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With Ketheric slain, it should be a victory worth celebrating. Yet Rhodeia finds herself prowling Moonrise Towers, fleet of foot and unsettled of thought. As much as she tries to fall into the rhythm of her heartbeat, to find calm, all she sees are the same flashes over and over. The jingling scales as the Apostle rises—Ketheric’s silent scream as Myrkul’s power abandons him—an elder brain enslaved — flames in the corner of her eye as Karlach hisses, “Gortash—”
At the time, Rhodeia could scarcely make out anything more than dark hair and a fine coat in what she can only assume is Baldurian fashion. But his voice pervaded the chamber, so conniving it slid beneath her skin like a knife. She can still feel the air scorch as Karlach burned beside her.
It’s strange to finally have a man to put to the name Karlach curses. Since she first described him, an amorphous mass of stories has lived in Rhodeia’s head, and the would-be tyrant doesn’t quite fill that shape. A wheeler-dealer inventor type, Karlach called him.
An arms dealer, the dream guardian called him.
Rhodeia’s mind gnaws at the revelation, turning it over and over like a wolf trying to crack a bone between its teeth to reach the marrow inside. Perhaps it’s hindsight, knowing what sort of man Gortash is, but the grim reputation of arms dealers has reached even the shaded depths of Ardeep Forest. A blacksmith might forge blades of all sorts—a creation of honest labour—but the souls who amass power through such business are another sort entirely.
Smugglers occasionally carve routes through the forest, carrying weapons of all kinds. Sometimes worse. The last band to try bludgeoned their way through the underbrush, killing half of the Greyjaw Pack and storing their cargo in a tunnel system of dwarven ruins that was home to Ardeep’s rarest mushroom, crushing most of the colony as they went. When they were warned to stop, they put an arrow through the emissary’s neck. In the end, the archdruid himself bound them in roots and dragged them belowground so their meat would feed the forest.
Perhaps Karlach didn’t know Gortash was an arms dealer. Why else would she omit such a key detail?
Yet another memory flits across Rhodeia’s mind: Karlach frowning over Florrick’s description of the Steel Watch, idly mentioning Gortash had a knack for weapons.
A little chill goes through Rhodeia, and she only realises she’s stopped walking when a Harper ducks around her. Bards tales never mention the cleanup after a grand victory, yet Jaheira’s agents seem to be no strangers to it as they prepare to move out. Rhodeia picks up her pace again, weaving between agents carrying this and that as she reaches the courtyard.
With the curse broken, the shadows have lightened hour by hour. The sky above Reithwin has the dimness of an overcast evening rather than the roiling black of Shar’s power, and the first hint of light burns through the clouds. As for the courtyard itself, it’s aglow with pixie dust. All but one of the moonlanterns are gone, and a ladder is propped against the last lamppost. Karlach perches on the highest rungs with one arm outstretched, fingers wriggling. She barely manages to snag the moonlantern, the ladder wobbling, and wastes no time freeing the pixie inside.
“Off you go, little fella!”
A tiny dart of light flits around her, leaving a trail of shimmering dust, and zips away. Karlach laughs, eyes bright with delight, and rakes her claws through the pixie dust; it billows at the disturbance, roiling through the air. The ladder wobbles again at the movement with a dangerous creak, and Karlach clambers down in a rush, scattering the dust even more.
She drops the last few feet as the ladder overbalances, and she scrambles to catch it in a clatter of timber before it can tip over the railing into the river. Crisis thus averted, she plants her hands on her hips and beams.
Something about her visage seems off, and it takes Rhodeia a moment to realise why. After a tenday in the shadow curse, she’s grown used to the eternal gloom that stripped the vitality from Karlach’s skin. Even the infernal engine, powered by pure hellfire, struggled to ward off the deathly dark. Now she stands radiant, skin dusted and glittering in a cascade of sparkles. Despite everything, Rhodeia’s breath catches.
Karlach notices her. “Hey, soldier! Where’ve you been?”
Rhodeia moves to her side. Even with the curse lifting, the air still carries a chill, and she relishes the warmth that surrounds Karlach. “Did you free them all yourself? That’s a number of favours you’ve earned from the fae.”
“Don’t need any favours. I just need them to be free.” Pixie dust flutters around them like an ocean of stars, clinging to Karlach’s eyelashes. When she laughs, her lips glimmer. “Some of them weren’t even as mean as Dolly!” She peers down at Rhodeia, amusement fading. “You all right? You look a little peaky.”
As loath as Rhodeia is to ruin the mood, she doesn’t want to lie, either. “I can’t stop thinking about everything we saw in the colony. Everything we have to do. We need to reach Baldur’s Gate before that army.”
“Zariel’s Legions like to teleport between war fronts. You know why? Because armies are slow. Make no mistake, it’ll be a task to get around their columns, but we can move fast and sneaky-like.”
“You? Sneaky?”
Karlach puffs herself up. “Listen, soldier. I’m good, but I don’t want to take on a whole army by myself. I’d rather get to the Gate. Home.” Her expression brightens with excitement. “Just a few days’ walk to Rivington. Argh, we’re so close!”
Rhodeia can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. “I believe you said you’d show me your favourite chowhall.”
“Yeah! Though we have to take care of that pesky cult first, I suppose. And Gortash.” Her expression darkens with promise. “Karlach’s coming for you.”
Rhodeia sees again the gold glittering on Gortash’s coat. The peculiar twist of the dream guardian’s mouth. An arms dealer and a slaver.
The words fall from Rhodeia’s mouth before she realises she’s spoken. “You didn’t mention Gortash was an arms dealer.”
“See, the man didn’t just deal in weapons. Liked to tinker with shit.”
“But he sold weapons?”
“What’s it matter, anyway?” Karlach gestures to Rhodeia. “Not like you’re against using weapons. Hells, you use your teeth when it suits you.”
Rhodeia blinks, startled. “It seems a strange omission, is all, and I was wondering why you never spoke of it.”
“Like I said. He made all sorts of things. This Steel Watch being one of them, apparently.”
More carefully, Rhodeia asks, “What do you think this Steel Watch is?”
“What did Florrick call them? Automatons?” Karlach pulls her lips together as she thinks. Her gaze grows distant, eyes darting back and forth as if making comparisons to some mental catalogue of past inventions. Around them, the pixie dust begins to dim, floating away on the faintest breeze. “Something that can withstand the shadow curse, at any rate.”
Rhodeia ventures, “Like the ones we found in that wizard’s tower?”
They are the first such automatons she’s seen, and she cannot picture anything other than an army of Bernards storming Moonrise Towers. In truth, she still finds it hard to fathom creatures fashioned from metal and brought to a life outside of nature’s cycles. Creatures that can talk without breathing and walk without eating and die without returning to the soil. For all the terrifying peculiarities of mushrooms, at least they’re natural.
Karlach frowns, but Rhodeia can’t help but note her stance has relaxed with the shift in conversation. “Gortash’s inventions were never like somebody else’s. He always made ‘em special. They’ll have all sorts of tricks up their metal sleeves, no doubt about it.”
Rhodeia can’t even contemplate what said tricks might be, but Karlach’s answer does pique her curiosity. “What did you do for Gortash, anyway?”
“I kept him safe and he paid me well. Well enough I could move into a nicer part of town and put coin away for the future.” Her face clouds. “My future.”
Rhodeia’s heart twists for a younger Karlach, scarless and with both horns intact, stepping into her own house for the first time. The details are hazy: a sunbeam streaming through a window, a rug to soften the hard-packed floor, and walls on all sides to cradle its occupant in safety. Of course, she’s never seen a city let alone a city dwelling, but the image, however wrong, lingers like a memory.
But she doesn’t fail to note how little Karlach spoke of her actual occupation.
“What did your work entail, exactly?”
“Bodyguarding. I was one of maybe a dozen or so. Some folks came and went. Had a few mates with me, and the rest were good sorts.” She snorts, then adds, “What did I know? All I saw was work I was good at with people I liked.”
Rhodeia is starting to get the sense Karlach might be more choosy with her words than she appears. “Do you think they could still be working for him now?”
“I’d like to think they realised what he was up to and high-tailed it out of there.” Her lips peel back from her teeth, and there’s a promise of violence in her eyes. “Or he threw them away as well.”
Rhodeia feels for these strangers—for people she cannot even picture, but they were Karlach’s friends, and they were pawns for Gortash to use at his pleasure. Only the gods know their fates now.
Drawing in a careful breath, Rhodeia asks, “How large was his operation?”
Karlach peers down at her. Only an occasional glimmer of pixie dust remains, too faint to compete with the sullen glow of her engine. Hellfire traces the taut lines of her jaw and deepens the grooves around her mouth. “What’s with all the questions, hey?”
“We have to stop him. Anything you know could help us.”
“It’s been ten years, and I can’t say I really knew him, can I?” Her frown shifts, turning darker. Her eyes flicker like embers before a chill breeze, and her expression shifts with an emotion somewhere between bitterness and regret. “I couldn’t have told you any of this was coming.”
“You mentioned Gortash had enemies. Who were you defending him from?”
“Shake the pot, and you’re going to burn any hands that get too close. I never knew the details, just that some people weren’t happy with what he was doing.”
No loyal bodyguard would stop to question an attacker in the middle of a fight, but Rhodeia can’t help but wonder about the enemies Gortash made. Who were they? Are any still alive, or has he consolidated power? And why did they want him dead?
Karlach peers at her. One boot-heel grinds against the cobblestone as she shifts her weight. “What’s with the face you’re making?”
Rhodeia hesitates, then asks, “Were those unhappy people mere rivals, or did anyone discover his plans and try to stop him?”
“Or,” Karlach says, voice tight, “they were unhappy because they were bastards.”
No ecosystem is so simple. It encompasses a vast—and fragile—network of actors, every one affected by the others. Shade-loving moss grows among the roots of a tree until a storm brings down its branches. As the moss dies, seedlings rise. Animals carve out their territories, often by stealing from their neighbours. Birds knock eggs out of each others’ nests to lay their own and wolf packs battle for the best hunting grounds. From what she’s seen of humanoid communities, they are no different. Whoever attacked Gortash had their reasons for doing so. What those reasons were, they’ll never know.
“You truly had no idea what he was doing? What you were doing?”
Karlach’s expression flares. The engine blazes brighter, bristling with her. Fury may be a familiar look on her face, but this makes Rhodeia’s skin twitch. Perhaps because the full force of those narrowed amber eyes is now turned on her.
“If I had,” Karlach snaps, “do you think I would’ve stuck around long enough for him to sell me to Zariel?”
After years of mediating disputes, both within druid circles and without, Rhodeia has a sense for how people behave, and this reaction is one she’s seen many times across many people: Karlach stands with her feet planted and her shoulders drawn up to protect her neck, tail swishing with agitation.
Rhodeia realises she doesn’t believe her.
“What don’t you want me to know?”
“Nothing.” For one who burns so brightly in the dark, the hellfire inside her seems to darken the shadows that circle them, leaving her in ambiguous gloom. As if whatever remains of Shar’s power now rises to shield her from scrutiny. “You’re better off keeping your eyes on Gortash. He’s the one we have to stop. And soon.”
Something in Rhodeia’s heart cracks. Just a hairline fissure, silent and stinging. “No matter what,” she says gently, “I love you. None of us can change our pasts.”
“Yeah,” Karlach agrees brusquely. “It is the past, and there’s nothing worth talking about.”
She stands tall and tense, eyes narrowed and her lip curled just enough to hint at sharp teeth. This countenance is entirely unlike the Karlach that Rhodeia knows, as if a stranger watches her with burning amber eyes. Whatever remains of the pixie dust has since faded, leaving her shrouded.
“All right,” Rhodeia says.
“Good.” Karlach turns on her heel.
There are no shortage of tasks to be done around the tower, and Rhodeia helps Quartermaster Talli catalogue all of the looted supplies, deciding what the Harpers can carry back to Baldur’s Gate. Any leftover weapons and armour have to be destroyed, per Jaheira’s orders, and Halsin intervenes before anyone can throw any swords in the river. Rhodeia tries to focus on the resulting argument, but unease lurks in the back of her mind like a watching predator, and every step she takes feels off-kilter somehow. She doesn’t see Karlach for the rest of the day.
After a late supper, Talli shoos Rhodeia off. “Heroes need their rest, don’t they? We’ll be marching hard for the Gate, and you won’t be getting much of it then.”
Slightly cross-eyed from all the supply lists, Rhodeia stumbles for the quarters she and Karlach claimed after the battle. The room is small but private, and she’s just lit the candles when the door creaks open.
“Heya, soldier.”
Karlach ambles in with her usual smile, kicking off her boots as she goes. One lands in the general vicinity of her backpack while the other skids under the bed. Her socks follow, leaving her toes wriggling on a stone floor that is no longer unnaturally cold and is instead just cold.
Rhodeia waits, but Karlach doesn’t say anything else. She only heads for the washbasin, leaving a trail of clothes as she goes, and lifts her arms over her head in a full-body stretch that has her tail straightening out behind her.
Rhodeia twitches at the sound of water pouring into the washbasin. The noise scratches over her skin, the only thing that suggests time is passing at all as Karlach runs a washcloth over her armpits.
Karlach glances up, pausing. “You right there?”
Rhodeia realises she’s wringing her hands and drops them. “About before…”
“No point fussing over it,” Karlach says. “I don’t know about you, but that bed’s looking cosier by the second.”
“It is,” Rhodeia agrees. Yet something in her tone makes Karlach’s gaze flicker, her smile straining.
As they ready themselves for bed, Rhodeia keeps her gaze on the tasks before her: sorting clothes that can be worn again from those that have to be washed, checking her belongings haven’t been stolen, rubbing salve into her chapped hands. Even so, she can’t help but track Karlach out of the corner of her eye. From the awkward way Karlach moves through her own nightly routine, she doesn’t doubt she’s being watched back.
Karlach hesitates, then puts her clothes back on. As they stand on either side of the bed, their eyes meet.
“Look.” Karlach shifts on her feet, tail coiling behind her. “I didn’t know he was a Banite, all right? I never would’ve protected him if I’d known.”
“I know.”
Karlach breaks into a smile, the tension leaving her at once. She’d been anxious, Rhodeia realises. This is the same Karlach that Rhodeia has always known, her face so bright that one might be fooled into believing there’s nothing more than gratitude in her life. “Should’ve known you’d understand. He’s a right prick, and this is his mess we have to clean up.”
“Of course,” is what Rhodeia says. And, oh, how her heart aches.
What are you afraid of, my love?