Robert Salvatore: The Pirate King

His blades were not there. He didn’t know what to think.

And his confusion only heightened when Jarlaxle Baenre and Kimmuriel Oblodra walked into the room.

It made sense, of course, given Drizzt’s failed—psionically blocked—strike against Athrogate, and he placed then the moment when he had felt that strange sensation of his energy being absorbed before, in a fight with Artemis Entreri, a fight overseen by this very pair of drow.

Drizzt fell back, a bitter expression clouding his face. “I should have guessed your handiwork,” he grumbled.

“Luskan’s fall?” Jarlaxle asked. “But you give me too much credit—or blame, my friend. What you see around you was not my doing.”

Drizzt eyed the mercenary with clear skepticism.

“Oh, but you wound me with your doubts!” Jarlaxle added, heaving a great sigh. He calmed quickly and moved to Drizzt, taking a chair with him. He flipped it around and sat on it backward, propping his elbows on the high back and staring Drizzt in the eye.

“We didn’t do this,” Jarlaxle insisted.

“My fight with the dwarf?”

“We did intervene in that, of course,” the drow mercenary admitted. “I couldn’t have you destroying so valuable an asset as that one.”

“And yes, you surely could have,” Kimmuriel muttered, speaking in the language of the drow.

“All of it, I mean,” Jarlaxle went on without missing a beat. “This was not our doing, but rather the work of ambitious men.”

“The high captains,” Drizzt reasoned, though he still didn’t believe it.

“And Deudermont,” Jarlaxle added. “Had he not surrendered to his own foolish ambition….”

“Where is he?” Drizzt demanded, sitting up tall once more.

Jarlaxle’s expression grew grim and Drizzt held his breath.

“Alas, he has fallen,” Jarlaxle explained. “And Sea Sprite lays wrecked on rocks in the harbor, though most of her crew have escaped the city aboard another ship.”

Drizzt tried not to sink back, but the weight of Deudermont’s death fell heavily on his shoulders. He had known the man for so many years, had considered him a dear friend, a good man, a great leader.

“This was not my work,” Jarlaxle insisted, forcing Drizzt to look him in the eye. “Nor the work of any of my band. On my word.”

“You lurked around its edges,” Drizzt accused, and Jarlaxle offered a conciliatory shrug.

“We meant to…indeed, we mean to, make the most of the chaos,” Jarlaxle said. “I’ll not deny my attempt to profit, as I would have tried had Deudermont triumphed.”

“He would have rejected you,” Drizzt spat, and again, Jarlaxle shrugged.

“Likely,” he conceded. “Then perhaps it’s best for me that he didn’t win. I didn’t create the end, but I will certainly exploit it.”

Drizzt glared at him.

“But I’m not without some redeeming qualities,” Jarlaxle reminded. “You are alive, after all.”

“I would have won the fight outright, had you not intervened,” Drizzt reminded him.

“That fight, perhaps, but what of the hundred following?”

Drizzt just continued to glare, unrelenting—until the door opened and Regis, battered, but very much alive, and seeming quite well considering his ordeal, stepped into the room.

Robillard stood at the rail of Thrice Lucky, staring back at the distant skyline of Luskan.

“Was Morik the Rogue who plucked you from the waves,” Maimun said to him, walking over to join him.

“Tell him I won’t kill him, then,” Robillard replied. “Today.”

Maimun chuckled, though there remained profound sadness behind his laugh, at the unrelenting sarcasm of the dour wizard. “Do you think Sea Sprite might be salvaged?” he asked

“Do I care?”

Maimun found himself at a loss to reply to the blunt answer, though he suspected it to be more an expression of anger and grief than anything else.

“Well, if you manage it, I can only hope that you and your crew will be too busy exacting revenge upon Luskan to chase the likes of me across the waves,” the young pirate remarked.

Robillard looked at him, finally, and managed a smirk. “Neither fight seems worth a pile of rotting fish,” he said, and he and Maimun looked at each other deeply then, sharing the moment of painful reality.

“I miss him, too,” Maimun said.

“I know you do, boy,” said Robillard.

Maimun put a hand on Robillard’s shoulder, then walked away, leaving the wizard to his grief. Robillard had guaranteed him safe passage for Thrice Lucky through Waterdeep, and he trusted the wizard’s words.

What the young pirate didn’t trust at that moment were his own instincts. Deudermont’s fall had hit him profoundly, had made him think, for the first time in many years, that the world might be more complicated than his idealistic sensibilities had allowed.

“We could not have asked for a better outcome,” Kensidan insisted to the gathering at Ten Oaks. Baram and Taerl exchanged doubtful looks, but Kurth nodded his agreement with the Crow’s assessment.

The streets of Luskan were quiet again, for the first time since Deudermont and Lord Brambleberry had put into the docks. The high captains had retreated to their respective corners; only Suljack’s former domain remained in disarray.

“The city is ours” Kensidan said.

“Aye, and half of it’s dead, and many others have run off,” Baram replied.

“Unwanted and unnecessary fodder,” said Kensidan. “We who remain, control. None who don’t trade for us or fight for us or otherwise work for us belong here. This is no city for families and mundane issues. Nay, my comrades, Luskan is a free port now. A true free port. The only true free port in all the world.”

“Can we survive without the institutions of a real city?” Kurth asked. “What foes might come against us, I wonder?”

“Waterdeep? Mirabar?” Taerl asked.

Kensidan grinned. “They will not. I have already spoken to the dwarves and men of Mirabar who live in the Shield District. I explained to them the benefits of our new arrangement, where exotic goods shall pass through Luskan’s gates, in and out, without restriction, without question. They expressed confidence that Marchion Elastul would go along, as has his daughter, Arabeth. The other kingdoms of the Silver Marches will not pass over Mirabar to get to us.” He looked slyly to Kurth as he added, “They will accept the profits with feigned outrage, if any at all.”

Kurth offered an agreeing grin in return.

“And Waterdeep will muster no energy to attack us,” Kensidan assured them. “To what end would they? What would be their gain?”

“Revenge for Brambleberry and Deudermont,” said Baram.

“The rich lords, who will get richer by trading with us, will not wage war over that,” Kensidan replied. “It is over. Arklem Greeth and the Arcane Brotherhood have lost. Lord Brambleberry and Captain Deudermont have lost. Some would say that Luskan herself has lost, and by the old definition of the City of Sails, I could not disagree.

“But the new Luskan is ours, my friends, my comrades,” he went on, his ultimately calm demeanor, his absolute composure, lending power to his claims. “Outsiders will call us lawless because we care not for the minor matters of governance. Those who know us well will call us clever because we four will profit beyond anything we ever imagined possible.”

Kurth stood up, then, staring at Kensidan hard. But only for a moment, before his face cracked into a wide smile, and he lifted his glass of rum in toast, “To the City of Sails,” he said.

The other three joined in the toast.

Beneath the City of Sails, Valindra Shadowmantle sat unblinking, but hardly unthinking. She had felt it, the demise of Arklem Greeth, stabbing at her as profoundly as any dagger ever could. The two were linked, inexorably, in undeath, she as the unbreathing child of the master lich, and so his fall had stung her.