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beekeeperofedenSummary: Ability to speak does not necessarily confer the ability to communicate. Entreri and Catti-brie are still learning this the hard way. Opposite of Arrogance AU.
Wordcount: 2880
They were on stake-out again. Catti-brie had noticed that none of the drow soldiers were sent out in pairs, and she wondered what it meant that Jarlaxle kept making Entreri work with her. She didn't need a translator to recognize the "it takes two humans to do the job of one dark elf" jokes as they left, but she didn't think that was Jarlaxle's reasoning. At least, that wasn't all of it.
Whatever Jarlaxle's rationale, it had resulted in the two of them sitting on the roof of a crumbling building, watching the street below for—someone. Catti-brie wasn't actually sure who they were looking for, but she had been assured that Entreri would recognize them. Which meant that, while Entreri studied the sparse crowds and watched for their target, Catti-brie had an idle mind and no one else to talk to.
"What're ye muttering?" she asked him. He'd been frowning and saying something under his breath for the past half hour. It almost had the rhythm of a poem, and she wondered if it were possible that the man who had haunted some of her nightmares would really be reciting poetry in his spare time.
Annoyed grumbling, followed by "Vocabulary." Not poetry, then. Far more practical, and Catti-brie was annoyed at herself for not guessing that first.
"That'll be in drow, then?" They were speaking in Surface Common. Catti-brie had half expected Entreri to insist on speaking drow in order to avoid talking to her, but he seemed to enjoy hearing a surface language again too much to argue.
Entreri rolled his eyes instead of answering.
"Drill me," she said.
"What?"
"I need to practice and so do ye." She nodded at the street. "It's not like we're going anywhere for a while."
He rolled his eyes again.
"Brane'sa," he said. Catti-brie grinned.
"Insect, pest, or annoyance." She'd heard that one a few times already.
"It also means 'prey,'" Entreri pointed out. He looked much less amused, though Catti-brie wasn't sure if that was just his face or if he'd gotten sick of hearing it muttered at him in the hallway.
"My turn," she said. "Delmah."
"Headquarters or fortress." He paused to watch someone exit a building across the row from them. "Uln'hyrr."
"Liar," she said. Entreri nodded.
"The synonym for that one is Jarlaxle," he said. Catti-brie started to etch the new word into her memory before she realized that Artemis Entreri had just made a joke. She searched for some hint of humor, but he kept his face totally blank.
"Uln'hyrr," she said. He raised an eyebrow.
"We just did that one. Choose another."
"Vynnessia," she said, grinning as he frowned. She'd remembered this one because it was pretty, but suspected Entreri might not have bothered to memorize it. He scowled.
"You made that one up."
"It means 'butterfly.'"
"You must be joking."
"Nope."
"Why do drow even have a word for butterfly?" He gestured at the ceiling, at the walls, at everything around them. "We are miles below the surface. There are no butterflies down here."
Catti-brie was silent for a moment, enjoying the view as Entreri's face shifted between astonishment and disbelief.
"Mayhap they're invisible butterflies," she said after a moment. His mouth opened and shut a few times before he responsed.
"It's not a matter of visibility—butterflies could not survive in the Underdark. They're too delicate, and there is nothing for them to eat."
Catti-brie frowned and gestured at a pack of rothe down the street. "There's plenty o' food."
Entreri blinked. "I thought butterflies ate flowers."
"And meat. I saw a flock of them nibbling on a deer carcass once. Looked like a patch o' daisies until I got close enough to see their wings move."
He stared at her, clearly hoping for some indication of untruth. She could see the idea but they're too pretty to be dangerous flutter across his mind, unspoken. She shrugged.
"Ye've met Jarlaxle, and he's awful pretty. Are ye gonna tell me he's not dangerous?" She leaned forward. "But more importantly...if I'm lyin' about the butterflies, then why do dark elves have a word for 'em?"
He looked away, staring at the deserted street below them.
"We should move on to verbs," he said. "Run."
Catti-brie blinked, then considered whether she was supposed to run. "Oh! Er, z'haanin."
"That's 'running.'" He stretched one leg, then the other, without losing sight of the road. Catti-brie realized her own legs were stiff from sitting and started to stand as well. "Usstan z'haan, dos z'haan, il z'haane, udos z'haan, nind z'haan—I run, you run, she runs, we run, they run. Dos z'haanus. You ran."
Catti-brie sighed. This was less fun than nouns, but she couldn't deny it was necessary. She winced, remembering the times she'd heard a goblin mangle verbs in common or dwarvish and how easy it had been to discount them as real people. At home, she'd wanted the others to respect her as an adult, as someone who could be trusted to make her own decisions. She had thought she wanted that. But the basic respect that came from acknowledgement that she was a person...she hadn't noticed until it was missing, and she hungered to have it back.
"I hate this," she said.
"Usstan phlith nindol." He eyed her for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the abandoned street. "And in third person singular?"
"Er, il phlithe. She hates."
"If you hate this so much, why not leave?" Apparently satisfied with the results of his stretching, he sat back down cross-legged on the edge of the roof. "You could probably convince Jarlaxle to return you."
"Why would he do that?"
"Gold. Surely your father could pay a ransom that would interest him."
Her own bed. Seeing friendly faces again. Sunlight, rain, a soft breeze. She wasn't sure what season it was on the surface. Autumn, perhaps? There would be fresh apples falling from the trees. Everyone would be taking stock of their supplies, getting ready for winter. Usually she'd be helping buy preserves, storing turnips, deciding which spices to purchase and how many before the roads became too icy for merchants.
If she mentioned it to Jarlaxle today, maybe she could be home before the first snow fell.
Jarlaxle's words echoed in her mind. Drizzt may even outlive you, if they have their way. House Baenre is not known for killing its enemies quickly.
"No. If I leave, then Jarlaxle don't need to hold up his end of the bargain."
"Do'Urden must be quite gratified, to have so persistent a rescuer."
Catti-brie shook her head. "He'd hate it if he knew I was here. He told Regis to hide it from us."
He looked at her, his regard frighteningly intense. "Then why pursue him?"
Empty hallways. Her father, red-eyed and silent. The guilt that would eat her away if she didn't go, if no one went. Alustriel watching her with unexpected hope and respect.
She closed her eyes.
"I already lost one friend." Whatever arguments they had had, whatever Wulfgar had been to her before he died, she could still say 'friend.' "You killed him attacking Mithril Hall."
"One of the dwarves?" He frowned, clearly unable to put a face to her description.
"Not one of the—" Her throat ached with the effort of stopping tears, but she held them back anyway. She would not cry in front of Artemis Entreri. "Wulfgar. He died in the attack."
"But I was not the one who killed him."
"Ye helped." Her voice trembled. "If ye hadn't, perhaps the battle would have gone different."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not." He shrugged. "If I had not been involved, it's possible you would have died and Wulfgar would have gone chasing Do'Urden to the Underdark."
"Or no one would have died!" She was vaguely aware that she was standing over him, her voice raised. He didn't seem the slightest bit intimidated, and that only made her feel worse. "We would have beaten them off and kept living our lives."
"Does Jarlaxle strike you as incompetent? If I had not been there, the drow would simply have used a different tactic to pry Drizzt out. Teleportation spells and a larger army, perhaps. Alchemical explosives in the mineshafts. Smoke, like hunters use for foxes."
"So ye joined them to reduce the body count?"
"Hardly." His lip curled in scorn.
"Then what does it matter, if I blame ye for his death?"
"It doesn't. But you hardly have cause to be upset. You did not wish to marry him anyway."
She stared at him, flummoxed.
"How do ye know—"
He arranged his features into a politely neutral expression that she'd never seen him wear. But she'd seen it on Regis's face a few times, when she needed to confide to someone. Like she had before drow attacked, when Regis had been...oh.
"You spying weasel," she spat. "That was—it's none of your—" She kicked a piece of decorative metalwork sticking out of the roof. Pain shot up her foot and spread like lightning through her leg. She cursed, still angry, but it was a pure, hot anger, something she could burn out. Grief was a dark tunnel that she couldn't afford to follow right now, not if she wanted to rescue Drizzt.
"How was I supposed to stop you?" Entreri's voice was harsh. "Say 'I cannot listen to your girlish woes right now, as I have espionage to commit and a prisoner to check on'? Or would you prefer that I simply pretend not to know?"
"Let's go with that."
"Very well." Another strange expression, this time an obvious caricature of sympathy. "I am so sorry about the death of your brutish fiance, whom you were so very excited to wed."
"Someone should have drowned you as a weanling."
He shrugged. "What makes you think no one tried?"
Exhausted by her anger, she sat down at the edge of the roof, close enough to speak but far enough away that he wouldn't think he was forgiven. I'm not sitting with ye, we just happen to be sitting in the same tunnel.
"Why do ye care if I go home, anyway?"
"Jarlaxle would need to give you a map, or send a scout to show you the way out. I could use that."
"So you're just bein' selfish."
"Yes. You could try it sometime."
"I think you're selfish enough for the both of us, aren't ye?"
He bared his teeth in what might have been a pleased grin. For a while they sat in silence, watching the street below them. Catti-brie's stomach growled, and she unpacked the fruit and cheese she had brought with her. She took a bite of the fruit, first. It was unfamiliar to her, but apparently commonplace in the Underdark. The skin was soft pink that faded into green. It tasted like a plum that wasn't ripe yet, but sweeter. She'd found she liked them.
Entreri glanced at her, then at the fruit. "Have you had a chance to look at the drow orchards yet?"
The question was so innocuous that Catti-brie was instantly suspicious.
"The drow have farms?" This far down, with no sunlight or rainfall to speak of?
Entreri nodded. "They're much like the great farms in the south, with aqueducts. They build in terraces to maximize space."
That...actually sounded rather nice. She'd seen aqueducts used in mining, to help carry away dust and debris. It could make sense for farming, too. She felt a pang of homesickness, thinking of the mines. Perhaps it was the case for Entreri, too.
"Do ye miss it?" He blinked, and she clarified. "Calimshan, I mean?"
"Parts of it." This time he didn't manage to hide the note of wistfulness from her. Was that him loosening up or her getting better at reading him?
"Like the food?" Her visit to Calimport had been too brief, too fearful, to really understand the city.
"Like the freedom to kill anyone who talked too much." Catti-brie took another bite of the fruit, and Entreri smirked. "But yes, some of the pashas keep fine gardens. Keeping plants alive in the desert requires time, water, money—it's a chance for them to show off."
Catti-brie didn't remembering seeing any such gardens, but she supposed that they were probably walled off. Knowing that Calimport hadn't been as barren as it looked but that all that green was simply hidden away didn't make her like the place any better.
"Is that why the drow grow fruit? To prove they can?"
Entreri thought about that, then chuckled. "Perhaps. Although, water is not the problem down here."
"Sunlight." She frowned, thinking. "Light spells?" But surely that would take too much magic to maintain, and the dark elves barely tolerated torches along crowded streets. They couldn't possibly be casting enough light spells up to keep any sizable farms alive.
"Some of the fields have light, yes, but plants don't need to get their energy from sunlight. Some can get warmth from the ground." He grinned wolfishly. "And most of the plants down here get their energy the same way we do—they eat."
Catti-brie finished chewing her bite of not-plum and swallowed. "Eat what?" she asked.
"Meat." He jerked his head at a goblin corpse, already being dragged away. "Whatever kind is available."
Catti-brie looked at her mostly-uneaten fruit with disgust. Entreri huffed in annoyance, then took it from her.
"If you won't eat it, I will."
Catti-brie swallowed her objections. It wasn't like eating a person, not really. She couldn't shake the certainty that it had tasted like blood, nonetheless. Entreri rolled his eyes.
"A few days of hunger, you'll get over it," he said, carving the not-plum into small pieces. He popped a piece of fruit into his mouth. "Or you'll starve. I care not which."
Catti-brie scowled at him, then snatched a piece of the not-plum and ate it, never breaking eye contact. He laughed.
She raised an eyebrow, considering how, when she'd first known him, he'd butted heads with the guard from Luskan for no apparent reason other than that it seemed to amuse him to insult the man.
"Do you have to work to piss off all yer potential allies this much, or do it come natural?"
"It took practice."
"Oh, so ye want otherwise neutral parties to be looking to take yer head off," Catti-brie said sarcastically. Entreri nodded.
"It weeds out the opportunistic leeches. Anyone who sticks around after that is probably just planning to kill me."
"Or mayhap they weren't planning to kill ye until ye opened yer damned mouth."
Entreri shrugged, as if people wanting to murder him was a natural consequence of existing. Then he perked up, like a cat that heard the skitter of rodent feet nearby. He jerked his chin as an armored figure down the street.
"Our target." Then he stood and started climbing down the building, not bothering with a rope. Catti-brie peered over the edge after him, then down at the rapidly-approaching drow.
"What am I supposed to do?"
He sneered but didn't answer. As their target got closer, Catti-brie recalled Jarlaxle's instructions: I need him alive, but not undamaged. She growled under her breath, drew her bow, and fired into the target's leg, pinning him to the nearest building.
Entreri, halfway across the street, whirled to scowl up at her. She made eye contact for a long second, then deliberately lowered the bow. She looped a length of rope around the decorative metalwork and started to climb down the side of the building. By the time she got down, their target was bound and gagged. He whimpered through the gag as Entreri roughly tourniquetted the wound on his leg. When Catti-brie let go of the rope, Entreri knotted the bandage and stood up.
"What were you thinking?"
"I was thinkin' ye hadn't exactly shared a plan, and this seemed like a halfway decent one. If ye were expecting me to do something else, ye should've said."
He tilted his head, and she expected an attack. A shove, a slap, something. When it didn't come, she ground her teeth and maintained eye contact until a particularly loud groan from their target drew her attention. Entreri was still frowning at her.
"If you get in my way again, I'll leave you at the bottom of the Clawrift, Jarlaxle's orders be damned."
With that, he dragged the captive to his feet and shoved him toward Bregan D'aerthe's base.
"Walk," he ordered in drow. A glance at Catti-brie suggested that the imperative was targeted at her, too. She pulled her rope down and followed.
"I don't suppose ye can tell me how drow say 'thank you,'" she said, draping the coil of rope over her shoulder. "Given that ye don't seem to know it yerself."
"If you shut up, I'll express gratitude by letting you live." He ran his thumb along the pommel of his dagger. "If a drow were going to deign to thank iblith for anything, I suspect it would be by killing us fast instead of slow."
She spent the rest of their walk in silence, wondering if he was right. When they returned, Jarlaxle smiled in delight, praised their work, and offered not a single word in thanks. By Entreri's grim smirk as they left Jarlaxle's office, he'd noticed too.
Wordcount: 2880
They were on stake-out again. Catti-brie had noticed that none of the drow soldiers were sent out in pairs, and she wondered what it meant that Jarlaxle kept making Entreri work with her. She didn't need a translator to recognize the "it takes two humans to do the job of one dark elf" jokes as they left, but she didn't think that was Jarlaxle's reasoning. At least, that wasn't all of it.
Whatever Jarlaxle's rationale, it had resulted in the two of them sitting on the roof of a crumbling building, watching the street below for—someone. Catti-brie wasn't actually sure who they were looking for, but she had been assured that Entreri would recognize them. Which meant that, while Entreri studied the sparse crowds and watched for their target, Catti-brie had an idle mind and no one else to talk to.
"What're ye muttering?" she asked him. He'd been frowning and saying something under his breath for the past half hour. It almost had the rhythm of a poem, and she wondered if it were possible that the man who had haunted some of her nightmares would really be reciting poetry in his spare time.
Annoyed grumbling, followed by "Vocabulary." Not poetry, then. Far more practical, and Catti-brie was annoyed at herself for not guessing that first.
"That'll be in drow, then?" They were speaking in Surface Common. Catti-brie had half expected Entreri to insist on speaking drow in order to avoid talking to her, but he seemed to enjoy hearing a surface language again too much to argue.
Entreri rolled his eyes instead of answering.
"Drill me," she said.
"What?"
"I need to practice and so do ye." She nodded at the street. "It's not like we're going anywhere for a while."
He rolled his eyes again.
"Brane'sa," he said. Catti-brie grinned.
"Insect, pest, or annoyance." She'd heard that one a few times already.
"It also means 'prey,'" Entreri pointed out. He looked much less amused, though Catti-brie wasn't sure if that was just his face or if he'd gotten sick of hearing it muttered at him in the hallway.
"My turn," she said. "Delmah."
"Headquarters or fortress." He paused to watch someone exit a building across the row from them. "Uln'hyrr."
"Liar," she said. Entreri nodded.
"The synonym for that one is Jarlaxle," he said. Catti-brie started to etch the new word into her memory before she realized that Artemis Entreri had just made a joke. She searched for some hint of humor, but he kept his face totally blank.
"Uln'hyrr," she said. He raised an eyebrow.
"We just did that one. Choose another."
"Vynnessia," she said, grinning as he frowned. She'd remembered this one because it was pretty, but suspected Entreri might not have bothered to memorize it. He scowled.
"You made that one up."
"It means 'butterfly.'"
"You must be joking."
"Nope."
"Why do drow even have a word for butterfly?" He gestured at the ceiling, at the walls, at everything around them. "We are miles below the surface. There are no butterflies down here."
Catti-brie was silent for a moment, enjoying the view as Entreri's face shifted between astonishment and disbelief.
"Mayhap they're invisible butterflies," she said after a moment. His mouth opened and shut a few times before he responsed.
"It's not a matter of visibility—butterflies could not survive in the Underdark. They're too delicate, and there is nothing for them to eat."
Catti-brie frowned and gestured at a pack of rothe down the street. "There's plenty o' food."
Entreri blinked. "I thought butterflies ate flowers."
"And meat. I saw a flock of them nibbling on a deer carcass once. Looked like a patch o' daisies until I got close enough to see their wings move."
He stared at her, clearly hoping for some indication of untruth. She could see the idea but they're too pretty to be dangerous flutter across his mind, unspoken. She shrugged.
"Ye've met Jarlaxle, and he's awful pretty. Are ye gonna tell me he's not dangerous?" She leaned forward. "But more importantly...if I'm lyin' about the butterflies, then why do dark elves have a word for 'em?"
He looked away, staring at the deserted street below them.
"We should move on to verbs," he said. "Run."
Catti-brie blinked, then considered whether she was supposed to run. "Oh! Er, z'haanin."
"That's 'running.'" He stretched one leg, then the other, without losing sight of the road. Catti-brie realized her own legs were stiff from sitting and started to stand as well. "Usstan z'haan, dos z'haan, il z'haane, udos z'haan, nind z'haan—I run, you run, she runs, we run, they run. Dos z'haanus. You ran."
Catti-brie sighed. This was less fun than nouns, but she couldn't deny it was necessary. She winced, remembering the times she'd heard a goblin mangle verbs in common or dwarvish and how easy it had been to discount them as real people. At home, she'd wanted the others to respect her as an adult, as someone who could be trusted to make her own decisions. She had thought she wanted that. But the basic respect that came from acknowledgement that she was a person...she hadn't noticed until it was missing, and she hungered to have it back.
"I hate this," she said.
"Usstan phlith nindol." He eyed her for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the abandoned street. "And in third person singular?"
"Er, il phlithe. She hates."
"If you hate this so much, why not leave?" Apparently satisfied with the results of his stretching, he sat back down cross-legged on the edge of the roof. "You could probably convince Jarlaxle to return you."
"Why would he do that?"
"Gold. Surely your father could pay a ransom that would interest him."
Her own bed. Seeing friendly faces again. Sunlight, rain, a soft breeze. She wasn't sure what season it was on the surface. Autumn, perhaps? There would be fresh apples falling from the trees. Everyone would be taking stock of their supplies, getting ready for winter. Usually she'd be helping buy preserves, storing turnips, deciding which spices to purchase and how many before the roads became too icy for merchants.
If she mentioned it to Jarlaxle today, maybe she could be home before the first snow fell.
Jarlaxle's words echoed in her mind. Drizzt may even outlive you, if they have their way. House Baenre is not known for killing its enemies quickly.
"No. If I leave, then Jarlaxle don't need to hold up his end of the bargain."
"Do'Urden must be quite gratified, to have so persistent a rescuer."
Catti-brie shook her head. "He'd hate it if he knew I was here. He told Regis to hide it from us."
He looked at her, his regard frighteningly intense. "Then why pursue him?"
Empty hallways. Her father, red-eyed and silent. The guilt that would eat her away if she didn't go, if no one went. Alustriel watching her with unexpected hope and respect.
She closed her eyes.
"I already lost one friend." Whatever arguments they had had, whatever Wulfgar had been to her before he died, she could still say 'friend.' "You killed him attacking Mithril Hall."
"One of the dwarves?" He frowned, clearly unable to put a face to her description.
"Not one of the—" Her throat ached with the effort of stopping tears, but she held them back anyway. She would not cry in front of Artemis Entreri. "Wulfgar. He died in the attack."
"But I was not the one who killed him."
"Ye helped." Her voice trembled. "If ye hadn't, perhaps the battle would have gone different."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not." He shrugged. "If I had not been involved, it's possible you would have died and Wulfgar would have gone chasing Do'Urden to the Underdark."
"Or no one would have died!" She was vaguely aware that she was standing over him, her voice raised. He didn't seem the slightest bit intimidated, and that only made her feel worse. "We would have beaten them off and kept living our lives."
"Does Jarlaxle strike you as incompetent? If I had not been there, the drow would simply have used a different tactic to pry Drizzt out. Teleportation spells and a larger army, perhaps. Alchemical explosives in the mineshafts. Smoke, like hunters use for foxes."
"So ye joined them to reduce the body count?"
"Hardly." His lip curled in scorn.
"Then what does it matter, if I blame ye for his death?"
"It doesn't. But you hardly have cause to be upset. You did not wish to marry him anyway."
She stared at him, flummoxed.
"How do ye know—"
He arranged his features into a politely neutral expression that she'd never seen him wear. But she'd seen it on Regis's face a few times, when she needed to confide to someone. Like she had before drow attacked, when Regis had been...oh.
"You spying weasel," she spat. "That was—it's none of your—" She kicked a piece of decorative metalwork sticking out of the roof. Pain shot up her foot and spread like lightning through her leg. She cursed, still angry, but it was a pure, hot anger, something she could burn out. Grief was a dark tunnel that she couldn't afford to follow right now, not if she wanted to rescue Drizzt.
"How was I supposed to stop you?" Entreri's voice was harsh. "Say 'I cannot listen to your girlish woes right now, as I have espionage to commit and a prisoner to check on'? Or would you prefer that I simply pretend not to know?"
"Let's go with that."
"Very well." Another strange expression, this time an obvious caricature of sympathy. "I am so sorry about the death of your brutish fiance, whom you were so very excited to wed."
"Someone should have drowned you as a weanling."
He shrugged. "What makes you think no one tried?"
Exhausted by her anger, she sat down at the edge of the roof, close enough to speak but far enough away that he wouldn't think he was forgiven. I'm not sitting with ye, we just happen to be sitting in the same tunnel.
"Why do ye care if I go home, anyway?"
"Jarlaxle would need to give you a map, or send a scout to show you the way out. I could use that."
"So you're just bein' selfish."
"Yes. You could try it sometime."
"I think you're selfish enough for the both of us, aren't ye?"
He bared his teeth in what might have been a pleased grin. For a while they sat in silence, watching the street below them. Catti-brie's stomach growled, and she unpacked the fruit and cheese she had brought with her. She took a bite of the fruit, first. It was unfamiliar to her, but apparently commonplace in the Underdark. The skin was soft pink that faded into green. It tasted like a plum that wasn't ripe yet, but sweeter. She'd found she liked them.
Entreri glanced at her, then at the fruit. "Have you had a chance to look at the drow orchards yet?"
The question was so innocuous that Catti-brie was instantly suspicious.
"The drow have farms?" This far down, with no sunlight or rainfall to speak of?
Entreri nodded. "They're much like the great farms in the south, with aqueducts. They build in terraces to maximize space."
That...actually sounded rather nice. She'd seen aqueducts used in mining, to help carry away dust and debris. It could make sense for farming, too. She felt a pang of homesickness, thinking of the mines. Perhaps it was the case for Entreri, too.
"Do ye miss it?" He blinked, and she clarified. "Calimshan, I mean?"
"Parts of it." This time he didn't manage to hide the note of wistfulness from her. Was that him loosening up or her getting better at reading him?
"Like the food?" Her visit to Calimport had been too brief, too fearful, to really understand the city.
"Like the freedom to kill anyone who talked too much." Catti-brie took another bite of the fruit, and Entreri smirked. "But yes, some of the pashas keep fine gardens. Keeping plants alive in the desert requires time, water, money—it's a chance for them to show off."
Catti-brie didn't remembering seeing any such gardens, but she supposed that they were probably walled off. Knowing that Calimport hadn't been as barren as it looked but that all that green was simply hidden away didn't make her like the place any better.
"Is that why the drow grow fruit? To prove they can?"
Entreri thought about that, then chuckled. "Perhaps. Although, water is not the problem down here."
"Sunlight." She frowned, thinking. "Light spells?" But surely that would take too much magic to maintain, and the dark elves barely tolerated torches along crowded streets. They couldn't possibly be casting enough light spells up to keep any sizable farms alive.
"Some of the fields have light, yes, but plants don't need to get their energy from sunlight. Some can get warmth from the ground." He grinned wolfishly. "And most of the plants down here get their energy the same way we do—they eat."
Catti-brie finished chewing her bite of not-plum and swallowed. "Eat what?" she asked.
"Meat." He jerked his head at a goblin corpse, already being dragged away. "Whatever kind is available."
Catti-brie looked at her mostly-uneaten fruit with disgust. Entreri huffed in annoyance, then took it from her.
"If you won't eat it, I will."
Catti-brie swallowed her objections. It wasn't like eating a person, not really. She couldn't shake the certainty that it had tasted like blood, nonetheless. Entreri rolled his eyes.
"A few days of hunger, you'll get over it," he said, carving the not-plum into small pieces. He popped a piece of fruit into his mouth. "Or you'll starve. I care not which."
Catti-brie scowled at him, then snatched a piece of the not-plum and ate it, never breaking eye contact. He laughed.
She raised an eyebrow, considering how, when she'd first known him, he'd butted heads with the guard from Luskan for no apparent reason other than that it seemed to amuse him to insult the man.
"Do you have to work to piss off all yer potential allies this much, or do it come natural?"
"It took practice."
"Oh, so ye want otherwise neutral parties to be looking to take yer head off," Catti-brie said sarcastically. Entreri nodded.
"It weeds out the opportunistic leeches. Anyone who sticks around after that is probably just planning to kill me."
"Or mayhap they weren't planning to kill ye until ye opened yer damned mouth."
Entreri shrugged, as if people wanting to murder him was a natural consequence of existing. Then he perked up, like a cat that heard the skitter of rodent feet nearby. He jerked his chin as an armored figure down the street.
"Our target." Then he stood and started climbing down the building, not bothering with a rope. Catti-brie peered over the edge after him, then down at the rapidly-approaching drow.
"What am I supposed to do?"
He sneered but didn't answer. As their target got closer, Catti-brie recalled Jarlaxle's instructions: I need him alive, but not undamaged. She growled under her breath, drew her bow, and fired into the target's leg, pinning him to the nearest building.
Entreri, halfway across the street, whirled to scowl up at her. She made eye contact for a long second, then deliberately lowered the bow. She looped a length of rope around the decorative metalwork and started to climb down the side of the building. By the time she got down, their target was bound and gagged. He whimpered through the gag as Entreri roughly tourniquetted the wound on his leg. When Catti-brie let go of the rope, Entreri knotted the bandage and stood up.
"What were you thinking?"
"I was thinkin' ye hadn't exactly shared a plan, and this seemed like a halfway decent one. If ye were expecting me to do something else, ye should've said."
He tilted his head, and she expected an attack. A shove, a slap, something. When it didn't come, she ground her teeth and maintained eye contact until a particularly loud groan from their target drew her attention. Entreri was still frowning at her.
"If you get in my way again, I'll leave you at the bottom of the Clawrift, Jarlaxle's orders be damned."
With that, he dragged the captive to his feet and shoved him toward Bregan D'aerthe's base.
"Walk," he ordered in drow. A glance at Catti-brie suggested that the imperative was targeted at her, too. She pulled her rope down and followed.
"I don't suppose ye can tell me how drow say 'thank you,'" she said, draping the coil of rope over her shoulder. "Given that ye don't seem to know it yerself."
"If you shut up, I'll express gratitude by letting you live." He ran his thumb along the pommel of his dagger. "If a drow were going to deign to thank iblith for anything, I suspect it would be by killing us fast instead of slow."
She spent the rest of their walk in silence, wondering if he was right. When they returned, Jarlaxle smiled in delight, praised their work, and offered not a single word in thanks. By Entreri's grim smirk as they left Jarlaxle's office, he'd noticed too.