The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(76)
They rushed up onto the driver’s bench and urged the mule along.
Effron went off the other way, not wanting to call attention to the cargo. He was several blocks away, circling around toward the docks and the empty boat, in whose hold he would claim his catch, before the weight of what he had done truly struck him.
He had her.
He had the woman who had thrown him from the cliff.
He had her.
He had the mother who had rejected him, and left him to a life of broken misery.
He had her!
THE PATIENCE OF A MONK
WELL THEN FIND HER,” CAPTAIN CANNAVARA SAID TO ENTRERI.
“Aye, or we’ll be leavin’ ye here, and won’t that be better for us?” added Mister Sikkal. He stood at Cannavara’s side, bobbing up and down on his bowed legs so that his head bounced stupidly. How Artemis Entreri wanted to put his recovered dagger to good use at that moment!
“I only came to tell you that we cannot find her,” Entreri remarked, addressing the captain directly, but throwing one warning glance at Sikkal as he did to keep the fool’s mouth shut. “Not to be lectured by either of you.”
“Then you four will be aboard when we sail?” the captain asked.
“No,” Entreri replied without the slightest hesitation—and he was surprised at his own certainty, though as he considered it, he couldn’t deny the truth. He would not leave Dahlia behind, would not leave Baldur’s Gate until he learned what had happened to her.
“Minnow Skipper sails on the morning tide,” Cannavara declared.
“Then you will explain to Beniago and High Captain Kurth why my friends and I returned to Luskan before you. You are on to Memnon, are you not?”
The expression on Cannavara’s face, and on Sikkal’s as well, spoke volumes to Entreri before either had uttered a word—if either had been able to speak at that moment. As far as Cannavara knew, clearly, they had told no one of their course change, and from Sikkal’s point of view, likely he had done some whispering that might get him thrown to the sharks.
“You think you know all the strands of the web,” the assassin quietly said. “That is a dangerous belief when dealing with … my associates.”
His tone left little doubt in the two men as to whom he might be referring. Bregan D’aerthe or Ship Kurth, the two men facing him obviously assumed, given the blood then draining from their respective faces.
Entreri used that moment to pull back his cloak and put a hand to the hilt of his fabulous dagger. Cannavara let out a little gasp at that, obviously recognizing it and remembering for the first time where he had seen that particular blade before.
With a dismissive snort, Artemis Entreri turned and walked back down the gangplank.
By the time he stepped onto the wharf, he had put the two men out of his thoughts, focusing again on the missing Dahlia. Half the night and half the day now, and not a sign of her.
This was more than petulance, he knew.
He was afraid.
Ambergris and Afafrenfere walked the wharf slowly, taking their time on their way to Minnow Skipper. Drizzt and Entreri moved separately through the various neighborhoods of the city, checking every inn and tavern, and every alley, but the dwarf had resisted Afafrenfere’s calls to separate and cover more ground.
“I got me an idea,” she announced to her partner, with one of her exaggerated winks, and she led him directly to these docks, where more than a score of ships were moored, some out on the water, others pulled up tight against the wharves.
“You think she’s on one of these boats?” Afafrenfere asked when Ambergris’s destination became apparent.
“She ain’t been out through any o’ Baldur’s Gate’s gates, from what them sentries’re saying.”
“Dahlia could have easily gotten past them unnoticed.”
“Aye, but to what end?” Ambergris asked. “Long roads to walk alone, and why would she, when there’s better ways to be long gone from Baldur’s Gate, eh?”
“So you think she left of her own accord?”
Ambergris stopped and turned to face him, hands on hips. “Well, say it out loud, then,” she remarked when Afafrenfere made no move as if to answer her look.
“I think she was kidnapped, or murdered,” the monk said.
“Things ain’t been so good between herself and Drizzt,” Ambergris said, an observation she and Afafrenfere had noted for the last few days, and even before that, out on the seas.
“She wouldn’t leave like that,” Afafrenfere argued, shaking his head. “Not that one. Lady Dahlia does not run from a fight.”
“Even from a lover’s quarrel?”
That gave Afafrenfere pause, but only for a moment before he shook his head. He didn’t know Dahlia all that well, but in the months he’d spent with her, he believed that he had a fairly solid understanding of the elf’s motivations.
“I’m only arguin’ with ye because I’m fearing that ye’re right,” Ambergris admitted.
“Then why have you led me to the docks?”
“If ye was to kidnap someone, to sell to slavers or to force to serve yerself, would ye be wanting to keep her in Baldur’s Gate with us friends o’ hers walking about?”