The youngest Lord Helmfast headed for the decanters on his sideboard. "That's bad. Is anyone speaking out against these rumors?"

Taeros waved his hands in a "who knows?" gesture. "Probably, but against truth, rumor spreads faster, dies harder, and is usually far more interesting."

Korvaun turned with a frown, decanter in hand. "And reminds us of the obvious: Piergeiron will not outlive every rumor. Some dark day, that rumor will be true."

"Yes!" Taeros gasped. "Wherefore I ran here! If enough citizens can be made to think about such things, we've the best chance we'll ever have to change things in Waterdeep! Make the Lords unmask, at least."

"How are we going to manage that, without violence? I can't imagine they'll want to reveal themselves, or that, if we try to force change with shouts and crowds and fists in the streets, the drunks and thieves and troublemakers won't swiftly make sure the whole city explodes into swords and blood. We'll have shops smashed, folk murdered, and the Watch and the Guard called out. Jails and blood and very hard feelings, fences broken that might not be mended for lifetimes…"

Taeros stared back at his friend, his red face going white to the lips, and eagerly took and drained an offered goblet. Korvaun calmly filled it again.

Taeros stared down into it. "So for the good of the city," he asked it bitterly, "we should just sit and do nothing as the Lords choose someone else to sit in the Palace, and everything goes on as before?"

Korvaun shook his head. "No, I didn't say that. I pointed out peril right before us and wondered why unmasking the Lords matters so much. Convince me."

"Who proclaims our laws?"

"Piergeiron, of course."

"Right. Who writes and decides them?"

"The Lords of Waterdeep, Piergeiron and…"

"And the gods alone know how many masked Lords, yes. And who chooses them?"

Korvaun chuckled. "I know not-no one does. That is, the Masked Lords choose their own, ah, reinforcements."

"Aha, and who administers the laws?"

"The Watch, and the Magisters decide guilt."

Taeros waved his goblet. "Who does the Watch report to? How are the Magisters chosen?"

"They report to Piergeiron, ultimately, and I believe he appoints the Black Robes, too."

"Just so. How's the Open Lord chosen?"

Korvaun frowned. "Strangely enough, I've no idea."

"Precisely!" snapped Taeros, slamming his fist down on a sidetable. "The most powerful man in Waterdeep, and no one knows just who gave him that power or who else decides things for this city. Piergeiron's worthy and just-few dispute that-but who's to say the one who follows him will be anything of the kind? He'll be the choice of the Lords, of course, but who are they? Why're we so willing to trust in what's kept secret from us? Who's to say we're not obeying the whims of liches? Or the very hissing sahuagin we thought we hurled back from our walls? Why-"

There was a commotion outside Korvaun's closed door: Booted feet coming swiftly closer. Then the door opened precipitously and one of the house doorjacks thrust his head in and blurted, "Pray pardon the interruption, Lords, but you have a visi-"

A long arm jerked the man back out of sight, trailing a startled "Eeeep!"

The owner of that arm swept into the room, face set in dark anger.

Beldar Roaringhorn sported an impressive bruise on his jaw, and there was fire in his eyes as he kicked the door shut, causing a muffled groan and thump from its far side. Taeros swallowed anxiously as Beldar strode forward.

To meet Korvaun's gaze squarely, and snap, "Pray accept my apologies for… last night. The fault was mine; I shouldn't run around disparaging servants, no matter what foolishness they offer me. What I said darkened the memory of poor Malark. Your anger was just. Pray, let it be forgotten between us."

"Let it be forgotten," Korvaun agreed, stepping forward to offer Beldar a goblet.

The youngest Lord Roaringhorn took and drained it. "Fine stuff, and sorely needed!" He set it down with a thunk. "Now, to business."

Korvaun poured himself a goblet. "Taeros came to me a-fire, and now you. What fuels your flame? All this talk of Piergeiron's death?"

"That and more. The city's roused worse than I've ever seen it. Even when scaly things were slithering up out of the harbor and folk were trembling in their beds, Waterdeep stood together. Now the city feels like… like an alley-full of roughblades spoiling for a fight, eyeing you just before the first of them pulls his knife."

"And Malark's dead," Taeros said softly, seeing what lay beneath his friend's anger.

A ruby-red cloak swirled glimmeringly as Beldar whirled around. "Yes, hrast it," he snarled. "Dead, just like that! Gone from us when-when it should never have happened! He had years left to joke and prance and-years!"

Korvaun deftly replaced Beldar's empty goblet with a full one. "Tell us more."

"More?" Beldar snapped. "This isn't enough?"

"Humor me," Korvaun replied, his voice mild but firm.

Beldar stared at him, breathing hard, then sipped from his goblet, swallowed, and growled, "The old Open Lord may just be gone at last, so Malark's passing is forgotten in an instant… and the shopkeepers and dockers are snarling at us as both the cause and all that's bad and wrong about Waterdeep… and blast me if I can find the words to refute them, with my own mother, Mratchetta bloody Roaringhorn, sitting there in her pearl-and-gold bedchamber right now; shouting at her maidservants and everyone else within reach, to get out and scour every last jeweler in the city-just so she can find out how many sapphires Alys Jardeth has had fitted into her new upcomb, so she can have more!"

The rivalry between Alys Jardeth and Mratchetta Roaringhorn was well known, and a traditional source of sardonic amusement among the Gemcloaks, but it took few wits to see Beldar was deeply upset-and not about upcombs.

"That would be those tiara-trellis things the ladies use to make their hair stand up like a rooster's comb, yes?" Taeros asked quietly, to fill the furious silence.

Beldar nodded as he drained his goblet again, somehow managing not to choke in doing so.

"Beldar," Korvaun said quietly, "be fair to your mother. She's grown up knowing she's but a cousin of the Lords Roaringhorn, and that even if neither of them marry and produce heirs, they've a younger brother who probably will. Moreover, with nigh a dozen strong, capable male Roaringhorns striding the halls of your High House, and-forgive me-her neither the most beautiful nor the most capable noble lady in Waterdeep, with no head for business nor easy hostess graces, what does life offer her but frivolous pursuits?"

Beldar Roaringhorn looked up with murder in his eye, and for a moment Taeros wondered if he was going to lose one friend to a burial crypt or perhaps his own life through getting between the two of them… but then the leader of the Gemcloaks set down his empty goblet on the nearest bright-polished sidetable with exaggerated care, drew a deep breath, and whispered, "You… see clearly and speak truly, Korvaun. I thank you for that. As you say, how could my mother be otherwise?"

He strode to Korvaun's windows and asked the city outside grimly, "How can any of Waterdeep's nobility be otherwise? So all of us fine nobles stand blind to the anger in the streets or dismiss it as the usual grumblings of the underclasses."

He made a fist and drew his arm sharply up as if to smash his hand down on a handy table that wasn't there, and then burst out, "Why can't folk just know their place?"

Taeros and Korvaun exchanged glances. It was the youngest Lord Helmfast who ventured to say quietly, "So we stand here concerned but uncertain of how to proceed. I suggest we go see Mirt the Moneylender and ask his advice. After all, he's a merchant of Dock Ward, and-"