Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(59)

“They would’ve taken your foot only because they thought it the only way to save your life.”

“They would’ve tried to take my foot and I would’ve killed them both,” Dahlia insisted.

“You would’ve killed a mother in front of her children?”

“I would’ve asked the children to turn around first,” Dahlia sarcastically replied.

Drizzt laughed at her unrelenting sourness, but Dahlia only glared at him all the more. For a moment, just a heartbeat, Drizzt almost expected her to jump up and attack him then and there.

“Damn you, Beniago,” the woman muttered, squeezing her aching foot yet again.

“He provided the antidote,” Drizzt said.

“Then he’s a fool, because he saved the life of one who will kill him.”

“It wasn’t Beniago who set the traps,” Drizzt reminded her.

“It was Beniago who forced me from the rope to the floor.”

“He defends the wares of Ship Kurth.”

“And you would defend him?”

“Hardly. Didn’t I arrive to chase him off?”

Dahlia spat on her foot and squeezed it again. A dribble of blood and greenish-white pus slipped out. “Killing him will wound Ship Kurth, and make it clear that I’m not one to be toyed with.”

“Ah, that’s it, then,” Drizzt said with a grin. “It’s your embarrassment at being outfoxed.”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes threateningly.

“High Captain Kurth, or yes, perhaps Beniago, understood that you would return to the jewelry shop to appropriate the piece, and so they were quite ready for you,” Drizzt said. “In fact, I suspect that the only reason they even took us to that particular merchant was because of your obvious fondness for sparkling gemstones.”

“I knew they’d know,” Dahlia insisted. “I wanted them to know.”

“And you wanted them to defeat you and kill you?”

Dahlia’s blue eyes threw imaginary darts into his face, Drizzt knew, but he grinned all the more, enjoying having the upper hand against Dahlia for once. For all of her stubbornness, she couldn’t, with true conviction, claim she’d expected the trap.

“I already told you I’d sorted out the design of the trap and deduced how to defeat it,” Dahlia said, biting each word off short for emphasis. “I would’ve slipped free of the lash and Beniago would’ve died if you hadn’t intervened.”

“With poison in your foot?”

“I would’ve stripped Beniago’s corpse naked and found the elixir. And had it not been for your foolish intervention, I would have had the time to tend the wound then and there, before the poison had spread up my leg.”

Drizzt laughed, shook his head, and let it go at that.

“We will return to Luskan,” Dahlia announced, standing and facing to the north up the road.

“To repay Ship Kurth?”

“Yes.”

“What of Sylora? I thought it was she you hated above all others.”

Despite her stubbornness—and she was possessed of great quantities—Dahlia couldn’t resist glancing back over her shoulder, back to the south.

“I go with you now to find Sylora,” Drizzt stated flatly, “as I committed to do when we left Gauntlgrym. I, too, would like to repay her for her actions that have so devastated Neverwinter. But I won’t return to Luskan beside you, should you choose that course.”

“I wouldn’t have gone to Luskan at all had it not been for your insistence,” Dahlia reminded him.

“But not to engage Ship Kurth or any other of the high captains.”

“No, to find Jarlaxle, because you cannot accept that he’s gone,” Dahlia said, for no reason other than to sting him, Drizzt realized.

“To Neverwinter Wood?” he asked. “Or do we part ways here?”

Dahlia’s glare abruptly turned into a wicked smile. “You’ll not abandon me. Not now.”

“I won’t go to Luskan,” Drizzt said flatly.

Dahlia held her stare for a few moments, but then it was she who blinked and nodded. “Ship Kurth will still be there when we’re done with the witch of Thay,” she decided. “And perhaps we would do well to let a few tendays pass, so that Luskan forgets about Drizzt and Dahlia.”

“And then we kill Beniago?”

Dahlia nodded and Drizzt shook his head.

“Let it be,” the drow advised.

Dahlia’s sigh showed more contempt than resignation.

“Kill Beniago?” Drizzt went on skeptically. “He who is powerful within Luskan and Ship Kurth? Beniago, who I spared at the end of my blade?”

“You think him an ally?” Dahlia asked incredulously.

“I think that perhaps the past is better left in the past,” Drizzt replied. “Beniago gave me the elixir knowing I would use it to save you. He was grateful that I didn’t kill him, because I surely had him dead, had I so chosen. He will soon enough be a man of great power within Luskan, and within the whole of the region, and he has shown himself to be no enemy of ours.”

“Drizzt Do’Urden bargains with murderers now,” Dahlia said with a wry smirk.

She meant the remark as another jab, obviously, but it struck Drizzt as more of an honest question than that. It was a question that he’d asked himself many times in his past. He thought of Artemis Entreri, his long-time nemesis, and undeniably a killer. Yet Drizzt and Entreri had struck a bond beneath the tunnels of Mithral Hall when it was still in the hands of the duergar dwarves. And Entreri had fought beside Drizzt and Catti-brie during their escape from Menzoberranzan. Drizzt and Entreri battled side-by-side, because it had been in their best interests. And on more than one occasion, Drizzt had not finished off Entreri, had not killed him, when he’d found the opportunity.