in by. It was the only door in the room.
His glance made Hasmur Ghaunt lean forward in almost breathless haste to gabble, 'I barred the door like you said! And set the alarm-cord, too!'
Dyre nodded his thanks and planted his hairy, battered hands on the table. 'Yestermorn,' he began, 'a man of mine was injured falling off a scaffold in Redcloak Lane.'
His guests winced, frowned, and made sympathetic sounds. The days of hushing up deaths and maimings of workers were gone or going fast. A hurt man meant coin paid out for no work, and hard questions in the guildhall-or harder questions from the Watch.
'Boards broke and spilled him off works that had got all twisted the night before and near-fallen into Redcloak Lane.'
'Wasn't that Marlus and his crew?' Lhamphur asked disbelievingly. 'I thought he was one of the best-'
'He is. A pack of noble pups at play set their swords on him and his hammer-hands, and started fires, too! One scaffold came right down, but this second one they hauled back into place and braced, and I hardly blame them. But for the whim and grace of Tymora, and the Watch happening along in a timely manner for once, the whole place would have burned!'
There were gasps and whistles at that, and more than one man reached for a decanter.
'As you know,' Dyre went on, his voice on the edge of a snarl, 'this is hardly our first brush with Waterdhavian nobility.'
Lhamphur pursed his lips. 'They walked free?'
'They did. The Watch gave them cold words but let them go. Utterly unpunished. One of them made noises about restitution, and that was the end of it.'
Whaelshod shook his head. 'They've got to be stopped,' he growled, and heads nodded around the room.
Dyre's was one of them, as the grim beginnings of a smile crept onto his face. Two seasons back, some idiot nobles had taken it into their heads that racing each other on their most wild-spirited horses from the Court of the White Bull to the South Gate was a daringly sporting thing to do. The fastest way out of the Court was down Salabar Street, and Whaelshod's Wagons stood on west-front Salabar. Everyone knew Jarago Whaelshod had lost beasts and harness and had one man injured.
'I don't know how prudent 'twould be to complain about it, though,' Lhamphur said slowly, twirling his jack in his hands.
Dyre suppressed a knowing smile. Nobles bought the elaborate and expensive gates crafted by Master Smith Karrak Lhamphur, and nobles paid the highest coin for copies of keys made with utter discretion, which half the city knew to be Lhamphur's special skill and greatest source of income.
Instead of sneering, Dyre nodded. 'Right you are, Karrak. We've complained before and gotten nowhere. I'm through complaining.'
All of his guests looked up sharply. This time, Varandros Dyre did smile.
'Something must be done,' he told them. 'And mark me: this time, something will be done.'
The proprietor of Ghaunt Thatching, normally Dyre's smiling and enthusiastically tail-wagging follower, frowned at his friend a little doubtfully. 'Uhmm… Var? What d'you mean?'
Varandros Dyre sat back, regarded his guests over the large and battered ruin of his nose, drew in a deep breath, and began.
'Waterdeep's a city of coins, hard work, and the rise and fall of trade. How is it that we who sweat and strain for every last nib and shard suffer the antics of idle young men who ruin property and harm hard workers and cost us all coin?'
His voice had sharpened to match the fire in his eyes. Dyre drew himself up as firmly as Mount Waterdeep and answered himself. 'Because we know speaking up or seeking justice is a waste of time and marks us as men to be hurt, ruined, or driven out of the city. Why? Because, deep down, we know the Masked Lords, who purportedly rule us all in fairness and supposedly number among their ranks many dungsweepers and humble crafters from Trades Ward garrets as well as master merchants and the occasional noble, are in truth all nobles or powerful mages! The Lords keep the city safe and firm-ruled and orderly not for the common weal but to guard the power they have-and they suffer none to rise and challenge it! The tales of humble folk wearing the Masks of Lordship are mere fancies intended to accomplish just one thing: to keep any Waterdhavian not nobly born from rising up against the rule of the Lords!'
He leaned forward again, eyes blazing. 'Now, I've no more interest in ruling Waterdeep than the rest of you, but I have had it up to here-' He slashed one hand across his throat, '-with standing idly by, swallowing my lost coins and trying to smile into the foolish young faces of those who openly despise and ridicule us because of the names they happen to have been born with, while this goes on and on, and we await a real disaster! City blocks set aflame, scaffoldings falling with scores of good men on them… as our taxes rise year by year, those who're driven beyond prudent silence are savagely put down-'
There were grim nods across the room, as everyone remembered Thalamandar Master-of-Baldrics, and the body of Lhendrar the weaver being fished out of the harbor, and…
'-and the nobles grow more and more reckless and steeped in their depravities, as they jeer at us from behind the wall of faceless Lords! How many of them wear the Masks of Lords? How many?'
'True,' Imdrael muttered, 'all true, and said before, by many of us, even without…' He held up his jack in salute, to indicate the fine wine it held.
'True,' Lhamphur echoed, 'and to my mind almost all the Lords are probably nobles, yet pointing fingers at rot and corruption is one thing, and doing something about it is another. The doing is what can get us all killed.'
'So what,' Jaeger Whaelshod asked heavily, as if Lhamphur's words had been an actor's cue, 'd'you want of us, Var?'
The Shark looked across his gleaming desk at them, juggling something in his large-fingered hands. Almost lazily, he tossed that something into the air.
It flashed back the light of the candle-lamps as it came. The merchants holding their jacks of wine, men of Waterdeep all, drew sharply back from what they saw in an instant was battle-steel, and let it bite deep into the table not far in front of Karrak Lhamphur and stand there quivering.
The weapon was a slender, finely made dagger with a curiously shaped pommel: a speartip topped by a star, bearing an ornate monogram on the sides of the spear blade.
'M… K,' Lhamphur deciphered it frowningly. 'Kothont.'
'Dropped by one of them, in his haste to carve up Marlus,' Dyre told them. 'They don't hesitate to draw steel on us.'
The proprietor of Ghaunt Thatching had gone as pale as the linens his sisters were wont to hang across his balcony on Simples Street. Cradling his jack in trembling hands, he asked faintly, 'But what do you want us to do, Var? Surely not-not-' He nodded at the dagger wordlessly, his meaning clear enough: take up arms.
Dyre smiled and shook his head. 'Nothing so drastic. I want us to work together, friends, to make a new day dawn over Waterdeep. Let us be that 'New Day.' Not to butcher Lords, nor cause unrest in the streets, for how does that help hard-working merchants make coin? No, I've something simpler and fairer in mind: to make the folk of the streets demand, more and more loudly, until 'tis the Lords who'll have to agree to the changes we seek or draw their blades and show us all their true villainy.'
Lhamphur looked very much like a man who had impatient oaths dancing ready on his tongue, but asked only, 'What changes, Var?'
'I want the Masks to come off. Lords should vote openly, in front of anyone who wants to walk in off the street and watch, and I want the Lords to stand for election just like guildmasters-say, every ten summers.'
Eyes narrowed, then brightened again.
'That's all?'
'But then everyone would know how they voted!'
'Exactly. Lords who rule unfairly, to fill their own purses, or to reward themselves and their rich noble friends, would have to answer to honest men.'
Jarago Whaelshod set down his jack very carefully and announced, 'That, friend Dyre, is a New Day I'll work to bring about.'
'Aye! Me, too!'
' Yes!' Ghaunt shouted, coming to his feet for an instant before realizing how loudly he'd bellowed and freezing
