The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [61]
Lord Unity's scowl was gone. "You've given this hard thought."
Mrelder nodded. "Once the 'why' of this collapse is known, citizens'll be ready enough to blame tunneling for other downfalls."
"There are other buildings down?"
"Not yet." Mrelder smiled. "Before dawn, another building will fall. Far from here, so no hint of suspicion comes to our doors."
Golskyn actually smiled. "Your sorcery will cause this?"
Mrelder bowed.
The priest squinted at the sky. "You'd best get on with it, my son. Dawn is but three bells away."
My son. Mrelder turned away to hide his blushing smile. He'd never thought to hear those words spoken so casually, much less with something approaching pride. He'd felt such happiness only once before, but then it had been Lord Piergeiron who'd looked on him with warmth and called him friend.
The sorcerer put that fond memory firmly out of his mind and strode across the room to his clothes. It was time to go out and spread dissent and destruction in Lord Piergeiron's Waterdeep.
* * * * *
The guards on the Palace steps gave Mrelder hard, steady stares, but let him pass.
The guards inside challenged him, and no wonder. The mists weren't off the harbor yet; it was early indeed to have honest business at the Palace.
However, it seemed the polite note he'd sent Piergeiron yestereve, mentioning his own arrival in Waterdeep and inquiring after the First Lord's health, had done its work well. Merely giving his name had the guards nodding respectfully and waving him toward a servant in a fine tabard.
"The First Lord bids you welcome and wishes Waterdeep had more friends of your mettle," that man said approvingly, as he waved Mrelder smoothly through a door that looked like most of the others in that long, lofty hall.
Morningfeast for Piergeiron was evidently a hearty serve-yourself affair. Steam was rising from platters on a sideboard, where about a dozen grandly dressed, important looking men with serious, frowning faces were forking sausages and smoked silverfin into wooden bowls, and plucking boiled eggs out of a sea of spiced butter. They looked as if they were expecting grim doom to strike them down before highsun, and had little desire to meet it with empty bellies.
The First Lord looked up from a stack of papers a clerk had just put in front of him, smiled broadly, and waved Mrelder to the sideboard.
Mrelder grinned back. Whatever his father's intended dooms for Waterdeep or anyone who stood in his way-and the First Lord of Waterdeep could hardly help but do that-he found it impossible to dislike this man.
"We can talk soon," Piergeiron promised, taking a quill the clerk was already holding out to him.
The son of Lord Unity joined the men at the sideboard, who all gave him silent "And you are-?" frowns. He found himself nose to nose with sleepy-eyed City Guard officers, a few softly gliding courtiers, and several grumpy looking Watchful Order wizards.
Mrelder's stomach rumbled. Several of the guardsmen were heaping their bowls to precarious heights, so he didn't stint in filling his own, ere he sat with the others at the long table. He had the far end from Piergeiron, of course, but as he dug into fried mushrooms dripping with some sort of sauce and gratefully received a drinking-jack of warmed zzar from a deft servant, he gathered from the speed with which the others were eating that they'd soon be out the doors to their duties.
So it proved, and Mrelder was just sitting back from his last few sausages with a sigh of contentment-gods of Amalgamation, it'd been years since he'd eaten this well!-when the oldest-looking wizard sat down right beside him and asked quietly, "And you are-?"
"Mrelder. I-"
"Fought beside the Lord Piergeiron in defense of the city, and are his personal friend, yes," the wizard said smoothly, his dark old eyes keen and bright. "Perhaps I should have added the words, 'here for' to my question, thus: And