obviously still Dahlia, the one and only Dahlia. Anyone who had ever met Dahlia, Drizzt knew, would not be fooled by such cosmetic changes, nor would anyone who had ever met Dahlia likely forget her.
“Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” Dahlia asked with a fake pout. “I am wounded.” She stopped abruptly and offered Drizzt a warm smile. “Don’t you like my disguise?”
There was a softness to her now that seemed almost magical. Her hair was more cute than seductive, and her face carried a soft glow and an innocence without the magical woad. Perhaps it was the warm afternoon light, the sun sending a warm glowing line across the waters off the Sword Coast. In that glow, Dahlia seemed unblemished, gentle and warm, through and through. It took all of Drizzt’s willpower to refrain from kissing her.
“You invite trouble,” he heard himself say.
“I’m disguised to avoid exactly that.”
Drizzt shook his head with every word. “You’re hardly disguised, and were not at all when we came through Luskan’s gate. If you truly wished to avoid trouble, you would’ve changed your appearance much more profoundly back out there, in the farmlands.”
“Am I to spend all of my days in hiding, then?”
“Has Dahlia ever spent a single day in hiding?” Drizzt asked lightheartedly.
Dahlia winced, and Drizzt recognized that he’d hit on some painful memory, yet another unknown facet of this elf.
“Come,” she said, and she walked away swiftly.
When Drizzt caught up to her, he found her expression very tight and closed, and so he said no more.
From a far corner of the tavern, two assassins watched the couple depart, one rolling a dagger eagerly in his grimy hands under cover of the table.
“Are ye sure it’s her then?” asked a skinny fellow with a face full of black stubble and one eye no more than a dull white orb.
“Aye, Boofie, I saw her come through the gate, I did,” answered the dagger-roller, Tolston Rethnor, the same guard who had watched Dahlia enter Luskan’s gate earlier in the day.
“Hartouchen’s to be paying well for she what killed his father,” said Boofie McLaddin, referring to the new high captain of Ship Rethnor, the heir of Borlann the Crow. “But so’s his anger to be great if we’re starting a fight with them damned drow elves over a mistake.”
“It’s her, I tell ye,” Tolston insisted. “She’s even got that staff. I’m not to forget Borlann’s lady friend-none who seen Dahlia forget Dahlia!”
“Half the reward, ye say?”
“Aye.”
“Well I’m wanting half o’ th’ other half, too.” When Tolston balked, Boofie went on, “Ye thinking just the two of us to fight them then? After what ye been telling me o’ Dahlia all the way here? She killed yer uncle to death, hey? And he was the boss, and got there by killing all them what stood afore him, hey? I’m to bring in me boys, a whole bunch and a wizard besides. They’ll be wanting their cut.”
“They’ll be buying Hartouchen’s gratitude,” said Tolston.
“That and a finger o’ silver’ll get me a meal,” Boofie replied. “And I ain’t thinking much o’ the gratitude when me belly’s growling. Half and half o’ th’ other half, or go and kill ’em yerself, Tolston Rethnor, and then hope yer bravery puts ye in line for Hartouchen’s seat. More likely, though, I’m thinking yer foolishness will just get yer ripped body buried in the family crypt, and a few might call ye brave, but most’ll name ye as stupid.”
“Half and half o’ th’ other half,” Tolston agreed. “But get yer crew quick afore others figure out that Dahlia’s back in Luskan.”
Upon the tavern’s staircase, not far from Tolston and Boofie, a small girl-by all appearances a human child- played with a wooden doll and only glanced up as Drizzt and Dahlia left the tavern.
Then she went back to talking to her doll, though her words were aimed more directly at the wizard she knew to be watching her in his crystal ball, and with the high captain of Ship Rethnor beside him, most likely.
Dahlia moved with purpose and kept up her pace across the city. Sometime later, she turned down a side street, her swift strides soon bringing them to an unremarkable two-story building.
“Jarlaxle and Athrogate made their Luskan home on the second floor,” she explained. “There’s a stair behind the building and a separate entrance there.”
She started around the building, but Drizzt hesitated.
“Perhaps we should find the landowner to inquire-”
“If you had rented a house to the likes of Jarlaxle and he was late in returning, would you be quick to throw wide its doors and rent it out to another?” Dahlia interrupted.
It was a good point, Drizzt had to admit, and so he shrugged and followed the elf around the back and up the wooden staircase to a porch and the back door. Dahlia fumbled with it for a bit, obviously seeking any traps the clever drow mercenary might have left in place. Finding nothing, she stepped back and motioned to Drizzt.
“Because there might well be magical traps that you could not detect,” he reasoned, and she didn’t disavow him of his line of thinking.
Drizzt moved up and gripped the doorknob, then gave a twist-it wasn’t locked-and he pushed it open. Daylight spilled into the small apartment, a place of sparse furnishings and even fewer supplies.
“No one has been in here for some time,” Drizzt said, glancing around. There was a plate on the table, but it was covered in dust.
“Not since Jarlaxle and Athrogate fell in Gauntlgrym,” Dahlia replied. “Could we have expected any differently?”
Drizzt’s dark face grew very tight.
“You thought they might somehow have escaped,” Dahlia remarked.
“Jarlaxle is known for such things.”
“You hoped they had escaped.”
“Is that an accusation? What a sorry friend I would be…”
“A friend?” Dahlia asked, and she didn’t hide her amusement in the least. “Drizzt Do’Urden a friend to Jarlaxle? So at last you admit it! How does that comport with those tenets that guide your life?”
“I’ve shared many adventures with Jarlaxle,” Drizzt replied. “And he has proven to be… surprising.”
“At the least,” Dahlia said, still grinning. “But that’s all in the past now. He’s dead, as we saw.”
“I never argued otherwise.”
“Not with me,” Dahlia replied.
“Not with anyone.”
“Not with Drizzt?” She paused and let that hang in the air for a few moments, clearly enjoying Drizzt’s obvious consternation. “You knew we wouldn’t find him, despite your hopes to the contrary. You owed your friend that much, at least. But take heart, for coming here has not been totally in vain.” She pointed to the plate on the table. “We know now that Bregan D’aerthe’s power in Luskan has waned greatly, for surely they would’ve come here to investigate their missing associate.”
“We don’t know that they haven’t come here. They are excellent at their craft-they might be watching us at this very-”
He stopped and cocked an ear.
Dahlia heard it, too, a slight creak like a footfall on an old wooden stair. She slipped silently toward the door. Drizzt pulled an object from his belt pouch and whispered something she couldn’t hear. She crouched at the side of the door and cracked it open then fell back fast.
A spinning hammer hit the door with great force and knocked it open wide.
Dahlia broke her staff into flails and moved to exit, thinking to strike before the next missile could come her way, but she fell back again as something flew at her from behind. Six hundred pounds of angry panther soared past and out the door. She didn’t yell out, but her eyes opened wide indeed.
But not as wide as the eyes of the two pirates who had the misfortune of leaping to block the doorway at that very moment.
Guenhwyvar sent them flying with hardly a break in her momentum. She skidded out onto the porch, her claws digging in deeply to slow her slide.
Dahlia went out right behind her. She broke fast to the left, away from the stairs, and straight at one of the
