"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 pommeclass="underline" 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 into silence, as stiff as the monument on a paladin's tomb.
"Oh, sit down," Dyre told him irritably. "There's no harm done, for there's none as can hear us here."
In the forehall at the bottom of the stairs, a slender hand deftly unhooked the alarm-cord. Three pairs of hastily bared feet ascended a few steps, and three heads bent nearer still, so as not to miss a single word from the locked room above.
Muttering an apology, Hasmur Ghaunt hastily sat down again, almost toppling a decanter.
Imdrael shot him a look of contempt and asked Dyre in a low, eager murmur, "So what will we of the New Day do, exactly?"
"Are you with me?" Dyre asked, just as eagerly. "Each and every one of you? Guild oath?"
His four guests almost fell over each other's tongues giving their emphatic oaths, two of them nicking palms and slapping down blood onto the table in the manner of their guilds. Decanters danced, and Dyre's smile grew.
"You know the Lords control the very sewers beneath our feet?"
Every Waterdhavian knew that, and the four merchants said so.
"Wherever the sewers don't run just to suit them in their spying and rushing bands of thugs here and there by night to silence unruly commoners, they cause passages to be dug. As a Master Stoneworker, I see much of the ways beneath the cobbles, and I swear to you: this is truth."
Four heads nodded-and from somewhere below came the sharp creak of a board, as if someone was on the stairs.
Five heads turned with frowns of alarm to listen intently.
And heard only silence.
The stillness stretched until Dyre stirred and muttered warningly, "For the words we've traded here this night, we could be the next unruly commoners to be silenced, so-"
"We must protect ourselves!" Imdrael hissed.
The Master Stoneworker smiled thinly. "I've already started doing precisely that."
From below came the hollow boom of the door-knocker. The men of the New Day flinched in unison, grabbing hastily for daggers.
"Dyre," Lhamphur snarled through suddenly streaming sweat, "if this is some sort of trap-"
The Shark flung the door wide, peered down the stairs, and turned back to his guests with a smile.
"Alarm-cord still stretched, door still closed, and-hear that giggling? — my gels at the door outside, with hot platters of something to make us all a little less fearful! Men, 'tis time to talk of the new buildings we'll raise together before the season's out, and those we must repair before they topple! No New Day talk around the ladies, mind!"
"We're not fools, Dyre," Whaelshod muttered under his breath.
"Oh, no?" Lhamphur whispered, his own knuckles white on the hilt of his still-sheathed dagger. "Let's hope not, or the heads that roll won't be the ones wearing the masks of the Lords of Waterdeep."
You must find him, Piergeiron had said. From what I've seen this day, I'm certain any father would rejoice in such a son.
The First Lord's words echoed in Mrelder's mind, mocking him with the hope he'd cherished for more than a year. The false hope.
He knew. He had yet to open his eyes, but he knew the graft had been a failure.
There was a dull, phantom ache where his left arm had been. If the gods had granted Golskyn's prayers and found Mrelder a worthy host, he would now be aflame with searing pain. Not lightly did the monstrous gods award their favors.
A faint, unfriendly hiss came from somewhere beside him. Then another, slightly fainter.
Mrelder fought his way up through the darkness. As lantern-light flared before his eyes, he turned his head toward the hissings.
The dying sahuagin lay on a table beside him, its gills flaring weakly as it gasped out its last breaths. A foul scent came from the charred, blackened stumps that were all that remained of not one, but all four of its scaled arms.
Four times had the followers of Lord Unity attempted the graft, and four times Mrelder's body had refused to accept the gods-given improvement.
"My son lives," Golskyn said coldly, looming over Mrelder, "and the sahuagin dies." His tone left little doubt as to his opinion of this state of affairs.
"I… I'm sorry," Mrelder managed to murmur.
"My sentiments precisely," his father replied, each word burning like acid. He drew a long dagger from its belt-sheath. "The mongrelmen follow me because I tell them they are more, not less. They enjoy the special favor of the True Gods. They are already well along the path only the strong may take. They are my children. I need no other."
Golskyn lifted the knife high.
This was it. His father's patience was at an end. Forlorn dreams and schemes flooded Mrelder's mind, a storm-flow of regret and loss. All would fade with him, thrown away in this dark cellar, all…
One idea caught in the rush of thoughts, looming rather than being swept on. A moment later, it was joined by another-and fresh hope, as Mrelder realized the two notions could become one: the sahuagin-shaped Walking Statue and the Guardian's Gorget.
"There's another way," he gasped.
"To end your worthless life?"
"To gain the strength of mighty creatures!" Mrelder gasped excitedly, seeing it all now.
The priest's uncovered eye narrowed. "Explain."