After he'd left the Zhents, he hadn't seen the point of moving around so often. In truth, after he'd resigned he hadn't seen the point of much at all. He had saved enough coin to keep him in whores and luxury for years, but that kind of life didn't appeal to him. If he'd been a weak man, he might have turned to a weak man's vices—drink and drugs—but those things had never held a draw for him either. So for a time, he'd felt aimless.

To his surprise, that had changed the day he found his girls, and changed still more when he had heard the Lord of Shadows's Call in his dreams.

Riven reached under his tunic to touch the onyx disc that hung from the chain around his neck. He had taken it from the corpse of the last hit he'd performed for the Network: a fat merchant who had run drugs into Cormyr for the Zhents, but had compromised an operative when he was captured by the Purple Dragons. For Riven, the disc symbolized two things: the end of his relationship with the Zhents, and the beginning of his relationship with Mask.

While he wasn't a priest like Cale—Nine Hells, the mere thought of that made him sneer—he also wasn't the man he once was. His mind was opening, he knew; something was happening, though he didn't yet know what. He knew only that he served Mask, and for the time being that knowledge was enough. That his service made Cale uncomfortable only made it more satisfying. Riven respected Cale, but didn't like him.

Still, Riven knew the Lord of Shadows had a purpose for Calling him and Cale almost simultaneously. Mask whispered that purpose in his dreams. Riven understood it when he first awakened, when his skull felt as though it was filled with squirming snakes, but the basis for that understanding fled from memory as the dreams faded out of his consciousness. Still, the understanding remained, the certainty, and Riven didn't question further.

He supposed it was faith, and that thought made him laugh.

For most of his life, Riven had thought that faith made men weak, made them dependent upon the divine rather than their own resources. He had held men of faith in contempt, even those in the Zhents. Especially those. In fact, the return of the Banites to authority in the Network had been the very reason he'd left it. The Zhents under the resurgent Banites would not be the Zhents in which Riven had flourished. The new Church of Bane was too fanatical. But Mask had taught Riven to make distinctions among faiths. Faith didn't have to make a man weak or mad, though it often did—he thought of Gauston, The Righteous Man, Verdrinal, and that fool Sephris. In Riven's case, faith was making him stronger. He could feel it changing him. Mask didn't make demands of Riven. Mask said to him, Here is a way to strength. Take it if you will. Riven had taken it, for he respected strength—those who had it, and those who shared it with him.

When he neared his flat, Riven circled the block a few times to determine if he had a tail. He didn't. Satisfied, he headed for home.

His flat shared half the space in a one-story wooden building with a scribe-for-hire's shop. The scribe—Riven had never bothered to remember his name—owned the building and had let it to Riven only because he was afraid to refuse. The scribe made his living notarizing bills of lading and shipping contracts, and drafting documents for the illiterate. He also sold paper, ink, and writing quills. He and Riven had exchanged exactly one sentence since Riven had taken the flat and that suited Riven fine. Riven made the scribe so nervous that the man's ink-stained hands visibly shook anytime Riven walked in his direction. That too suited Riven fine. No conversation meant no questions.

The building stood at the corner of Mal's Walk and Drev Street, both narrow, dirty little cart roads near Selgaunt's western wall. Most Selgauntans held those who lived "under the wall" in contempt, but Riven felt at home there. He could have afforded a much nicer location, of course, but denied the urge. Luxury made a man soft, he knew, and needed only look to Cale for an example of the phenomenon.

The thought of betraying Cale and that little bastard Fleet had entered his mind, of course, but he had dismissed it. Mask clearly wanted him and Cale to work together, and Riven still owed Vraggen a handswidth of steel in his gut for that spell. More than a handswidth. He thought of the dark place that spell had taken him, full of shadows....

He shook his head. In any event, the surest way to get a go at Vraggen was to pair up with Cale, and if the half-drow and the rest of his crew got in his way, all the better.

He strode past the door to the scribe's shop, past his own door, and ducked down Mal's Walk. He didn't see the girls—they'd be along—and no one else was in sight. He pulled a slim dagger from a boot sheath, slid the blade between the shutters of his only window, and carefully lifted the latch. Silently, he pulled open the shutters and slid through the window.

Good habits, he told himself. Unless absolutely necessary, he tried to avoid obvious entrances and exits. With all the corpses he'd left in his wake, it paid to stay sharp.

No one was inside the two room flat. Riven's spartan furnishings took up little space. In the front room, a plain wooden table and chair stood near the hearth. An oil lamp and a water jug sat upon the table. Other than the hardware for the hearth and the girls' buckets beside the door, the room contained nothing else. His bedroom contained a wood framed bed with a feather mattress—his lone indulgence—with a wagon-trunk at its foot. That trunk held most of his personal belongings.

Around the room he had secreted the wealth he'd accumulated throughout his career in the Network: several diamonds behind a loose stone in the chimney, and four separate coin caches under the floorboards. He went to each in turn, removed the contents, and put them in his coin purse.

He was leaving; he knew that. Possibly, he would not return. Cale didn't see that yet, but Riven did. Whatever they were involved in, whatever Vraggen and this half-drow were scheming, it was bigger than Selgaunt. It had to be. Riven's dream visions had become more frequent, the pain in his skull upon waking more intense. Mask was preparing him for something....

A scratch at the door drew his attention, a chuffing at the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor.

"Here I come," he said, smiling.

He rose and glided across the room. He checked the buckets—one filled with water, one filled with the boiled scraps he regularly purchased from a butcher on Tenderloin Street. Typically, he pre-paid by the month, and a butcher boy delivered the buckets of scraps every day or two.

He opened the door and the girls thundered in, tails wagging and tongues lolling.

He kneeled down to receive their charge and they nearly bowled him over. He rubbed each behind her ears.

"Hey, girls, hey. Good dogs, good dogs."

They licked him in greeting, fairly covering him in dog spit, while their tails wagged furiously. He fought through their affection to shut his door. The smaller of the two, a short-haired brown and black mutt with bright eyes, flopped onto the floor and showed Riven her stomach. Riven obliged her with a belly rubbing.

The larger brown hound with the gentle eyes, obviously the smarter of the two, left off Riven's affection and went for the buckets while the other was distracted with the belly rub. The smaller caught on fast, though. She rolled onto her feet and scampered over to the food. The larger made a hole and the two began to eat in earnest.

Riven slid near them and patted their flanks as they ate. He marveled at how gentle they both were. Most strays would squabble over food, and growl if they were disturbed while eating. Not his girls. He thought they might be a bitch and her daughter but he had no way of knowing for sure.