"You really believe that?"
Turning, Jherek glared at the paladin. "You don't know anything about me."
Glawinn crossed his arms over his chest and drew himself up to his full height. "Such wisdom in one so young, to be knowing all these things that you do."
"You taunt me." Jherek's eyes blazed, but he restrained himself. Glawinn didn't deserve his wrath and he knew it, but that emotion was so ready to be released.
"The opposite," Glawinn disagreed. "I marvel at you."
"This is my decision."
"I've not tried to alter it."
"You asked me if I was sure about doing this."
Glawinn let out a slow breath. "I only thought that someone should. I've known something was bothering you. I waited, thinking you might come to me for help. Or talk to Sabyna about it."
Jherek's throat hurt when he tried to talk, and his eyes burned from the effort it took to keep his words from breaking. "I can't talk to her about it."
"Why?"
"Because it would hurt the friendship I have with her."
"Is it so bad, young warrior?"
Jherek looked past the paladin, making sure none of the sailors were close by. Troge, the first mate, was making his rounds, checking his night crew and the lanterns that hung from Black Champion's yardarms and masts to light her and to mark her for other ships in the water at night.
Closing his fist over the object in his hand, Jherek pulled up his left sleeve, baring the flaming skull tattoo masked in chains. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.
Glawinn only had to glance at it briefly. "It's the mark of Bloody Falkane the pirate, also called the Salt Wolf."
"Aye," Jlierek said bitterly, "and known widely abroad enough that even someone from the Dalelands has heard of him."
"You're not old enough to have been one of his crew."
"No," Jherek agreed. "My fate is worse than that. I'm his son."
Glawinn didn't let any surprise show. He said, "I never knew he had a son."
"It wasn't," Jherek replied, "something he seemed especially proud of." He rolled his sleeve back down. "And what do you think of me now, Sir Glawinn, when you think back on those nights you've spent training me with a sword? Did you ever think you might be training a pirate captain's son who might someday hold that sword and all that skill at your throat?"›
The paladin's eyes narrowed. "That's not something you'd ever do."
Jherek shook his head. "How can you be so sure about that?"
"I know you."
"You don't know me. The tattoo proves that."
"I know you," Glawinn said, "I admit the tattoo is something of a surprise. Tell me about it."
Standing there gripping the railing, his fist tight about all that he was about to abandon, Jherek did. He told the story of his life on Bunyip, and of what little he knew about his father. He spoke of the sea battles he'd seen, the deaths he'd watched, and the tortures he'd seen inflicted.
And he told of the time when he was twelve and his father had first placed a cutlass in his hand and told him he was going to be part of a boarding crew. He'd escaped in the night and somehow made the long swim in to Cape Velen fourteen miles away.
"When I got to Velen I was starving," Jherek said, "but I couldn't even steal food. Instead, I lived on berries and eggs I found down by the beach. I hired myself out first working the docks to move cargo, then any job I could get in Velen. Eventually I got a job with a shipwright. I love working wood, and I've got a talent for it. That's what got me the job of repairing Madame litaar's roof."
He told the paladin of Madame litaar, how she'd taken in an orphan boy who was sleeping in an extra room in the shipwright's building during the months it took to repair her roof.
"Months?" Glawinn asked. "For a roof?"
"It started out as the roof but it moved on to other things. A new fence. A new porch, front and back. New tables and chairs. Madame litaar has a list of projects she always wants done. I'm a good woodworker."
"You must be."
"I lived in her house for years, and she wouldn't have treated me any better if I'd been her own son." As he said that, Jherek was surprised to find that he still believed that.
"Why did you end up in Baldur's Gate?"
Jherek told him of Breezerunner and the Amnians, and how Madame litaar seemed certain that whatever destiny he had lay in Baldur's Gate. "Even Malorrie thought so."
"Malorrie's the man who taught you your skill with the blade?"
"Actually, Malorrie's a phantom," Jherek replied. So he told of how Malorrie had been the first to really find him living on the beaches. He'd broken his leg a short time after arriving in Velen and it had been the phantom that'd taken care of him. He told of the nights they'd spent in the shipwright's building learning all the combat skills the phantom knew.
"You don't know who this Malorrie was when he was living?" Glawinn asked.
"I never asked. It's like that between us. We just accept each other for the way we are. Without trying to change anything." Jherek's voice turned bitter. "You don't get that out of many people."
"I know. So why give up now?"
Jherek glanced at his fist, thinking of the object inside it, what it had meant then and what it had ceased meaning since. "I'm not giving up. I'm acknowledging my inability to control whatever destiny I may have."
"It sounds like quitting to me."
Jherek shook his head and laughed. "Call it what you will. I've had enough."
"Enough of what? Disappointment? Everybody faces disappointment."
"Not disappointment," Jherek answered. "I've been betrayed."
"By whom?"
"I don't know."
Glawinn let him have some time, then asked, "How have you been betrayed?"
"What does 'Live, that you may serve,' mean to you?" the young sailor asked.
"Nothing. Should it?"
"Probably not, but for years I've been wondering what it meant for me."
"Why?"
"Because I've been told that."
In a shaking voice, Jherek told of the voice, how it had said that the first time and he'd been saved by a dolphin. He also told him how the voice had spoken again earlier that day, just before the freak gust of wind had powered them out of capsizing.
"For all my life," he finished, "I've wondered what that's supposed to mean."
"Maybe it's not time," Glawinn replied.
"No," Jherek said in a loud voice. "I'm tired of waiting. Ill tell you what I think now. I think whoever that voice belongs to has been trying to destroy me, to destroy my hope. I've fought it. I lived when I wanted to die. I escaped my father, risking my life against the sea, rather than take up a blade against an innocent man. I starved because I wouldn't steal. I worked because I had to take care of myself and not throw myself on the mercy of others. I've lived, but I've had no life." His voice broke.
Glawinn, thankfully, kept his distance and let Jherek regroup on his own.
The young sailor spoke carefully when he could. "The closest I've ever come to a life was in Velen. In risking my life to save a rich, spoiled girl, I saw all that taken away from me. My reward. No, it should have been 'Live, that you may suffer.' " He shook his head. "I'm done with that, and I'm done with this."
The young sailor opened his hand and revealed the small pair of white clay hands bound at the wrists by a blood-red cord that lay on his palm.