They were soon standing in a narrow alley that ended in a tangle of ramshackle buildings. Naoni tapped on a sagging door half-hidden behind a rotting pile of broken barrel-staves.
It swung open to flickering torchlight amid darkness and the familiar hard stares of a pair of halfling guards. Mostly hidden beyond the doorframe, they were dressed as human urchins, and their belts bore cheap, bright-painted leather scabbards. Despite their childish, harmless appearance, those scabbards held swords that were very real and very sharp.
"A fine afternoon to you both," Naoni said, hefting her covered basket. "I've business with Jacintha."
The guards nodded and silently drew back to let her pass. The three girls ducked inside, and Lark spread her hands, palms up, to show she bore no weapons.
"You, too," one hin said in a surprisingly gruff voice, nodding at Faendra. "Palms, pretty one?"
The younger Dyre sister rolled her eyes and held her arms out wide as if to ask "And where might I be hiding anything in this gown?"
The guard nodded, and the door was already being thrust closed behind them as Naoni handed the basket to Lark and took a torch from the guards' barrel. Lighting it from their wall-torch, she started along the tunnel.
The smell of damp stone arose strongly around the three, and they took care not to brush against the walls. The Warrens was one of Waterdeep's lesser-known neighborhoods. It had been centuries in the making, beginning with stone houses built along hilly streets. Betimes a higher floor would be added here, or a walkway built across a street from house to house there, and with the passing years stretches of streets were completely hidden from the sun, and many lowest floors became cellars. Rebuilding shored up the lower levels and worked upward from there, and beneath a few blocks of bustling Waterdeep, the slow result of this tireless reaching for the grander was a forgotten layer.
Many Small Folk dwelt here. Gnomes, halflings, and even the occasional dwarf found a congenial and discreet address amid the dark cellars and narrow tunnels of the Warrens.
The lasses passed several gnomes coming the other way, and polite nods were exchanged. Jacintha was so highly regarded that Naoni, by association, was counted among their own.
Soon they reached a familiar arched door. Twice as wide as it was tall, it stood open, letting out a rhythmic, slightly ragged clatter to echo in the tunnel.
A soft clack and sweep filled the room, swelling around the three lasses as they entered. Half a dozen looms clattered busily in the low-vaulted stone hall, but one slowed smoothly as the weaving-mistress left off her work and bustled over with a smile of welcome.
Jacintha was, as usual, too busy for additional pleasantries, taking the basket from Lark without pause to unwrap the skeins and hold them up into the lantern light.
She stared hard and nodded. "Fine, very fine."
Faendra had already wandered over to Jacintha's loom, which bore a silky, almost translucent amber fabric. Woven into it was a pattern of dragonflies with brilliant, glittering wings.
"How's this done?" she marveled, peering closely. "Many colors… but all the threads, warp and weft, seem of one…"
"And are," the gnome said briskly, "made from your sister's amber thread and silk I dyed to match. One drop of amber had a dragonfly trapped in it, as I recall. The pattern's none of my doing; it came of itself as I was weaving. 'Tis a pretty thing."
"Indeed it is," Faendra said longingly. Something brighter caught her eye. "What of this?" she asked, waving at a nearby glittering swath of red cloth.
The gnome smirked. "That'll become a nobleman's evening cloak. Take two paces to your left and gaze on it, letting your eyes lose focus."
Faendra did as she was bid, and after a moment burst out laughing. "There's a pattern: a male peacock, all a-strut!"
"Fitting for those who wear such things," Jacintha observed dryly, "and fitting amusement to those of us who don't."
She unstrung a pouch from her belt and handed it to Naoni. "Your coins are on one side, and the next gems to be spun on t'other. Peridot, a very fine pale green."
"That hue would suit Naoni, with her hair and eyes," hinted Faendra.
Her gaze slid to a bolt of shimmering blue that matched her own eyes, then moved to the pouch holding Naoni's payment, her meaning all too clear.
Naoni looked up from examining the gems to give her sister a warning glance. "A lovely green," she told Jacintha. "I'll enjoy spinning it."
It was the way of gnomes to remember faults, longings, and other weaknesses for future bargaining. Before Faendra could say anything else, her elder sister made swift work of the farewells and hustled her companions back out of the Warrens.
As Father expected her to know the sites where Dyre money or men were at work, Naoni led them up Redcloak Lane to check on the recent damage.
One entire run of scaffolding was a near-ruin. Faendra surveyed the bustling workmen and murmured, "I begin to see why Father was so a-fret."
Naoni frowned. "Even so, I dislike this talk of New Days and challenges to the Lords."
"Old men's foolishness," her sister said cheerfully, putting a lilt to her hips for the benefit of the watching laborers.
"Such talk's nothing new," Lark observed. "Common folk have always complained about nobles, and rumors about the Lords are as old as Mount Waterdeep itself."
Naoni nodded. "The Lords know their own work best."
Lark made a sound that was suspiciously like a sniff. "Some may be good, fine men behind those masks, but I'll warrant most of them are no better than they have to be. Still, Waterdeep goes along well enough, and I'd just as soon not shave the dog to spite its fleas."
"Perhaps Father wants to be a Lord," Faendra put in lightly. "I suppose many might be unhappy that Waterdeep's governed in secret, for how can they rise in power and influence unless they can see the path ahead?"
Naoni winced. Despite her frivolities, her sister saw people with disturbing clarity. Sudden fear rose in her: did Faendra know their mother's secret?
No, that was impossible, surely! Naoni had hidden those letters and journals very carefully. And well she had! In his current temper, Father needed no reminders of Ilyndeira Dyre's sad taste of Waterdhavian nobility.
Redcloak Lane was behind them now, and Faendra had strolled into a smaller crossway than Naoni would have chosen.
They almost brushed shoulders with a cluster of dockers arguing heatedly over ownership of a battered crate in their midst.
Naoni was only six or seven strides past the men when a realization struck her with a sudden chill.
The argument had fallen silent.
She glanced back. One man was only a few paces behind her, moving very quickly and quietly.
He gave her a grin that might have been charming if he'd still possessed most of his teeth. "What's in the pouch, pretty one? Let's have a look."
Naoni's heart started to pound. All six of the others were right behind the foremost one. Before she could cry out to Faendra and Lark, the men charged at her, and knives flashed in their hands.
"That dagger was my favorite-or rather, the two of them were." Malark held out his hands: one empty, the other holding a dagger with an elaborate Kothont monogram. "Superbly balanced, very fine steel, and a matched pair. I'll have it back, and damn the cost."
Taeros grinned mockingly. "I'd wish you luck, but you'll need the kiss of Tymora herself to find it. By now your fang's probably been buried in several hearts-"
"All at once?" inquired Korvaun Helmfast, with a gentle smile.
"— in rapid succession," Taeros continued, "and thereafter sent to the bottom of the harbor, still hilt-deep in its last victim!"