cellar,” Chime said.

Kargun nodded.

Rishi looked at Elisa. “Would you go?”

Elisa looked toward the cots. “I would rather have you all here.” She turned back to Firemind. “But I’ll come with you.” Her gaze returned to Rishi. “You’ve only just come home.”

He had. There were people in this room he had wanted to sit with, work he had expected to take up again. Through the open kitchen door he could hear someone struggling with a drawer that had always stuck.

“I’d like to go with you.”

“So would I,” Maeril said.

Rishi turned toward her. She had finished the bread. Her hand rested on the table beside his, palm open.

Firemind looked from her to Rishi. “I didn’t come to ask you for this.”

“I know.”

Chime rose between them. “Chime would like to see Renaer again.”

“And who takes your night rounds here?” Kargun asked.

Elisa turned toward him. “We’ll settle that before we leave. The temple, the volunteers, the stores. I need to speak with Mara.”

Kargun folded the cloth over one hand and stayed beside the table.

Rishi rested his forearms on the wood. “Then we go to Waterdeep. We speak to Renaer and Vajra. Anything beyond that waits until we know more.”

Maeril nodded beside him. Elisa caught Mara’s eye across the room, and Rishi drew another chair to the table.