She believed him.
“I often travel with the merchants,” she lied, holding the quiver in her voice. “It is one of the duties of my rank as a soldier of Ten-Towns.”
Entreri laughed at her again. Then he looked into the distance, his features assuming an introspective tilt. “Perhaps this will play to my advantage,” he said rhetorically, the beginnings of a plan formulating in his mind.
Catti-brie studied him, worried that he had found some way to turn her excursion into harm for her friends.
“I’ll not kill you—not yet,” he said to her. “When we find the halfling, his friends will not defend him. Because of you.”
“I’ll do nothing to aid ye!” Catti-brie spat.”Nothing!”
“Precisely,” Entreri hissed. “You shall do nothing. Not with a blade at your neck—” he brought the weapon up to her throat in a morbid tease—”scratching at your smooth skin. When I am done with my business, brave girl, I shall move on, and you shall be left with your shame and your guilt. And your answers to the merchants who believe you murdered their companion!” In truth, Entreri didn’t believe for a moment that his simple trick with Catti-brie’s dagger would fool the merchants. It was merely a psychological weapon aimed at the young woman, designed to instill yet another doubt and worry into her jumble of emotions.
Catti-brie did not reply to the assassin’s statements with any sign of emotion. No, she told herself, it won’t be like that!
But deep inside, she wondered if her determination only masked her fear, her own belief that she would be held again by the horror of Entreri’s presence, and that the scene would unfold exactly as he had predicted.
Jierdan found the campsite with little difficulty. Dendybar had used his magic to track the mysterious rider all the way from the mountains and had pointed the soldier in the right direction.
Tensed and his sword drawn, Jierdan moved in. The place was deserted, but it had not been that way for long. Even from a few feet away, the soldier from Luskan could feel the dying warmth of the campfire. Crouching low to mask his silhouette against the line of the horizon, he crept toward a pack and blanket off to the side of the fire.
Entreri rode his mount back into camp slowly, expecting that what he had left might have drawn some visitors. Catti-brie sat in front of him, securely bound and gagged, though she fully believed, to her own disgust, that her own terror made the bonds unnecessary.
The wary assassin realized that someone had entered the camp, before he had ever gotten near the place. He slid from his saddle, taking his prisoner with him. “A nervous steed,” he explained to Catti-brie, taking obvious pleasure in the grim warning as he tied her to the horse’s rear legs. “If you struggle, he will kick the life from you.”
Then Entreri was gone, blending into the night as though he were an extension of its darkness.
Jierdan dropped the pack back to the ground, frustrated, for its contents were merely standard traveling gear and revealed nothing about the owner. The soldier was a veteran of many campaigns and had bested man and orc alike a hundred times, but he was nervous now, sensing something unusual, and deadly, about the rider. A man with the courage to ride alone on the brutal course from Icewind Dale to Luskan was no novice to the ways of battle.
Jierdan was startled, then, but not too surprised, when the tip of a blade came to rest suddenly in the vulnerable hollow on the back of his neck, just below the base of his skull. He neither moved nor spoke, hoping that the rider would ask for some explanation before driving the weapon home.
Entreri could see that his pack had been searched, but he recognised the furred uniform and knew that this man was no thief. “We are beyond the borders of your city,” he said, holding his knife steady. “What business have you in my camp, soldier of Luskan?”
“I am Jierdan of the north gate,” he replied. “I have come to meet a rider from Icewind Dale.”
“What rider?”
“You.”
Entreri was perplexed and uncomfortable with the soldier’s response. Who had sent this man, and how had he known where to look? The assassin’s first thoughts centered on Regis’s party. Perhaps the halfling had arranged for some help from the city guard. Entreri slipped his knife back info its sheath, certain that he could retrieve it in time to foil any attack.
Jierdan understood the calm confidence of the act as well, and any thoughts that he might have had for striking at this man flew from him. “My master, desires your audience,” he said, thinking it wise to explain himself more completely. “A meeting to your mutual benefit.”
“Your master?” asked Entreri.
“A citizen of high standing,” Jierdan explained. “He has heard of your coming and believes that he may help with your quest.”
“What does he know of my business?” Entreri snapped, angered that someone had dared to spy on him. But he was relieved, too, for the involvement of some other power structure within the city explained much, and possibly eliminated the logical assumption that the halfling was behind this meeting.
Jierdan shrugged. “I am merely his courier. But I, too, can be of assistance to you. At the gate.”
“Damn the gate,” Entreri snarled. “I’ll take the wall easily enough. It is a more direct route to the places I seek.”
“Even so, I know of those places, and of the people who control them.”
The knife leaped back out, cutting in and stopping just before Jierdan’s throat. “You know much, but you explain little. You play dangerous games, soldier of Luskan.”
Jierdan didn’t blink. “Four heroes from Ten-Towns came into Luskan five days ago: a dwarf, a halfling, a barbarian, and a black elf.” Even Artemis Entreri couldn’t hide a hint of excitement at the confirmation of his suspicions, and Jierdan noted the signs. “Their exact location escapes me, but I know the area where they are hiding. Are you interested?”
The knife returned again to its sheath. “Wait here,” Entreri instructed. “I have a companion who shall travel with us.”
“My master said that you rode alone,” Jierdan queried.
Entreri’s vile grin sent a shiver through the soldier’s spine. “I acquired her,” he explained. “She is mine and that is all that you ever need to know.”
Jierdan didn’t press the point. His sigh of relief was audible when Entreri had disappeared from sight.
Catti-brie rode to Luskan untied and ungagged, but Entreri’s hold upon her was no less binding. His warning to her when he had retrieved her in the field had been succinct and undeniable. “A foolish move,” he had said, “and you die. And you die with the knowledge that the dwarf, Bruenor, shall suffer for your insolence.”
The assassin had told Jierdan no more about her, and the soldier didn’t ask, though the woman intrigued him more than a little. Dendybar would get the answers, Jierdan knew.
They moved into the city later that morning, under the suspicious eye of the Daykeeper of the North Gate. It had cost Jierdan a week’s pay to bribe them through, and the soldier knew he would owe even more when he returned that night, for the original deal with the Daykeeper allowed the passage of one outsider; nothing had been said about the woman. But if Jierdan’s actions brought him Dendybar’s favor, then they would be well worth the price.
According to the city code, the three gave up their horses at the stable just inside the wall, and Jierdan led Entreri and Catti-brie through the streets of the City of Sails, past the sleepy-eyed merchants and vendors who had been out since before dawn and into the very heart of the city.
The assassin was not surprised an hour later when they came upon a long grove of thick pine trees. He had suspected that Jierdan was somehow connected to this place. They passed through a break in the line and stood before the tallest structure in the city, the Hosttower of the Arcane.