"I will be of little use in this," Magadon said, his lips pursed.
"You have been of great use in everything else, Mags," Cale said. "Leave this to Jak and me. This is what we do."
Jak drained his ale, wiped his mouth, and stood. "I'll get started tonight."
Cale nodded.
"I will try scrying," he said. "If that does not work, I'll join you on the wharves."
* * * * *
Dressed in the tailored black doublet, trousers, high boots, and fur-trimmed cloak of a middle-aged, wealthy, potbellied merchant, Riven walked the pier toward Demon Binder. To maintain appearances, he had hired a laborer to bear his chest of traveling goods-in reality, his weapons, armor, clothing, and a few other useless gewgaws he had purchased to add weight.
As he neared the gangplank, two crewmen hurried down to the pier to assist the laborer with his burden. Both Sailors wore cutlasses and hard looks. Riven threw a silver to the laborer and sent him on his way.
"The captain said you was comin'," the first said, a thin, tattooed sailor missing two fingers on his right hand.
"We'll bear that for you, now," said the other, a burly crewman with burn-scarred hands. His sour breath stank of distilled spirits.
Riven wiped fictional sweat from his brow, made as though he was catching his breath. He adopted a Chondathan accent and offered his thanks.
"Cap'n's holdin' a cabin for you," said the thin one. "Leavin' with the moonrise, he said. Where'll we be headin'?"
Captain Azriim must not have told the crew the destination. Riven could not have told them if he'd wanted.
"I will leave it to the captain to tell," Riven said, and boarded.
"Must be something special, to divert our course as we are though, eh?" the thin sailor said. He worked with the other crewman to carry the chest.
The bigger took a half-hearted swing with his free hand at the smaller's head. "Shut yer hole, Nom. We'll know when the Captain wants us to know. He's never sailed us wrong, has he?"
Nom grumbled agreement and the two led Riven to his cabin-little more than a closet with a flea-ridden bed and small dressing table-and left him alone with his chest. Riven wandered onto deck later, where he found Azriim and Dolgan walking the ship, supervising the preparations to set sail. Riven grudgingly conceded that the slaadi were at least as good as he at playing their roles. He noticed that Azriim surreptitiously held one wand or another against his forearm as he moved over the deck.
"Welcome aboard, Mendeth," Azriim said. The slaad looked exactly like the captain except that he had retained his mismatched eyes. Riven was not surprised that none of the crew had noticed, but a professional would. Cale would.
Dolgan, in his guise as the first mate, grunted a greeting.
Riven pretended to make insignificant conversation, but caught Azriim's gaze and indicated the wands the slaad rotated in and out of his hands.
Warding the ship, Azriim explained.
Above them, the crew was at work in the rigging, unfurling sails.
"We sail at moonrise," Azriim said, confirming what the crewman had said to Riven. He continued to walk the deck, with Dolgan at his side.
Riven tired of the slaadi's company in short order. With nothing to do but wait for the ship to set sail, Riven returned to his quarters and brooded. The thump of activity went on for several hours, then shouts were heard, and the ship began to move away from the pier.
As Demon Binder sailed out of the harbor and out into the open sea, Riven emerged onto the deck, up the stern-castle to the aft railing. He felt the eyes of the crew on him, saw the questions in their expressions, but ignored them and offered no information. He leaned on the rail and watched Selgaunt and its torches and lamps vanish into the distance. For a moment, he wondered what his girls were doing, if they would miss him. He wondered, too, if Cale was in the city, looking for him.
He suspected so.
For the hundredth time, he wondered if he was doing the right thing.
* * * * *
From their room in the Murky Depths, Cale tried to scry Riven or the slaadi but met with no success. He was not surprised. No doubt the Sojourner had bolstered the ability of the slaadi to avoid detection. He tried, too, to scry Sakkors, focusing the spell's magic using only the city's name. That failed as well. He and Jak would need to use more mundane methods.
For a night and two days Jak and Cale frequented the taverns and eateries of the Dock District, carousing among the watermen. It felt good to Cale. The atmosphere reminded him of his early professional life in Westgate, when things had seemed less complicated and earning coin had been his only concern.
He and Jak sprinkled fivestars and drink among sailors, courtesans, merchants, ferrymen, serving girls, bartenders, dockworkers, and anyone else who might have had an ear to recent events. Cale used his ability to stand invisibly in the shadows to move unseen among the crowds.
As always, the dockside establishments were awash in rumors and schemes-dragon attacks in the north seemed a popular bit of nonsense-but none of them fit what Cale knew of Riven and the slaadi. Cale watched dozens of ships come and go from the harbor, wondering with each if he was watching the slaadi escape. After a time he began to suspect that Riven and the slaadi had not returned to Selgaunt after all, or that they had secured passage on a smuggler's ship outside the harbor.
The second night, after another fruitless day, he and Jak walked back toward the Murky Depths.
"You ever think about doing something like that?" Jak said, and nodded at a group of glory-seekers walking along the docks: two warriors in mail hauberks, both armed with swords and bows, what looked like a paunchy wizard, to judge from his robes and the esoterica hanging from his belt, and an armored priest of Lathander, with a yellow sun enameled on his breastplate and a mace at his waist. The four adventurers joked among themselves as they walked the waterfront, laughing about some jest made at the wizard's expense.
"An itchie?" Cale asked, incredulous. "Are you jesting?"
Jak shook his head. "I don't mean an adventurer, Cale, at least not exactly. I mean . . . you know, someone who does big things." He cleared his throat. "A hero, is what I'm saying."
Cale would have chuckled if not for the earnestness in Jak's voice. He said, "Adventurers are coin grubbers and tomb robbers, Jak. They're not heroes, if there even are such people."
Jak stopped and faced him, brow furrowed. "What do you mean, 'if there are such people?' You do not think there are any? What about Tchazzar? The Seven Sisters? Khelben Arunsun? Even King Azoun of Cormyr, before he fell."
Cale shook his head and said, "Those people have done big things, great things maybe, but to call them heroes? I don't know, Jak. The word .. . reduces a man, makes him more myth than real."
"What does that mean?" Jak asked.
"It means. . . ." Cale fumbled for words. "Do you think that what we know about the men and women you named amounts to even a fraction of who they were or what they did? They slew a dragon, defeated an army, faced a demon. All well and good. But how did they treat their friends? Their family? I'll wager they experienced more failures than successes. Should that not factor into the evaluation? We take one aspect of who they were or what they did, grab onto it because we like it or think it admirable, and call them heroes. Hells, Jak, you and I have faced demons, even a dragon. No one knows, no one will remember but us, and I would wager a fortune that no one will call us heroes. Will they?"
Jak surprised him by saying softly, "I don't know. Maybe they will."