A Time for Alone Time

18 Kythorn 1492

Zanalor slipped away, back to the sweeping promenade where they had first encountered Ahmaergo. Seeing the majordomo still on his rounds, Zanalor snuck up and whispered in his ear. “I am most useful to you” quickly making plain that he could slit the dwarf’s throat but instead offering services. The dwarf, accustomed to assassins but also expecting to be one step ahead of them, turned an experienced eye to Zanalor. “You may be right. But your friends are a liability that someone will have to remedy.” (I know I’m supposed to separate speakers in paragraphs. But Strunk and White never lived in the Forgotten Realms, yo.)

In not more than a few minutes, Zanalor has stuck a deal with Xanathar’s majordomo. Convincing him that the liabilities are “friends of convenience” at best (“When did you ever know an ex-Zhentarim to have friends?”), Zanalor had orders to return to Ahmaergo if he is still alive after the audience. The shifty dwarf continued to appraise Zanalor while providing some details on the bloody work ahead. Bounties on the Black Network. Rewards suited to the task. And the disposition of the rest of the party troublemakers, with perhaps another exception. With his own motives hidden, Zanalor tried to persuade Ahmaergo to support the mission to Candlekeep, sending all three if there is any hope “to succeed without my greatness” and crafting a story about him “volunteering to stay”. However, the dwarf seemed resigned or disinterested in the others. A fateful deal was struck and they parted ways.

Zanalor attempted to shift the large stone slab in the hall but failed, and snuck back to see Froderick heading out to make making lazy examinations of the slime-crusted room and northwest halls. Nuitt and Pessius were talking back the breeding chambers. Zanalor crept down the dark stairs, first checking a door at one end and then investigating a pair of doors at the other. Feeling it best not to push his luck, he left them undisturbed and crept back up beneath the scrying eyestalk. He could see his friends were starting a fight with some kuo-toa, but feeling they had it in hand, made his way to the immense audience chamber where he encountered Nar’l Xibrindas and his grell bodyguard.

Nar’l, a drow mage somehow connected to Xanathar leadership, had heard something of the party and their ill-advised exploits. Zanalor started explaining about his mission from Gwydion, who stirred at his post a mile away sensing he was about to cause the death of a friend. Zanalor then corrected himself, and won a reserved confidence by confirming Cai’lel Caidanni as a mutual friend. Nar’l was still not entirely persuaded, asking who had freed them and what they might do. He offered only that there was a safe place and a plan and suggesting that Zanalor persuade Thorvin Twinbeard of his integrity. Zanalor left a message for his friends, should they come looking. “Tell them, no matter what they hear, Zanalor is still with them.” He snuck off through the western door, spying a secret door and nasty trap to go with it.

He followed the directions to a small workroom, where a cagey Thorvin, under the watchful eye of a gazer assigned to him not long ago, agreed to answer only three questions. Zanalor considered carefully, and was able to confirm that the safe place was a secret stash of smokepowder hidden in a room at the behind the east bookcase of Nar’ls office. Used in the right places, they could bring the lair crumbling down. Zanalor also confirmed that the only exits from the lair were a long stair, likely sealed now but stretching up from a secret door in the hall of eyes, and the eastern hall leading to Skullport.

Thorvin returned to his tinkering with a large contraption, and Zanalor had a strange feeling that his friends might be trying to kill each other.