Page 101 of Astarion

Den Suriel could not help him, but perhaps he could help den Suriel in some small way.

“I want you to live,” Astarion said with perfect truth, “and not forget my name.”

Den Suriel pushed himself away from the wall. He was a hundred years old, but his face looked, briefly, very young. “Astarion…”

“You are, I suspect, sorry that you ever met me. But I’m not sorry that I met you.” Astarion looked away. “I have always been a very selfish person.”

The aasimar drew himself to his full, towering height and stepped forward. Astarion had to tilt his head back to meet those pale, anguished eyes.

Den Suriel kissed him.

It was a last desperate kiss, the kiss of a soldier going to battle or a prisoner to the gallows. The aasimar’s lips were hard, and Astarion could almost taste the anguish on them. It mingled with the triumph growing in his chest, sweet as poison, bitter as truth.

When the kiss ended, den Suriel pressed his lips against Astarion’s forehead. “May all the gods help me,” he whispered. “I can’t do it.”

Astarion had put his hands flat on the other man’s chest at some point, so he felt the exact moment that the paladin broke. A shudder and a silent snap went through him, like a bone breaking, unheard but excruciating. Den Suriel caught his breath in a sob and stepped away.

Astarion noticed absently that the aasimar was no longer glowing.

“That’s that, then,” den Suriel said. He tried to straighten up, but even then he seemed smaller, the metallic gleam of his hair dulled. He searched Astarion’s face for a long moment, then turned away.

“It’s not the end of everything,” Astarion said. “There are ways back, aren’t there? You can go to a cleric of your god and do penance, and then you’ll be fine again, won’t you?”

Den Suriel paused with one hand on the door leading away from Szarr Palace. “No,” he said, “that only works if you’re sorry for what you’ve done.”

He let himself out into Baldur’s Gate, and Astarion waited for a few minutes, staring at nothing in particular, then tapped on the door to let Dufay know that he had dealt with the paladin.

Bajia left him on a bluff half a mile from Baldur’s Gate, overlooking the river. He gazed into the eyes of his old teacher and mentor and friend, who had taught him how to throw a knife and pick a lock, and did not know what to feel.

“Astarion…”

“Thank you for the escort,” he said. “It was appreciated.” He recognized his own voice as the one he used when speaking before a magistrate: calm and measured and remote.

Bajia wrung her hands. He turned away, one hand on the horse’s reins, and she said, “That’s the worst of this. You take the shape thinking it’s a game, but then you meet people, and you get involved in their lives, and you learn to love them, and you start to forget…”

“I wouldn’t know.”

The horse jerked violently, and behind him, he heard the sound of wings.

He waited for a time, until the horse had calmed, then turned. Far across the river, he could see a dark V, much larger than any bird, flying toward the sea.

He reached into the breast pocket of his tunic and took out the skeleton key. He turned it in his hand, seeing the places where it had been rubbed shiny by a child’s nervous fingers.

It vanished from sight long before it hit the waves.

He turned his attention to Baldur’s Gate. It was far larger than Silverymoon, with shantytowns built up along its walls. Even from here, he could see the differences between districts, the contrast between grimy docks and shining stone.

A big city. Big and vibrant and filthy and alive. A city of silks to be touched and laws to be circumvented.

Astarion Ancunín touched the letter of introduction still in his pocket, took a deep breath, and started down the road to his new life in Baldur’s Gate. And this time, he vowed, no one would take it from him.

It would be another dozen years before the irony of that vow caught up with him, and more than two hundred before he was finally able to keep it.

Time passed, as even the gods could not stop it from doing. Days flowed across the sky and turned to night. A tenday later, Astarion judged it safe to return to the Rat’s Run.

The clothes he had left behind were waiting for him, neatly folded, with his daggers on top. They would need laundering, but most of them were salvageable. Third from the top was an absurdly pink silk dressing gown.

Astarion lifted it in his hands. The silk was still slippery under his fingers. It smelled faintly of soap and even more faintly of spice.