The man gasped for breath.

“Ye hear me?” the dwarf asked, giving him a rough shake, and though it was with just one hand, the man couldn’t have any more resisted it than he could the pull of a strong horse.

He nodded stupidly and the dwarf flung him down to the ground. “Crawl out o’ here, boy. And if ye’re meaning to crawl back, then do it with a pledge to Ship Rethnor.”

The man replied, “Yes, yes, yes, yes…” over and over again as the dwarf calmly walked out of the alleyway, tucking his twin morningstars diagonally into their respective sheaths on his back as he went, and seeming as if nothing at all had just happened.

“You don’t have to enjoy it so much,” Kensidan said to the dwarf a short while later.

“Then pay me more.”

Kensidan gave a little laugh. “I told you not to kill anyone.”

“And I telled yerself that if they’re drawing steel, I’m drawing blood,” the dwarf replied.

Kensidan continued to chuckle and waved his hand in concession.

“They’re getting’ desperate,” the dwarf said. “Not enough food in most quarters for Baram and Taerl.”

“Good. I wonder how fondly they look upon Captain Deudermont now?”

“Governor, ye mean.”

Kensidan rolled his eyes.

“Yer friend Suljack’s getting more than them other two,” said the dwarf. “If ye was to send him a bit o’ ours on top o’ what he’s getting from Deudermont, he might be climbing up behind yerself and Kurth.”

“Very astute,” Kensidan congratulated.

“Been playing politics since afore yer daddy’s daddy found his first breath,” the dwarf replied.

“Then I would think you smart enough to understand that it’s not in my interest to prop Suljack to new and greater heights.”

The dwarf looked at Kensidan curiously for just a moment, then nodded. “Ye’re making him Deudermont’s stooge.”

Kensidan nodded.

“But he’s to take it to heart,” the dwarf warned.

“My father has spent years protecting him, often from himself,” said Kensidan. “It’s past time for Suljack to prove he’s worthy of our efforts. If he can’t understand his true role beside Deudermont, then he’s beyond my aid.”

“Ye could tell him.”

“And I would likely be telling Baram and Taerl. I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

“How hard’re ye meaning to press them?” the dwarf asked. “Deudermont’s still formidable, and if they’re throwing in with him…”

“Baram hates Deudermont to his soul,” Kensidan assured the dwarf. “I count on you to gauge the level of discontent on the streets. We want to steal some of their men, but only enough to make sure that those two will understand their place when the arrows start flying. It’s not in my interest to weaken them to anarchy, or to chase them to Deudermont’s side for fear of their lives.”

The dwarf nodded.

“And no more killing,” Kensidan said. “Run the intruders out, show them a way to more and better food. Break a few noses. But no more killing.”

The dwarf put his hands on his hips, thoroughly flustered by the painful command.

“You will have all the fighting you desire and more when Deudermont makes his move,” Kensidan promised.

“Ain’t no more fightin’ than I’m desiring.”

“The spring, early on,” Kensidan replied. “We keep Luskan alive through the winter, but just barely. When the ships and the caravans don’t arrive in the early spring, the city will disintegrate around the good capt—governor. His promises will ring as hollow as the bellies of his minions. He will be seen not as savior, but as a fraud, a flame without heat on a cold winter’s eve.”

And so it went through Luskan’s long winter night. Supplies reached out from Ship Rethnor to Closeguard Island and Kurth, to Suljack and even a bit to Deudermont’s new palace, fashioned from the former Red Dragon Inn, north of the river. From Deudermont, what little he had to spare, supplies went out to the two high captains in dire need, though never enough, of course, and to the Mirabarrans holed up in the Shield. And as the winter deepened, Suljack, prodded by Kensidan, came to spend more and more time by Deudermont’s side.

The many ships riding out the winter in port got their food from Kurth, as Kensidan ceded to him control of the quay.

The coldest months passed, and were not kind to battered Luskan, and the people looked with weary eyes and grumbling bellies to the lengthening days, too weary and too hungry to truly hope for reprieve.

“I won’t do it,” Maimun said, and Kurth’s eyes widened with surprise.

“A dozen ships, heavily laden and hardly guarded,” the high captain argued. “Could a pirate ask for more?”

“Luskan needs them,” said Maimun. “Your people fared well throughout the winter, but the folk on the mainland….”

“Your crew ate well.”

Maimun sighed, for indeed Kurth had been kind to the men and women of Thrice Lucky.

“You mean to drive Deudermont from power,” the perceptive young pirate captain said. “Luskan looks to the sea and to the south, praying for food, and grain to replant the fields. There is not enough livestock in the city to support a tenth of the people living here, though only half of what Luskan once was remains.”

“Luskan is not a farming community.”

“What, then?” Maimun asked, but he knew the answer well enough.

Kurth and Kensidan wanted a free port, a place of trade where no questions would ever be asked, where pirates could put in and answer only to other pirates, where highwaymen could fence jewels and hide kidnap victims until the ransom arrived. Something had happened over the winter, Maimun knew, some subtle shift. Before the onset of the northern winds, the two plotting high captains had been far more cautious in their approach. In their apparent plan, Deudermont would rule Luskan and they would find ways around him.

Now they seemed to want the town for their own, in full.

“I won’t do it,” the young pirate captain said again. “I cannot so punish Luskan, whatever the expected outcome.”

Kurth looked at him hard, and for a moment, Maimun expected that he would have to fight his way out of the tower.

“You are far too full of presumptions and assumptions,” Kurth said to him. “Deudermont has his Luskan, and it serves us well to keep him here.”

Maimun knew the lie for what it was, but he didn’t let on, of course.

“The food will arrive from Waterdeep’s fleet, but it will come through Closeguard and not through Deudermont’s palace,” Kurth explained. “And the ground caravans belong to Kensidan, again not to Deudermont. The people of Luskan will be grateful. Deudermont will be grateful, if we’re clever. I had thought you to be clever.”

Maimun had no answer to the high captain’s scenario. Maimun knew Deudermont as well as any who were not currently crewing Sea Sprite,and he doubted the captain would ever be so foolish as to think Kurth and Kensidan the saviors of Luskan. Stealing for the reward was the oldest and simplest of pirate tricks, after all.

“I offered Thrice Lucky the flagship role as a tribute,” Kurth said. “An offer, not an order.”

“Then I politely refuse.”

Kurth nodded slowly and Maimun’s hand slid down to his belted sword, with all expectation that he was about to be killed.

But the blow never came, and the young pirate captain left Closeguard Island a short while later, making all haste back to his ship.

Back in Kurth’s chamber, a globe of darkness appeared in a far corner, signaling that the high captain was not alone.

“He would have been a big help,” Kurth explained. “Thrice Lucky is swift enough to get inside the firing line of Waterdeep’s fleet.”

“The defeat of the Waterdhavian flotilla is well in hand,” the voice from the darkness assured him. “For the right price, of course.”

Kurth gave a sigh and rubbed his hand over his sharp features, considering the cost against the potential gain. He considered many times in those moments that Kensidan would certainly handle the land caravan, that Kensidan was walking ever more boldly and more powerfully in no small part because of the food those strangers in the darkness were providing.