R. Salvatore - The Last Threshold

And the excitement, always that, with a pirate sail on every horizon, it seemed, and a crew ever ready and eager to take up the chase.

“The finest ship to ever sail the Sword Coast,” Drizzt remarked when Dahlia walked up beside him, to find him still staring at the mast.

“Not any more, it would seem,” she said flippantly.

“Aye, a long tale, and one worth telling,” Drizzt replied. “And no better place to tell it than on a ship’s deck on the open waters, under the stars and with the lull of the ocean nodding truth to every word.”

Dahlia draped her arms around Drizzt and he tensed up for just a moment, then forced himself to relax. Somehow that touch didn’t seem right to him. Not out here. Not on these same waters he had so often sailed with Catti-brie.

“We’ve no private cabin, but we can find a private place,” the elf woman whispered into his ear. “Do you think the ocean will nod about that?”

Drizzt didn’t answer, other than to offer a chuckle, a half-hearted one, and he understood that Dahlia had recognized it as such when she unwrapped her arms and stepped back from him. He turned to her, trying to find some way to soothe that unintentional sting, but he diverted it instead, seeing their three other companions moving to join them.

“I’m not for knowin’ how these bowleggers take to this pitchin’ and rollin’ days on end,” Ambergris grumbled. She planted her feet wide and square, but even then the slightest pitches of Minnow Skipper had her stumbling side-to-side. That just made her dig her heels in harder, but to little positive effect.

“You take the sea’s roll with your belly,” Afafrenfere explained to her, and he tapped his hard abdomen.

“Ah, shut up afore I spray me breakfast all about ye,” said the dwarf.

“You will get used to the motion of the sea,” Drizzt promised. “And when we put in to port, you’ll find your legs unsteady once more.”

That brought a laugh from Afafrenfere, and from the dwarf, but Dahlia just stared at Drizzt, seeming more than a little wounded by his rebuff, and Artemis Entreri looked as dour as ever as he walked past Drizzt to the rail.

“That one’s been sailin’ afore,” Ambergris muttered, shaking her head at Entreri’s smooth gait, for he didn’t miss a stride even when Minnow Skipper pitched unexpectedly under the roll of one heavier wave.

“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.