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“Often, yes?” Drizzt asked, turning to face the man.
“Too often,” said Entreri.
“Then you know Baldur’s Gate?”
“Every street. ”
“Good,” said Drizzt. “I know not how long we’ll dock there, but you’ll be our guide. ”
Entreri turned to look at him, to offer him a smirk. “Just long enough for Luskan to destroy Port Llast, I would expect. So not long at all. ”
That had the other four crowding in closer.
“What’d’ye know?” Ambergris asked.
“It merely occurs to me that Beniago conveniently arranged to get the five best fighters out of Port Llast all at the same time,” Entreri mused.
“Ooo,” Ambergris groaned, apparently having not thought of that before.
But Drizzt had. “Beniago asked only that I go in the deal for your dagger,” he said. “He could not have foreseen that I would bring you four along with me. ”
“But he knows now,” said Entreri.
Drizzt snorted the uncomfortable thought away. “Luskan’s high captains cannot agree on which dock to use for a visiting lord without a street battle to settle it,” he said. “They couldn’t muster any sizeable force and march or sail on Port Llast in the few tendays we will be away. Nor would they begin to understand the level of power within the city any time soon, with or without us there. ”
Entreri looked at him and chuckled softly, his expression practically screaming the word “simpleton. ” But he said nothing and walked away, back to the hatch and into the hold.
“For my benefit alone,” Drizzt said to the remaining three, shaking his head dismissively at the departing man. He believed the truth of his hypothesis. Ever was Artemis Entreri trying to throw doubts into Drizzt; indeed, he seemed to derive some strange pleasure from doing so.
Drizzt turned back to the sea, gave a last glance at Sea Sprite’s mast, then turned his gaze out to the wide-spreading waters before him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the briny smell and letting it take him back to better days and—he tried unsuccessfully to exclude Dahlia from the thought as it formed—to better company.
“Who is on that boat?” Effron demanded of the dockworker. The tiefling warlock had arrived on the docks in time to watch Minnow Skipper glide out past Closeguard Isle. He had heard the rumors of some late arrivals to the ship’s crew, and now, from the docks of Luskan, it was becoming very clear that he had missed his prey by a matter of moments.
So from an alleyway, he had assaulted and captured one of the men who had thrown out Minnow Skipper’s lines.
“I don’t know you, Master!” the terrified dockworker replied.
“You tell me now, or I will put spiders under your skin!”
“Master!”
Effron shook the fool roughly with his good arm, his eyes, one red, one blue, flaring with outrage.
“K-Kurth’s ship,” the man stammered. “Under Ship Kurth’s flag. ”
“And who was on it?”
“Twenty-three crew,” the man replied.
“Tell me of the guards! The drow!”
“Just one,” said the man. “Drizzt. And a dwarf and two men and a woman, an elf woman. ”
“Her name!”
“Dahlia,” the man replied. “Dahlia who killed High Captain Rethnor, and Ship Rethnor’s all up and angry about her coming through Luskan under Kurth’s protection. ”
He continued to stammer on about the politics around it, but Effron was hardly listening at that point, staring out at the diminishing sails, watching his hated mother sail far, far from him.
“Where are they bound?” he asked, but quietly now, his moment of outrage pushed aside.
“Baldur’s Gate. ”
“And where is that?”
“Down the coast,” the man said, and Effron scowled at him for the obvious, vague answer.
“Down past Waterdeep. Couple, few hundred miles. ”
Effron let him go and he tumbled to the ground, and lay there, his arms up defensively in front of him.
The tiefling warlock paid him no heed. Trying to suppress his anger, Effron reminded himself that he was unable to confront Dahlia anyway, under pain of reprisal from Draygo Quick. He had ways to travel quickly, and Baldur’s Gate was not too far.
He left the alleyway, then left Luskan all together, trying not to worry that Minnow Skipper would sink with all hands lost. Dahlia could not be lost to him in this manner. The Sword Coast was rumored to be a dangerous place for any ship to sail, but surely one under the flag of Ship Kurth would be afforded some distance by most pirates.
By the time he was back in the Shadowfell, Effron was shaking those fears away more easily. Not only would the flag of Ship Kurth help, he realized, but having Drizzt, Dahlia, and Artemis Entreri aboard was also a pretty good indicator that Minnow Skipper would get to her destination safely.
Dahlia remained with Drizzt long after Afafrenfere and Ambergris had gone belowdecks in search of rum and dance, and long did the drow stand there at the prow, staring at the dark waters opening wide before him. He didn’t look back any longer, for there was no point, as Luskan was long out of sight, and the view behind resembled that before them.
After a while, Dahlia moved up right beside him, and Drizzt draped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. He felt almost hypocritical as he did, though, for it occurred to him that he was only doing so because of the unsettling feelings he had been entertaining in the last hour. He could not continue to compare Dahlia to his beloved wife if he wanted to maintain any feelings beyond friendship for this elf.
Minnow Skipper was not Sea Sprite, and Dahlia was not Catti-brie, and to Drizzt, those comparisons seemed a fitting analogy. But he pulled her tight against his side now, more for his benefit than for hers.
Because he was afraid.
He was afraid of continuing with her, knowing, and now admitting, the truth in his heart, and he was afraid of ending his relationship with her because he did not wish to walk his road alone.
“I’ve grown unused to you touching me,” Dahlia said after a few moments.
“We’ve been busy,” Drizzt answered. “Momentous events. ”
Dahlia scoffed, clearly seeing right through his dodge. “Such victories we have known often led to carnal pleasures,” she remarked.
Drizzt had no answer—none that he wished to openly express, actually—other than to pull her even tighter against him.
“Entreri will leave us in Baldur’s Gate. ” Drizzt was surprised that she chose that particular moment to change the subject.
He looked at her carefully, but couldn’t read her expression.
“He’s been making that threat since Neverwinter,” Drizzt replied.
“He has his dagger now. ”
“The dagger was an excuse, and never the reason he didn’t leave. ”
“What do you know?” Dahlia turned, releasing herself from Drizzt’s arm.
“Artemis Entreri is free again, but fears the chains of his memories,” Drizzt replied. “He doesn’t wish to become what he once was, and the only way for him to avoid that fate is to remain with us—with me, actually. He will find this excuse or that to justify his actions, for he would never give me credit or adulation, but he won’t leave us. ”
“In Baldur’s Gate,” Dahlia said.
“Or back in Luskan, or back in Port Llast thereafter. ”
“You sound confident. ”
“I am,” Drizzt assured her.
“About all of your companions? Then you are a fool,” she said, and with a little smirk that Drizzt couldn’t quite comprehend, Dahlia walked away.
Drizzt turned back to the sea, and instead of letting himself fall back into his long-past adventures with Catti-brie and Captain Deudermont, he thought of his recent history, of the last wintry months. Dahlia’s remarks were true enough: rarely did he touch her any longer, or engag
e her in any but the most banal conversations. They were moving apart, and it was all Drizzt’s doing, subconsciously perhaps, but inexorably.
The thought alarmed Drizzt, and for a brief moment, he blamed Entreri. Entreri’s empathy for and understanding of Dahlia’s trauma and deep emotional scar had forced Drizzt aside.
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.