gloved hand.
'He means you need to stop looking out that window so much,' the pirate captain stated. 'You're going to draw attention.' Azla was a half-elf, bearing the characteristic pointed ears and slender build of her elf parent. Her features were beautiful and dusky, made even darker by a dozen years and more in the sun and wind. Silky black hair hung just to her shoulders, cut straight across. She wore a green blouse so dark it was almost black, and leather breeches dyed dark blue.
'The thing that worries me,' Sabyna said, 'is that he doesn't seem to be himself.'
'No,' the paladin said, 'our young warrior is torn.'
'By what?' Sabyna asked.
She risked another glance at the Bare Bosom, watching a sailor stride drunkenly from the establishment in the company of a serving wench doing her best to prop him up. The girl's fingers found the man's coin purse.
'There are things I feel a man should be willing to discuss on his own without having others discuss them for him,' Glawinn answered.
'He could get killed over there tonight,' Azla warned coldly.
'True enough,' Glawinn replied, 'but sometimes you have to rely on faith.'
Azla snorted. 'Faith isn't as certain as cold steel.'
'It is for some.' Glawinn's words were soft, but strong.
'Faith has never done well by me,' Azla went on. A trace of bitterness threaded through her words.
Sabyna knew the captain hadn't always been a pirate. Azla had grown up in the Dalelands, but events and her own guilt forced her down to the Sea of Fallen Stars and into a pirate's life. Glawinn had no way of knowing that.
'The problem could be that you're not supposed to expect faith to do well by you,' the paladin said. 'You're supposed to do well by your faith.'
'I am a mage,' Sabyna said. 'My faith is strong enough, but I'm no cleric to be led around by looking at a chicken's entrails to figure out what my chosen god wants me to do. I believe in knowledge. Our gods choose what knowledge to put in our paths, but it's up to us to learn it and choose what to do with it.'
'My faith is not that way,' Glawinn said. 'I choose to let Lathander set me upon a path, trusting in the Morninglord that I will know what to do when the time comes.'
'More men have died from conflicting beliefs than over gold and silver,' Azla said. 'Trusting a god is a very dangerous thing.'
'On that issue, Captain,' Glawinn said gravely, 'I fear we'll have to disagree.'
Sabyna pulled her cloak more tightly around her against the night's chill. More than anything she wanted to be up and around, doing something but not knowing what. 'He's changed so much since I first met him,' she whispered.
'How so?' Glawinn asked.
Across the street, a handful of cargo handlers deep in conversation walked across the uneven boardwalk in front of the Bare Bosom. One of them carried a shielded candle hanging from a crooked stick that barely beat back the night.
'When he first came aboard Breezerunner, there was a quiet desperation in him,' Sabyna said. 'I didn't understand that, now I understand his feelings even less after seeing how he handled himself aboard Breezerunner. He stood up against Vurgrom and his pirate crew in the middle of a maelstrom and never faltered. Now he seems…'
'Afraid?' A faint smile twisted Glawinn's lips. 'He's a warrior, lady.'
'Then why should he be afraid?'
'So that he might live, of course.' Glawinn sipped his drink. 'Warriors live with fear as they might a lover. They never forget that fear, else they step closer to Cyric's cold embrace.'
The ship's mage wrapped her arms even tighter around herself, losing the battle against the night's chill creeping in against the banked coals filling the hostel's fireplace.
'Then where does that leave him?' she asked.
'He's dangerous,' Azla commented. 'He's dangerous to himself and to us.'
'I don't think that's entirely true,' Glawinn said.
The pirate captain shook her head. 'I don't mean to disparage your beliefs, Sir Glawinn, but men believe what they want to believe. Sometimes purely because they have nothing else to believe in.'
'And to live a life with nothing to believe in?' The paladin looked directly at her and asked, 'What kind of life is that?'
Azla broke the eye contact, put on a deprecating smile, and said, 'A very profitable one. If you're a pirate.'
'Gold and silver assuages a wounded heart?'
Azla's eyes turned cold and hard. 'You step over lines here, paladin.'
'Forgive me, lady,' Glawinn replied, though he showed no remorse, 'I do indeed.'
Sabyna watched the exchange in silence. She didn't know how Glawinn knew so much about the pirate captain, but she was aware how close he was to the truth. Azla's own life was filled with tragedy. The ship's mage reached for the hot tea she'd ordered and sipped it only to find that it was now cold.
'The thing that most concerns me is that your young friend didn't come here to take that pearl disk back from Vurgrom,' Azla said.
'Then what?' Sabyna asked.
Azla kept her voice quiet and still. 'I think it's very possible that your young friend came here to die as nobly as he can.'
'I can't kill him,' Jherek said. He stood in the alley, his body pressed up against the man, and silently damned all the events and the false pride that led to the point of holding a man's life at the edge of his knife.
'Then let me.' Talif stepped forward and lifted the short sword.
The man in Jherek's grip tensed, on the verge of fleeing and taking his chances.
Jherek swung his empty hand, balling it into a fist and rolling his shoulder to get most of his weight behind the blow. His fist caught the pirate on the point of his chin and dropped him.
Talif knelt and grabbed the man by the hair. He swung his short sword toward the man's exposed throat.
Jherek kicked Talif in the chest, knocking him back across the hard-packed earth of the alley. Talif rolled instantly, coming up from the ground like a trained acrobat. His triangular face was a mask of rage. The short sword came around in a glittering arc.
The young sailor stepped in close and brought up his left arm. His open hand smacked into Talif's wrist and blocked the sword strike. Talif grunted in pain and anger. Before the mate could recover, Jherek slipped his free arm under the man's outstretched one and flipped him over his shoulder.
Carried by his own weight and momentum, pulled by Jherek's strength, Talif landed hard on the ground on his back. Murderous rage gleamed in his black eyes. 'You're a fool,' Talif snarled.
'That remains to be seen,' Jherek said, 'but I do know I am no murderer.'
Talif struggled a moment to get free but couldn't.
'You knocked that man out, boy, but I've seen men knocked cold like that before. Sometimes they come around in just minutes, none the worse for it. He could still come into the tavern after us and let them all know we're among them.'
'He doesn't know who we are,' Jherek said quietly.
'By Leira's razor kiss, you fool, that man has seen me. He'll know I sail with Cap'n Azla.'
'So you say.' Jherek shook his head. 'Maybe that's just your pride talking. We'll take our chances.'
Talif cursed him soundly, using invective that would have shamed even most sailors.
Jherek maintained his grip even though Talif sought to shake out of it. 'You think me a fool for letting this man live, but keep in mind that should a man attack me willingly with a sword in his fist, I'll not be so generous.'
'A man doesn't always see the sword that cleaves him, boy,' Talif threatened.
Jherek nodded. 'But Glawinn would know.' Azla's pirates walked lightly around the paladin.
