Gauntlgrym (40 page)

Drizzt could easily picture that miscreant sitting on a stool at Arumn’s bar. He was always there, always talking, and he had an unusual name, Drizzt remembered, a silly one.

But the drow couldn’t quite recall it, so he just shook his head.

“Arumn’s kin still got the place, or so I hear,” Bruenor recalled. “What was that girl’s name, then? Shibanni?”

Drizzt nodded. “Shivanni Gardpeck. Claims to be Arumn’s great-great-great grandniece, I believe.”

“Think it’s true?”

Drizzt shrugged. All that mattered to him was that the Cutlass remained. Shivanni may or may not have been Arumn Gardpeck’s descendent, but if she wasn’t, she had to have come from a similar bloodline, and if she was, then fat Arumn would be glad to know it, and to know her.

The pair crossed through the open gate, many eyes turning their way. There were only a scant few guards manning the walls and none visible on the towers. They might have been soldiers of one or another of the High Captains who ruled Luskan, but looked more like thugs serving themselves first—a ragtag band of knaves bound by no uniform, no code, and no notion of the common good of Luskan.

The city gates were always open. If Luskan began discriminating about who they let in, they would probably find the city deserted in short order. Even the scurvy dogs who wandered in through the gates paled under the glow of angelic halos compared to the rats who crawled off the ships that put into port there.

“ ’Ere now, a dwarf an’ a drow,” one man said to the pair as they passed under the gate.

“Be ye more impressed by yer eyes, or by yer sharp mind that sorted such a sight?” Bruenor shot back.

“Not a usual pairing, is all,” the man said with a chuckle.

“Give him that much, Bruenor,” Drizzt said so only the dwarf could hear.

“And what is the news in Luskan, good sir?” Drizzt asked the man.

“Same news as any day,” the guard replied, and he seemed in good spirits. He stood and stretched, his back making cracking sounds with the effort, and took a step toward the pair. “Too many bodies cloggin’ the waterways, and too many rats blocking the streets.”

“And pray tell, what captain do you serve?” asked the drow.

The man looked wounded, and put his hand over his heart. “Why, dark skin,” he replied, “I’m livin’ to serve the City o’ Sails, and nothin’ more!”

Bruenor shot Drizzt a sour look, but the drow, far better versed in the ways of the chaotic and wild town, smiled and nodded, for he had expected no other answer.

“And where’re ye off to?” the guard asked. “Might I be directin’ ye? Ye lookin’ for a boat er an inn in particular?”

“No,” Bruenor said flatly, aiming it, obviously, at both questions.

But to the dwarf’s wide-eyed surprise, Drizzt answered, “Passing through. For tonight, good lodging. For tomorrow, perhaps the road north.” He saluted and started away, then said to Bruenor, and not quietly, “Come, Shivanni awaits.”

“Ah,” the guard said, turning them both back to regard him. “Good ale to be found in Luskan, to be sure. Boatload o’ Baldur’s Gate pale brew come through just two days ago.”

“To be sure,” Drizzt answered, and he led Bruenor away.

“When’d ye get a waggin’ tongue, elf?”

Drizzt shrugged as if he didn’t understand.

“He might’ve knowed the name.”

Again, Drizzt shrugged. “If Jarlaxle wishes to find us, why would we make it difficult for him?”

“And if he ain’t lookin’ for us?”

“Then we would never have known it was a drow that raided our camp, and would never have found a trail so obvious leading us here.”

“Or the trail’s a fake. Leadin’ us here so we’re just thinking it’s Jarlaxle.” Bruenor nodded repeatedly as he considered his own words, as if he had just had a moment of epiphany.

“In that case, too, I would speak with Jarlaxle, for any so sending us in this direction surely concerns him as well. And a fine ally he will make, in that case.”

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted.

“We have no enemies here that I know of,” the drow said. “We walked in openly, with nothing to hide and no ill intent.”

“Now ye’re friends to the High Captains, are ye?”

“Assuming there are any left, I’d kill every one of them if the opportunity presented itself—if they in any way resemble those who defeated Captain Deudermont, decades ago,” Drizzt admitted.

“I’m sure they’d be glad to hear that.”

“I don’t intend to tell them.”

“A dwarf an’ a drow, just like ye asked,” the guard said to the alluring woman who had hired him to watch for that very thing.

The woman, an Ashmadai serving in Dahlia’s band, nodded. “This very day?”

“Not an hour past.”

“You are certain?”

“A dwarf an’ a drow,” the guard deadpanned, for how could anyone get something like that wrong?

The woman licked her lips and pulled out a small purse. She turned as she opened it, shielding its contents from the guard’s eye, then turned back to toss him two pieces of gold.

“Which way did they go?”

The guard shrugged. “Didn’t bother to watch ’em.”

The Ashmadai sighed and gave a little growl of frustration. With a disgusted look and a shake of her head, she started away.

“Why would I, when I know right where they’re goin’?” the ruffian asked.

The woman spun, hands on hips, glowering at the grinning man. She waited a few heartbeats, but he said nothing. “Well?” she prompted.

“Ye paid me to watch the gate for a dwarf an’ a drow. I watched the gate and saw yer dwarf an’ drow.”

She narrowed her eyes threateningly, but the guard appeared unconcerned.

With another sigh, the woman grabbed up her purse.

“One piece o’ gold for the name o’ who they’re goin’ to see,” the guard said, grinning all the wider. “Two’ll get ye the name o’ the place. Three, how to get there.”

She tossed two gold coins at his feet. “All of it,” she said.

The guard considered the coins, shrugged, and accepted the bargain.

“The skinny one,” Bruenor prompted, leaning on the bar, his gray and orange beard lathered with foam.

Shivanni Gardpeck stood opposite him with one hand on her hip and the other tapping at her chin. She was an attractive woman, nearing forty, full-bodied with considerable curves and long dark brown hair that bunched thickly
at her shoulders. She didn’t remind Drizzt of her distant uncle Arumn in her appearance, but her mannerisms bespoke a family resemblance.

“A long way removed, was Arumn,” she mumbled.

“A long time ago,” Bruenor agreed. “But the tales came down through yer family?”

“To be sure.”

“The tale o’ Wulfgar’s stolen hammer?”

Shivanni nodded and chewed her bottom lip as if the forgotten name was right there, begging release.

“Ah, by the beards o’ gnomes,” Bruenor lamented when the woman held up her hands in defeat. He lifted his flagon and drained it, belched for good measure, and nodded to Drizzt that he was ready to go to their room.

Halfway up the stairs, the pair were stopped by Shivanni’s call. “I’ll remember it, don’t you doubt!” she said.

“Rat-faced man with a hammer that weren’t his own,” Bruenor called back, a light tone in his voice as if the conversation had brought him back across the decades to a place he far preferred. Indeed, his voice was filled with relief, and he grinned widely and threw up his hands, as if all the world had been made right.

Two hours later, Bruenor was deeply sunk into a chair and snoring loudly. Drizzt contemplated whether or not he should disturb his friend, but he knew that if he let Bruenor sleep, the dwarf would likely awaken him in the middle of the night, grumping about a grumbling belly.

Bruenor stopped his snoring with a grunt and a chortle, and opened one lazy eye to regard the dark-skinned hand touching his shoulder.

“It’s time for evenfeast,” Drizzt said, quietly but forcefully, for it appeared to him that Bruenor was about to bite his hand.

The dwarf shrugged him away and closed his eyes again, smacking his lips as he settled down deeper into the chair.

Drizzt considered the slight for just a moment, then walked around to the other side of the chair, bent low, and whispered into the dwarf’s ear, “Orcs.”

Bruenor’s eyes opened wide and he hopped from his chair in a great explosion of movement, lifting right into the air before landing in a ready, fighting crouch.

“Where? What?”

“Forks,” Drizzt said. “It has been a long time since you’ve used one.”

Bruenor glowered at him.

“Evenfeast?” Drizzt suggested, motioning toward the door.

“Bah, but our talk earlier put some old thoughts in me mind, elf, thoughts what turned to dreams. And ye stole ’em.”

“Memories of Wulfgar?”

“Aye, me boy
and
me girl.”

Drizzt nodded, knowing full well the comfort such dreams could impart. He offered his friend a sympathetic smile, and bowed in apology. “Had I known, I would have gone for my meal without you.”

Bruenor waved that away with one hand and rubbed his grumbling belly with the other. He grabbed up his one-horned helm and plopped it on his head, slung his shield over his shoulder, and took up his axe.

“Don’t need no damned fork,” he said, showing Drizzt his axe, “and if it is an orc, we’ll chop it up to bite-sized pieces, don’t ye doubt.”

Something struck Drizzt as odd by the time he and Bruenor were only halfway down the stairs to the common room. Shivanni wasn’t behind the bar, which was unusual though hardly suspicious, but it was more than that, something he couldn’t quite sort out. They continued down and found a small table off to the side of the bar, with Drizzt continuing his scan of the room and its patrons.

“Does something seem wrong to you?” he quietly asked his companion as Bruenor sorted himself out, resting his axe against one chair and carefully resting his shield against the axe, so he could comfortably sit.

The dwarf glanced around, then turned back, clearly perplexed.

Drizzt could only shake his head, but then his discomfort registered more clearly: there were no elderly people in the tavern, and no unshaven and grubby-looking characters who looked like they’d just climbed out of a rum bottle and from the deck of a pirate ship.

There was something too … uniform, about the tidy crowd.

“Keep your axe close,” Drizzt whispered as a barmaid—one he didn’t recognize, though, since he was so rarely in Luskan of late, he didn’t know them all—came over.

“Well met,” she greeted.

“And to yerself, lass, and what might yer name be?” Bruenor asked.

She smiled and turned her head demurely, but not a hint of a blush came to her cheeks, Drizzt noted. And he noticed, too, in the sweep of her half-turn, that she bore a painful-looking burn scar between her left breast and collar bone.

Drizzt again scanned the room, focusing on one tall man bending across the way, the movement opening a gap between the man’s shirt and breeches, and revealing a similar scar. Then he spotted a woman seated at a table directly across the way, and from his angle, he could see the neckline of her dress, and enough under it to note a scar—not a scar, a brand—identical to the barmaid’s.

He turned his attention back to Bruenor and the barmaid, to find the dwarf ordering a pot of stew and a bottomless flagon of Baldur’s Gate Pale.

“No, hold,” Drizzt interrupted.

“Eh? But I’m hungry,” Bruenor protested. “Ye waked me up and I’m hungry.”

“As am I, but we’re late for our meeting,” Drizzt insisted as he stood.

Bruenor looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“I am confident that Wulfgar will have venison aboard his boat,” Drizzt reassured the dwarf, and Bruenor looked at him with blank confusion for just a moment before catching on.

“Ah, so’d be me hope,” the dwarf said and rose to his feet.

As did everyone else in the Cutlass.

“Interesting,” Drizzt said, his hands resting on his scimitar hilts.

“Be reasonable, drow,” said the barmaid. “You have nowhere to run. We wish to speak with you two, privately, and in a place of our choosing. Hand over your weapons, and less of your blood will be spilled.”

“Surrender?” Drizzt asked casually, and with a hint of a snicker.