Arrayan rolled her eyes again, and Wingham laughed heartily and draped his arm around her.

"Perhaps this winter will be one of which I will spin yarns in the decades hence," the woman said at length, and with enough honest trepidation in her voice to take the grin from Wingham's wrinkled and weathered face.

He hugged her closer, and she tucked her arms and pulled her fur-lined cowl tighter around her frosty cheeks.

"It has been an eventful year already," Wingham replied. "And one with a happy endin'…" He paused when she tossed him a fearful look. "A happy middle," he corrected.

For indeed, the adventure that they all had thought successfully concluded with the defeat of the dracolich had returned to them yet again with the arrival a few days earlier of Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle. The pair had come riding in to Palishchuk on hellish steeds, coal black and with hooves pounding fire into the frozen tundra.

They had been welcomed warmly, as heroes, of course. They had earned the accolades for their work beside Arrayan and Olgerkhan, and they had been granted free room and board in Palishchuk at any time for the remainder of their lives. Indeed, when the pair had first arrived, several of the townsfolk had argued loudly over who would have the honor of boarding them for their stay.

How quickly things had changed from that initial meeting.

For the pair would not stay. They were merely passing through on their way to the conquered castle—Castle D'aerthe, Jarlaxle had named it. Their castle, the seat of their power, hub of the kingdom they planned to rule.

The kingdom they planned to rule.

A kingdom that by definition would surround or encompass Palishchuk.

There had been no answers forthcoming to the multitude of questions shot back at the surprising pair by the leaders of Palishchuk. Jarlaxle had nodded, and merely added, "We hold nothing but respect and admiration for Palishchuk, and we consider you great friends in this wondrous adventure upon which we now embark."

Then they had gone, the pair of them back on their impressive steeds, thundering out of Palishchuk's northern gate, and while some of the leaders had called for the pair to be detained and questioned, none had the courage to stand before them.

But they had returned, and the city's scouts had been filtering in and out with reports of shadowy figures moving about the castle's formidable walls, and of gargoyles taking flight only to crouch at another spot along the parapets and towers of the magical construct.

Arrayan glanced down the length of the wall, where a doubled number of guardsmen stood ready and nervous.

"Do you think they will come?" she asked.

"They?"

"The gargoyles. I have heard the tales of Palishchuk's fight while I was battling within the castle walls. Do you think this night, or tomorrow's, will bring another struggle to the city?"

Wingham looked back to the north and shrugged, but was shaking his head by the time his shoulders slumped back down. "The scouts have claimed sightings of gargoyles in the dark of night," he said. "I can imagine their fear as they crouched outside of that formidable place."

Arrayan looked at him at the same time he was turning to her.

"Even if it is true and Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri have brought the castle back to life, I fear no attack from them," Wingham went on. "Why would they have bothered to stop in Palishchuk to proclaim their friendship if they meant to attack us?"

"To put us off our guard?"

With a nod, Wingham directed her attention back to the doubled sentries lining the wall. "Our guard would have been nonexistent had they just ridden by the city, to animate the castle and attack while we played under the delusion that our battle was successfully completed, I expect."

Arrayan spent a moment digesting that as she looked back to the north. She smiled when she met Wingham's gaze yet again. "Are you not curious, though?"

"More than you are," the old barker replied with a mischievous grin. "Fetch Olgerkhan, will you? I would appreciate his sturdy companionship as we venture to the home of our former allies."

"Former?"

"And present, we must believe."

"And hope."

Wingham smiled. "Castle D'aerthe," he mumbled as Arrayan started for the ladder. Even more quietly, he added, "It can only portend trouble."

Two sets of eyes looked back in the direction of Wingham and Arrayan, from far away and with neither pair aware of the other. On the southern wall of the magical castle north of Palishchuk, Jarlaxle and Entreri did not huddle under heavy woolen cloaks—nothing that mundane for Jarlaxle, of course, who had taken out a small red globe, placed it on the stone between them, and uttered a command word. The stone glowed red, brightly for a moment, then dimmed and began to radiate heat comparable to that of a small campfire. The northern wind rushing off the Great Glacier still bit at them, for they were thirty feet up atop the wall, but the mediating warmth sufficed.

"What now?" Entreri asked, after they had been up there for many minutes, staring in silence across the miles to the dim glow of Palishchuk's nighttime fires.

"You started the fight," Jarlaxle replied.

"We ran from the Citadel. Better that we fight them in the streets of Heliogabalus, one alley at a time."

"It is a bigger fight than just the Citadel," Jarlaxle calmly explained—and indeed, it was that tone, so self-assured and reasonable, that had Entreri on his edge. Whenever Jarlaxle got comfortable about something, Entreri knew from experience, big trouble was usually brewing.

"We have stirred the nest," Entreri agreed, "between the king and Knellict. So now we must choose a side."

"And you would select?"

"Gareth."

"Conscience?"

"Practicality," Entreri countered. "If there is to be an open war between the Citadel of Assassins and King Gareth, Gareth will win. I've seen it before, in Calimport, and you've known this struggle in Menzoberranzan. When a guild pricks too sharply at the side of the open powers, they retaliate."

"So you believe that King Gareth will obliterate Knellict and the Citadel of Assassins? He will wipe them from the Bloodstone Lands?"

Entreri mulled that over for a few moments, then shook his head. "No. He will drive them from the streets and back into their remote hideouts. Some of those will likely fall, as well. Some of the Citadel's leaders will be killed or imprisoned. But Gareth will never truly be rid of them. That is never the way." He paused and considered his own words, then chortled, "He wouldn't wish to be completely rid of them."

Jarlaxle watched him out of the corner of his eyes, and Entreri noted the little grin spreading on the drow's face. "King Gareth is a paladin," the drow reminded. "Do you doubt his sincerity?"

"Does it matter? Having the Citadel of Assassins lurking in the shadows is good for Gareth and his friends, a reminder to the people of Damara of the alternative to their hero king.

"He is no Ellery, perhaps, in that he won't deal with the Citadel, but he uses them all the same. It is the nature of power."

"You have a cynical view of the world."

"It is well earned, I assure you. And it is accurate."

"I did not say it was not."

"Yet you seem to think Gareth above reproach because he is a paladin."

"No, I think him predictable because he is guided more by principle— ill-reasoned or not—than by pragmatism. Gareth's end plan is always known, is it not? He may be served well by the Citadel, but he is likely too blinded by dogma to see that truth."

"You still have not answered my question," said Entreri. "What now for us?"

"It seems obvious."

"Enlighten me."

"Always."

"Now."

Jarlaxle gave an exasperated sigh. "We declare our independence from King Gareth, of course," he replied.