by Ed Greenwood
“I know, I know,” Glethro replied. “It’s going to take us most of the day to drop it from within, slow and careful and without the usual tossing down boards and all. I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying. I just don’t understand why a man rich enough to gut a building this size, on this street, wants a false wall and ceiling that can come crashing down if someone gives them a good push in the right spot. It don’t make sense! Oh, he must have a good reason, all right, but I can’t think—”
“You’re not being paid to think, Glethro. You’re being paid to gild the last bit of that hrasting plaster so we can get done and get this down and clear out of here!”
“Haemiekal! He’s coming!” Prethgar called up from the canvas-shrouded floor down below. “And Saular’s crew is with him, carrying the sign.”
“Here’s hoping they don’t hammer it too hard,” Haemiekal grunted.
“No, it’s made to slide into the frame. All beautiful gilt work. ‘Thantilvur Investments,’ he’s calling it.”
Glethro rolled his eyes. “Thantilvur? That’s not his name!”
“Look, youngling,” Haemiekal snapped, all too predictably, “speculate and point out the hrasting obvious on your own time—and after we’re well away from here. They say this one hears and sees everything, and for what he’s paying, he can put any farruking name he wants to over the door. Just get your gilding—”
“Done,” Glethro snapped back. “I’m finished. So enough with the lectures, Haemiekal, and help me get the buckets down without any spills or crashes. I don’t want to be crushed by a falling wall and ceiling any more than you do!”
• • •
THE CASTLEGATE WAS grand. Despite its name, you couldn’t see the gates of Castle Waterdeep from its front door or even its loftiest windows, but then, Jalester hadn’t expected to. You named your inn whatever sounded nice and lured folk in.
The Castlegate was big and impressive and richly furnished, the best-appointed travelers’ haven he’d ever set boot in. It was more than four times larger than the country inn he’d grown up in so far from here, but it was cold.
Not cold as in bone chilling, but impersonal. Too clean, too bright, too formal, and its staff were all of those things, too. Jalester was certain his legendary great-grandmother would have hated this place.
Not that a city inn in Castle Ward in the great city of Waterdeep could properly be judged against the Old Skull Inn, a rustic crossroads waystop in Shadowdale half a world away, but Jalester Silvermane couldn’t help it.
What he’d give to be back in the Old Skull right now, lounging with feet up in front of the hearth fire …
Though if he really was back in the Old Skull, he wouldn’t be lounging with his feet up anywhere. He’d be hard at work scrubbing floors and plucking fowl and washing blankets. Not to mention working the pump and carrying the graywater. Oh, gods, yes, carrying all the water.
Still, that nigh-constant carrying had given him strong arms and shoulders, and wrists like iron, and they were a large part of why he’d mastered the sword so well. He was quick, agile, and acrobatic rather than burly and strong. Yet he was good at keeping his balance, and … and by all the gods he sounded like a slaver crying the worth of someone he was trying to sell!
Though the vending cant at the hiring fair they’d attended in Virgins Square yestermorn had sounded not all that much different, to be honest.
The Steel Shadows were growing desperate. Waterdeep was every bit as grand and sprawling as they said it was, crammed with folk from everywhere in the world and the exotic things they ate and did, but this city ate coins from your purse like a starving dog goes through a meat larder.
It seemed half the novice adventuring bands in Faerûn had entertained the same idea as the Steel Shadows of Shadowdale, and at the same time: Hie to the City of Splendors, where coin was king, to seek employment. Everyone there has money, everyone is busily pursuing new ventures, everyone has need of bodyguards and escorts for their wares and—
Well, all of those things were true, but it seemed that everyone already had their own pet band of adventurers on hire, too. Which meant that day after day passed and coins drained out of their purses at an alarming rate despite the relative bargain the Castlegate offered—even wine, albeit a weak and watered-down vintage, was included in the tenday rate for a shared room, along with three meals daily and a cold bath every three evenings; hot water was extra. Relative was the word to pounce on; you could feast like a king at the Old Skull for a month for less than the tenday rate here. Still, if they found no “situation,” as casual non-guild hires seemed to be called in this city, in the next five or six days, they’d be forced to tramp out into the wilds with no more than a few coppers between them, to live wild on their wits and what they could catch …
Nelvor and Eraskyn had the finest clothes, so they were calling at the gates of the wealthy in the North Ward right now, hoping to find work, and Faerrel and Gelthark were out visiting guildhouses.
As for Jalester Silvermane, well, he’d agreed to try the Castle and the Palace, but had met with refusals so firm, accomplished, and swift that he’d come back here drowned in discouragement, to sit in the dining room and think. There was so much to see in the crowded streets of Waterdeep, and so many perils from rumbling wagons and handcarts and elbows-out hurrying folks, that he couldn’t think out there.
He needed a seat, and a little quiet, and not to have to watch for pickpockets every moment. He was young, and willing, and not hard on the eyes—though by no means as handsome as some he’d seen since arriving in the City of Splendors, and he’d not seen so much as an eyebrow belonging to nobility or the truly wealthy. But he wasn’t big, and meat-mountain swordswingers seemed cheap and legion hereabouts, and in Waterdeep being the great-grandson of Jhaele Silvermane meant nothing at all.
So here he was, thankful for hot tea that tasted nothing at all like what he got at home but good nonetheless, in a dining room that at this time of the day was patronized by Waterdhavians who loved the stuff.
Matrons, mainly, and portly couples whose shopping had made their feet hurt and were taking a break. Middle-class Waterdhavian citizens of the sort who can afford one or two servants to look after the children while they go out to dine of an evening.
After one glance at Jalester, they’d ignored him, and had been gossiping long enough now to have forgotten him. Their tongues were wagging freely, so he raised her cup, inhaled its aromatic steam, and listened in.
“He’s Gulkyn. You know, of Gulkyn’s Fresh Fish!”
“Oh, that Gulkyn. The one that had three mistresses, until they all found out about each other.”
“Yes, that Gulkyn. He was rather drunk last night, and was telling me about the giants coming to conquer us.”
“The what?”
“Oho, you haven’t heard? Giants have been seen everywhere in the Sword Coast backlands. Cloud castles and full-armored giants of all breeds, striding along—”
“Breeds? I don’t think they’re called that, dear.”
“Well, types, then! How should I know the proper name for ‘sort of giant’? I grew up hearing stories about giants all being alive—bad; or dead—vastly preferable. Those are the two sorts of giants I know.”
“Hareth, you’re disgusting!”
“Oh? That why you married me?”
Giants? What was this? Jalester had certainly never laid eyes on a giant of any sort—breed—on their way here, but then they’d kept to the great trade roads, in the dusty, creaking company of caravans seventy wagons strong or more, and—
“It’s all part of Neverember’s revenge, you know!”
“What? Deposed Lord Neverember? Well, he was certainly enraged enough. Didn’t say much, but his eyes burned like fire and he hrasted well gnashed his stlarning teeth, he did! Or so they say. I wasn’t there, myself. We honest working folk have to show up at our situations and work, look you.”
“Well, what of this revenge? What’s he going to do, show up in
the dead of night and personally murder us all in our beds? At, say, five killings a night, how many years would that take him? He’ll be dead of old age before he’s done emptying Dock Ward, he will.”
“Not if he just makes war on us, with all the hireswords he can muster—armies of mercenaries, mind!”
“Ah, but we’ve got the Walking Statues! We can trample armies of mercenaries in an afternoon.”
“If they ever move again, that is. They’re saying all the magic went out of them, back when the Blue Fire came.”
“Are these the same experts on everything who know what Neverember’s secretly planning? My cousin lives in Neverwinter, and she’s seen plenty of crews being hired to work on the road, but no marching companies of mercenaries. I’m more worried about more dragon attacks. With Mistshore burning now, and Field Ward already ashes—thanks to dragon attacks, remember—it’ll be our homes the dragons come for next!”
“Field Ward … they’re not rebuilding it, you know. So where will the likes of us find rooms we can afford, hey?”
“Same place we always did: warehouses in South Ward that leak too much to be used to store wares any longer, and every rat-infested, rickety dump in Dock Ward that can be divided into still-smaller rooms and rented out to us for a few more years before it rots away entirely and falls into the street.”
“Well, aren’t you the cheery one? I suppose you expected Bright Trumpetings to fail!”
Jalester leaned forward to hear better, at the same time trying not to look in the slightest bit interested. He’d overheard talk of this Bright Trumpetings Imports about a dozen times during his job hunts. Mostly bitter talk, from those who’d lost coin investing in it. Some sort of new business that had opened with much fanfare a bare month back—and already closed its doors. There was much muttering that it was a clever scheme by someone to take the savings of investors and then abscond, always intending it to fail.
“Well, of course I did! I ask you: What sort of fool ‘I stand for nothing’ name is Bright Trumpetings? No wonder it went bust! Why couldn’t the man behind it—they’re saying he was local, not some sly outlander with a strange name—do what sensible upstanding Waterdhavians do, and name his business after himself? Blount Holdings, or Halambur Holdings, or whatever?”
“Well, perhaps he didn’t think his name would impress. He’s called Triskreth Lahoonder.”
“Lahoonder? What kind of unfortunate has a name like that?”
“A crooked swindler, by the looks of it, that’s what kind of unfortunate.”
“Ah, have done! If we talk over businesses that failed in a hurry and took a lot of coins with them, we’ll be sitting here a year from now—and by then, there’ll be a whole lot more of them! I’m more interested in what can touch us all: the results of burned investors getting even. Murders.”
CHAPTER 3
The Wagging Tongue is a Deadly Sword
Trust not in tall towers, brimful vaults, and bright-armored guards. You can have all these, and wise alliances galore, too, and still fall to unchecked rumor. Never underestimate the wickedness of bored folk, or the spiteful, and those who feel slighted in some way. For the wagging tongue is a deadly sword that brings kings and emperors down with frightening speed.
—Meldreathe Myral, Sage of Selgaunt, from One Unwise Woman’s Musings, published in the Year of the Haunting
“MURDERS?”
The dining room of the Castlegate was suddenly hushed and attentive.
“Well, don’t you think Guildmaster Tarelver Rashenstaff of the Innkeepers met his death in, ah, suspicious circumstances? Or the two Masked Lords?”
“Ah, but that’s not investors a-hiring dirty deeds. No, that’ll be Neverember, settling his scores. There’ll be lots more of that coming, I’m thinking.”
“Good—the more rats go down, the more coins for the likes of us!”
“Oh? You really think the Deep will ever run short of rats? Well, you are simple. You’re probably one of those who thinks starting wars is worth it.”
“And what’re your high Hidden Lords doing about all of this?” an outlander merchant visiting the city asked loudly and hastily, raising a warning hand to forestall the Waterdhavian sitting next to him from making an angry retort to that last rebuke.
All over the dining room, he was answered by shrugs.
“Does it matter?” a stout, side-whiskered Waterdhavian asked. Maskalan Blount was his name, Jalester recalled, the owner of five sausage and savory pie shops, of which he was swellingly proud. “They’re good at prohibitions and prying little rules and taxing us, but as to the larger matters—”
“But I thought you have a Palace and an Open Lord sitting in it so he—sorry, she, now—could hear citizen concerns and complaints!”
“Oh, she hears us, all right. Lady Silverhand’s a good listener, I’ll give her that, and if it’s something that a friend with coin to spare can’t fix, she’ll fix it herself. But as to moving the Lords to decide this way or that …” Blount’s wave of dismissal was even more emphatic than his shaken head.
“Lady Laeral conveys our concerns,” put in a tall paint and dye merchant—Caslant Wintertal, that was his name; Jalester was getting better at remembering names in the endless Waterdhavian parade and tacking them to faces—“and they hear. And then go ahead and do whatever they were going to do anyway.”
There were snorts and wry chuckles at that, and much nodding, as another guest came into the dining room, bringing the sharp reek of smoke with him.
Heads turned, and tea was set down to sniff. “Mistshore?”
“Mistshore,” the new arrival confirmed. “Must be oils or summat of the sort burning; flames higher than the masts, now. All those hulks’ll be burned down to the waterline by tomorrow, every last one of them.”
Some diners rose to go and look, as smoke started to waft into the Castlegate.
Only one man returned, and he looked impressed. “Flames and smoke and all,” he muttered. “As bad as Field Ward. Mistshore’s history.”
“Well, good riddance to that den of thieves and beggars,” said a shopkeeper—Meldar Maerammon, of Maerammon’s Nets and Tassels—who was sitting close enough to Jalester for him to touch.
The sounds of general agreement arose across the dining room.
“Must have been magic,” a lone adventurer—an ugly red-nosed man, not one of the Steel Shadows—commented. “I was there three days back, guarding a client, and everything was so damp they were kindling cooking fires on their own decks without fear of any blazes spreading.”
“Well, someone set their fire good and proper,” another Waterdhavian grunted. Telfeather, Jalester recalled … a seller and repairer of coaches. That was it: Urdreth Telfeather. “Barrels of oil is usually the way. If there hadn’t been so much of that stored in Field Ward, there’d still be a Field Ward.”
“I’m not so sure we need less cooking oil standing around in barrels,” another diner said sourly. “I’m thinking we need fewer marauding dragons.”
“And arsonists,” a scarred-faced man put in. “We’ve an entire guild of them, to take up the slack when the amateurs aren’t at work.”
“Oh? How d’you reckon that?”
“Whenever a building burns, the Carpenters’, Roofers’, and Plasterers’ get work putting in the new one,” the scarred man explained. “Every time. Stands to reason they help the old buildings go, hey? The old ones that only rise three tiers of windows above the street or less. One after another, those places go, and tall new ones go up in their place. The hammering never stops.”
“And the Stonecutters and Masons, too,” someone else agreed. “Those Dyre sisters were sharper than their father ever was. Got well on their way to owning half of South Ward, they did.”
“The unburnt half?”
“Har har, you’re a witty one, aren’t you? Gah, this smoke is starting to get up my nose. Think I’ll be off to my favorite eatery before their fresh sundfin turns into smoked sundfin.”
/> “Ho, witty one yerself! Don’t trip on that clever tongue of yours, now.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, arsonist.”
“After you, then, cooking oil amateur.”
“Surrounded by glib tongues running wild,” an older merchant sporting the half-cloak of a fashionably successful Tethyrian said gloomily. “I’m in Waterdeep again, all right.”
• • •
THERE WERE HIDDEN ways in the Palace of Waterdeep, an extensive network of passages that the general public never saw. They weren’t secret, but they were well concealed within the thick walls, and served servants and longtime courtiers as highways so they could move about with relative ease, speed, and privacy. Laeral hadn’t paid them all that much attention in her earlier time in Waterdeep, but she was getting to know them quite well now. Not so much because she needed to move about unseen, but because there were times she needed to be alone to think. Brief respites from the endless whirl of reading reports, signing things, and making small decisions brought to her in haste—always in pressing haste—by courtiers far too urbane to want to make any decisions themselves.
She’d been thankful to find a neglected and forgotten little dead end, where an unsafe turret had been filled in with stone and mortar, leaving a cramped spiral stair ascending to a sudden stop in a rough-walled blind alcove, where she could sit alone.
She was sitting there now.
The Open Lord of Waterdeep, hiding in her own palace.
Just as she must hide from everyone that she was no longer an archmage mighty enough to spell duel half a dozen mighty archwizards at once and effortlessly defeat them. Blood of Mystra, just one Watchful Order mage of middling mastery who struck the Laeral Silverhand of today when she was unprepared might well prevail.
There’d been another two attempts to get into Mirt’s Mansion since the half dozen assassins, so she was safer here.
Especially when going into reveries with the Weave, so she could confer with Dove and Syluné, who now served Mystra as messengers. Spectral “ghosts” who were little more than whispers in the Weave much of the time, but they could rise up out of altars dedicated to Mystra and impress clergy and praying wizards alike, if need be.