Interlude

"Well, it was entertaining," said the Abbot of Misrule, lining up his next shot carefully. "Much better the second time around. Or third in his case. See you in a few years, my friend. I'll keep your charges safe."

He stepped up to the chalk-marked line and let go of the paladin's skull in a smooth, underhanded motion. The skull bounced erratically down the hallway of the crypt, striking a triangularly-arranged set of soul-bottles. The skull struck the most forward of these bottles, sending all but two hurtling in various directions. All but two.

The Abbot harrumphed and contorted his face into a mask of disappointment. "Seven-ten split. This must be the plane of punishment."

The Castellan of the Condemned held an angry silence as his companion recovered the tossed skull. Then he said with a low threat in his voice, "You cheated."

"Cheated?" said the taller abishai, trying to transform his lizardlike features into a semblance of honesty. "Me?" he touched the spot where his heart would be-if he had one-just for effect.

"You…" said the Castellan, slamming a fist down. "You sent that vision to Toede, led him down the Abyss-intended path to that anachronistic creature Jugger. And appeared to his companion when he was just about to be rescued. A heavenly figure in blue and white, indeed! That had your greasy clawprints all over it."

"Oh, I see," said the Abbot, drawing himself up to full height. "And I am supposed to abandon my own appointed tasks just because of some silly bet," he said crossly.

"It's not a bet," snarled the Castellan. "It's an experiment, one that was going swimmingly. The test subject was starting to put things together for us. Then you decided to pitch him in over his head!"

"I won't argue with you about terms," said the Abbot, who was of course arguing about terms. "But it is in my portfolio to make sure bad advice is heeded, correct?"

The Castellan was silent for a moment, then muttered, "Right."

"And through my bad advice, an ancient evil was freed, a city was wrecked and left leaderless, and a great repository of early ogre erotic epics destroyed," said the Abbot, leaning against a counter made of obsidian, polished with the ashes of fallen heroes. "I am just doing my job. In fact, I might even get a promotion out of this."

"If Judith doesn't sack you for goofing off in the first place," muttered the Castellan. The Abbot winced but let that comment slide.

Instead the taller fiend gave a snarl. "And it's not as if I were the first to influence our little pet noble-to-be."

"I had nothing to do with that coin flip," said the Castellan hotly.

"Coin flip?" said the Abbot, looking innocent as the driven sleet. "I wouldn't even suggest that you would have meddled so blatantly in your valuable experiment, to interfere with an affair of chance. I always thought you had more style than that. It never even entered my mind." He let his voice trail off, as if the idea were entering his mind.

"So?" prompted the Castellan.

The abishai nibbled on a problem nail, then admired his handiwork. "There was a little matter of the first assassination attempt, back at that little bar-the Jetties, was it?"

The Castellan was silent, but nodded.

"Think of it," said the Abbot, "A crowded room emptying of its patrons. Pandemonium erupting on all sides. The assassin wounds our subject in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt, then engages in mortal combat with his companion. Our subject limps across the room during this fray to a deceased barbarian prince, pulls a dagger,"-the abishai mimed the action-"and lets fly."

The Abbot flung the imaginary dagger at the Castellan, who continued to regard his fellow abishai in stony silence. "Wounded thrower, off-balance, tossing a weapon that is not designed to be thrown at a target engaged in melee," summarized the Abbot. "And yet it not only hits the intended target but strikes in such a way that it renders said target insensate immediately. And through it all no one present regarded this circumstance as odd." The taller abishai finished with a flourish. "If there was an area where I would have acted, where I would have influenced the normal course of events, that would have been it."

The silence hung in the air like a convicted criminal at the end of his last rope. The Castellan bit his words off. "You never mentioned that before."

The Abbot made a broad sweep of his arms, at least as broad as he could manage without scraping some soul-bottles to the floor. "I was not accused of impropriety, before."

Another silence. Then the Castellan sighed and said, "Well, we'll have to do it again."

The taller abishai rose, palms outward. "We have wasted enough time away from our official duties. If Judith found out…"

"Triple or nothing," put in the Castellan.

"We'll be missed from our posts for sure," said the Abbot, smiling as if being caught missing were not truly a problem.

"Quadruple or nothing," added the Castellan.

"And all for some little bet," put in the Abbot.

"It's not a bet!" shouted the Castellan, then added more softly, "Quintuple or nothing. Five years on the line."

"But then, what is life without risk?" said the Abbot of Misrule, hefting the pickle jar with Toede's name on it. He smiled. "Shall we proceed?"