Hark: I've modified this chapter a bit. I'm not sure whether it's better or worse now. I haven't had much time for writing, so no new chapters yet. Maybe more will come when summer (or even proper spring) reaches Finland and all my exams are over. I really need to concentrate on studying now.
Chapter 2: Journeys
The slaves were driven to the road before the sun had risen. They were chained, but as Jeron observed, the chains were unnecessary. What could the slaves have done to them? They were armed and only they knew the way through the desert. They couldn't travel on the normal caravan routes, so they had found their own way, which was unknown to anyone else. If the slaves managed to get free and kill them, they would most likely die in the desert, never finding their way out.
Jeron had sometimes found himself thinking why he did this, but usually he dismissed those kinds of thoughts as useless. He did this because he was good at it and he had been making profit ever since his first year as a slave trader's assistant. Now he was running a successful business himself, and found it strange when some woman he had bought for a night asked him how he could sell people. The woman was selling herself, wasn't she, and what really was the difference between selling one's own body or selling someone else's body. He hadn't liked the woman and had made a mental note not to buy her services again. He hadn't been very upset when he'd find out that she had been killed by another disgruntled customer. Probably he hadn't been any more interested in what she had to say that Jeron had been.
The sun was rising and Jeron looked at the trail of slaves. This was a good group, he was certain he would manage to sell them all. There were eight children, more than usually, and he knew already that they would fetch a good price for all of them. He knew the right kind of customers, who preferred the young over adults. Of course there were a couple of older children, who would be more difficult to sell, but Jeron knew his skills and was confident that he could sell those children, if they survived the desert.
Entreri was lying awake in the bed, not wanting to get up yet. He knew he would have to get up soon, if they were going to leave with the group of merchants, but they still had time, and he wanted to make the most of it.
Shandara was asleep with her back turned to him. Her brown hair was tied with a red ribbon, she had said that she had woken up too many times when Entreri had pulled her hair in his sleep, and she in turn had woken him. A few locks had escaped and Entreri touched them gently, wondering once again what it was about her that made him feel this way. Why did he feel so happy just to watch her sleep? He couldn't understand it, but with her he had started to see things differently. Like helping the villagers... Before he would have done that only if it served some greater purpose, like finding someone he hunted.
He couldn't help his thoughts moving to a direction they had gone to too many times recently. Regis. Catti-brie. Drizzt Do'Urden. His greatest opponent, his greatest victory. His greatest loss. He wouldn't have beaten Drizzt in a fair fight, he would have died. That would have been the end of it all, and sometimes he thought that maybe that would've been better.
"Don't ever again think like that," Shandara had said when he had talked to her about these thoughts - the first time he had ever confided to anyone about his feelings. "You would have died and I would have never met you. You would have never met me," she had added and kissed his cheek. "Think how sad it would've been for you."
"I wouldn't have known," he had pointed out to her. "I would've been dead." She had grinned and told him not to spoil everything with being too realistic. Then they had stopped talking and...
Entreri decided not to follow that particular memory any further. It wasn't the right time for it. The sun would rise soon, he would have to wake her up and they would have to leave.
"I hate it when you do that," Shandaa muttered. "Lay awake and stare at me," she continued, turning to look at him, although her eyes appeared to be more closed than open. She blinked and then turned the blinking into a wink. "What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing much," Entreri replied, unsure whether he could find the right words for the feelings he had.
"Well, then we should get up," Shandara said and smiled. "You can tell me when you come up with the right words, alright?"
Diana tried to keep up with the rest, but she was short for her age - she was pretty certain she was already twelve - and her short legs couldn't keep up with the rest of the slaves. There was a boy of his age, but he was in the group with the men, and the rest of the children were younger than her and had been put into the wagon. She had learned that children were precious, so the slavers took better care of them. But she was already older, and not as pretty as the younger girls, so Jeron wasn't that worried about her. And so she had been ordered to walk.
"Try not to fall over, dearie," a woman walking in front of her said. "If you fall, it's hard to get up, and then you fall again, and... How old are you?"
"Why?" Diana asked, realizing for the first time that her mouth was dry, her voice was no stronger than a whisper.
"I had a little girl," the woman said, turning to look in front of her again. "She would be ten now. Maybe she is ten now, for all I know. They took her away. Sold her."
"Who are we going to be sold to?" Diana asked, staring at her feet. The woman hadn't either heard her question or had fallen back to her thoughts, and Diana concentrated again to counting her steps. She had got as far as over two hundred the last time, before she had faltered, and she could do better now. All she had to do was to concentrate. Concentrating on footsteps was so much better than concentrating on the future and what would happen after the footsteps had taken her, taken all of them, to their destination.
"A nice day," Shandara said, mounting a brown mare called Merri that they had bought two weeks before. She liked the horse, it was calm enough for her limited riding skills. Entreri's horse was a grey mare, Pippin, which to Shandara's mild annoyance looked much.. she searched for a word in her limited horse-related vocabulary and settled for 'better'. More horse-like, perhaps. More like she had thought that a horse should look like, while her own horse looked like it was closer to being a pony. Pony, horse... It really didn't matter to her, as long as the horse she was riding didn't attempt to throw her of its back.
"Is it?" Entreri asked and Shandara grinned. "I'm not sure, but it's just something you should say when you're embarking on a journey. At least in some of the books I've read," she added.
"I'll take your word for it," Entreri said, looking around. It actually was quite a nice day, although a couple of clouds in the horizon suggested that rain might become an issue at some point. But now the day was nice and Shandara was wearing a bright green cloak that made her eyes seem greener than normally. She had pulled her hair back with a black ribbon and looked happier than in a long time.
"You're sure you want to leave?" Entreri asked, although he already knew the answer.
"Well, I've packed my things, and there's this horse, and I really have nothing better to do right now, so..." Shandara said and then grinned. "Take a guess."
"I'm guessing that means 'yes'," Entreri said. "Let's go then. The merchants will be waiting for us outside the town."
In Calimport Dwahvel Tiggerwillies was listening to a report from one of her scouts with growing amount of worry.
"So they just gathered a lot of information about Entreri?" she confirmed. "But why?"
"I don't know," Juuso, the scout, answered. "I've asked everywhere, but they have no connection to him, they have no reason to hate him and if they have read all the information, they must know by now that Entreri won't probably return to work here. And still... They are using vast amounts of money to find him."
"Find out more," Dwahvel said after some consideration. "If there's any link, no matter how insignificant, you must find it out. And make sure I get all the reports they do."
"I'm on it," Juuso said and left the room. Dwahvel took one of the papers on the table and read the text. Why this interest to Artemis Entreri? She felt that she needed to find it out, that she owed that much to her friend. And, she had to admit to herself, she was quite curious about Entreri's current companion. Entreri had teamed up with people before, she knew this, usually in order to achieve something he wanted, and left those companions soon after achieving his goal. Sometimes he left his companions dead. To Dwahvel he had seemed like a natural loner. But this woman was not a fighter, was not a mage, practically she was no one. And still... Dwahvel was curious. A woman who could charm someone like Entreri must be something special. And she would soon learn what. Unfortunately, so would those who were wasting no efforts in finding Entreri and his companion.
Dwahvel hoped the man had found some time to talk with her when he had visited Calimport, but he had been in a hurry to return to Athkatla. Return to this woman? Dwahvel tried to remember whether Entreri had mentioned her name. He hadn't said anything about her. That was typical of Entreri, keeping quiet about his business. But this seemed to fall more under the heading of pleasure, Dwahvel thought and smiled. She liked Entreri, and had been quite surprised when she had realized that they had become friends. The man was not the heartless murderer everybody said he was, and this... development, it could be called, proved that. But she had been unsure of how much the man could actually change, and she had been quite annoyed to realize she might never find that out, since it was unlikely for Entreri to return to Calimport. But he had visited there already once, and with things being as they were, Dwahvel had the feeling they would meet yet again. She knew that it was bad for business to get too involved into personal matters, but Entreri could be one of those few exceptions that had to be made.
Dwahvel leafed through the papers until something caught her eye. Well, here was something to ease her curiosity. A name and a place. She send for some other reports and finally found it. An unusual connection. She called in one of their mages and asked her to contact Aran Linvail of the Shadow Thieves at once.