"And you spend too much time breathing," Entreri said to Kimmuriel, reminding the drow that he had learned to interpret that silent drow language during his stay in Menzoberranzan, even though his less delicate human fingers could not «speak» it well.

Jarlaxle put his hand on Kimmuriel's arm, a silent reminder to the psionicist that he did not have permission to kill Entreri.

Never blinking, never taking his awful stare off of Artemis Entreri, Kimmuriel obediently stepped back, prepared, Jarlaxle knew all too well, to cripple or even kill the human with a wave of psionic energy.

As Kimmuriel retreated, Calihye stumbled forward to Entreri's side. Her sobs genuine, she grabbed his arm and lowered her head to his shoulder in supplication, whispering that she was sorry over and over again.

"The poor thing has wound herself into an emotional collapse," Kimmuriel remarked.

"Shut up," said Entreri. He turned to Calihye and roughly pulled her back.

"It was Parissus," she blabbered. "And you were leaving. You can't leave… I can't let you… I'm sorry."

Entreri's responding expression was, perhaps, the most profound look of disappointment and dismay Jarlaxle Baenre had ever seen. Entreri let out a long sigh and seemed to relax, and apparently bolstered by that, taking confidence that the moment of crisis had passed, Calihye dared to look up and say, "You will never hurt me." She even managed to put a weak, hopeful smile on her face.

She was trying to be cute, to be coy, to be playful, Jarlaxle recognized, but he saw, too, that to Entreri, she appeared as nothing but mocking.

He ran his hand down her cheek softly, then changed in a blink, his expression going hard, his hand grabbing at her chin. Her eyes went wide and she clutched and clawed at his unyielding wrist with both hands.

He drove her before him with two powerful strides and with frightening strength shoved her backward. She crashed through the shutters, she smashed through the glass of the window, and she shrieked only once as she tumbled over the pane to fall a dozen feet to the street below.

Entreri turned back to Jarlaxle.

"You should have killed her," the drow said, and in a voice dripping with sympathy and regret. "She is dangerous."

"Shut up."

Jarlaxle sighed.

"And if you slay her, I promise you that you will join her in death," Entreri added.

Jarlaxle sighed again. But of course, he could only blame himself for using the flute to manipulate the assassin, for prying open the heart of Artemis Entreri, which for so long had been shielded from the agony of love.

The cold began to overtake her. Blood flowed from a hundred cuts and when she tried to extract herself from the planking and broken glass, Calihye found that her leg would not support her.

She was dying, she knew. Miserable and alone in the biting cold, naked and bleeding before the world. She held no hope, and didn't want to live, anyway. She had failed, in all ways.

She had fallen in love with the man who had killed her dear Parissus, and that discordant reality had broken her. When faced with the thought of leaving her home, or of saying farewell to Entreri, she had found the options untenable.

So she had made her own course, reverting to her fierce desire for revenge, using her despair at the loss of her dearest love Parissus as armor against the heartbreak Entreri was about to inflict upon her by leaving her.

And she had failed.

So she was dying, and she was glad of it. She crawled through the glass in search of a suitable shard, agony burning, cold wind biting. She found a sizable chunk, elongated like a dagger's blade, and with it clutched in hand, she crawled around the side of the inn, into the alleyway where she could die, free from the intrusion of any curious eyes.

She barely made it in, and fell back into a sitting position against the wall. Her breathing came in rasps, and she coughed up some blood. She realized she didn't even have to put the shard to her throat to end it all; the fall had done the work.

But death from her wounds would be too slow, and it hurt too much.

Calihye lifted the point of the shard to her throat. She thought of Entreri, of their lovemaking, but she brushed it away. She pictured Parissus instead, and imagined her waiting in death, arms wide to embrace her dear Calihye again.

Calihye closed her eyes and stabbed.

Or tried to, but a stronger hand clasped her wrist and held it steady. Calihye opened her eyes, and they went all the wider when she realized that a dark elf held her wrist, and that other drow were about, all leering at her. In that instant of terror, the fog and the pain abandoned her.

"We are not finished with you quite yet," she heard from the back of the group, and the dark elves parted to reveal one of the drow she had just seen in the room above, the one Entreri had spoken of before and had named as Kimmuriel.

"Perhaps in time we will allow you to take your life," Kimmuriel said to her. "Perhaps we will even do it for you, though I doubt you will enjoy our technique."

A pair of dark elves forced her to her feet and a twist of her wrist made her drop the glass shard.

"But then, perhaps you will enjoy the Underdark even less," said Kimmuriel. "Fail in your duties, and we will be happy to determine which is the worst fate for Lady Calihye."

"Duties?" the stunned woman managed to whisper.

The drow dragged her away.

He went looking for her," Jarlaxle said to Kimmuriel when the pair met up the next day in a shaded glen near the appointed rendezvous with the dragon sisters. Not far away, Entreri and Athrogate sat about a tumble of boulders in the middle of a rocky lea.

Kimmuriel had joined them, intending to prevent the conversation from veering toward Calihye. Jarlaxle, as if reading his mind, had led with a reference to the wretched human woman.

"It is typical of humans, is it not?" the psionicist answered. "To throw a lover through a glass window, then seek her out in remorse? Our way is much more straightforward and honest, I think. No drow matron would expel a male and let him live."

"With notable exception."

"Notable," Kimmuriel agreed. "Of course, in the instance to which you refer, Matron Baenre had little choice in the matter. Is it true that the Secondboy of House Baenre was the one commanded to rid the House of the cursed Jarlaxle, who lay on the altar without a mark despite the repeated stabbing of the mighty matron mother herself?"

"You know the tale," Jarlaxle replied.

"Yes, but I would like to hear it as often as you would deign to tell it. To see your mother's face twisted in exquisite frustration and horror when her blade would not bite into the infant! And then to see her expression of the sheerest terror, and that of Triel as well, when Secondboy Doquaio whisked you from the slab! He must have looked much like that bloody creature in Artemis's room when the infant Jarlaxle unwittingly released the captured energy into him."

Kimmuriel took hope at Jarlaxle's chuckle, an indication, perhaps, that he had deflected the conversation from Calihye.

"And of course, then Jarlaxle was no longer the third son, and no longer a fitting sacrifice," he rambled on.

"I haven't seen Kimmuriel bantering this much since you wagged your hands in trying to alleviate a cramp in your forearm," Jarlaxle said, and the psionicist's lips went tight.

"She was gone from the alley," Jarlaxle said. "She didn't crawl far, for the blood trail ended—and rather abruptly, and right near a place where the blood had pooled. She was sitting there, against the wall, of course, before she was taken away."

"Lady Calihye has made powerful enemies, and powerful friends," said Kimmuriel. "Perhaps it is a good thing that Artemis Entreri is leaving the realm, and quickly."