No pity found its way into Dinin’s callous heart, but House Do’Urden needed the wizard. "You will get your salve" Dinin promised calmly, "when Alton DeVir is dead."

"Of course," the wizard agreed, "this night?"

Dinin crossed his arms and considered the question. Matron Malice had instructed him that Alton DeVir should die even as their families battle commenced. That scenario now seemed too clean, too easy, to Dinin. The Faceless One did not miss the sparkle that suddenly brightened the scarlet glow in the young Do’Urden’s heat-sensing eyes.

"Wait for Narbondel’s light to approach its zenith" Dinin replied, his hands working through the signals excitedly and his grimace seeming more of a twisted grin.

"Should the doomed boy know of his house’s fate before he dies?" the wizard asked, guessing the wicked intentions behind Dinin’s instructions.

"As the killing blow falls," answered Dinin, "let Alton DeVir die without hope."

Dinin retrieved his mount and sped off down the empty corridors, finding an intersecting route that would take him in through a different entrance to the city proper. He came in along the eastern end of the great cavern, Menzoberranzan’s produce section, where no drow families would see that he had been outside the city limits and where only a few unremarkable stalagmite pillars rose up from the flat stone. Dinin spurred his mount along the banks of Donigar-ten, the city’s small pond with its moss-covered island that housed a fair-sized herd of cattle like creatures called rothe. A hundred goblins and orcs looked up from their herding and fishing duties to mark the drow soldier’s swift passage. Knowing their restrictions as slaves, they took care not to look Dinin in the eye.