“At your service,” Drizzt said, and he bowed a bit, constrained as he was upon Andahar’s back.
“Passing through?” she asked. Drizzt noted a bit of an edge to her voice, and he understood, for when Captain Deudermont had overstepped the bounds of reason and tried to tame wicked Luskan, the resulting revolution had put evil men in charge of the City of Sails and that in turn had cast a long shadow over the struggling town of Port Llast. Drizzt had been part of Deudermont’s failure, so went the common lore, and the fact that he had tried to turn the captain from his dangerous ambitions long before the catastrophic events wasn’t widely known.
Drizzt had been through Port Llast a couple of times over the last decades, but had not found a particularly warm welcome there since the debacle in Luskan. More often, he avoided the city in his travels north and south.
“We hope to winter in your fair town,” he replied.
Two of the guards disappeared, the third turning around, apparently to join in a conversation the companions couldn’t make out from below. Before they ever got a verbal reply, the gates creaked open.
“Well met to you, then,” the guard who had been third up on the wall said with a nod as they passed by. “There’s an inn, Stonecutter’s Solace, under the shadow of the east cliffs. You’ll find good accommodation there, would be my guess. Be smart, and stay east, and go nowhere near the docks.”
Drizzt nodded and slid down from his seat, then dismissed Andahar. The guard’s eyes widened as the powerful unicorn leaped away and seemed to diminish to half its size. A second stride halved it again, and again a third and fourth time, where Andahar simply vanished into nothingness.
“You’ve been to Neverwinter of late?” the guard asked, trying to appear calm, though he was obviously awestricken. “How does she fare?”
“Growing strong,” Drizzt replied. “The immediate and greatest threats to the city have been driven off.”
The man nodded and seemed quite pleased by that news, and Drizzt understood the reaction well. Port Llast needed a strong and secure Neverwinter to help keep the pirates of Luskan away, and perhaps to bolster them in their continuing tribulations against the creatures of Umberlee’s ocean domain. The City of Sails would have little trouble in overwhelming this once thriving, but now nearly abandoned city, and Drizzt was keenly reminded of that when he looked to the sheltered harbor, where but a dozen or so small ships bobbed in the tides, and several of that meager fleet hardly appeared seaworthy. Catapults set on the eastern cliffs overlooking the city, still operational and manned, were a more imposing sight. But slinging a stone at a moving ship was no easy task. If the high captains of Luskan came calling, Port Llast would almost surely fall with barely a whimper.
“Doesn’t seem a friendly place,” Afafrenfere remarked as the five wound their way down the road past the dilapidated stone houses and shops. Indeed, most of the shutters were pulled tight, and others banged closed as the unusual troupe passed.
“These are troubled lands of wild things,” Drizzt replied. “The citizens are cautious, and for good reason.”
“I expect that simply by walking in here, we have doubled their defenses,” Dahlia quipped.
“I expect that you underestimate the strength of settlers,” Artemis Entreri unexpectedly put in, and the other four turned to regard him, still astride his nightmare. “They survive here, and that alone is no small thing.”
“Well said,” Drizzt remarked, and started off once more. “This will be a fine place to spend the winter.”
“Why?” the assassin asked, and when Drizzt stopped and turned back, he added, “Do you ever plan to tell us?”
“Tonight,” Drizzt promised, and on he went.
The road forked, but the left way was blocked by a stone wall manned by a trio of guards. That road led to the lower reaches of the city, the harbor and coast, and scanning around, the five could see that many new walls had been erected, virtually cutting the city in half, east and west. The right-hand fork led almost directly east, toward the cliffs and the higher sections of the city, and even from this distance, the companions could easily spot their destination, a newly constructed central building, free of moss and of stones not yet weathered to dark gray.
The common room at Stonecutter’s Solace was wide and deep and well-attended, with several hearths burning brightly and dozens of townsfolk sitting about the circular tables that filled the floor before a grand bar. A half wall behind it revealed the bustling kitchen.
“I might be gettin’ used to this place,” Ambergris offered at the promising sight. She sauntered by the nearest table, flashing a smile at the trio sitting there, a man and two dwarves, all three with faces weathered under a seaside sun, hands calloused by digging stones and arms thick with muscles.
“Well met,” Ambergris said to them.
“Aye, lassie, and sit with us, why don’t ye?” one of the dwarves replied.
Ambergris skidded to a stop, looked back to her four companions, winked, and then did just that.
“No fighting,” Drizzt remarked to Afafrenfere as they walked past the table. “I’ll not have us thrown from this inn or this bar.”
“Never my choice,” the monk replied. “Ambergris always wants her coins jiggling as she walks, you see.”
“I see and I saw, and I’ll have none of it now,” Drizzt answered. “We have important work to do here.”
“Perhaps you’ll tell us sometime soon,” Afafrenfere replied rather harshly, and he moved toward the bar.
Drizzt stopped and turned to Dahlia. “Stay with him,” he bade her quietly, glancing back at the distracted dwarf. “Get to know our monk companion. I need to understand his demeanor and loyalty.”
“He can fight,” Dahlia remarked.
“But does he know when to fight, and against whom?”
“He’ll do what the dwarf tells him,” Entreri said.
Drizzt glanced over at the table, where Ambergris was putting back shots of potent liquor with her three new friends.
“You think you know her?” Entreri remarked. “You’re putting Bruenor’s face on her. Take care with that.”
“Artemis Entreri warning me about those I choose to walk beside,” Drizzt muttered. “The world has gone mad.”
Dahlia laughed at that as she skipped away, following Afafrenfere to the bar. Drizzt and Entreri, meanwhile, found an empty table in the corner opposite the door.
“This is a doomed town,” the assassin said as soon as they took their seats. “Why are we wasting our time here?” He considered those words for just a heartbeat before changing them subtly. “Why are you wasting my time here?”
“Not doomed,” Drizzt replied. “Not unless we give up on it.”
“And you haven’t,” Entreri surmised.
Drizzt shrugged. “There is a chance for us to do good here,” he explained, and he stopped abruptly when a serving girl came over to offer drinks.
“Do good here?” Entreri echoed doubtfully when she had gone.
“The people of Port Llast deserve the chance,” Drizzt said. “They have held on against all odds.”
“Because they are stupid,” Entreri interrupted. “I thought we had already settled on this.”
“Spare me your sour jokes,” Drizzt replied. “I am being serious here. You have lived a … questionable life. Does that not itch at your conscience?”
“Now you pretend to lecture me?”
Drizzt looked at him earnestly and shook his head. “I’m asking. Honestly.”
The serving girl, a young and pretty brunette of no more than fifteen years, returned with their drinks, set them down, and scampered away to the call from another table.
“Sounds like you’re lecturing,” Entreri replied after a long swallow of Baldur’s Gate Red Ale.
“Then I apologize, and again, I ask, do you feel no regret?”
“None.”
The two stared at each other for a long while, and Drizzt didn’t believe the answer but found little room for debate in Entreri’s steadfast tone. “Have you ever done anything for someone simply because it was the right thing to do?” he asked. “Need there always be a reward for you at the end of the task?”
Entreri just stared at him and took another drink.
“Have you ever tried it?”
“I came north with you because you promised me my dagger.”
“In time,” Drizzt said dismissively. “But for now, I would know, have you?”
“Do you have a point to make?”
“We have a chance to do some good here, for many people,” Drizzt explained. “There is a level of satisfaction in that exercise I doubt you’ve ever known.”
Entreri scoffed at him and stared incredulously. “Is this how you heal your wounds?” he asked. When Drizzt looked at him in puzzlement, he continued, “If you can reform me, then you need not feel so guilty about letting me escape your blades in the past, yes? You could have killed me on more than one occasion, but didn’t, and now you question that mercy. How many innocents died because you hadn’t the courage to strike me down?”
“No,” Drizzt said quietly, shaking his head.
“Or is it something else?” Entreri asked, clearly enjoying this conversation. “I once met a paladin king—in his dungeon, actually, where I was his guest. Oh, how he loathed me, because he saw in me a dark reflection of his own heart. Is that it? Are you afraid that we two are not so different?”
Drizzt considered that for a moment, then returned Entreri’s confident look with one of his own. “I hope that we are not.”
Entreri’s expression quickly changed. “And so you must redeem me so that you can feel your own life justified?” Little certainty rang out in his tone.
“No,” Drizzt answered. “Our paths have crossed so many times. I don’t call you a friend—”
“Nor I, you.”
Drizzt nodded. “But a companion … of circumstance, perhaps, but a companion nonetheless. Let me lead you down this road. Consider it a chance to see the world through a different perspective. What do you have to lose?”
Entreri’s expression hardened. “You promised me my dagger.”
“And you will get it, or at least, I will show you where it is.”
“If I indulge you here?” he asked with a sarcastic edge.
Drizzt took a deep breath and tried to let the assassin’s stubborn ripostes fall off his shoulders. “Whether you indulge me or not. I didn’t offer you a bargain, but merely suggested a road.”
“Then why would I help you?”
Drizzt was about to argue, but he caught something, in the background of Entreri’s callous question, that clued him in to the truth of this discussion. He smiled knowingly at his old nemesis.
Entreri drained his mug and banged it on the table, signaling for another.
“You’re paying,” he informed the drow.