The City of Splendors

by Ed Greenwood

  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, ‘swhat! 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!

  Naoni knelt, placed a small spray of blueburst on the marker that read “Ilyndeira Dyre,” and then sat back on her heels to wait for memories of her mother to ease her heart.

  Or, perhaps, firm her resolve.

  Ilyndeira Dyre had loved a noble and come to grief because of it. Naoni had known this since her twelfth summer, after her mother’s death, when she’d found Ilyndeira’s hidden journal, letters, and a few sad little keepsakes. Her mother had never forgotten, and Naoni had sworn she’d never forget, either. Yet when she looked into Korvaun Helmfast’s steady blue eyes, she found herself in danger of breaking the oath she’d sworn over her mother’s grave.

  He seemed a good man, and growing into his own before her eyes. Quiet ways and all, Korvaun was fast becoming a leader of men; she’d seen his friends’ faces when they looked to him, and she was only a guildsmaster’s daughter and housekeeper, a simple spinner of threads. He was courteous to commonborn women, and had honored a servant girl at the funeral, before many nobles. None of that swept away the fact that he was a noble of Waterdeep.

  Everything was happening so fast. Father had come roaring home, bellowing orders and all but dragging them from the house! She’d barely had time enough to seize her spinning tools before he hustled them to an inn. Faendra, of course, had been pleased at the novelty and the prospect of some leisure, but Naoni wanted silence and solitude, the solace of soft shadows, in green places like this one. Grand folk had their private gardens and arbors, but this garden of the dead was the only haven available to the likes of Naoni Dyre.

  So she sat in silence, waiting for the quiet green peace to find its way into her heart.

  “Another building’s down! The Lords did it!”

  Heads turned as the shout rang back off magnificentl
y carved tomb walls.

  The City of the Dead was crowded with folk escaping the stink of Dock Ward fish-boilings and a harbor dredging. There had been many mutters of “The New Day, they call themselves!” and “Piergeiron’s dead, and they’ve shoved someone else into his armor to fool us! He crossed some Hidden Lord or other, and they killed him for it!” and even darker sentiments as peddlers and stroll-cooks moved through the throngs.

  There was a restless mood in the parklike cemetery. The Watch patrols, walking their usual patrols, felt it. As angry talk swelled around them, they kept their mouths shut and pretended not to hear, where at other times they’d have stepped forward to warn and remonstrate.

  Nor were they the only ones treading lightly in the cemetery. Highcoin folk who might on other occasions have loudly called on the Watch to chastise and more, kept their peace and walked warily, listening instead of airily voicing opinions.

  “The Lords are driving Dyre down, building by building!”

  Heads turned.

  “What’s that? What building?” a merchant bellowed, in a voice that rang out like a warhorn.

  “The Lords are smashing the New Day!” someone else shouted, bringing inevitable calls of, “What’s the New Day?”

  Folk were gathering quickly, striding frown-faced from bowers behind more distant burial halls. In the darker shadows of the tombs, half-seen ghostly shapes stirred restlessly, called forth into the sunlight by the sudden anger and fear riding the air.

  “The Lords are against us all!” a man roared, waving his belt-knife.

  A woman standing near shrieked, “They can blast down all our homes, and take our coins from among our bones, and build anew!”

  “They’re hunting Varandros Dyre in the streets right now,” a breathless cap-merchant gasped, trotting up the cobbled path from the nearest cemetery gate. Others, standing near, took up that cry.

  “They’ll kill us all, if they think we’re of the New Day!”

  “What’s this ‘New Day’?”

  “Get home and get your coins before they bring the walls down on your children! Fetch your swords! This is it!”

  “The Lords are hunting the New Day! The Lords are after us all!”

  “What by all the blazing Hells is the New Day?”

  That exasperated outlander’s shout was lost in the rising roar of angry Waterdhavians drawing belt-knives and gathering nose-to-nose to shout rumors into dark truths, and dark truths into war-cries.

  A Watch horn rang out—then another—and suddenly the crowd knew its foe.

  Heads turned, eyes peered, pointing arms shot out—and in an instant the Watch became the hunted.

  “This—this is not right!” an old noble growled, reaching for his sword. “Give me that, man!”

  And he plucked a Watch-horn out of the hands of a paling, stammering officer and blew it as hard as he could, in the old, frantic dah-DAH, da-DAH blast that meant Aid! Aid here! All aid here NOW! That call was echoed in the streets around the City of the Dead, and helmed heads turned, peering down from the towers of the city wall along the east side of the cemetery.

  “They’re coming for us!” a cobbler shouted, waving a stool around his head like a club. “They’ll hunt us down! Fight for your necks! Fight for your freedom! Fight for Waterdeep!”

  “For Waterdeep!” the roar went up, as furious as any beast’s howl, and all Watchmen within reach died in a few panting moments of furious hacking.

  Watch-horns were sounding closer, now—and the high, clear song of a City Guard muster-horn rang out from a wall-tower.

  Some folk cowered, but others bawled defiance and fury, and ran at all who stood against them. The old noble’s blade bought the whimpering young Watchman a few moments more of fearful life ere they were both hacked down. Then everyone was running, racing amid the tombs as Watchmen and armored Guardsmen with drawn swords burst into the cemetery at every gate. Women and children screamed and wept and ran wildly across the sward, men snatched up cobblestones and funeral urns and turned to fling and overwhelm anyone in uniform—and swords were snatched from failing hands to be swung against the lawkeepers.

  “The New Day!” someone shouted. “For the New Day! Down with the Lords!”

  “They killed Piergeiron! For Piergeiron!”

  A fat man swung a captured Watch blade so hard that it burst apart in shards and sparks around him as it bent the sword it struck and drove a tall Guardsman head-over-booted-heels down a short stone stair into bushes, where shrieking women, clawing and kicking, overwhelmed him.

  Guard-horns sang out over the tumult as astonished commanders stared open-mouthed over the sea of angry citizenry.

  “ ’Tis a bloody war! A war within our gates!” one snarled, and blew the horncall that would summon the Watchful Order. Surely this fury must be spell-driven …

  A few frantic breaths later, he blew his horn again, this time the call for his men to rally around. It was soon accomplished, for anyone who’d dared stray too far from his fellows had already been slain.

  “This is madness!” he shouted, to those who were left. “If we try to stand, we’ll be butchering fellow citizens until it’s too dark to see! So: Sword-ring, blades out, and walk steadily back to the gate we came in by! We’ll form a shield-wall outside the Deadrest!”

  With his horn he told Guardsmen elsewhere what they was doing as screaming, curse-spitting citizens crowded close around his men again, striking with bench-slats, lamplighting poles, and anything else long enough to outreach a Guard’s blade.

  Hardened Watch and Guard officers cursed in amazement as they fought their way back to the gates.

  “They’ve gone mad! Mad!” one snarled, and others nodded grimly, their eyes wide in sweating faces.

  “That’s it,” a white-haired Guard officer snapped from his saddle, as blood-drenched Guardsmen staggered out through the gate in front of him. “Form two shield-walls, funneling back that way! Arrest all who leave, and at sunset, close this gate!”

  The woman sitting cold-faced on the horse behind his lifted her hand in a swift gesture, and a sudden blue glow swirled around the officer’s mouth. Abruptly, the sounds of other men shouting came out of it, and another cold order, from unseen lips: “Spread the word. I, Marimmon of the Guard, do so order: round up all who flee the City of the Dead before sunset—and close the gates at that time on those who don’t. Fell magic’s at work among the tombs! Ghosts or no ghosts, I’m not having this butchery spill out into the streets!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Something—she never knew what—brought Naoni out of her reverie and abruptly to her feet with a small cry of dismay. The shadows had deepened alarmingly while she’d been lost in thought; the sky was already the soft purple of coming twilight. She gathered her skirts and ran down the path, plunging through the cold magic of the portal.

  A strange din—battle?—grew louder as she hurried from the Rest toward the grander tombs, but Naoni never slowed. Better to dash through a scuffle than cower in the shadows and be locked in when the gates were closed at nightfall.

  A flung cobblestone flew past her shoulder. She ducked hastily into the nearest tomb, spun around, and peered back out.

  Ahead, men and women were throttling each other, punching and thrusting daggers into whoever was nearest, clubbing people bloodily to the ground with walking-sticks and bench-slats. More than once Naoni winced and turned away, feeling her gorge rise.

  Only to turn back again, not daring to look away too long, lest someone come charging her way with murder in their eyes.

  She felt sick. So many shouts of “New Day” and “Down with the Lords” … and now, so much blood.

  Half the shopkeepers and crafters in Waterdeep seemed to be out there on the grass and now-trampled gardens of the City of the Dead, angrily trying to slay each other. Soon it would be dark, and the Watch patrols were nowhere to be seen. Were they just going to let people kill each other here all night?

  Here, in with the restless de
ad?

  Something cold touched her spine, sliding down to her hips in what was almost a caress, and Naoni whirled around, unable to stifle a little shriek of alarm.

  There was no one there—nothing but a hint of movement in the gathering darkness of the tomb.

  Naoni swallowed hard. The dead walked the City of the Dead after dark, ’twas said. She’d always thought that a scare-tale, put about to keep honest folk out of the walled cemetery by night, to cut down on carousing and trysting and knifings—but now she could see something grinning at her. Something not quite seen, not quite there … something with teeth that glinted as it came toward her, a shifting darkness in the darkness.

  She couldn’t stay here!

  Naoni whirled and ran out of the tomb. She shrieked as a thrown dagger flashed over her arm and past her, almost catching on her bodice.

  Its owner was a tall, burly man, stinking of fear and of badly cured hides. He struck out wildly with his fists, catching Naoni on the forehead and sending her reeling. The target of his fury, however, was a crawling, stumbling scents-seller Naoni had seen in Ship Street a time or two.

  “Now you’re caught, you dirty Lords’ spy!” the big man snarled, pouncing.

  A hooked hide-knife flashed across the perfumer’s throat. Dark blood sprayed, and the doomed man’s cry of protest came out as a despairing, sobbing gurgle.

  The murderer let go of a fistful of hair, and the dying man’s face thumped onto the turf at a sickening angle. The leatherworker turned, wearing a bloodthirsty grin.

  He caught sight of Naoni, who’d fetched up against the tomb wall to wait for the world to stop spinning—and his smile changed.

  “Well now,” he said hungrily, gazing at the swift, frightened rise and fall of her chest. “I never much favored skinny, flame-haired wenches … but here we are.”

  Oh, gods. Naoni scrabbled for the tiny shears in her belt-sheath. Waving them like a dagger, she backed away along the roughness of the wall and all too soon felt it end, and that cold, bone-chilling caress come again. On her leg, this time, and—