Regis sat at the long table’s head, the thousand gemstones he had sewn into his tunic catching the candlelight in a glittering burst every time he shifted in his seat. Behind him stood the two hill giant eunuchs who had guarded Pook at the bitter end, their faces bruised and bandaged.
At the halfling’s right sat LaValle, to Bruenor’s distaste, and at his left, a narrow-eyed halfling and a chubby young man, the chief lieutenants in the new guild.
Farther down the table sat Wulfgar and Catti-brie, side by side, their hands clasped between them, which, Drizzt guessed—by the pale and weary looks of the two—was as much for mutual support as genuine affection.
As weary as they were, though, their faces lit with smiles, as did Regis’s, when they saw Drizzt enter the room, the first time any of them had seen the drow in nearly a week.
“Welcome, welcome!” Regis said happily. “It would have been a shallow feast if you could not join us!”
Drizzt slid into the chair beside LaValle, drawing a concerned look from the timid wizard. The guild’s lieutenants, too, shifted uneasily at the thought of dining with a drow elf.
Drizzt smiled away the weight of their discomfort; it was their problem, not his. “I have been busy,” he told Regis.
“Brooding,” Bruenor wanted to say as he sat next to Drizzt, but he tactfully held his tongue.
Wulfgar and Catti-brie stared at their black friend from across the table.
“You swore to kill me,” the drow said calmly to Wulfgar, causing the big man to sag back in his chair.
Wulfgar flushed a deep red and tightened his grip on Catti-brie’s hand.
“Only the strength of Wulfgar could have held that gate,” Drizzt explained. The edges of his mouth turned up in a wistful smile.
“But, I—” Wulfgar began, but Catti-brie cut him short.
“Enough said about it, then,” the young woman insisted, banging her fist into Wulfgar’s thigh. “Let us not be talking about troubles we’ve past. Too much remains before us!”
“Me girl’s right,” spouted Bruenor. “The days walk by us as we sit and heal! Another week, and we might be missing a war.”
“I am ready to go,” declared Wulfgar.
“Ye’re not,” retorted Catti-brie. “Nor am I. The desert’d stop us afore we ever got on the long road beyond.”
“Ahem,” Regis began, drawing their attention. “About your departure, …” He stopped to consider their stares, nervous about presenting his offer in just the right way. “I…uh…thought that…I mean…”
“Spit it,” demanded Bruenor, guessing what his little friend had in mind.
“Well, I have built a place for myself here,” Regis continued.
“And ye’re to stay,” reasoned Catti-brie. “We’ll not blame ye, though we’re sure to be missing ye!”
“Yes,” said Regis, “and no. There is room here, and wealth. With the four of you by my side…”
Bruenor halted him with an upraised hand. “A fine offer,” he said, “but me home’s in the North.”
“We’ve armies waiting on our return,” added Catti-brie.
Regis realized the finality of Bruenor’s refusal, and he knew that Wulfgar would certainly follow Catti-brie—back to Tarterus if she so chose. So the halfling turned his sights on Drizzt, who had become an unreadable puzzle to them all in the last few days.
Drizzt sat back and considered the proposition, his hesitancy to deny the offer drawing concerned stares from Bruenor, Wulfgar, and, particularly, Catti-brie. Perhaps life in Calimport would not be so bad, and certainly the drow had the tools to thrive in the shadowy realm Regis planned to operate within. He looked Regis square in the eye.
“No,” he said. He turned at the audible sigh from Catti-brie across the table, and their eyes locked. “I have walked through too many shadows already,” he explained. “A noble quest stands before me, and a noble throne awaits its rightful king.”
Regis relaxed back in his chair and shrugged. He had expected as much. “If you are all so determined to go back to a war, then I would be a sorry friend if I did not aid your quest.”
The others eyed him curiously, never amazed at the surprises the little one could pull.
“To that end,” Regis continued, “one of my agents reported the arrival of an important person—from the tales Bruenor has told me of your journey south—in Calimport this morning.” He snapped his fingers, and a young attendant entered from a side curtain, leading Captain Deudermont.
The captain bowed low to Regis, and lower still to the dear friends he had made on the perilous journey from Waterdeep. “The wind was at our backs,” he explained, “and the Sea Sprite runs swifter than ever. We can depart on the morrow’s dawn; surely the gentle rock of a boat is a fine place to mend weary bones!”
“But the trade,” said Drizzt. “The market is here in Calimport. And the season. You did not plan to leave before spring!”
“I may not be able to get you all the way to Waterdeep,” said Deudermont. “The winds and ice will tell. But you surely will find yourself closer to your goal when you take to land once again.” He looked over at Regis, then back to Drizzt. “For my losses in trade, accommodations have been made.”
Regis tucked his thumbs into his jeweled belt. “I owed you that, at the least!”
“Bah!” snorted Bruenor, an adventurous gleam in his eye. “Ten times more, Rumblebelly, ten times more!”
Drizzt looked out of his room’s single window at the dark streets of Calimport. They seemed quieter this night, hushed in suspicion and intrigue, anticipating the power struggle that would inevitably follow the downfall of a guildmaster as powerful as Pasha Pook.
Drizzt knew that there were other eyes out there, looking back at him, at the guildhouse, waiting for word of the drow elf—waiting for a second chance to battle Drizzt Do’Urden.
The night passed lazily, and Drizzt, unmoving from his window, watched it drift into dawn. Again, Bruenor was the first to his room.
“Ye ready, elf?” the eager dwarf asked, closing the door behind him as he entered.
“Patience, good dwarf,” Drizzt replied. “We cannot leave until the tide is right, and Captain Deudermont assured me that we had the bulk of the morning to wait.”
Bruenor plopped down on the bed. “Better,” he said at length. “Gives me more time to speak with the little one.”
“You fear for Regis,” observed Drizzt.
“Ayuh,” Bruenor admitted. “The little one’s done well by me.” He pointed to the onyx statuette on the dressing table. “And by yerself. Rumblebelly said it himself: There’s wealth to be taken here. Pook’s gone, and it’s to be grab-as-grab-can. And that Entreri’s about—that’s not to me likin’. And more of them ratmen, not to doubt, looking to pay the little one back for their pain. And that wizard! Rumblebelly says he’s got him by the gemstones, if ye get me meaning, but it seems off to me that a wizard’s caught by such a charm.”
“To me, as well,” Drizzt agreed.
“I don’t like him, and I don’t trust him!” Bruenor declared. “Rumblebelly’s got him standing right by his side.”
“Perhaps you and I should pay LaValle a visit this morning,” Drizzt offered, “that we might judge where he stands.”
Bruenor’s knocking technique shifted subtly when they arrived at the wizard’s door, from the gentle tapping he had laid on Drizzt’s door, to a battering-ram crescendo of heavy slugs. LaValle jumped from his bed and rushed to see what was the matter, and who was beating upon his brand new door.
“Morning, wizard,” Bruenor grumbled, pushing into the room as soon as the door cracked open.
“So I guessed,” muttered LaValle, looking to the hearth and beside it to the pile of kindling that was once his old door.