Chapter Text
Late in the morning, Deirdre sits on Enver’s dining table, staring at the tack board he brought back from his office. Her brow is furrowed in concentration, a small budding willow branch spinning absentmindedly in her fingers. The warm light outside fades to cool shade as an early spring cloud drifts in front of the sun, the room dimming with it.
Enver leans against the table next to her, rubbing the stubble along his jaw. He’s thinking hard about the spread of information tacked to the board before them: Deirdre’s drawing of the crown on the elder brain, visions their gods have given them, notes on illithids and their tadpoles, and half-deciphered wizard code from the Annals of Karsus.
“What if we call it another Bhaalspawn ‘crisis’?” Deirdre asks, though not convincing in her tone, “It works with Bhaal’s ascension, and there’s already fear there?”
“I don’t doubt you could single-handedly terrify the city, but it might be too…” Enver waves a hand in the air, trying to find the right word.
“Predictable, you’re right.” Deirdre slumps her head in her hand, and taps the small stick against her leg. “That ancient Harper would be on my ass immediately.”
“I fear we need something more ambiguous. Not that I don’t think you could operate with a level of discretion, I just-“
“Ambiguous is not how I’d describe anything about Bhaal.”
“Bane neither. Or an elder brain floating in the sky.” Enver sighs, narrowing his eyes.
They continue staring at the board, the ticking of the small clock on the mantle breaking up the silence. There’s something here, they’re sure of it, but both Bane and Bhaal have been vexingly quiet over the last months about the details. Maybe they just had the end in mind, and it’s up to their mouthpieces to do all the hard work. That thought has crossed both mortals’ minds, though they’d never admit it.
Deirdre scans the notes on their gods again. She goes over the visions from Bhaal: they command the brain, the brain commands the world… she takes the brain for Bhaal and kills Enver- a part she had omitted when recounting the dream to him. The smallest pang of resignation strikes her. No. She is not feeling pity for this human. Even at his best he’s still pompous and self absorbed, at worst he’s insufferably annoying. And the way his leg is unconsciously bouncing is shaking the table beneath her. And being this close, she keeps catching wafts of his cologne when he moves. No, focus on the brain, Deirdre thinks.
Enver goes over the Annals of Karsus, the half deciphered code he’s been working on for ages. He wonders if he should mention that he kept the pages Deirdre ripped from the book, but she would surely give him shit for not taking the book whole. Then his mind wanders back to unlocking the office door at Sorcerous Sundries, and how glad he is he managed to grab her by the waist and shoulder given she was invisible. The lock pick would still be embedded in him if his hands had been placed elsewhere. He thinks of how soft her hair was against his jaw, and what else about her might be surprisingly soft. He then quickly forces his mind to return to the Annals of Karsus in front of him.
“What about a new god?”
“You want a new god?” Enver chuckles, keeping his gaze on the board.
“No, really.” Deirdre insists, her voice teetering into excitement, “This city thinks it has Bhaal sorted out, but if an entirely new god arrived, they wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Interesting.” Enver looks to her, seeing the wheels turn behind her eyes, “Continue.”
“Ao’s out there right now fucking with the order of the gods, it wouldn’t be unusual for a new one to appear. If our plot is disguised by a new god, we’ll have a buffer of time as everyone scrambles to figure out what this god is or where it came from.” She explains, growing more animated with every word, “And commanding an illithid brain means we’d have some psychic control over its followers. Even they wouldn’t know it’s a front for our gods.”
“We’d still be able to work as individual cults and it’d give us deniability of our involvement.” Enver nods.
“Exactly.” She smiles up at him.
“And the psychic influence of the illithids paired with Netherese magic would be nearly impossible to figure out quickly, let alone devise a plan to fight against. We’d have time to build an entire religion and army with new followers to hide our churches.”
“What if we didn’t even start with the city? What if we build a following somewhere else, somewhere vulnerable, and then this religion spread to the Gate?”
“We’d isolate the city and have an army to intimidate the leadership.”
Deirdre stands up, seeing the plan clearly, “My Bhaalists could make their killings look like followers of the new god. Make the new religion seems dangerous while keeping our worship secret.”
“And while residents grow weary of each other inside the walls,” Enver adds, pushing off the table and turning to her, “I could use my connections with the Gazette to make the religion seem like its spread along the coast. Make the masses scared of anyone outside of the Gate, too.” Deirdre looks up, an eager smile on her face.
“We’ll need a way to spread any opposition thin. The Guild, the Harpers, the Fist?” She asks expectantly of Enver.
“Something to distract them where it hurts.” Enver thinks, “Their trust in one another, their business, their connections. Something-”
“Something like a new group of mercenaries or a gang.” Deirdre continues, twisting the branch in her fingers, “People who can infiltrate their ranks and sow distrust.”
“If we could take control of the Fist or render them useless in the fight against this god, we could turn the city on the Council.”
“And with city scared of it’s own shadow, and it’s Council failing them, the people will look for a strong leader,” Deirdre looks up proudly and taps the back of her hand to Enver’s chest, “to guide the city to a more glorious future.”
“This is fucking brilliant!” Enver grabs Deirdre’s face before he thinks, beaming at her with unbridled enthusiasm. Before he can even process what has happened, his body is flipped around and his arms are pulled up behind his back, straining his shoulders.
Deirdre realizes what she’s done, dropping Enver’s arms and taking a large step back. He whips around and looks at her with wide eyes, his cheeks giving away his embarrassment.
“Ahem,” Enver clears his throat awkwardly, “Apologies. I didn’t um sorry I, that was-” he fumbles over his words- not something that often happens to him- and turns back to the board. He can feel his chest grow hot under his collar.
“I should go.” Deirdre runs a hand through her hair, her eyes glued to the floor between them. Her cheeks burn, and the room suddenly feels uncomfortably warm, “I am.. late for a..” She closes her eyes and juts a thumb at the door.
“Ah yes, of course, of course.” He says, not able to look in her direction. “I’ll see you.. I’ll see you next tenday.” Deirdre disappears in a cloud of smoke.
Enver sighs, and stretches a sore shoulder. His thoughts immediately berate him; maybe if he hadn’t been thinking about holding her at Sorcerous Sundries, he wouldn’t have been so brash as to grab her godsdamn face. He looks down, the bent willow branch on the floor where she stood. He picks it up and flips it in his fingers, then walks back to his spot at the head of the table.
Enver tries to focus on organizing the loose pages at his seat, tucking them into his notebook, but the sting in his shoulders is still very present. He deserved it, he thinks, for being entirely too unprofessional. Again. Her hair was very soft against the back of his hands, though. Enver cringes, and brings a swift palm up to his face.
He groans, then rubs his face and turns back to contents of the table. Deirdre’s notes and books still lie open at her seat next to his. He sighs and decides to leave them for when she’s here next, or, at least until he doesn’t feel his insides turn in embarrassment. He picks up his glass of whisky from the table and leaves the room, still flipping the branch in his fingers.
That night, Deirdre sits at her vanity in her bedroom, one knee tucked to her chest. She brushes through her hair and chews at the inside of her cheek. Her mind has stubbornly refused to let her forget the morning, and she replays Enver’s hands meeting her face, him ever so gently pulling her towards him, the proud look in his eyes. The smell of his cologne around her.
She sets her hairbrush down gently next her blades on the vanity, then slowly lifts a hand up to her cheek. She presses her own fingers where Enver so briefly held his. His hands were calloused in a different way than hers, and his were larger, firmer. Warmer. And his grip was softer.
She huffs and closes her eyes, the cycle of emotions starting for the hundredth time today; first, embarrassment for her own actions. How she pulled his arms away and pushed him around with excessive force. She could have, and should have, responded like a normal fucking person.
Then she feels the obvious frustration with Enver for being so brash. It’s like he’s incapable of not flirting when he talks- even when they’re working- and this whole situation would have been avoided if he could keep his hands to himself. Which brings her to the third feeling- something small and present and exciting deep in her chest she’s unwilling to name. He can’t keep his hands to himself. She brushes her fingers across her cheek again.
Deirdre sighs, and drops her hand to her lap. She looks back up to herself in the mirror when she catches a shift in the shadows behind her. In a swift motion, she grabs the blade set in front of her and throws it across the room. It flies, then pierces through Sceleritas’s top hat, sending it skittering across the stone floor.
“Fuck, Sceleritas, walk louder. That was almost your eye.” She barks, choking back the mortifying realization that the fiend may have been there for a while. He stares back with equal surprise. Deirdre puts her face in her hands and turns to the mirror.
“Apologies my sweet Master, I was simply coming to check on you.” Sceleritas responds, creeping up beside her, “You missed the Black Mass and Lady Orin cut me naval to nose when I told her you weren’t in attendance.”
“I had important business.” Deirdre snaps, picking her hairbrush back up and aggressively working it through her dark hair.
“I do not doubt you, Dark Urge,” Sceleritas coos, “but during the Mass, your Father gave me a message.” Deirdre pauses, her stomach dropping. She tries to stifle her reaction, and continues to brush her hair. Her palms clam up, and her mouth goes dry.
“And?” Is all she can get out in a steady tone.
“He said a weed grows in your dark garden of ambition.”
A lump swells in her throat, “And?”
“And He wishes for you to kill it.”
Deirdre stops. Her body goes cold. She swallows hard and turns to Sceleritas, “Thank you. Is that all?”
“Yes, Milady.” He says, his demeanor not giving her any indication that he understands what the message really means, “Should I start a bath for you?”
“No, I can do it myself.” She stands, and turns to leave. The fiend moves to follow her, when his throat is met with a silver blade. Deirdre walks off as Sceleritas chokes and gasps, holding his spurting neck. She doesn’t look back as his boney body thuds against the stone. Whatever she felt before is replaced with a deep-seated dread, a reminder of her Father’s hand around her throat.