The idea couldn’t hold, and only a few heartbeats later, Drizzt was laughing at himself. True enough, Entreri had come between them, or at least, his empathy for Dahlia had, but only because it had revealed to Drizzt the shallowness of his relationship with this elf warrior he really didn’t even know.
Drizzt couldn’t see where this might lead. He tried to follow the thread to a logical conclusion, but soon enough, he was aboard Sea Sprite again in his mind, Catti-brie beside him, Guenhwyvar curled on the deck before them, the wind in their faces, the adventure in his heart and soul.
His hand went reflexively to his belt pouch, and he couldn’t resist the calling of his heart. Soon he had Guenhwyvar beside him, looking haggard perhaps, but seeming content to be with him, indeed, resting heavily against him.
And her presence brought Drizzt cascading back more fully to his days aboard Sea Sprite, and he was happy.
Artemis Entreri had been assigned a small hammock along the starboard hold of Minnow Skipper, but he didn’t return there after leaving Drizzt and the others at the forward rail.
Something bothered him regarding this whole arrangement. Entreri wasn’t overly familiar with the ways of Luskan any longer, but he couldn’t imagine that things had changed so dramatically since the earlier days of the reign of the five high captains. This ship sailed under the flag of Ship Kurth, which was still a dominant force among the leadership of the city, given the strength evident around Kurth’s residence on Closeguard Isle, and given the mere fact that Beniago had been able to make such a deal with Drizzt concerning Port Llast.
So why did Minnow Skipper need such extra and extraordinary guards?
Perhaps this was all a power play by Beniago and Ship Kurth, getting Drizzt and Dahlia to prove their allegiance by sending them on such a trivial task as this. Or perhaps, Entreri feared, it was something more, much more, and much more sinister.
Was there a terrible danger lurking in the dark waters? The sahuagin, perhaps? Had the sea devils abandoned their assaults on Port Llast to wage war on the merchant vessels instead?
Or was this, as he had hinted-for no better reason than to bother Drizzt-truly a diversionary tactic to strip Port Llast of her most powerful denizens in preparation for an assault on the town by the powers of Luskan?
That possibility didn’t bother him very much, but what troubled him most of all was not knowing. Artemis Entreri had survived the streets of Calimport as a child and had thrived as an adult because of knowledge, because his instinctual understanding of people combined with his ever-present scouting and information gathering had allowed him a great advantage, which he never relinquished.
He felt as if he had allowed Drizzt to surrender that advantage now, because of the drow’s desire to cut his deal. So Entreri did not return to his bunk, and in fact, was not even in the hold at all, though he had initially gone down there to deflect any attention from the busy crew. Then he had quietly slipped back up, moved along a pre-ordained course, and with a quick glance, had eased his way into the captain’s quarters aft of the main deck, passing through the feeble lock with hardly a thought.
The hanging nets and plethora of trophies and other decorations made it easy enough for the skilled assassin to fully conceal himself.
Then he waited, with the patience that had so marked his successes in Calimport and beyond, knowing that the captain would remain out on the deck until they were long clear of Luskan and the many rocks along the coastline.
He had barely settled into position when the cabin door opened and the first mate, not the captain, entered. The man-if it was a human, for he seemed to have a bit of orc blood in him-fit the part of the old seadog perfectly, with a scraggly beard gone more gray than its previous black, a face that reminded Entreri of the cracked and deeply lined tundra of the Bloodstone Lands during the dry summer tendays, and spindly legs so bowed that he could slide onto a short horse from behind without ever lifting a leg. One of his eyes was dead, a wide-open orb grayed over by a thick film. Even his demeanor spoke of a sailor who had seen too many waves and cheap whores, for he grumbled and cursed under his breath with every step as he moved to the desk.
“Take ’em on. They’ll be guardin’ ye,” he mumbled in a voice meant to mock someone Entreri did not know. “Aye, and be guardin’ us from what, will they? From the angry dock boys o’ Baldur’s Gate? Useless bit o’ dirt walkers, the whole lot o’ ’em, and if that dwarf’s not ready for bedding, then know that I’m to be throwing the she-dog o’erboard!”
He ruffled through some papers messily, searching for a particular chart, Entreri could see, then he rolled it, tucked it under his arm, and shambled back the way he’d come. He almost made the door before Captain Andray Cannavara entered, pushing it closed behind him.
“You were heard on the deck, Mister Sikkal,” Captain Cannavara said, trying to sound regal, and trying to look the part, too, and being successful at neither attempt. He wore a tailed waistcoat, as was the fashion, and a great plumed tri-cornered cap-one taken from another man, obviously, for it hardly fit his enormous head, particularly given his enormously bushy mop of hair. He had cut the hat on one side in an attempt to slide it down farther, but alas, such an act had also taken the integrity from the hat’s band, and so with every movement he made, the hat climbed back up to sit far too high, ridiculously high, upon his dirty hair.
“Do you mean to wound the morale of my crew before we have even left the harbor, man?” he said. “If so, do tell before we are too far out for you to swim back to the docks.”
The salty first mate lowered his eyes and respectfully answered, “Me pardon, Captain.”
“Your last pardon, Mister Sikkal.”
“Aye, Captain, but I isn’t saying any what th’others ain’t thinkin’,” he replied and he dared to look up. “Five land dogs.”
“Five formidable warriors.”
“Aye, but no friend o’ Luskan is Drizzit Dudden, not matterin’ what Captain Kurth’s sayin’!”
“The water is cold,” Cannavara replied somberly, and threateningly.
“Me pardon again, then, or still me first pardon stretched longer.”
The captain turned and pushed the door to make sure it was properly closed, then motioned Sikkal to follow him to his desk.
“I care for this no more than you do,” he quietly explained-quietly, but of course, Artemis Entreri was in perfect position, wrapped around a beam above the net above the desk, to hear every word.
“I was, we were, given no choice in the matter,” he went on. “Beniago’s orders were clear, and I’m hardly to go against that one!”
“What’s his tie to these dogs?” asked Sikkal. “The little man’s carryin’ his poker!”
The captain shook his head. “More a tie to the dark elf, I expect. Beniago is doing as he was instructed to do, as I expect that High Captain Kurth is doing as he was instructed to do.”
“Kurth? Instructed?” Sikkal started to reply, but then his face brightened as he said, “Them damned drow’re back.”
“So I would guess.”
Up above them, Artemis Entreri clutched at the beam and fought very hard against growling at the surprising news. Were they speaking of Jarlaxle? It had to be, or of Bregan D’aerthe, at least. So suddenly, everything changed from Entreri’s perspective, for so suddenly, he wasn’t so sure that this was about Drizzt at all. Surely Jarlaxle’s band had an interest in Drizzt, but wouldn’t their greater interest be in him, in Entreri? If they knew that he had broken free of Herzgo Alegni, then Jarlaxle and that wretched Kimmuriel surely understood that they were not safe.
Jarlaxle! The name screamed through Entreri’s thoughts. He recalled the last look the drow had thrown him, one of sadness perhaps, or at least resignation-but behind any such emotions lay Jarlaxle’s greatest feeling, Entreri knew: relief. For as Entreri lay there, caught in a net, surrounded by enemies, Jarlaxle had found freedom, walking through the ranks of the Netherese with hardly a care.
Entre
ri forced the memories to the back of his mind and reminded himself to pay attention.
“Bah, but it’s only a couple tendays or so to Baldur’s Gate, as we’ll find a favorable tide,” muttered Sikkal, but the captain was shaking his head with every word.
“We’re swinging wide,” Captain Cannavara replied, and he motioned to the chart he had sent the man to retrieve. “Wide to Baldur’s Gate and wider back to Luskan, for we’ll be ordered to Memnon once we’re in port.”
His eyes went even wider as he echoed incredulously, “Memnon?”
“We’ll be surprised by the order, of course, but to Memnon we’ll sail, and perhaps all the way to Calimport beyond that.”
“What’re ye talkin’ about? What goods’ve we got for them places?”
“It is not about goods, Mister Sikkal.”
“It’s about them five!”
“Aye, and we’re to keep them out of Luskan for the whole of the summer and to the last northern run before the winter.”
“What …?” Sikkal started to ask.
“I do not care to argue with Beniago, and care less so to take up any complaints with Kimmuriel’s band. This is their demand-I do not know why.”
Sikkal groaned, but the captain laughed and patted him on the shoulder.
“Easy work!” the captain explained. “We’ll find the whole season on the waves where we belong, and should we encounter any foolish enough to disrespect the flag of Ship Kurth, be they pirates or minions of Umberlee, or even a warship from the lords of Waterdeep, then know that we’ve got grand protection, by sword or by parlay, in the five we have taken aboard.”
“Aye, but they’re not to be doin’ any work, are they?”
“You could probably convince Drizzt Do’Urden to pull his share. He is quite familiar with the sea, after all.”
“Aye, sailin’ with that cursed Deudermont!” Sikkal spat upon the floor.
“However he came by it.”
“Might be that he’ll have a bit of an accident, then.”
The captain stared at him sternly, and Entreri took comfort in that response. “We left with five, we return with five-alive unless unforeseen circumstances, and circumstances not of our own making, befall us. You would risk the wrath of the drow, brave Mister Sikkal, but know that if you do, my own wrath will put you in a shark’s belly long before Minnow Skipper ever docks in Luskan again.”
The man, looking down at the floor again, nodded. At the captain’s bidding, he unrolled the chart on the desk and the two plotted their run to Baldur’s Gate. Up above, Artemis Entreri watched it all, thoroughly intrigued. He feared that they were being set up, delayed on their return to Luskan until Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel could arrange a proper greeting for them at the docks.
But he assuaged those fears with the reminder that Jarlaxle was not an enemy of Drizzt Do’Urden, and anything involving him surely went deeper than any fears or grudges the drow might have with a relatively minor player like Artemis Entreri.
He didn’t manage to get out of the captain’s quarters until the sun was low in the sky, giving him many hours to contemplate all that he had learned. He decided against sharing the information with the others.
If an ambush by Bregan D’aerthe was awaiting them in Luskan, then he surely wouldn’t be around to watch it, but if something else … perhaps he could get a chance to repay Jarlaxle’s treachery, and that, of course, would be worth the risk. He kept putting his hand to the hilt of his jeweled dagger whenever he thought of Jarlaxle, imagining the sweetness of stealing that one’s black soul.
Chapter 11
DARK ROOM, DARK SECRET
Effronpaced the vast docks of Baldur’s Gate as he had every morning for more than a month now. He found himself at a loss-the boat should have been in to port soon after his arrival. Every day he came down here; every day he asked every dockhand he could find who would take a few moments to speak with him.
Nothing.
No word of Minnow Skipper, and looking out at the vast, dark water rolling before him this rainy day, it was not hard for Effron to imagine that the boat had been lost to this inhospitable environ known as the Sword Coast. In fact, this particularly dreary morning, the warlock was certain of it.
The ocean had taken her, and all aboard, likely, or some sea devils or a great shark or whale or kraken even, had splintered her hull and pulled her under to feast on the crew.
If he was right, then his mother was dead, and his purpose in life had run into an abrupt end.
Or maybe his mood was a result of the weather and not some reasonable conclusion. The air felt heavy this day, though spring fast raced toward summer.
Effron dismissed that superficial notion. The weather might not be helping, but this was not nearly as abrupt an ending as it seemed. This morning came as a logical conclusion of his building dread. For two tendays now, Effron had been fighting a nagging feeling that they were gone, swallowed by the sea, and that his perspective on life-on his own life-was about to dramatically shift.
He had wanted her dead. He had wanted to kill her.
Now he was an orphan. Now his dream had been realized, but the taste, so suddenly, seemed not so sweet.
“Damn you,” he whispered under his breath as he paced the massive quayside of this impressive port city. Those were the only words he spoke, not even bothering to inquire of the dockhands if any had seen or heard a whisper of Minnow Skipper’s approach.
There was no point.
And perhaps, he feared, there was no point to much of anything, any more than asking empty questions of dockhands in Baldur’s Gate.
He walked slowly, his dead arm a pendulum behind his back. The moisture around his eyes was more than the drizzle of the heavy and humid day.
For so many years, he had tried to prove himself to his father. He could never become the warrior Herzgo Alegni would have preferred, obviously, with his shoulder and arm useless and a dozen other less obvious or garish infirmities wreaking his fragile form. But still he had tried, every day and in every plausible way. Was there a warlock in the Shadowfell of his power anywhere near his age? He had overheard comments that not even Draygo Quick had been as advanced as Effron was now until he had passed his fortieth birthday, though Effron was barely half that age.
He had lived his life with daring and discipline, and even the lords of Netheril had taken note of him at times.
Had any of that made Herzgo Alegni proud?
Effron honestly didn’t know. If so, his brutish tiefling father had never revealed it, and even on those few occasions when a word or glance from Herzgo Alegni might have been taken as fatherly pride, hard experience had taught Effron to view them more as manipulation than anything else, as if the self-absorbed Herzgo Alegni was boosting Effron’s morale because he wanted to get something more out of him.
Effron considered the possibility that he had no deeper feelings for Herzgo than he had for Dahlia.
Ah, Dahlia. For Effron, she was the rub, the ultimate pain, the desperate question, the ever-nagging doubt.
She had thrown him from a cliff.
His mother had rejected him, utterly, and had thrown him from a cliff.
How could she do that?
How he hated her!
How he desired to murder her!
How he needed her.
He could not wrap his thoughts comfortably around the emotions assailing him from every direction that dreary day. Now, on these docks this morning, he accepted the reality that she was gone, and the waves coming at him from opposite directions rolled and rose, crested and collided in the middle of his consciousness.
“Ha!” came a cry as he walked past one pair of older men, one with a mop, the other wearing a pair of hand gaffs for unloading sacks of grain.
“I told ye today’d be the day the ugly one didn’t ask!” continued the gaff-armed gaffer, and he let loose a squeal of laughter.
“Are you mocking me?” the dour Effron asked.
“Nah, devil-boy, he�
�s just laughing at his own prognostication,” the man with the swab replied. “He said yerself wouldn’t ask about Minnow Skipper today.”
“And pray tell how he would know that?”
“Because today’s the day word’s come in,” said the gaffer, and he laughed again, though it sounded more like a cackling cough. “She’s out there, north and west. Tide’s bad and wind’s wrong, but her sails might dot the horizon before sun’s to setting. Either way, she’ll slide in tomorrow.”
Effron tried to hold steady, but he knew that he was shaking, for he could feel the increasing movement of his dead arm. “How do you know? Tell me. Tell me!”
The other fellow lifted his mop and pointed it at a boat that had just come in, obviously, for her crew was still at work and hadn’t come ashore. “They seen her trailing these last three days. Flying Kurth’s flag. Luskan boat, that one there, and they’re knowing Minnow Skipper.”
Effron looked blankly at the other boat, but inside, his mind cascaded along avenues thought lost. Dahlia. Likely aboard, and almost surely alive.
Dahlia, who had the answers to the questions Effron most feared and most needed to hear.
Only then did it occur to him that his impatience, which had brought him to the docks these last days, might now dearly cost him.
“Listen to me,” he said intently to the pair. “There’s coin in this for you. Gold coin.”
“Keep talking,” said the man with the mop.
“I would know who comes off that boat,” Effron explained. “And I would not have them know that I have asked.”
“Gold coin?” asked the gaffer.
“Gold coins,” Effron assured him. “More coins than the fingers of both your hands and both his hands.
“Look for a dark elf, and a female elf beside him,” Effron explained.
“Female drow?”
“No, just the male.”
“Lots of elves about. How’re we to know it’s her?”
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