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Dinin doesn’t murder a brother. He saves one.
The brothers of House Do’Urden are closer than any brothers in any house have any right to be. Not openly, of course. Openly, they go along with the schemes and traps their mother and sisters pull, pitting them against each other, keeping them angry and fearful of losing what station they have. In private, though, they are close. They protect each other. In a city where anyone and everyone could be a backstabber, they fight back-to-back.
It starts when Dinin is young. Briza, not much older and not yet close to being a full priestess, but still with all the cruelty and fervor of one, is in charge of his care. She catches him drawing in the dirt instead of sweeping it up, and whips his legs until they bleed. She leaves him there, to clean up both the chapel and himself.
Nalfein wanders in first. A year or so removed from heading off to Sorcere, he is also only a year or so removed from kneeling where Dinin kneels, hurt and humiliated and trying not to show it. In the end, Dinin isn’t the one who cleans the chapel — it’s Nalfein, handing him a pot of salve at the same time he takes the broom.
Dinin looks up, vision blurred with tears. “Why?” he asks, softly, already unused to kindness.
Nalfein stops, then, looking down at his brother — this brother of his in only the loosest sense of the word, this brother who he has said maybe two words to in his entire life, this brother who is likely to grow up to kill him — yet, his brother. He says, “Why not?”
There are many reasons why not. They will discover these in the years to come. Two males conspiring in a household, even just two who are close, are not looked upon kindly. They are pushed to be rivals, to hate each other, and pretend to follow the political current of the house, playing out the actions expected of them in the game of their existence. They spit curses in the hallways, passive-aggressively vie for the attention of their mother in the throne room — but in their many hidden corners and forgotten passageways, they laugh together about what they must do, ignoring the deep melancholy that lingers beneath it. Their only choice is between laughing or crying, and one of the options brings down hell.
Maya is born after Nalfein leaves for Sorcere. Briza takes care of her, too, but unlike Dinin she is doted upon, taught, praised. And yet. There is no love to be found in House Do’Urden — no love, except then she walks into the kitchen while Nalfein and Dinin are laughing over a stolen, shared pastry, and she wants it. Not the pastry; she could have one if she asked. But the companionship, the laughter caught in the corners of their smiles, the joy stolen as surely as the pastry was and many times more forbidden. Yet when they see her, their expressions shut down, suddenly the cold older brothers she remembers from seeing at family gatherings, standing, rigid, along the walls of the room.
She tries for a small smile of her own, tentative, like a quiet knock and a shy “may I come in?” The door stays closed; their matching faces, the ones that match her own, stay frozen in what she now knows is a mask. Maya drops her smile, when it is not returned. They do not ask her to leave; they are not allowed to. She leaves anyway.
But the next tenday, while Briza is on official business for Matron Malice, Maya finds herself poking around the quiet corners of the Do’Urden compound, and, in the end, she finds what she is looking for.
They’re not laughing this time, but they are sitting in companionable silence, with Nalfein flipping through a text borrowed from his master at Sorcere while Dinin sharpens his practice sword. Maya almost backs away when she sees them; silence is never good, always due to some danger or punishment. Are they angry with each other? But Dinin nudges Nalfein when he sees her, and they look up at her with the same expression. Guardedness.
Hesitantly, Maya pulls out what she’s been hiding behind her back, setting the pastry in front of them. Both of them look at her in confusion. She glances down. “I stole it,” she whispers, then looks up, trying another smile, like maybe this will be the key that fits the lock.
Dinin looks at Nalfein, Nalfein at Dinin. They both look at Maya. Is there something more she’s supposed to say? “It’s for you,” she says. “It’s for—” But Maya doesn’t know the word for what she means. She settles on “a gift,” but even that feels wrong in her mouth, because gifts come with expectations, like don’t fail your lessons and remember all the manners at dinner and hurt them. “A gift. But I don’t— There’s not—” She stomps her foot in frustration. “You were in the kitchen and then you weren’t so I brought a gift but I don’t want anything back,” she says, the words rushing out of her, and it’s still not quite right so she just hopes they know what she means. Something flickers over her brothers’ faces as they exchange a glance. “Did I— Is it the wrong kind? I’m sorry if it’s the wrong kind.”
Nalfein hesitates, and glances at Dinin, then back at her. “It’s… not the wrong kind,” he says slowly, and Maya can’t stop her shoulders from slumping in relief. Dinin produces a knife from somewhere and starts cutting the pastry. He glances up at Maya to find her still standing. “You can sit… if you’d like,” he adds hurriedly, suddenly anxious about being caught ordering around a drow female, even one as young as Maya. But then Maya plops down beside them with a happy sigh, skirts spreading out in a rumpled circle, and Dinin’s worries vanish.
Nalfein nudges her piece of the pastry to her, and Maya frowns down at it. “It’s bigger than yours,” she points out. It is, cut purposely larger on purpose. Despite this… kindness? she is currently showing them, Maya still ranks much higher in the house pecking order. It’s almost instinct to make sure she’s appeased.
Nalfein nods, slowly. “It is,” he agrees.
“They should be the same,” Maya says, holding out a small hand for Dinin’s knife. He passes it over, exchanging a look with Nalfein that is half confused, half… amused as Maya struggles to chop off tiny slices of her pastry and distribute them to her brothers. In the end, she ends up with a smaller piece — but she either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, eating the pastry with delight.
Nalfein and Dinin follow her lead, up until Dinin gets pastry filling smeared on his nose. Maya’s tinkling laugh fills the air, and then Nalfein snorts, and starts to laugh as well.
“What? What’s funny?” Dinin asks, confused, trying to wipe off the pastry but only spreading it further. Maya laughs until her sides ache. The door opens. Their small alliance of two becomes a circle of three. For now.
Maya is sent off to Arach-Tinilith. She goes with the hopes of her mother, the watchful eyes of her sisters, the ever-present expectations that she be as fervent in her devotion to the Spider Queen as any in the city.
She goes with memories of stolen pastries, the quiet, worried glances between her brothers, and fists clenched tight, unwilling to let go of the joy she found in her family, her real family.
When she first returns, once again, the door is shut. Nalfein and Dinin withdraw, unwilling, unsure, afraid. But Maya already has a foot inside, this time, and so she snags a pastry, one that would have been given to her willingly but tastes all the better for being illicit, and makes her way to one of the small hideaways within the compound. When Nalfein and Dinin find her there, waiting patiently, still, they are hesitant.
Until Maya holds up her hand and signs, to them, their own private code for the Spider Queen, one ripe with crude gestures. Blasphemy, for a priestess. But close to a password, for them. Maya hopes that the door stays open forever, no matter what she may have to do.
Maya is at the compound when they find out that Malice is pregnant again. When the news is announced, Dinin can’t help but share a glance with Nalfein. With the growing tension within the compound, and the growing apparentness of the weakness within House DeVir, Dinin had thought, and Nalfein had agreed, it would be to officially announce the plans to eliminate the higher house. And then it becomes both.
They’re barely dismissed from the meeting before Dinin is exchanging a pointed glance with the two of them and then purposely separating at the nearest corridor junction, only to break into a run the moment he’s out of sight. Moments later, he’s bursting into one of their hiding places. Maya is already there, and Nalfein moments behind.
“We have to do something,” Dinin says urgently, before Nalfein can open his mouth. “We have to help them.”
“Help who?” Nalfein asks, face shuttered. “The baby who hasn’t been born yet?”
“Our sibling,” Dinin corrects. “Our sibling who’s going to grow up in the same hell we have if we don’t do something to help.”
Nalfein laughs, strangled. “Like what? Spirit them away to the surface? We’d never survive up there.”
“Then… then…” Dinin searches for words. “Then what? Just leave them to fend for themselves? Get hurt like we did?”
“Everyone gets hurt like we did,” Nalfein scoffs. “That’s just the way it is.”
“Yeah, but maybe someone shouldn’t have to!” Dinin near-yells, until Maya shushes him urgently. He switches to the drow hand code. “Maybe we should do something so this kid doesn’t have to.”
Nalfein looks away. Dinin turns to Maya searchingly. “Please.”
Maya looks down, too.
Dinin feels something in his chest crumble. Neither of the two of them will look at him, so he resorts to speaking out loud again, desperate, playing his last card. “What if it’s a boy?”
Nalfein looks up, then Maya less than a second later, both of them with identical expressions of horror.
“They’ll kill him,” Maya says, softly, looking like she’s about to throw up. “They’d kill our brother.”
Nalfein seems at a loss for words, blinking quickly before giving up and squeezing his eyes shut completely, breathing heavily for a few moments. Finally, he looks up at Dinin, eyes clear and filled with a new determination. “What do we have to do?”
The child is born a boy, and named Drizzt. Maya announces Nalfein’s death. Dinin returns, under suspicion, and behind closed doors, praised for his ambition. Drizzt remains alive.
Nalfein hides, owing a favor to Jarlaxle Baenre, but he is alive. All of them are alive. One day, Nalfein thinks— one day, Dinin hopes— one day, Maya prays, to a goddess she no longer believes in— they’ll be reunited. Perhaps in the Underdark. Perhaps on the surface. Perhaps behind the protective banners of Bregan D’aerthe. But they are siblings. And one day, they hope they can become the family they so desperately wish for. And they hope Drizzt wishes for it too.