Lark and Phandelopae Melshimber snorted in unison at these words and then gave each other challenging glares.
"The Mistresses Dyre are greatly comforted by your helpful suggestion, I'm sure," Taeros Hawkwinter observed sarcastically.
Naoni and Faendra exchanged unhappy glances, but they'd have been far more upset if they'd turned in just the right direction at that moment to peer into the laughing, chatting crowd, and so behold a particular face that had gone from ruddy to white in an instant, upon commencing to stare at them.
Varandros Dyre was extraordinarily uncomfortable in his hired finery-Gods above, why did these collars have to itch so? — and too hot besides… and this din was deafening.
Yet the drinks were free and potent-firewine, by the Altar, the best that had ever raged down his gullet! — he'd never tasted smallmeats so fine, and Nalys was even more beautiful than he'd paid her to be. Quite the actress she was being, too, looking and sounding the part of a fine lady. None of the overloud haughtiness of the real noblewomen he'd observed here thus far. His daughters would doubtless be disapproving, but blast it, a man has to His gaze, roving across the noisy tumult filling the vast, crowded hall, fixed upon a distant face.
And froze with a gut-dropping lurch.
Naoni! His Naoni, looking as serenely noble and as beautiful as-as any ten women here, by all the Watching Gods! And there-aye, his little Faen was right beside her, standing in a little cluster of the Gemcloaks. Faendra might have been her mother, come back to life, and Varandros felt his throat tightening.
Oh, Ilyndeira, if only you'd lived to see this…
He could not stop looking at his daughters. In, yes, in awe. When had they turned so beautiful?
Someone stepped into the way of his stare, pointing. "Who's that yonder-the incontinent dragon?"
"Lord Tesper? No, couldn't be! What a costume!"
"I know the lady with him, I do, but can't quite… well, we'll know at the unmasking."
"Yes! How soon-?"
The floor beneath the chatterers trembled briefly, and someone let out a startled shriek. Dyre frowned. Well, at least the disturbance had shifted them out of the way, so he could look at Naoni and Faendra again, but… this was a big building; it would take a lot to make it shiver so. A spell?
There was another brief, heavy shuddering, soundless but strong enough to make someone drop a platter and evoke several screams.
"What by the Nine Hells-?" a shipwright snapped, nearby, as the chatter turned to voices rising in alarm and query.
Up on the stage, Piergeiron had stepped back, looking even more pale, and Madeiron and the mage were on their feet, peering around watchfully. Magic started to twinkle in the air all around them, and Elaith stepped quickly away from it.
Varandros Dyre didn't see what was happening on the stage and could have cared less. His daughters were over there, and something was very wrong, and-and Nalys was plucking at his arm and murmuring, "Varandros? This is-not right, is it?"
"No," Dyre snarled unnecessarily, as the tremors acquired sound-a ponderous, heavy thudding-and rhythm. Boom. Boom. Again, and again, for all the world as if Mount Waterdeep had decided to get up and start walking nearer… and nearer…
"They're trying to kill us all!" the shipwright shouted, before Dyre could. Folk were screaming all over the hall now, and running this way and that. Grandly garbed men were cursing and peering around wildly, more than one spectacularly gowned woman was swooning theatrically, and servants all over the hall were turning and peering at the stage.
Varandros started across the hall toward his daughters, towing Nalys in a grip so hard that she gasped in pain, but she hurried with him rather than protesting.
He found himself looking at Elaith Craulnober, who'd just sipped some wine and lowered his tallglass unconcernedly. As the rhythmic, growing thunderings got louder and tapestries and hanging lamps started to sway, the Serpent looked up and out across the crowd, smiled, then nodded, slowly and deliberately.
Right in front of Dyre, a servant cast aside his tray of tall-glasses with a spectacular crash, tugged at the gold shoulder-braids of his jackcoat… and drew forth a wicked-looking shortsword. Bending to draw a matching dagger from his boot, the platter-jack straightened with sharp warsteel in both hands and strode across the room.
Other servants were doing the same, everywhere in the hall, hurrying purposefully through the frightened crowd with drawn swords, converging on… an archway in the wall a little way along from the stage.
Nalys had worked here at the Silks! Shaking her as if she were a dusty mop rather than a regal-looking woman, Varandros snarled, "Where's that lead?"
The screaming and the thunderous shakings were almost deafening now, but Nalys put her mouth to his ear and gasped, "The winecellars-and below that, the sewers!"
Dyre snarled something incoherent and furious and started racing through the crowd again, towing her along helplessly in his wake. Dust was falling in great drifts, now, and small fragments of ceiling were clattering down here and there. Everywhere, people were running, running…
Boom. BOOM.
With a sudden, shattering roar, chunks of curved stone-ceiling-vaultings! — plummeted down to shatter on the hall floor.
"No!" Dyre roared, snatching up Nalys and starting to really run, lurching and pelting along. "No! Not my daughters!"
Then all was darkness and a flood of tumbling stone, and Varandros Dyre was dashed to the floor, dead or senseless. Nalys tumbled helplessly across spilled wine and shattered glass, seeing a pleasure-lass she vaguely knew beheaded in an instant by more falling stone. The headless body toppled and was promptly half-buried… and then, though the shakings went on, the ceiling-falls abruptly stopped.
Nalys suspected that if she could somehow sweep aside all this choking dust and look up, she'd be seeing the star-filled night sky now, but she couldn't manage to do much more than roll over and wipe her streaming eyes and look along the floor in the direction they'd been hurrying, before… before…
Bodies were lying crumpled everywhere on it, amid scattered shards of stone. Not much had really fallen, it seemed, but folk were fleeing wildly, everywhere, and shouting from the walls- from the doors! — that they couldn't get out.
There were Dyre's daughters, looking terrified but standing unharmed, with the Gemcloaks holding them firmly. As Nalys watched, the young nobles drew their swords in flashing unison.
Boom.
Boom.
BOOM. BOOM.
Every thunderous impact made the Gemcloaks and their ladies sway, now, and cracks were opening here and there in the formerly flawless marble underfoot.
Naoni Dyre clutched the dagger Korvaun had given her in the City of the Dead and went a little pale as she saw Taeros calmly draw two smaller knives from his boots and pass one hilt-first to Faendra, who clutched it so hard her knuckles went white, and the other to Lark, who hefted it thoughtfully.
"Delopae?" Starragar snapped. "Are you-?"
"I'm fine, Lord Jardeth," the tall Melshimber noblewoman replied briskly, momentarily lifting her gown to reveal a total lack of undergarments-and a high-thigh sheath from which she calmly drew a dagger of wicked length.
Letting her skirts fall again, she hefted it and added, "Just fine, and ready to take care of myself-or rather, of all the rats Waterdeep may choose to send against me!"
"Oh," Taeros chuckled, as he as Korvaun watched a distant Beldar Roaringhorn salute them with drawn sword and then race into the winecellars, "our fair City of Splendors seldom has a shortage of those!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"Tarry," Korvaun told Taeros firmly. "Beldar and his allies will tend to business below. Our task is to hold the portal if the fight goes badly, and keep the foe from gaining the hall."