Scales, flesh, and bone were shorn through as if they were so much butter, and the arm bounced on the stone floor, severed above the elbow. The cleanly sliced stump vanished back through the bars, and a bubbling wail of agony trailed away into the unseen waters.

Mrelder was already peeling off his tunic. He lay down quickly on one of the tables, extending his arm. Strong hands held it firmly in place as he closed his eyes and composed himself, silently reciting the mind-chant an old monk of Candlekeep had taught him.

It was working. He was drifting… down… deeper and darker, all sound fading. He was only dimly aware of the continuing chant now…

He'd spent hours practicing this, hoping that if his mind was settled just so, his body might accept the new limb.

White-hot pain exploded in Mrelder's skull like a fireball, dashing his wits and will to screaming froth in the void, tatters that writhed, faded… and were lost in the deepening, silent darkness.

Varandros Dyre leaned across his gleaming desk and snapped, "Be welcome!" with a fire in his eyes that betokened no good for someone.

All the men taking chairs in this unfamiliar upper office wondered just who Dyre held such ill will toward, and hoped they'd not be caught standing too close to whoever it was when the old Shark struck.

Dyre noticed Karrak Lhamphur eyeing the nearest of the small, gleaming forest of decanters on the curving table before the arc of guest-seats, and waved at it grandly. "Drink, friends!"

Lhamphur and Dorn Imdrael shot him similarly suspicious glances, but it was Lhamphur who spoke up. "What's the occasion, Var? And why here, in such secrecy, instead of at your grand little citadel on Nethpranter's Street? Something you don't want your 'prentices to hear?" He glanced around curiously. "What is this place, anyway? A new venture you want our coins for?"

The Shark's eyes flashed, and-just for a moment-the room sang with tension as every guest awaited the expected explosion.

Then Varandros Dyre smiled and slowly reached for one of the two decanters on his desk, and men breathed in the room again.

"No to your last, Master Smith! Dyre's Fine Walls and Dwellings owns this building free and clear, thanks to the successes we've all shared in this season. Just as Lhamphur's Locks and Gates recently acquired a warehouse for metals to meet the need for gates and hinges and doorplates, I find myself in need of a place to store cut and dressed stone. I can't just leave it lying about in the streets, now can I?"

This caused an overly eager eruption of chuckles from Dyre's closest friend, Hasmur Ghaunt, which thankfully distracted the Shark from noticing the expression that passed momentarily over the face of Jarago Whaelshod, the last-invited of his four guests. The proprietor of Whaelshod's Wagons privately held the view that to save sharing coin with him whenever possible, Varandros Dyre frequently did just that. The Watch usually came to Master Carters to inquire as to how piles of building-stones came to be blocking the narrow streets of the southerly wards of the city, rather than bothering the fastest-rising builder in Waterdeep.

"No," Dyre said heartily, "I don't want your coins, yet I do want to share some news with you, and the words we may exchange shouldn't be overheard by anyone. My home comes furnished with not only 'prentices but daughters and servants, whose hearing, I shouldn't have to tell any of you, can be far keener than even their tongues."

Some chuckles arose. Of the five men in the room, only Hasmur Ghaunt was unmarried, and only Dyre had buried a wife. All of them had been blasted, at one time or another, by the dragonlike temper of Goodwife Anleiss Lhamphur.

"My lasses'll be along later to bring us food to go with this death-to-thirst, but we'll hear them arrive and have to let them in: there'll be no listening at keyholes."

The four guests nodded. Jacks were drained and set down thoughtfully, and Dyre waved at his guests to have more and drink freely.

Surprisingly, it was the swift-to-roister Dorn Imdrael who put his hand over the top of his jack and suggested, "Before we all get roaring, suppose you tell us why we're here. I prefer to be prudent when giving my aye or nay."

Dyre nodded. "Well said. Of course." He looked meaningfully over at the closed and barred door they'd all come in by. It was the only door in the room.

His glance made Hasmur Ghaunt lean forward in almost breathless haste to gabble, "I barred the door like you said! And set the alarm-cord, too!"

Dyre nodded his thanks and planted his hairy, battered hands on the table. "Yestermorn," he began, "a man of mine was injured falling off a scaffold in Redcloak Lane."

His guests winced, frowned, and made sympathetic sounds. The days of hushing up deaths and maimings of workers were gone or going fast. A hurt man meant coin paid out for no work, and hard questions in the guildhall-or harder questions from the Watch.

"Boards broke and spilled him off works that had got all twisted the night before and near-fallen into Redcloak Lane."

"Wasn't that Marlus and his crew?" Lhamphur asked disbelievingly. "I thought he was one of the best-"

"He is. A pack of noble pups at play set their swords on him and his hammer-hands, and started fires, too! One scaffold came right down, but this second one they hauled back into place and braced, and I hardly blame them. But for the whim and grace of Tymora, and the Watch happening along in a timely manner for once, the whole place would have burned!"

There were gasps and whistles at that, and more than one man reached for a decanter.

"As you know," Dyre went on, his voice on the edge of a snarl, "this is hardly our first brush with Waterdhavian nobility."

Lhamphur pursed his lips. "They walked free?"

"They did. The Watch gave them cold words but let them go. Utterly unpunished. One of them made noises about restitution, and that was the end of it."

Whaelshod shook his head. "They've got to be stopped," he growled, and heads nodded around the room.

Dyre's was one of them, as the grim beginnings of a smile crept onto his face. Two seasons back, some idiot nobles had taken it into their heads that racing each other on their most wild-spirited horses from the Court of the White Bull to the South Gate was a daringly sporting thing to do. The fastest way out of the Court was down Salabar Street, and Whaelshod's Wagons stood on west-front Salabar. Everyone knew Jarago Whaelshod had lost beasts and harness and had one man injured.

"I don't know how prudent 'twould be to complain about it, though," Lhamphur said slowly, twirling his jack in his hands.

Dyre suppressed a knowing smile. Nobles bought the elaborate and expensive gates crafted by Master Smith Karrak Lhamphur, and nobles paid the highest coin for copies of keys made with utter discretion, which half the city knew to be Lhamphur's special skill and greatest source of income.

Instead of sneering, Dyre nodded. "Right you are, Karrak. We've complained before and gotten nowhere. I'm through complaining."

All of his guests looked up sharply. This time, Varandros Dyre did smile.

"Something must be done," he told them. "And mark me: this time, something will be done."

The proprietor of Ghaunt Thatching, normally Dyre's smiling and enthusiastically tail-wagging follower, frowned at his friend a little doubtfully. "Uhmm… Var? What d'you mean?"

Varandros Dyre sat back, regarded his guests over the large and battered ruin of his nose, drew in a deep breath, and began.

"Waterdeep's a city of coins, hard work, and the rise and fall of trade. How is it that we who sweat and strain for every last nib and shard suffer the antics of idle young men who ruin property and harm hard workers and cost us all coin?"