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The first of the posters is tacked up in Rivington. It’s no larger than everything else on the board—all those missing person’s pleas, and calls for help, shiny handbills for the circus across the way—and it’s just as damaged, rain-torn and sun-faded, the text, whatever it once said, long since ripped away. But it takes all of Valas’s attention. A man’s face, with a sun’s halo drawn behind. A wide collar frames his features: broad nose, dark eyes, full lips. Plunging neckline, and dark hair on his chest. There’s an optimistic tilt to his gaze. Soft hint of a smile.
“Anything?” Jaheira’s voice breaks in, and Shadowheart lets out a hum of dismay. Then the weight of Jaheira’s hand on his arm. “What about you, cub?”
There’s a pin on the man’s jacket, a leering face with horns. It sits next to the gold-piped edge of his lapel. At a haphazard angle, little thought to its placement, like the laces threaded unevenly, the laces undone to show a length of his chest.
“Valas?”
Right, he’s meant to have read the entire board. The same way Shadowheart’s done: looked for anything that might push a memory loose, that might reacquaint him with this place, with himself, give them a hint, any hint, of where they might search for Bhaal’s temple, and Shar’s. “Um,” he says, and takes a step back.
“It’s alright,” Jaheira insists, to them both, but he can feel her gaze on him as it lingers. He doesn’t look down to meet it.
He hasn’t been able to meet her eye for long, not since that night, the night he thrashed awake to find her there, wary, having pieced together what he is. The night fragments began to return to him, too. Orin. Bhaal. Order and reason behind the blood blood blood. She’d sat with him as it drained slow from his mind, until he found the truth, just a feeling, one she’d had since they first met eyes outside of Last Light. I knew you before, he said quietly, as dark began its shift into dawn, and she’d reached over to take his hand. I can tell you more, she said, when you’re ready. About your father, she said, and the word curdled inside.
“Let’s try this way,” Jaheira says. “There’s plenty more to see before we reach the Harpers.”
The next poster, and several more, are in a row along a fence just down the path. These are in better condition, their paper uncreased, the rays of golden ink in the background still bright. Valas slows. He sees now that there’s no text, no message, no name, as if the image of the man’s face alone is meant to mean something to anyone, to everyone: the refugees cold in the misty rain, the workers on their way to the tanneries, the Flaming Fists staring implacably behind their spears.
It’s become a pleasurable feeling, grasping at a thread and finding more in his hands.
“I’ve seen him before,” he says to Shadowheart when she falls back to his side. She takes his hand, her fingers between his, and he runs his thumb along hers. “And I don’t mean from the Emperor’s vision, or beneath Moonrise. I’ve seen him before here, in Baldur’s Gate.”
“Anything else?” she asks, and he closes his eyes.
“Sunlight, I think. In the Wide. Morning crowds, and the sight of my breath. Cobblestones beneath my feet. He said something—to me, maybe. Or more likely to the crowd. They hold a lot of speeches there, don’t they?”
“They do,” she says, with that note in her voice that means she’s remembered one, too. He should ask, but she doesn’t volunteer, and he lets her pull away. She goes after Jaheira, and he lingers a moment longer. The poster on the end is in the best shape, and he carefully takes it down. He folds it into quarters and puts it away in his pack.
Who are we without our memories? We’re bodies. We’re instinct. The weight of a sword, or the words of a spell. Grass between fingers, cold wine in a glass, quiet voices, clear night—warm blood on the hands, nail’s scape against bone, slide of blade beneath skin. We’re fear, and we’re desire.
There had been a before, but then just an after, and Valas was drawn to her because she felt it, too.
He’d noticed Shadowheart evading the first few nights, the same little tricks: short answers, few specifics, no mention of her god. At first, he’d thought she didn’t know who fuelled her spells, either. (Kelemvor, he thought, for himself. But no matter how many times he prayed he couldn’t find him, and when he tried to draw his ire, letting undead Astarion draw life from his neck: silence still.) Later, he wondered if maybe he was a Sharran cleric, too. He didn’t feel the revulsion so common at the mention of her name, and sometimes he liked to live in the fantasy. That the first time he kissed Shadowheart hadn’t been the first at all. That they’d found their way back.
With memories, we’re history and meaning. This reminds me, oh it’s you, remember when. Weight behind each feeling. Each touch not just that.
But it made no sense, Valas knew that. Shar hadn’t taken Shadowheart’s devotion; she cast it off on her own. There’s no reason Shar would have stolen his.
But when he walked through Moonrise, he knew he’d been there before. He found Jaheira and echoes of her, too. And then. And then, Baldur’s Gate. Baldur’s Gate makes him think he might get back more. The wind moves from the Chionthar through his hair and he remembers the meandering path at the bluffs’ base. He knows how much he’ll need for the toll. They find an invitation, and he recognizes its scent; he’s sure he’s smelled it before on someone’s neck. It works for Shadowheart, too: she sees a man in the distance, and knows he’s from her temple. New stories, new ways to know her, and himself.
He should have known they wouldn’t like everything they’d find.
Jaheira’s approach is cautious. She’s patient. She asks him questions, and she’ll confirm or deny, but unless he insists she lets him take the lead, or how else will they know if he truly remembers, she says.
Enver Gortash’s approach is not. He makes declarations. He stands not far from a banquet in his honour and spells out a history, an alliance, a plan—but does Valas truly remember?—no one knows you like I do, he says.
His parting words had been a threat. Don’t dare to follow, not until you have Orin’s stone. The others wonder if they should speak to some of the patriars, or head right away to Basilisk Gate; they debate amongst themselves, but Valas decides, and he doesn’t stop even when he feels Jaheira’s warning hand. He doesn’t say anything to the half-orc at the base of the stairs, either, just pushes past and spirals up. The door is closed but it isn’t locked. It doesn’t stop him.
Gortash is there. The party is still going on downstairs, but he’s seated at a desk, one of those gauntlets catching in his hair, and he keeps writing as Valas stares. He only puts down his quill at the end of a line. Sharp press of punctuation.
“Well,” he says, turning to him, and Valas can see in his face that he’d expected the intrusion. Wanted it, even. He stands and steps closer. “So here we are. Finally, just the two of us. Welcome home.”
He doesn’t mean the Gate—he’s already said as much downstairs. Not this room, either, a lofty thing, red carpet and long table, statues on display and a pair of Steel Watchers stood rigid at the back; Valas has never run his fingers along the spines of the books here, or taken in the view from these windows, or if he has there’s no recognition in him now.
But that word. That word can mean a person, sometimes, too, Jaheira’s said as much. He’s tried to grasp it, all those nights at camp, eyes closed, listening to her voice; fleetingly familiar, yes, someone he’s met before, someone he knew before, but before what he struggles to understand. In every memory he catches he doesn’t recognize himself. Who was he, the boy who once listened to Jaheira’s words? Not him. Not Valas. She tells him that’s the feeling, though, the one that still keeps slipping from his hands. Home. Is that what this is? Is this like all the other times? Pulled by a smell or the rain in his hair. Someone’s face in the street, or when his boots know just what turn to take. Could that be what this is? Looking at him. His own heartbeat, quick, felt in his neck.
This feels different, but why. He can’t place it.
Gortash is the one to break the silence. Valas watches him part his lips. “So you’ve discerned it? I can see it there, in your face. You know that I’m right. Why would I lie? You know me.”
Valas reaches for him. He grasps his chin, and his eyes flare, alarm, surprise, but no resistance save for a quick exhale. Silently he tilts Gortash’s face to the right until he finds it, the exact angle. Like the posters outside. If he’d been hoping something would unlatch, he doesn’t find that, he’s still a stranger, but he sees his pupils dilate, feels a hand float to his waist, as he pushes him two steps back into better light to be sure.
He expects to withstand a shove, but Gortash doesn’t move his hand, palm against his hip. If anything he leans in more.
“Tell me,” Gortash says, after some moments of shared breath, “what is it you’re looking to see?”
Nothing. Everything. He doesn’t know. “The likeness is wrong,” he says. “On the posters.”
Gortash laughs, and Valas feels it in his throat. His fingers have drifted down, tracing his carotid, then his collarbone. New feeling in his body. He’s becoming better at suppressing it—first the thought, then the want, then the need, to dig his hand deep, to break and to taste, soft blood, sweet death—but he’s never taken a breath without it. Not in the after. Not that he can remember. Not until this. His mind goes quiet, as he touches Gortash’s skin.
He watches it flush, and feels his hand move from his hip to his lower back.
Here it is, the thread, though Valas isn’t sure how far he wants to trace it. It’s tangled, they’re always tangled, but this one feels strong, so strong it could take years to pick free, if he ever can, but there’s not enough time, not now, not yet. Still, he has to know. “I called you Enver,” he says.
Something changes in his eyes, and he nods, confirmation. Hand still on him. His face, his real face, so very near. There’s something there beneath his touch. “You came back.”