The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [60]
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He couldn't stop coughing.
On his knees on the dirty cobbles, Taeros hacked and spat and heaved, shoulders shaking, until a grim-jawed Beldar slapped his back hard enough to drive him nose down onto the stones, which promptly rattled and shook hard enough to numb a Hawkwinter chin and send its owner rolling helplessly over onto his side, still coughing.
"What was-?" he managed to ask.
"The last of the Slow Cheese," Beldar Roaringhorn snapped, in a voice that promised brutal death to someone, and soon. "Going down flat."
"M-Malark?"
"Under it, somewhere." Beldar thrust something under his friend's nose.
Taeros blinked at it, fighting for breath.
"This," Beldar growled, "was stuck to a spar that was flung into the air just after I carried you over here-and damned near skewered me coming down. It was stuck there with blood."
Taeros stared at what his friend was holding: A blood-smeared scrap of emerald green gemweave, cloth that in all Waterdeep, only Malark Kothont could have been wearing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first rumble and roar brought Golskyn from his bed, coverlets flying. He hurried to the window of their upper room and gazed up into the midnight sky, his uncovered eye searching the stars with open longing.
"A dragon's heart," he said wistfully. "Now that would be a true test of a man's strength!"
Mrelder stumbled to his father's side, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His thoughts were not of dragon flight, nor the wondrous challenge of capturing, dismembering, and incorporating that greatest of creatures. He thought instead of the city all around and the folk who dwelt in it. Fresh rumblings drew his gaze.
"A building's fallen!" He pointed. "Look, there: Dust rising. Flames now, too."
Golskyn peered. "Dragonfire?" he asked hopefully, not ready to relinquish his fond hope.
"No dragons," his son murmured.
Mrelder thought he might know the cause of the collapse. The mongrelmen had tunneled thereabouts to link to the cellars of another of Golskyn's buildings. Lord Unity wasn't the only priest of monstrous gods in Waterdeep, but he was new to Waterdhavians, and undeniably impressive. Folk were flocking to his hidden rituals, and the traffic beneath Waterdeep's streets was rapidly increasing. If one foundation had been so weakened, what else might soon fall?
Once the rubble was cleared, that tunnel would be discovered, and then-
The sharp, suspicious glare of his father's uncovered eye suddenly blocked Mrelder's view.
"You know something of this," Golskyn snapped. It was not a question.
Mrelder's thoughts raced. Nothing less than a solution would serve; Golskyn had no patience for unsolved problems.
"Well?"
A map of the city sewers came suddenly to mind, and with it his answer.
"I had the mongrelmen undermine yon building's foundation," Mrelder lied. Golskyn scowled, and his son added hastily, "Their work runs very close to a long established sewer-run. It'll be short work to breach what's between them and use the dirt and stone to block off one end of our passage, keeping it secret."
"And the other end?"
"Leads to an old warehouse, half-full of the rubble of our diggings."
Golskyn's scowl remained. "I like this not. Too high a risk."
"How so? Investigation will show only that someone's extending tunnels. Most Waterdhavians believe the Lords control the tunnels, so the Lords'll be blamed. The more troubles Lord Piergeiron must answer for, the more frequently he'll be out among the people-and the more opportunities we'll have to lay hands on the Guardian's Gorget."
"And this warehouse?"
A genuine smile spread across Mrelder's face. "I won it at dice-no coin changed hands, no papers-from an old, retired merchant. He had no family, and, ahem, died suddenly. Shortly after our game."
"He'd no parts worth keeping, I'll warrant," Golskyn muttered predictably, in his usual response to news of death, dismemberment, or murder.
"Alas, none. Heirs and