Page 22 of Astarion

“…mama!”

“Take your evil god-potato,” Astarion said, holding out the bowl. “I am not babysitting it.”

Dalyria took the potato, picking it up with tongs—the tiny mouths bit at it ineffectively—and dropped it into a jar of liquid. It settled slowly to the bottom, thrashing as well as a root vegetable could. She screwed the lid onto the jar and set it on a shelf, muttering to herself.

“Is your turnip going to do that?”

Dalyria sighed regretfully. “I don’t think so. The potatoes are the only ones that change. The turnips don’t do anything, and the carrot seeds didn’t even germinate, although that might be faulty seed. Do not ask me about the kohlrabi.”

“Darling, I assure you that I have never asked anyone about kohlrabi in my life, and I do not intend to start now.” He shuddered theatrically. “Somehow, the unicorn scab is less disturbing. What do you plan to do with it?”

“I plan to place a drop of my blood in it and see what the results are.” She abandoned her turnip to look at him. “Think of it. Innocence in concentrated form. If there is anything that could cure vampirism…”

Astarion shook his head slowly. “You don’t think small, I’ll give you that. And where might one find your…err…jar of scab?”

She told him.

—

There were two magic shops in town, and Gurgan’s Magic Emporium was the other one. The original wizard Gurgan had died decades ago, and it was now run by a relative who clearly had not found joy in running a magic shop. Rumor had it that the building hadn’t been cleaned since the Spellplague. The shop probably contained wonders, but you could never find anything in it, and that included the traps. And while shops were public spaces where a vampire could walk in without difficulty, and the new owner lived off-site, there was no telling what magical countermeasures had been put in place to keep out thieves.

Well, he’d said that he was bored.

Astarion looked up the outside of the building and sighed heavily. It was four stories tall and built in that style of architecture common to the Lower City of Baldur’s Gate, where any bits of previous buildings on the lot were slathered with mortar and incorporated into the structure. These bits included a squat brick guardhouse, a glassblower’s chimney, and the remnants of a cathedral to some god no one remembered, full of complicated bits of buttress and a few broken gargoyles. It looked like a wedding cake made by drunken goblins.

He traced a likely route up with his eyes, took off his socks and boots, tucked them away into the shadow of a drainpipe, and got to work.

He hated spider climbing. He just wasn’t very good at it. Some people could calmly walk upside down on a ceiling as if gravity applied to others. Aurelia was good at it. So was Violet, to his chagrin. Astarion could really only do it on all fours, and only if he took off his shoes. His brain kept insisting that no, down was that way, and while he didn’t fall off, he got extremely queasy and tended to stumble.

He looked around one more time to make sure no one was watching, then went up the side of the building, looking less like a spider and more like an anemic gecko with a fear of heights.

There were pigeons nesting under the eaves. They hadn’t woken up. Astarion made sure his feet were properly braced on a stone gargoyle, reached out, and wrung one’s neck before it even stirred. He sank his fangs into the plump body, past the layer of feathers, and there it was.

Blood ran down his throat, thin and hot, stronger than whiskey, smoother than wine. It pulsed over his tongue as the pigeon’s heart beat frantically, the wings still trembling as the bird tried mindlessly to escape. Astarion gave himself over to a rush of sensation that made the best orgasm of his life seem banal by comparison.

When the pigeon’s heart had stopped and the rush had finally faded, Astarion picked a feather out of his teeth and set the small corpse down on the roof. Another? I do have work to do…

Well, perhaps one more.

He reached for another bird, and it opened its eyes and yelled, “Get off, you bastard! What’re you doing?”

Astarion groaned. The bliss of blood drinking was driven out by the weight of his annoyance. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

The bird cocked its head to one side, studying him out of one beady orange eye. “Do I know you?”

“We’ve met.”

“Have we?” The bird thought for a minute. “Sorry. Memory’s not what it was. Who’re you again?”

“I’m named Petras,” Astarion lied, “and you’re Rooftop Henry.”

“That I am,” the bird said, settling down out of arm’s reach. “That I am.” He observed the roof with a proprietary air. “You robbin’ the place?”

“That was the plan.”

Rooftop Henry nodded. “Good choice, good choice.”

Every burglar in Baldur’s Gate knew who Rooftop Henry was, although nobody knew what he was. He definitely wasn’t a bird, for all that he appeared to be a rather disreputable cross between a pigeon and a seagull. There were a number of theories, from a lost familiar to a wild-shaped druid who had somehow gotten stuck, to a polymorph spell gone horribly wrong.