I. i know i shouldn’t love you
“Apaika ancalë.”
Light shimmers across the surface of the Blade of Saints, and sheds its glow over Fray’s face. Here in the shadow-lands, the more light he can acquire the better. The torch had been useful, but Shadowheart teaching him to light things with magic feels far more reliable. (The irony of learning it from a woman named Shadowheart is not lost on him.) Now he doesn’t have to worry about juggling sword and torch should they be attacked.
“Clever,” Right remarks. They perch birdlike on one of the many ruined walls that litter this place, looking down at him and his preparations. They put Fray in mind of a gargoyle: crouched and still and gray, blending in perfectly with the gloomy environs.
Just like a tiefling, his thoughts rush to tell him; he stops this in its tracks, frustrated with the immediacy of it. No, he tells himself; just like Right, who specializes in going unnoticed, watching, waiting. Just like Right, who most certainly has experience with unsavory work, with breaking and entering and taking what is not theirs to take. Of course they would be practiced.
But they don’t do that anymore. They’re apprenticed to a weaponsmith now. Or so they have said. And how badly Fray wants to believe it; wants to believe in Right.
The scars that encircle his throat seem to ache at the thought. He wonders, dully, if the pain is real or merely something his fear of worse punishment is trying to hobble him with. He should be saying a prayer to the Revealer right now, seeking protection against the shadow curse. He should not be out here, helping a tiefling thief rummage through the sad remains of this place.
Yet whenever he does find the time to kneel in worship, to still his soul and listen for guidance—and that is becoming rarer and rarer—he finds instead his thoughts wandering to Shadowheart and her nonsensical faith to an evil god; to Lae’zel, blindly faithful to a lich that promised her her dreams, only to reward her with death.
He tries to pray, but praying has become more and more difficult, these days.
SCENE: The long-forgotten ruins of a Sharran temple, deep in foul lands. Four figures ponder a statue of the Lady of Loss, the monument missing both arms: Fray, Right, Karlach, and Shadowheart. As the curtain opens, Karlach and Shadowheart are in discussion of Shar. Fray and Right sit side by side on the moldering remains of a bench opposite, watching.
SHADOWHEART:
Shar’s great gift is peace, you see. She gathers all who are wounded to her and shrouds them in loving darkness.
KARLACH:
And then what?
SHADOWHEART:
She brings forgetfulness. She brings an anesthesia. You lose sight of your pain, and eventually all pain, altogether.
KARLACH:
By numbing it?
SHADOWHEART:
Yes.
KARLACH:
(Disgruntled.) I don’t see how that helps. Just because you can’t feel the pain of a wound doesn’t mean it’s gone, or even healing.
SHADOWHEART:
That’s not—
KARLACH:
Fuck, I’ve seen what happens to infected wounds. If you saw that rot, you’d never ignore an injury again.
SHADOWHEART:
(Impatiently.) We’re hardly speaking of actual wounds.
On the other side of the stage, Fray shakes his head and turns to Right.
FRAY:
(Stage whisper.) You following her?
RIGHT:
Not really.
KARLACH:
It’s not that different, physical wounds or not. They’ll both kill you from the inside.
SHADOWHEART:
They’re not at all the same.
KARLACH:
And didn’t you say pain is sacred to Shar or something, too? How’s that work, if she’s getting rid of pain for you?
SHADOWHEART:
Haven’t you been listening? (Slowly, as if explaining it to a small child.) It’s sacred because without pain, you have nothing to offer Shar.
KARLACH:
So to follow Shar you have to be in terrible pain, and … instead of doing anything to fix it or help yourself, you let her smother out all ability to be hurt.
SHADOWHEART:
Yes.
KARLACH:
I don’t get it.
SHADOWHEART:
Some wounds are too deep to heal. Physical or no.
FRAY:
(Stage whisper, exasperated.) Do I sound like that?
RIGHT:
Like what?
FRAY:
Like … a fanatic.
RIGHT:
Well … (They shrug.) yeah, most of the time.
Fray groans, putting his head in his hands. A moment later, he rises and exits stage left.
END SCENE.
“Ready?” asks Right, and Fray gives them a nod and a smile. Right smiles back, and it feels like another beam of light in the darkness.
Off they set. Foraging is wretched work in this place, and the Harpers can only share so much. As good a cook as Gale is, he is limited by ingredients, and his attempts to create food for them from the Weave result in the most beautiful and blandest, unfilling meals Fray has ever had.
So: they are looking for untouched goods, and untouched after a hundred years means locked away or too dangerous to approach. Right is here to handle the former. Fray is for the latter.
An hour passes uneventfully. They find one or two caches of unspoiled things, a few magically preserved links of sausage and a dusty jar of honey. The curse on this place makes even speech feel oppressive, to say nothing of how talking might alert unwelcome company. Fortunate, then, that they are not limited to it.
“At your home,” Right signs. “Do you keep any pets?”
Right’s grasp of thieves’ cant is profound. No less profound was Fray’s scandal when Astarion pointed out that the secret, sacred language of handcant was simply a mirrored version of it, with slight alterations. At the time he soothed his confusion by telling himself all languages stem from somewhere. His is a young sect, though he has been told there are greater strongholds of the Revealer in faraway lands. Perhaps thieves’ cant is simply a mirrored version of handcant.
(But if that is so, why would the Revealer not destroy those who would use Their holy language for wickedness?)
Fray does not think on it. For now he must focus on survival. If there is idle conversation to be had in the meantime, well …
“We keep pets,” Fray signs back. He must be clear with his signing for Right to read him fluidly, given the mirroring, but it’s a joy to be able to use what feels like his first language again. Going for so long using only his voice has often left him feeling stupid and ill-spoken, only able to communicate in half-formed sentences. He had to, lest his voice vanish on him when he truly needed it. It’s been eased, somewhat, with help from Halsin and a supply of honey candies that seems infinite.
But now!
“My quarter had a cat, growing up,” Fray signs. “She was a wonderful mouser. If you were sad she just seemed to know. She’d sit in your lap for hours.” It feels good to share this, to share something about his home that won’t be questioned. Of course they kept pets.
“What was her name?” Right signs.
“Why would she have a name?”
Right, who has been picking their way along a remarkably intact stone wall, lifts their eyebrows at him. Fray suppresses a wince. So much for not being questioned. “Names are,” he starts to sign, and then finds he needs to start over. “I was taught that names are reserved for important things. People, settlements.”
“Animals can be important.”
“Yes,” Fray allows, thinking of Scratch. “We … weren’t supposed to. But most of us called her Rosie.”
“There you go,” Right says aloud, and smirks at him. Fray wants to catch that smirk in a bottle so that he can look at it whenever he likes. “Knew you had a rebellious streak.”
It’s true, though Fray has never been sure if it’s something he ought be proud of. It has been both rewarded and punished, often by the same people. “I was a little bit of a hellion when I was younger, if I’m being honest,” he admits. “Got in trouble with no small frequency.”
Right laughs, hopping down from the wall as Fray examines the still-sturdy door of a sagging barn. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
With his hands full, Fray returns to speech. It feels like trying to communicate with mud in his mouth after the fluent comfort of signing. “S’true.”
“Try the rake pick,” Right says from over his shoulder, watching as Fray works to find the right lockpick to use for the barn door. “And what did you do, then, that made you such a hellion?”
As Fray feeds the pick into the keyhole, he runs through old memories, trying to find something sufficiently impressive. “Stole the reh, rector’s horse,” he says, listening for the click of the pins. “Me and my friend.”
“Stole it! For what?”
“Heard of a white stag in the woods. S’posed to grant wishes.”
The rake pick was, of course, the correct choice. Right’s advice about such things can always be trusted. The lock pops open in his hands and he looks to Right for their reaction. It makes him feel silly and childish, craving their approval, but he craves it anyway. He can’t help it. He gets it, too: “Nice job,” Right tells him as they push the door open. “You’re getting faster.”
“Good teacher,” Fray says, following. There’s more he wants to say, but it keeps getting stuck in his throat. He’s not even sure if he knows what it is, or else he does know but there’s simply too much of it to manage, so it all falls apart into jumbles.
It might be for the best, anyway. Whatever the thing he wants is, he can sense that it’s dangerous.
II. the terrible fire of old regret
The barn proves to have little of use, though Right does procure some jewelry. They might be able to pawn it off to the Harpers’ quartermaster, and use that gold to buy food. More immediately, Fray catches signs that something has passed through recently: small footprints in the gathered dirt, a room recently torn apart. “Shadows, you think?” Right asks.
Fray, examining the tracks, shakes his head. “Don’t leave footprints,” he says. “Harpers, maybe. Small enough for haf, halflings.”
In answer Right hums, nodding. “Best be on guard either way, I guess,” they say. In agreement, Fray draws his sword. Its light blooms across the tattered remains of what was once a home, and now does not so much as dream. “I thought I saw some crates along the hill,” they say, and in short order that is where the pair of them are bound.
It’s a longer walk than Fray had anticipated. It is made somehow longer by the fact Right walks steadily at his side. He wants to say something. He wants—he wants to—
Words leap from his tongue, shoved forward by the ones he can’t seem to say. “Haven’t properly done it, yet,” he says all in a rush, trying his damnedest not to stumble over his own tongue. “Want to … to apologize.”
He does not dare look at Right, not until they give a sigh that is almost (but not quite) amused. “For?”
“Everything.” The sword in his hand seems to drag its weight. He ignores it. “Me. My behe, behavior.”
The silence that follows is more painful than he would have anticipated. Fray feels his face grow hot. He regrets at once not waiting until he could more easily sign, but his nerve fails him more than it doesn’t anymore. He might not find the courage again, if this goes poorly. It mustn’t go poorly. “I’ve mistreated you. Karlach. Tieflings.”
Here Right stops. The very tip of their lizard-like tail lashes as they rub at their eyes. The glow inherent to them never fails to dazzle Fray when they open in the dark. “And?”
Fray finds himself at a loss. Words are enough of a struggle for him on a good day. While he gropes for something to say, Right shifts their weight from hoof to hoof, hands shoved deep into pockets. Their eyes find the pavement. “Do you actually want to change what you think about people like me?” they say. “Or do you just want me to ease your conscience now that you know what other people think of you?”
It’s a slap in the face, and it’s one Fray deserves. His head spins as if he’d been struck; he nearly loses his grip on his sword. He notices his mouth hangs open long after it’s too late to hide.
He never discovers how to answer. There’s a soft sound of something sliding, of pebbles being disturbed. It’s too nearby for comfort, tucked in the ruins of some sort of studio or shop. Right’s ears swivel toward it.
“I’ll go high,” they whisper, and back into the shadows.
Fray watches until he is no longer sure if he is looking at tiefling or tiefling-shaped bush. He steadies himself best he can, and sheathes the glowing blade so as to not give himself away.
III. you’ll bury me beneath the trees
SCENE: The colorful, dreamlike setting of the myconid colony. Camp. Right is cooking, but seems distracted. Fray arrives, carrying a bundle of firewood. They nod at one another in greeting. Fray busies himself unloading the firewood. As he does, Right reaches toward the pan on the fire without looking. Fray notices.
FRAY:
(Alarmed.) Wait, don’t—
Right grabs the uncovered handle. They flinch away at once, hissing. Fray puts down the rest of the wood.
RIGHT:
Shit!
FRAY:
Let me see.
RIGHT:
No, it’s fine, it’s not bad.
FRAY:
Let me see it. (Right looks at him warily.) Shadowheart’s been teaching me.
RIGHT:
(Allowing Fray to take their wrist.) Teaching you what?
Fray begins casting something.
FRAY:
Healing. (He pauses, frowning.) You’re too hot.
RIGHT:
(Deadpan.) Save that one for Karlach.
FRAY:
That’s—I didn’t—
Right smirks at him.
FRAY:
Shut up. (He examines their hand.) Not too bad.
RIGHT:
What did I say?
Fray rolls his eyes. He does not drop their hand.
FRAY:
Sick?
RIGHT:
What?
FRAY:
Too hot. Are you sick?
RIGHT:
No. I’m always like this. You feel as cold as a lizard to me.
Fray frowns, confused. Right starts to pull their hand away, but stops when Fray doesn’t let go.
FRAY:
Tiefling thing?
RIGHT:
Yes.
Fray looks down and notices Right’s claws with surprise.
FRAY:
Cl—claws.
RIGHT:
(Amused.) Had you not noticed?
FRAY:
No, I—are—are they … sharp?
Right cocks their head to one side and smiles with mischievous intent.
RIGHT:
Do you want to find out?
Fray stares at them for slightly too long, then hastily drops their hand.
END SCENE.
It’s the third or fourth broken clay pot that does him in. He misjudges, again, how sturdy the old things are. They look much stronger than they seem to be. Certainly stronger than the way they seem to shatter as soon as he brushes past them. So much for not drawing attention.
He’s seen no tracks, but he never was great at tracking. He’s good at following, though. He follows an overgrown path missing half its cobbles now, and he’s followed Right’s lead in staying out of sight, and he’s been following the Revealer for his entire life. Shadowheart’s been practicing her polymorph spell, lately. Maybe Fray should volunteer; he’s already a very good sheep.
The very idea of suggesting that following the Great Revealer is not the noblest pursuit in life makes Fray’s chest seize with nervousness. He’s oft been told the Revealer may peer into one’s heart, and that a sin of the mind is no different than a sin of the body. Is he being tested, that his mind should so relentlessly drag him toward doubt? Does his god wait and watch and listen, growing angrier with this apostate saint?
Surely not, Fray comforts himself. The justice of the Revealer is swift and fierce. They do not issue second chances. If he had truly sinned, he would not have slept before knowing it.
All the same, it clouds his mind. It preoccupies each crevice in his brain, forming long shadows that obscure what he ought to actually focus on—like ambushes.
Fray’s eyes are tracing over his own hand when it happens. He compares, in his head, the thin profile of his half-heartedly maintained fingernails to the sharp, narrow claws he recalls from Right’s too-warm hand. He pictures them flexed in deadly preparedness as Right readies another crossbow bolt; the careful way Right utilizes them as pocket-knife or needle or dagger as the situation may call; how those dangerous tips might feel against the skin of Fray’s jaw, cheek, throat …
He should have prayed to the Revealer for strength. Instead, when a thin cord is slipped around his neck and pulled taut, he is still worrying over whether he has finally driven Right off.
He makes only one sound before he is reduced to gagging and choking. It’s a pathetic, quiet sound of surprise, nothing that would draw anyone’s ears. A wretched few seconds pass, and the world smears across his vision. Something behind him. Something that smells of fetid water and feels bony pressed against his back. Fray goes limp just long enough to gather himself, and once he has, he slams his head backwards, into what he hopes is a face.
There’s a snarling in his ear, like steam escaping a boiler. The garotte slackens, and that is all Fray needs to get a hold on it and rip it from his neck. In a moment his sword is out. In another, so are his assailant’s guts. It spasms and howls in the dirt until he drives his blade between its eyes.
Gasping, Fray stares down at the body. It’s a strange, pale thing, covered in silvery fur with great tufts of longer gray hair around the face. Its limbs, long and gangling, lend it an uncanny air of the eerie. It blends with the shadows so flawlessly it might as well be one itself. As the adrenaline fades, Fray touches his throat. This is his newest compulsive behavior, and has been so ever since his god anointed him with the rune collar. The scars beneath his fingertips, dented with the impression of the cord, leaves him with a vague sense of terror. He ought not have split up with Right. Had he been unlucky, Fray would have choked to death with no one the wiser.
He should find Right, he thinks; then all thought is shoved from his mind as another cord tries to wrap itself around his neck.
This time he at least has the presence of mind to shout before it tightens. Right’s hearing is keen, and it’s with a wild desperation that Fray prays to—to—to anyone that they will hear him.
The scuffle that follows is frighteningly quiet. This attacker does not fall for his trick, and when he throws his head back this time it only lets the cord bite deeper. Fray’s choked-out noises sound like a dying animal, until they burst into bloom with sudden air. Again he tears the garotte from his neck, again he turns with sword in hand to plunge it into the monster’s body; this time he does not need to. The creature slides slowly to the ground, a crossbow bolt embedded deep into the side of its head. The only thing that allows Fray to find where Right crouches in the failing rafters of the roof is their movement as they hurriedly reload the next bolt. “Behind you!” they hiss.
Fray whirls, sword at the ready; sure enough another of the things is there with garotte in hand, sneering with a mouthful of pointed teeth. It leaps backwards, narrowly dodging his swipe. His sword seems to buzz in his hand, as if enraged, but he can pay no attention to this; more of the things are pouring out of the shadows.
It’s four altogether. They crowd him, dancing in and out of range, and his greatsword feels too slow and clumsy to keep pace. It glances off the poorly kept blade one brandishes at him, leaving his hand vibrating and numb. In a desperate bid for more room to maneuver he tries to shoulder his way past. His only reward is a cord being thrown around his sword hand and yanked. The sword clatters in fury as it hits the stone and dirt below. He does not get so much as a chance to retrieve it before the other three fall on him with their own wires, pulling him to the ground.
He can’t move. He can’t speak to cast a spell. He can’t breathe, and he did not pray to his god to protect him. He relied instead on the comfort of Right’s presence. Even if they do not flee to preserve their own skin, even if they stay and pump bolt after bolt into these things, Fray realizes—
He’s going to die here.
IV. i feel it in my soul, i feel the empty hole
SCENE: Pre-dawn. The Last Light Inn. Curtain opens to Fray at the inn’s stable, empty but for three skinny oxen. He paces here and there a few times, pausing to look off-stage and through windows. After a moment of this, he retires to one of the oxen stalls, sitting on a bale of hay.
FRAY:
(Signing to the ox. Resigned.) I don’t suppose you’ve seen a gray tiefling.
The ox looks at him uninterestedly.
FRAY:
(Signing.) No. Of course you haven’t. (He fidgets for a few seconds.) I don’t know why I thought they would come. I’ve been nothing but wretched to them for a solid month, after all. For all I know, these runes on my neck tell tieflings go out of their way to avoid me. And that’s not even mentioning Karlach! I’m sure she’s even more appealing company now, with her engine fixed.
The ox lies down.
FRAY:
(Signing.) I’m not even sure what I want to tell them, you know?
The ox lows.
FRAY:
(Signing.) “Would you meet me in the barn later tonight.” Gods. I imagine they think I mean to kill them. It’s not like they haven’t seen me do it to other tieflings.
Fray scrubs his hands through his hair. He draws the Blade of Saints and considers it before laying it down on the ground.
FRAY:
(Signing.) I think I’ve been wrong. I think I’ve been wrong about almost everything.
He stares at the sword for a long time.
FRAY:
(Signing.) What does that mean? What does it mean about me? About the things I’ve done, about my whole life? (Hesitantly.) About …
He trails off.
FRAY:
(Stage whisper.) Am I too late to fix it?
RIGHT:
(Off-stage.) Fray?
Fray jumps to his feet in a panic. He dismisses the sword and fusses with his hair, failing to do anything with it before Right enters, stage left.
FRAY:
(Relieved, if nervous.) Thought you wouldn’t come.
RIGHT:
A mystery summons while everyone else is occupied? How could I not? (They lean against one of the ox stalls.) So?
FRAY:
I, ah …
He looks at the ox as if it might help him.
FRAY:
Wanted to … ask some questions. About tieflings.
RIGHT:
(Cautiously.) Oh?
FRAY:
Stupid ones, probably.
RIGHT:
Mm. Like if we’re walking prisons for innocent souls?
Fray grimaces.
FRAY:
Kind of. Want to … wanted to hear what tieflings have to say about tieflings.
RIGHT:
And here I thought you were already the expert.
FRAY:
So did I. But I … I was wrong. I want to know what’s true.
Right’s ears, which have been constantly swiveling around, direct themselves entirely at Fray.
RIGHT:
Well. Not what I expected to hear, I’ll admit.
FRAY:
(Hurriedly.) If you’re willing to talk to me, I mean.
RIGHT:
Well, I did decline an invitation from Karlach to come here. But I suppose if you make it quick …
Fray looks equal parts anxious and embarrassed. After a few seconds, Right rolls their eyes and smiles.
RIGHT:
I’m teasing.
FRAY:
O—oh.
RIGHT:
I’ll answer your questions. Even the stupid ones. Maybe especially the stupid ones.
FRAY:
Thank you—
RIGHT:
(Interrupting.) On one condition.
FRAY:
Of—of course.
RIGHT:
If you say anything really funny, I get to tell Karlach about it.
Fray looks startled, then laughs.
FRAY:
That’s the least I deserve.
RIGHT:
Let’s do it walking, though. I’m going a little stir-crazy.
The two of them exit, stage right. The ox Fray had been signing to watches them leave. A few seconds later, it addresses the audience.
OX:
I daresay there isn’t a lick of hope for that one.
END SCENE.
He is going to die.
This is not the first time that thought has come upon him. It’s not even the first time it has arrived since that massive tendril spirited him away from Baldur’s Gate. Fray has glimpsed death’s door more than once, and he had stood firm. He has always known that should he fall, the Revealer would catch him. The sainthood etched across his body would grant him safe passage to the Great Revealer’s eternal reward. But now things are different. Now he spends his nights feeling the runes on his throat, the itch of his countless scars. Doubting. Questioning. If the Revealer, whom all his life Fray has been told is perfect in all things and wise without measure—if the Revealer is wrong about tieflings, then what else Fray has been told to believe might be wrong?
Fray is going to die, here, now, under the choking wires of anonymous shadow creatures. He will die, doubting and frightened, with the thing he could not find the words to say to Right still trapped in his closed-off throat. The only solace he can find is that perhaps this is justice, whether for his disbelief in his god, or for the actions he took while believing in Them. Perhaps this will redeem him. Perhaps it will give meaning to his mistakes.
This is all he can muster to mind as his thoughts begin to flicker and darken. One of the creatures stands on his back, using the leverage to draw the garotte ever tighter around his neck; the others gibber and jockey around him. He cannot feel his sword-hand.
As things go dark for the last time, one last thought bubbles up, like blood pooling: he should have told Right to run.
The first thing Fray thinks is: is this what it feels like, being dead?
The second is, I thought it would be colder.
The third isn’t anything, because he is too caught up with retching and gasping for air.
Around him there is movement and sound. It all spins together, a complicated mess of nonsense. Something hot rolls down his face, and becomes cold. He touches it. It’s an oily, orangey brown. There’s more of it everywhere he looks, and as he looks he sees bodies, the creatures’ bodies, each laid low by what looks like a single massive wound each. A crossbow bolt in the throat. A stab wound square over where a heart might be. A throat slit in a clean, single line.
Still dizzy with oxygen deprivation, still with black spots dancing in his vision, Fray lifts his eyes and sees divinity. It must be so. He has been plucked from certain death, and as he stares he is struck dumb a second time with awe, with reverence. This celestial savior bears no wings, no halo, not even a holy sword, but it matters not. Fray can see through the dusty green coat and slender gray hooves, the long, heavy tail. He knows an angel when he sees one.
Before his eyes, Right rips their shortsword from the last monster’s chest. Their face is wild, eyes huge and teeth grit. When Fray tries and fails to lever himself upright they leap away from him, at first, their gore-covered blade at the ready. It clatters to the ground an instant later. “Fray!”
“I’m alright,” Fray tries to say. It comes out as a series of wheezes. His throat is even angrier with him than usual, breaking syllables into nonsense sounds. He is left to lean awkwardly on Right’s proffered arm, coughing and clearing his throat. It does little. “Don’t try to move yet,” they are telling him, but if he cannot speak, he cannot obey that command. When the worst of the dizziness passes, Fray clutches Right’s arm, once, and then lets go.
He signs: “Are you hurt?”
“Me?” Right shoots back, instantaneous. “I’ve—I’ve got scratches, you idiot, stop moving, you nearly had the life choked out of you!”
Fray tries to protest, and finds he does not have the strength for it. Instead he lets himself be helped out from the old ruin, into the close, warm walls of a nearby shed. It’s one they had ransacked already, too small to hold any nasty surprises. Fray allows himself to be sat back on a pile of straw that is only slightly moldy, the worst of it covered with torn burlap. Right makes him comfortable, though he insists he’s fine. It is pointed out he is shaking, which he cannot deny. A healing tincture is shoveled into him regardless, and Right insists on examining his throat. “Shouldn’t scar,” they say with a faint sort of disdain. “More’s the pity. I don’t like the look of those runes.”
Fray is too tired to get into a debate about his rune collar. He doesn’t even know what he thinks about it. Instead he beckons Right to sit beside him, and his shivering soon starts to fade in the face of their too-warm body.
And for a time, that is all.
V. the cup that can’t be filled, the beast that can’t be killed
Fray’s been thinking about plays, lately.
He’s never seen a play. Not a proper one. At most he’s seen puppet shows at Baldur’s Gate, bawdy things put on for the entertainment of bar-goers. He’d assumed that was all they were, hollow distractions for the downtrodden.
And then he’d found one. He’d fished out a tattered copy of a script from some bookshelf or another in his ongoing search for things to convert into gold to convert back into food, and the claims that it had been banned in four cities had been too much a curiosity to ignore. This was Fray’s introduction to A Pleasurable Deal.
That A Pleasurable Deal should be banned anywhere at all seems to Fray to be an assault on literature by panicked prudes. Yes, the piece is erotic. People flirt and say silly double-entendres and lie together, and yes, there is the infamous orgy scene. But to stop at these, to ignore the other two hours of the two and a half hour play, reeks of a dismissiveness Fray finds insulting. It is not a play about bodies. It is a play about honesty.
He’s sought other plays since. He found a whole collection of them in the ruined tower of the cleric Lenore, and these were even better than Deal. He likes the clarity to them, something he’s found lacking in the handful of novels that have passed through his hands. His favorite is the monologue in one by the name of On Lambs and Other Predators. The character, a halfling who has had a dreadful streak of ill luck, speaks to the audience for two solid pages. She begins in dismal depression, decrying all that has befallen her: her distant wife, her spoilt son, the failure of her career as a silversmith. Yet in the outlining she asks herself, is not silver melted before it is shaped? Must not it be seized and worked and hammered? And might not her own life be the same? By the end, she assures the listener that no more will she be held captive by fate, by fear. Fray read it three times in a row after he first found it.
He knows life is not a play. He knows it is messy and ugly, without guarantees. It does not have neat endings, nor convenient happenstance. It is rare that it even makes sense. That is perhaps why he finds the scripts so compelling; why he’s begun filtering his own memories through the format. It lends them a sort of structure that he’s sorely missed since leaving his home.
Even now, he thinks:
SCENE: The quiet near-darkness of the shed. Fray, rattled from his recent near-death experience, pretends he does not notice his leg bump against Right’s. Right is unreadable …
He wishes he were half so good at dialogue in real life, though.
“Thank you.”
Fray’s voice is still even worse than usual, scratchy with pain. If there were more to cover it than the breeze outside he would be inaudible. But Right does hear him, if their ears are any indication. They ponder their answer for a time. “Well,” they say at last, “I’d never hear the end of it if I came home without you.”
“Be a hero, more like.”
“Is that the direction you’re taking now, then?” says Right. It’s not glib, or even annoyed. It just … is. “You’re not so bad as all that.”
“Mm.”
“Karlach likes you. That’s got to mean something.”
The words are getting away from him again. Part of Fray wants so badly to just go to sleep here, curled up against the space heater that is his tiefing companion. “Just,” he tries again, “thank you. You could’ve l, left me. I wouldn’t have blamed you.” Right draws a long, slow breath. Their tail curls up between their hooves. Fray says, “What I said. Before. This is what I mea, mean, I think.”
A long silence. Fray’s throat hurts too badly to do much about it. At least, not until Right says, “I might have been too harsh. Earlier.”
“No. Deserve it.”
“Maybe,” Right allows. “You did, at the beginning. But you’re … I wonder if you know how rare you are. People don’t do what you did. People don’t change the way you have. Not really.”
“Some do,” says Fray.
Right makes a sound of discontent. “Let me rephrase,” they say. “Most people who are viciously punished by their gods don’t carry on doing the thing they were punished for.”
In his slow, sleepy brain, it takes Fray some time to follow that sentiment. It does click, though. Compulsively his hand comes to his neck. “I’ve meant to tell you for a while now,” Right goes on, looking ill at ease with themself. “I followed you out of curiosity. And to make sure you weren’t going off to murder some other tiefling. I didn’t … well. By the time I realized what you were doing, I couldn’t risk drawing that … your god’s … attention.”
Fray turns this confession over in his mind. He should feel violated, he thinks. Shamed, probably. He wonders how much of that confessional Right understood, or if they simply watched silent signing become violent correction without warning. And yet. “Okay,” Fray says.
“‘Okay’, what?”
“Just okay. It’s fine. Told you. Want to know what’s true. Not just … what I’ve been told is true.”
Right is quiet for a long time. “I wonder,” they say again, “if you have any idea how rare you are.”
VI. i know i shouldn’t love you, but i do
Half an hour passes.
They are still in the shed.
Fray has long since regained what use of his voice he’s going to retain. It wasn’t much to begin with. But it’s comfortable here, and feels somehow safe, even in a land gripped by the Shadowfell. Like no one can see them.
No, not no one.
The Great Revealer.
Some part of Fray feels like he’s found a rock to crawl under. A place to relax. He doesn’t get this feeling in camp, with the six-odd people wandering around at all hours, and with devils and wizards appearing as if from nowhere to deliver dire messages. Fray finds himself tensing whenever he hears footsteps outside his tent. But this, this hidey-hole …
The shed smells like old hay, and more interestingly, Right. There’s just the faintest touch of smoke under everything, and then—this close—Fray can catch their unique scent. It’s clean, somehow. It’s warm and straightforward, and it makes his stomach clench. It dries out his mouth. “Sure you’re alright?” Fray says, barely above a whisper.
“They scarcely stuck me.” Right’s is little louder, but not by much.
“My h, healing’s improved. Can I see?”
Right wavers. Fray can feel their indecision. It’s such a relief when they exhale and shrug. A moment later they’ve peeled off their coat to allow Fray to see the damage. Fray’s eyes rove over it with a mixture of annoyance and horror. This is not scarcely stuck. This is was nearly made into a pincushion. Their undershirt is stiff with blood, and the cloth itself is lacerated. The fact there isn’t more blood than there is seems like a miracle. It sends a wave of nausea through Fray to look at it, but he casts the spell. It doesn’t do anything about the blood, but Right seems to relax after. Fray continues to look. “Never,” he says, presently, “do that again.”
“What?” says Right blandly. “Take off my armor?”
“Come save me.”
“Well, there’s a fine hello.”
“You’re not front lines,” Fray shoots back, bolstering himself best he can. It’s poor. “You’re artillery. Too dangerous.”
They’re looking at him now, brow creased. “And if I had stayed back and just fired bolts, you would be dead. Unless that’s what you would have prefered.”
“I’m not ungrateful—”
“Then what are you?”
Before he can even consider stopping himself, Fray says, “Scared.”
Wind curls cautiously around the shed, listening in.
“I’m,” says Right, “probably not worth being scared over.”
“More than me. And I am scared. Always. Every fi, fight. Every risk.” It’s with a fearful shock that Fray realizes he’s hit upon it, he’s found the thing he wanted to say. It is not waiting patiently. It tumbles out of him. “I see a bow or a blade, I’m scared it has your n, name on it. Every trap you disarm, I’m scared it’s your last.”
“Fray—”
“I’m scared I’ll lose you.”
Quiet follows, but Right’s beautiful eyes shimmer over him. The light is too pale to illuminate more than their own face, and the placement of it sends eerie shadows over their features. Before Right, Fray had never seen anything like it. Now, he can scarcely close his eyes without seeing that chiaroscuro. He feels small and stupid under their gaze, unworthy. Ever unworthy. He tries to sink deeper into the straw and burlap.
Right says, “That’s why I had to do it. Get up close, I mean. On the front lines.” They wet their lips, eyes fixed on the hinges of the door in front of them. “I was scared I’d lose you.”
The words are like bombs to Fray’s fragile psyche. Yes, he had been digging for them, but he had no expectation of ever finding them. Now that he has, he can’t fathom what to do with them. He sits frozen, waiting. “I don’t understand you at all,” Right says, hands slipping through the loose strings of hair at their temples. “I’ve watched you go from earnest belief I’m evil to—to this, whatever it is. From arguing with a god to openly defying it, because you believe you’re doing the right thing. Every day we run into these insane situations, and every day I watch you breaking your back to be as kind and helpful to as many people as possible. Once you told me you used to want to be a hero. I think you might already be one.”
Nothing more comes.
Seconds tick by.
Right clears their throat. “Anyway,” they say, “we should probably—”
They do not finish their sentence. They don’t so much as get to catch their breath, for Fray wraps one hand behind their neck and presses a kiss to their lips. “Not a hero,” he’s muttering even as he does, his confessional between his need to feel their body against his. “Just—lost idiot with a sword. Scared. Scared.”
Right’s mouth is so warm it makes Fray feel cold-blooded when he takes their lower lip between his teeth. Their hair is exactly how he’d imagined it, strong and a little coarse, but soft. The handsome aquiline arch of their nose nudges against his cheek in a way that makes his already racing heart thunder along quicker. Somewhere in the back of his mind, deep, shut away, he knows—he knows a cost will be demanded for this moment, for these stolen kisses. Let it come. He is willing to pay. Still, he wishes. If only Right—
If only Right would shift to better meet his mouth. If only they would sink their clawed fingers through the ruined braid that spills over his back, if only they would make small, hungry sounds against him as the two of them leaned into one another. If only they would twist to better face him, and lay the comforting weight of their tail across his legs, if only they would guide his other hand to their face and up, up, to brush the fine fur on their beautiful ears. If only they would wrap his fingers around their horn and gasp into his mouth. If only they would let him close the rest of the distance, let him press them against the makeshift bedroll and straddle them to better reassure himself they are still here. Let them be together.
If only, Fray would think, were that not exactly what happens.