'No, it suits you, despite all.' Quessahn turned and motioned him toward the hallway where they could speak without disturbing the others. 'What brings you here?'
'Murder,' he said, measuring his words and seeing no need to mention Sathariel or the Vigilant Order just yet. 'A series of them.'
'All in the last month or so,' she added. 'Yes, the Watch keeps many secrets at times, but this is one they've been hard pressed to maintain.'
'How many others know?' Jinn asked, already imagining doubled Watch patrols, curfews, wealthy families abandoning their manors for other homes while adventurous sightseers sneaked through the streets hoping to glimpse the murderer, all the things that might make his job that much more difficult.
'Know? Only myself that I'm aware of,' Quessahn answered, leading him farther down the hallway, where a smaller extension of the library lay empty. 'But rumors spread, about missing people-kidnappings, ambitious sons and daughters unwilling to wait for inheritances, and the like.'
'And how do you know they are anything more than just rumor?' he asked.
'I saw,' she said plainly. 'Three of the bodies, recently, but only at a distance. The Watch had already arrived with dark sheets and sawdust to clean the blood. It seemed as though they had things under control, so I never bothered to ask. I doubt they would have wanted my help anyway.'
Relief trickled into his thoughts, though he had suspected the wizards had known about the murders all along, as he had almost hoped they knew of Sathariel. He paced to the window, plotting how he might catch a killer that could be anyone-and wondering if the effort would only be a waste of time. There was no assurance the angel or the order were involved at all.
'I expect that if you are here, there is more than just blood on the ground,' Quessahn said, pulling him from his thoughts. The unspoken question sparkled in her eyes, but there was also accusation in their sky blue depths. She'd worn a similar expression before, shortly after they'd met a few years earlier, but Jinn was never sure where her suspicion had come from nor her strange familiarity with him. She spoke to him as if she'd known him all his life. He never asked why, and she never offered explanations.
He pulled the sketches from his coat and handed them to her wordlessly, unwilling to lie but not yet ready to divulge the full truth. She turned the pages slowly with a troubled expression, tracing the symbols.
'They are old,' she said. 'Older than me. Arcane to be sure, but something else taints the way they are rendered, markings where there should be none, almost like two languages overlapped.'
'Also, what do you know of a circle of skulls?' he asked.
'What?' she said. 'The skulls?'
'Quessahn.'
Jinn turned, finding a bearded man in dark robes standing in the doorway, dark eyes glowering at the elf under bushy, black eyebrows. A young man stood at the wizard's back, sneering over his shoulder at the startled pair.
'Archmage Tallus,' Quessahn replied as she turned, hiding the sketches behind her back.
Tallus strode into the room, calmly looking Jinn up and down as he tapped a gnarled wooden staff on the floor with each step. Turning to Quessahn, he stopped, glancing between her and the deva.
'It is not your place to entertain guests here at your whim, Quessahn,' he said, eyes sparkling in the candlelight. 'I suggest if you wish to continue your studies, that you escort this fellow-'
'I am not the guest of Quessahn, Archmage,' Jinn said, taking a half step between the two. 'I have been given, some time ago, a standing invitation from Master Bastun Nesraan of Rashemen, currently in Shadowdale, I believe.'
'Master Bastun,' Tallus muttered. 'Why am I not surprised, with his soft spot for adventurers and trouble- makers. He would open our doors to all manner of… guests, if he had his way, I imagine. However, Bastun is not here, it is late, and our students cannot be interrupted-'
'I'm afraid my invitation is not dependent upon the kind master's presence.' Jinn stepped forward. 'And I doubt your peers would look favorably upon your ousting the invited guest of a colleague, even in his absence.'
Tallus adjusted his staff before him, its dull tap on the floor more firm than before. 'Indeed,' he replied, a slight growl hiding behind the word. 'And what business brings you here to disturb dear Quessahn so late? What, might I ask, could not wait until morning?'
'My business must remain my own, Archmage,' Jinn answered carefully, detecting a knowing smirk behind the wizard's beard. 'And it has no hour upon which it is dependent, though when it calls, I answer with haste.'
Tallus stood quietly a moment longer, as though considering the answer and still sizing up the deva with his dark eyes. Jinn noted the man's white-knuckled grip on the gnarled staff, the detail belying the wizard's otherwise perfect calm.
'I see,' the archmage said, slowly turning to leave. 'Then may your stay be pleasant and your business conducted swiftly, saer Jinnaoth.'
'I do not recall introducing myself,' Jinn said to the wizard's back.
'You did not,' Tallus replied. 'Give my regards to Rorden Marson.'
Jinn stood stone still as the wizard left, though his eyes burned into the archmage's back, questioning his instincts and finding suspicion seemingly at every turn. He preferred dealing with devils and monsters; any beast that wore its intentions honestly was better than the petty secrets and half-hidden prejudices of mortals.
'Well, I see you're still making friends as easily as ever,' Quessahn said, 'though in your defense I doubt that Tallus has any friends at all.'
'Can you decipher the symbols?' Jinn asked, more sharply than he'd intended.
'I will try,' she answered. 'And afterwards I will also assist you and the rorden.'
'No. That will not be necessary-,' he began; then he caught the stern look in her eye and cursed the eladrin's stubbornness.
'It is most certainly necessary,' she said. 'I don't know what your true business is here, but I have some knowledge of your technique in matters like this. These are murders, Jinn, not casualties. I intend to make sure that is not forgotten.'
A part of him knew she was right, a part that seemed to speak up less and less in his thoughts as centuries and lives rolled by. He found compassion to be a difficult trait to maintain, one that every evil in the world took pleasure in exploiting.
'Fine,' he answered and strode toward the door. 'Gateclose tomorrow, in the alley.'
He didn't wait for her reply, shoving the house's doors open. He missed the glimmering memory of ancient wars, the simplicity of facing an enemy across a shining field of battle, the trumpets of challenge and victory, but most of all he missed the memory of her, Variel, the deva he'd found after four millennia in the unlikely city of Waterdeep-the companion he'd lost to Sathariel.
By the time he'd reached Mara's shop, his fury had faded somewhat, replaced by exhaustion. Bodies, sigils, rumors, and ghostly skulls haunted him up the stairs, mysteries for which he had little stomach or patience, but for Variel, he would answer the call of his ancient spirit, with all eternity laid out before him to make right what he had once let slip away.
Tallus stood at his chamber window, looking down as Jinnaoth disappeared in the dark of Pharra's Alley. He ground the base of his gnarled staff into the floor angrily, drumming his fingertips on the windowsill and contemplating the winding, well-lit streets of Sea Ward from the heights of the House of Wonder.
'Gorrick,' he called, causing a sharp intake of breath from the doorway.
His apprentice rushed into the room, robes swishing on the floor. 'Yes, Archmage?' Gorrick said, and Tallus could imagine the fear in the ambitious young man's eyes. He would have smiled, enjoying the boy's discomfort, if not for the fact he knew Gorrick's fear did not lie entirely with the archmage.
'Return to the libraries. Keep a watchful eye upon Quessahn,' he commanded. Though he doubted the eladrin warlock would discover anything useful in the common books available to students of the house, he did not want to take any chances. 'Be discreet.'
'Yes, Archmage,' Gorrick said and swiftly left to obey, closing the chamber door behind himself.
Tallus was not overly fond of his apprentice, but he and Gorrick were two of a kind in the city, held under the same thumb and both threatened by the arrival of Jinnaoth. Gorrick was unaware of the threat the deva represented, but Tallus would not underestimate Jinnaoth as his brothers once had-he would deal with the problem quickly and efficiently.
