'Ah… Master Dyre?'
Varandros Dyre glanced up sharply. 'I'm starting to dread news unlooked-for,' he growled, letting fall a sheaf of building plans onto his littered desk. 'What is it this time?'
The man at his office door was a senior framer who'd been with Dyre's Fine Walls and Dwellings from the early days. A calm, capable worker, Jaerovan was first hand of his own crew for nigh a decade and well worthy of that trust, a man of prudence and few words. It took much to bring any expression at all onto Jaerovan's old boot- leather face, a face that, just now, looked very grim.
Varandros lifted an eyebrow. 'Well? Out with it, man!'
'Another building's down. One of ours.'
Dyre's mouth dropped open.
'On Redcloak Lane,' Jaerovan added, before the guildmaster could snap the inevitable question. 'The one Marlus was-'
Varandros Dyre went as white as winter snow. His fist crashed down onto his desk so hard that the massive piece of furniture shook, with just a hint of splintering lacing the thunderous boom of his blow.
Then Dyre was moving, snatching up the swordcane Jaerovan had only seen him carry twice before and striding for the door like a storm wind. The framer hastily got out of the way.
As he strode past, Dyre snapped, 'Have your men spread word to all my workers: Be sharp of eye and fleet of foot, for this may not be the last message the Lords of Waterdeep send this day!'
Jaerovan gaped at the Shark's swiftly departing back. 'The Lords-?'
'This is a blade meant for my guts,' Varandros Dyre muttered to himself as he hastened down the street, leaving his doors standing wide open in his wake and servants scuttling to close them.
'They'll have my house down next! My lasses to an inn… my oddcoin chest removed to safety… then muster the New Day. And buy a good sword!'
A dozen dockworkers, stripped to the waist and deeply browned by long labors under the suns of many summers, tossed bales of Moonshae linen and wool into waiting carts, swinging the heavy bundles as easily as a street juggler tosses matched balls. With every bale, they sent rumors flying though the air with the same practiced ease.
'Crashed right down into the street, it did! Took old Amphalus and his oxcart, beasts and all, and left 'em bloody paste on the cobbles! They're hawking pieces of what's left in the Redcloak Rest and the taverns all down Gut Alley!'
'Can't Dyre's men lay two blocks together straight? Or is he crooked enough to skimp on stones or deep pilings?'
'Neither, they're saying! 'Tis the Lords, setting their men to work with picks-and conjured gnawing things, too!-to dig out the pilings and bring everything down! For daring to say we should all know who's behind every mask and how they vote! They're going to ruin him!'
'Aye, and crush the rest of us! Stupid dolt, can't he see they wear masks for a reason? The gods don't make enough gold to let us pay the bribes we'd all have to, once everyone knew who every Lord was, to get 'em all to rule our way-and outbid every other jack in Waterdeep, who'd be payin' just as hard to buy votes into fallin' their way! Serves him right, I say!'
'Oh, does it now? What of the rest of us, who happen to be trading inside a building he worked on a dozen summers back or just passing it by on the street below when the Lords decide to work a little justice on him? What did we do to be smashed down alongside him?'
'Grew up in Waterdeep, What! Got on with earning coins like greedy little packrats, an' never looked up to challenge those ruling the roost! So now the Lords hold it their right to go on doing just as they please, an' slapping down anyone who dares to question! We've done it, jacks, all of us! So have we the spine, I wonder, to stand up now an' undo it?'
'How?'
'By standing forth an' dragging down a few men in masks, that's how! Or stringing up Old Lord Fancyboots, the only Lord we all know!'
'I thought he was already dead!'
'So 'tis said, time and again, but have we ever seen a corpse, hey? That strutting paladinspawn has more lives than a troll! My sister Hermienka works the laundry in the Castle, an' she seen him yestermorn, stalking about bigger than life.'
'You've the right of it, Smedge: A corpse is what's needed! If we can't find the Hidden Lords, get the one we know. That ought to lure the rest of 'em out!'
There was an uncomfortable little silence.
'That's… that's lawless talk, that is. You sure you're Waterdeep born?'
'So my mother says, an' I doubt she'd've reared me on Ship Street if she'd been able to claw up coin enough for us to get out the gates an' live anywhere else! So don't be trying to wave my words away as some dark outlander plot 'gainst the Deep!'
'Why talk of stringing up poor Piergeiron's corpse, then, if you love Old Stinkingstreets so much?'
'Use your head, man! If they can take down Varandros Dyre-a guildmaster, mind-while we stand and stare and do naught, what's to stop them coming for you next? Or you-or you? Or me? When the walking fish came, we fought! When the orcs came, years back, we fought! Well, these're just as bad-and they're inside the walls with us!'
The chorus of curses that followed was heartfelt, and the hearts were not happy.
Sunset was a bell away as Naoni left the cool green shade of the City of the Dead behind and stepped into the Coinscoffin. Merchants' Rest, more properly, but only haughty folk ever called it that. Down its tiled, high-vaulted, echoing forehall she walked, not looking at the statues of the mighty, and stepped through the everglowing arch she'd hated for years.
Her next step was bone-chilling, as always, and then she was shivering in a wooded garden, on a path somewhere far from the sound and bustle of the city, heading for a familiar glade.
All around, flanking the ribbons of winding paths, was a rough pavement of small, flat stones set into the ground, so numerous that the open space between the trees looked very much like a huge cobbled courtyard. Naoni was in the Guildbones.
Every stone was a life gone, and every grave was covered with a row of them, for guildworkers and their families were buried in layers. Some guildmasters were wealthy-and arrogant-enough to buy grand, statue-guarded vaults in the forehall before their passing, but Naoni's father had been a long way from guildmaster when his wife died.
More than that, Naoni knew he'd have to resign the mastership the moment Master Blund recovered from brain-fever. He'd been chosen as acting guildmaster purely because guild rules prevented anyone with standing in another guild-and Varandros Dyre was a member of the Stonecutters and Masons as well as the Carpenters and Roofers-from permanently warming the master's chair, so no one had to fear he'd try to keep it when the Hammer returned.
So like the stillbirths of the lowliest apprentices' wives, Naoni's mother 'rested' in a simple wooden box with two sailors below her, a carter and a wool-carder above, and layers of dirt and lime between them all. Years from now, this glade would be dug up to make space for the newly dead, and any bones left put into a common vault. The markers would be given to descendants, unclaimed ones to the stoneworkers.
Playing in her father's workshop, Naoni had spent much childhood time wondering about the forgotten lives graven into such stones. Few folk knew nearly every building in Waterdeep contained at least one of them. Small wonder tales of ghosts abounded in the city!
