The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [136]
"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