Don't you die! Don't you die on me!" Maimun cried, cradling Deudermont's head. "Damn you! You can't die on me!"
Deudermont opened his eyes - or one, at least, for the other was crusted closed by dried blood.
"I failed," he said.
Maimun hugged him close, shaking his head, choking up.
"I have been...a fool," Deudermont gasped, no strength left in him.
"No!" Maimun insisted. "No. You tried. For the good of the people, you tried."
And something strange came over young Maimun in that moment, a revelation, an epiphany. He was speaking on Deudermont's behalf at that moment, trying to bring some comfort in a devastating moment of ultimate defeat, but as he spoke the words, they resonated within Maimun himself.
For Deudermont had indeed tried, had struck out for the good of those who had for years, in some cases for all their lives, suffered under the horror of Arklem Greeth and the five corrupt high captains. He had tried to be rid of the awful Prisoner's Carnival, to be rid of the pirates and the lawlessness that had left so many corpses in its bloody wake.
Maimun's own accusations against Deudermont, his claims that Deudermont's authoritarian nature was no better for the people he claimed to serve than were the methods of the enemies he tried to defeat, rang hollow to the young pirate in that moment of great pain. He felt unsure of himself, as if the axioms upon which he had built his adult life were neither as resolute nor as morally pure, and as if Deudermont's imposition of order might not be so absolutely bad, as he had believed.
"You tried, Captain," he said. "That is all any of us can ever do."
He ended with a wail, for he realized that the captain had not heard him, that Captain Deudermont, who had been as a father to him in years past, was dead.
Sobbing, Maimun gently stroked the captain's bloody face. Again he thought of their first meeting, of those early, good years together aboard Sea Sprite.
With a growl of defiance, Maimun cradled Deudermont, shoulders and knees, and gently lifted the man into his arms as he stood straight.
He walked out of Suljack's palace, onto Luskan's streets, where the fighting had strangely quieted as news of the captain's demise began to spread.
Head up, eyes straight ahead, Maimun walked to the dock, and he waited patiently, holding Deudermont all the while, as a small boat fromThrice Lucky was rowed furiously to retrieve him.
"Oh, but what a shot ye took on yer crown, and if yer head's hurting as much as me own, then suren yer head's hurtin' more'n ever ye've known! Bwahahaha!"
The dwarf's rhyming words drew Drizzt out of the darkness, however much he wanted to avoid them. He opened his groggy eyes, to find himself sitting in a comfortably-adorned room - a room in the Red Dragon Inn, he realized, a room in which he and Deudermont had shared several meals and exchanged many words.
And there was the dwarf, Athrogate, his adversary, sitting calmly across from him, weapons tucked into their sheaths across his back.
Drizzt couldn't sort it out, but then he remembered Regis. He bolted upright, eyes scanning the room, hands going to his belt.
His blades were not there. He didn't know what to think.
And his confusion only heightened when Jarlaxle Baenre and Kimmuriel Oblodra walked into the room.
It made sense, of course, given Drizzt's failed - psionically blocked - strike against Athrogate, and he placed then the moment when he had felt that strange sensation of his energy being absorbed before, in a fight with Artemis Entreri, a fight overseen by this very pair of drow.
Drizzt fell back, a bitter expression clouding his face. "I should have guessed your handiwork," he grumbled.
"Luskan's fall?" Jarlaxle asked. "But you give me too much credit - or blame, my friend. What you see around you was not my doing."
Drizzt eyed the mercenary with clear skepticism.
"Oh, but you wound me with your doubts!" Jarlaxle added, heaving a great sigh. He calmed quickly and moved to Drizzt, taking a chair with him. He flipped it around and sat on it backward, propping his elbows on the high back and staring Drizzt in the eye.
"We didn't do this," Jarlaxle insisted.
"My fight with the dwarf?"
"We did intervene in that, of course," the drow mercenary admitted. "I couldn't have you destroying so valuable an asset as that one."
"And yes, you surely could have," Kimmuriel muttered, speaking in the language of the drow.
"All of it, I mean," Jarlaxle went on without missing a beat. "This was not our doing, but rather the work of ambitious men."
"The high captains," Drizzt reasoned, though he still didn't believe it.
"And Deudermont," Jarlaxle added. "Had he not surrendered to his own foolish ambition...."
"Where is he?" Drizzt demanded, sitting up tall once more.
Jarlaxle's expression grew grim and Drizzt held his breath.
"Alas, he has fallen," Jarlaxle explained. "And Sea Sprite lays wrecked on rocks in the harbor, though most of her crew have escaped the city aboard another ship."
Drizzt tried not to sink back, but the weight of Deudermont's death fell heavily on his shoulders. He had known the man for so many years, had considered him a dear friend, a good man, a great leader.
"This was not my work," Jarlaxle insisted, forcing Drizzt to look him in the eye. "Nor the work of any of my band. On my word."
"You lurked around its edges," Drizzt accused, and Jarlaxle offered a conciliatory shrug.
"We meant to...indeed, we mean to, make the most of the chaos," Jarlaxle said. "I'll not deny my attempt to profit, as I would have tried had Deudermont triumphed."
"He would have rejected you," Drizzt spat, and again, Jarlaxle shrugged.
"Likely," he conceded. "Then perhaps it's best for me that he didn't win. I didn't create the end, but I will certainly exploit it."
Drizzt glared at him.
"But I'm not without some redeeming qualities," Jarlaxle reminded. "You are alive, after all."
"I would have won the fight outright, had you not intervened," Drizzt reminded him.
"That fight, perhaps, but what of the hundred following?"
Drizzt just continued to glare, unrelenting - until the door opened and Regis, battered, but very much alive, and seeming quite well considering his ordeal, stepped into the room.
Robillard stood at the rail of Thrice Lucky, staring back at the distant skyline of Luskan.
"Was Morik the Rogue who plucked you from the waves," Maimun said to him, walking over to join him.
"Tell him I won't kill him, then," Robillard replied. "Today."
Maimun chuckled, though there remained profound sadness behind his laugh, at the unrelenting sarcasm of the dour wizard. "Do you thinkSea Sprite might be salvaged?" he asked
"Do I care?"
Maimun found himself at a loss to reply to the blunt answer, though he suspected it to be more an expression of anger and grief than anything else.
"Well, if you manage it, I can only hope that you and your crew will be too busy exacting revenge upon Luskan to chase the likes of me across the waves," the young pirate remarked.
Robillard looked at him, finally, and managed a smirk. "Neither fight seems worth a pile of rotting fish," he said, and he and Maimun looked at each other deeply then, sharing the moment of painful reality.
"I miss him, too," Maimun said.
"I know you do, boy," said Robillard.
Maimun put a hand on Robillard's shoulder, then walked away, leaving the wizard to his grief. Robillard had guaranteed him safe passage forThrice Lucky through Waterdeep, and he trusted the wizard's words.
What the young pirate didn't trust at that moment were his own instincts. Deudermont's fall had hit him profoundly, had made him think, for the first time in many years, that the world might be more complicated than his idealistic sensibilities had allowed.
"We could not have asked for a better outcome," Kensidan insisted to the gathering at Ten Oaks. Baram and Taerl exchanged doubtful looks, but Kurth nodded his agreement with the Crow's assessment.
The streets of Luskan were quiet again, for the first time since Deudermont and Lord Brambleberry had put into the docks. The high captains had retreated to their respective corners; only Suljack's former domain remained in disarray.
"The city is ours" Kensidan said.
"Aye, and half of it's dead, and many others have run off," Baram replied.
"Unwanted and unnecessary fodder," said Kensidan. "We who remain, control. None who don't trade for us or fight for us or otherwise work for us belong here. This is no city for families and mundane issues. Nay, my comrades, Luskan is a free port now. A true free port. The only true free port in all the world."
"Can we survive without the institutions of a real city?" Kurth asked. "What foes might come against us, I wonder?"
"Waterdeep? Mirabar?" Taerl asked.
Kensidan grinned. "They will not. I have already spoken to the dwarves and men of Mirabar who live in the Shield District. I explained to them the benefits of our new arrangement, where exotic goods shall pass through Luskan's gates, in and out, without restriction, without question. They expressed confidence that Marchion Elastul would go along, as has his daughter, Arabeth. The other kingdoms of the Silver Marches will not pass over Mirabar to get to us." He looked slyly to Kurth as he added, "They will accept the profits with feigned outrage, if any at all."
Kurth offered an agreeing grin in return.
"And Waterdeep will muster no energy to attack us," Kensidan assured them. "To what end would they? What would be their gain?"
"Revenge for Brambleberry and Deudermont," said Baram.
"The rich lords, who will get richer by trading with us, will not wage war over that," Kensidan replied. "It is over. Arklem Greeth and the Arcane Brotherhood have lost. Lord Brambleberry and Captain Deudermont have lost. Some would say that Luskan herself has lost, and by the old definition of the City of Sails, I could not disagree.
"But the new Luskan is ours, my friends, my comrades," he went on, his ultimately calm demeanor, his absolute composure, lending power to his claims. "Outsiders will call us lawless because we care not for the minor matters of governance. Those who know us well will call us clever because we four will profit beyond anything we ever imagined possible."
Kurth stood up, then, staring at Kensidan hard. But only for a moment, before his face cracked into a wide smile, and he lifted his glass of rum in toast, "To the City of Sails," he said.
The other three joined in the toast.
Beneath the City of Sails, Valindra Shadowmantle sat unblinking, but hardly unthinking. She had felt it, the demise of Arklem Greeth, stabbing at her as profoundly as any dagger ever could. The two were linked, inexorably, in undeath, she as the unbreathing child of the master lich, and so his fall had stung her.
She at last turned her head to the side, the first movement she'd made in many days. There on a shelf, from within the depths of a hollowed skull, it sparkled - and with more than simple reflection of the enchanted light set in the corners of the decorated chamber.
Nay, that light came from inside the gem, the phylactery. That sparkle was the spark of life, of undeath existence, of Arklem Greeth.
With great effort, her skin and bones crackling at the first real movement in so many days, Valindra stood and walked stiff-legged over to the skull. She rolled it onto its side and reached in to retrieve the phylactery. Lifting it to her eyes, Valindra stared intently, as if trying to discern the tiny form of the lich.
But it appeared as just a gem with an inner sparkle, a magical light.
Valindra knew better. She knew that she held the spirit, the life energy, of Arklem Greeth in her hand.
To be resurrected into undeath, a lich once more, or to be destroyed, utterly and irrevocably?
Valindra Shadowmantle smiled and for just a brief moment, forgot her calamity and considered the possibilities.
He had promised her immortality, and more importantly, he had promised her power.
Perhaps that was all she had left.
She stared at the phylactery, the gemstone prison of her helpless master, feeling and basking in her power.
"It's all there," Jarlaxle insisted to Drizzt on the outskirts of Luskan as evening fell.
Drizzt eyed him for just a moment before slinging the pack over his shoulder.
"If I meant to keep anything, it would have been the cat, certainly," Jarlaxle said, looking over, and leading Drizzt's gaze to Guenhwyvar, who sat contentedly licking her paws. "Perhaps someday you'll realize that I'm not your enemy."
Regis, his face all bruised and bandaged from his fall, snorted at that.
"Well, I didn't mean for you to roll off the roof!" Jarlaxle answered. "But of course, I had to put you to sleep, for your own sake."
"You didn't give me everything back," Regis snarled at him.
Jarlaxle conceded the point with a shrug and a sigh. "Almost everything," he replied. "Enough for you to forgive me my one indulgence - and rest assured that I have replaced it with gems more valuable than anything it would have garnered on the open market."
Regis had no answer.
"Go home," Jarlaxle bade them both. "Go home to King Bruenor and your beloved friends. There is nothing left for you to do here."
"Luskan is dead," Drizzt said.
"To your sensibilities, surely so," Jarlaxle agreed. "Beyond resurrection."
Drizzt stared at the City of Sails for a few moments longer, digesting all that had transpired. Then he turned, draped an arm over his halfling friend, and led Regis away, not looking back.
"We can still save Longsaddle, perhaps," Regis offered, and Drizzt laughed and gave him an appreciative shake.
Jarlaxle watched them go until they were out of sight. Then he reached into his belt pouch to retrieve the one item he had taken from Regis: a small scrimshaw statue the halfling had sculpted into the likeness of Drizzt and Guenhwyvar.
Jarlaxle smiled warmly and tipped his great cap to the east, to Drizzt Do'Urden.
