Page 4 of Astarion

By the time he reached the Seatower district and the seedy neighborhood surrounding the docks, the fog was so thick that you could no longer cut it with a knife. You’d need an axe at the very least. The lamps that marked the doorways of taverns shone like lighthouses above the street. Voices echoed strangely off buildings, the words stretched and distorted, so that it was nearly impossible to tell where the speakers were or what exactly they were saying.

He paused across the street from the Rat’s Run. In many ways, it was a marvelous place, full of drunken sailors no one would miss. Perfect for picking up a stranger and luring them back to Cazador’s palace. The owner was a very…interesting lady who owed him a favor and wasn’t above indicating when she would like someone killed.

He took out his glasses and put them on his nose, and the mist immediately turned them opaque.

“I am foiled at every turn, it seems,” he muttered to himself. The glasses were exceedingly flattering, or so he had been told by numerous people, some of whom had even gone on to live out their natural lifespans. Unable to check in a mirror himself, he had been more than a little worried. But the glasses were also host to a very minor illusion, so small and harmless that anyone who sensed it would chalk it up to vanity. Many people wore such charms—necklaces that magically disguised a double chin, earrings that smoothed a pocked complexion, that sort of thing. (In one memorable case, it was underwear that corrected the spelling of a lower back tattoo, a fact Astarion learned when the underwear came off and he found himself gripping hips marked with the elven characters for bladder infection. Fortunately, the human man underneath him had taken his shout of laughter for passion, and Astarion had excused himself afterward to go and laugh hysterically in private.)

In Astarion’s case, his glasses turned his eyes blue. It was all well and good to have red eyes when the lights were off, but when he went hunting somewhere well lit, the glasses made life rather easier.

He put the glasses away. The Rat’s Run would be there tomorrow and the next day and probably for the next hundred years after that. Tonight, he would find a victim in the fog.

—

Astarion made his way along the waterfront, keeping the buildings tightly to his left. The fog was even thicker here, draped over the docks like a funeral shroud, and the last thing he needed was to misjudge a distance and stumble over the wall. The bay here didn’t count as running water, but it was cold and full of all sorts of dreadful things. Fish pissed in it. So did sailors. Astarion really did not want to have to squelch home smelling like an estuary.

He passed another spill of light, this time from a bar where a halfling was playing an accordion in front of an audience that did not seem to be made up of accordion aficionados. I could probably get more applause by walking in, grabbing that bard by the throat, and dragging them out.

A large piece of dock equipment loomed before him. It looked like a crane, but being nautical, it was probably called a larboard mizzenpoop or something like that. Astarion did not feel the need to clutter up his mind learning names for things on boats. They all sounded like tawdry sex acts, possibly performed with a dead fish.

He leaned against the mizzenpoop for a few moments, letting his eyes adjust to the fog. Small red lanterns gleamed along the street, appearing and disappearing as the breeze off the ocean twisted the fog into strange shapes. Prostitutes, most likely. Hard to do business if the sailors can’t find you.

Astarion did not hunt prostitutes, even though they seemed like they would be easy prey. Not because he was a good man—that was a laugh—but because the ladies of negotiable affection watched out for one another, and they would have rapidly noticed that those who went off with a certain pale elven client did not come back. Immortality was all well and good, but being tossed into the River Chionthar would mean a quick, brutal death by running water.

Petras, who had all the brains of an orange tabaxi, had attempted to hunt prostitutes when he was newly made. Astarion didn’t know what had happened, just that Aurelia had found him in an alley, bloody and shaking and stinking of sewage. It had taken a fair amount of blood to get him healed up and coherent, and he wouldn’t talk about it even now.

Truth be told, Astarion had a certain fellow feeling for prostitutes. The number of times he’d used his body to lure a victim into Cazador’s clutches probably qualified him for membership in their guild.

As if summoned by the thought, the fog around him flickered red and a voice said, “Hey. You there.”

Astarion swung around and saw a red lantern approaching him, held by a slender figure in clothes that might have been revealing if he could see anything but an outline in the mist. He sighed internally.

“Madam, I’m flattered, but I’m afraid that I’m not looking for company this evening.”

The prostitute came closer, lifting her lantern. “No. I’m looking for you.”

“Me?”

She nodded. She was small and waiflike, and Astarion guessed she had at least three knives on her person. “I’ve seen you here before. With your red eyes.”

“They aren’t red,” Astarion said reflexively. “It’s a reflection.”

She stepped close enough that he could see her skeptical expression. Her own eyes were big and brown and could probably look liquid and adoring. At the moment, they looked like frozen agate.

“Ugh. Fine, you’ve caught me. My grandmother was a drow. A dear woman. Had a remarkable way with a snake-headed whip.” Astarion let a faraway look cross his face. “Grandfather always said that’s what attracted him to her in the first place.”

The woman snorted. “Save it for the marks.” Her accent was pure Waterdeep, and her ears proclaimed some elven ancestry. “I’ve seen you before, sometimes with a client. Sometimes a client I know.” She lowered the lantern a little. “Then I don’t see them ever again. Funny, isn’t it?”

Astarion tensed. He could probably overpower her, and no one would notice in the fog, but all the reasons he didn’t hunt prostitutes still held. I could dump her body in the bay. She’d wash up, and it would look like she just fell off the dock in the fog. Gods, what a waste of effort, though. All that work, and I still wouldn’t have anything to bring back to the old man.

He could practically smell her blood, but he knew better than to dwell on it. Cazador’s proscription was clear: Thou shalt not drink the blood of intelligent beings. Astarion’s victims belonged to the master vampire alone.

He didn’t let any of that show in his voice when he drawled, “You make me sound like a dangerous man, Madam. I like it, but wouldn’t that make approaching me…unwise?”

The woman cocked her head. “Three people know I’ve been looking for you. I don’t come back, they know why.”

A chill sank into Astarion’s gut. “And why, exactly, have you been looking for me? Other than my superb good looks.”

“Need your help.”