When they were both staring at her again, Asper handed a small silver device to Roldo.

"Don't lose or drop those, or all our strivings are wasted."

The two nobles looked down at their slipshields. The device Mirt had given Korvaun was a tiny shield of dull metal, but Roldo's was a fanciful pendant of a hawk soaring across a large and intricate snowflake.

"Winterhawk," Roldo murmured, recalling a tale he'd read in an old and rare book his bride had acquired in Silverymoon. For resale, of course.

Asper nodded. "An old tale, not often told," she said quietly, eyeing Roldo with something that might have been respect in her eyes.

Then she went on as briskly as before, "Now at the Gentle, you'll follow Laneetha-dark purple robe, eyes gray as a harbor mist-to her curtained chamber, where you can make the switch unseen. She'll identify herself. I'm telling you this in case anything happens to me in the tunnel. Come."

"Tunnel?" Roldo asked, face tightening.

"It'll get us behind Laneetha's curtain rather more quickly than the carriage could take us there, through underways neither of you will ever remember and have never seen nor heard of-and if you don't follow my instructions precisely as we proceed, will never be able to forget."

Roldo frowned. "Is that a threat?"

The smile fell from Asper's face so suddenly that Roldo half expected to hear it shatter on the floor. "No, it's a promise, on the part of the traps awaiting there. They're very good at keeping promises, believe me. Now, Lords, answer me this: do you swear to serve Waterdeep in utter secrecy, upon pain of death?"

"Lady," Roldo told her a little stiffly, "we are nobles."

"That's why I'm asking," she said quietly, as their eyes locked.

After a long moment, Roldo sighed and shrugged. "I swear. Of course." Korvaun echoed him, without the shrug.

"Good. Thank you." Turning to the nearest wall, Asper thrust aside a curtain.

Both Roldo and Korvaun knew the battered figure standing in the dimly lit room beyond leaning on a crutch-wherefore they both swallowed hard and rose to their feet in hasty unison.

This earned them a smile and the dry words, uttered in a strangely slow and thickened voice: "Well met, loyal lords."

Mrelder had never before seen so many people just lounging around an alley in bustling Dock Ward. Laborers were casually draped over barrels, fishmongers tallied catch-crates with chalk on a handy wall instead of inside whatever warehouse held those catches, and three burly men were fixing the axle-pins of a wagon even a sorcerer could see wasn't really broken.

Even if he stood boldly in the center of the cobbles like a man awaiting a duel, there wasn't much space left. Wherefore Mrelder went into a handy net mender's shop, pointed up its stairs, and offered the toothless old man behind the counter two gold dragons for "the use of yon upper window."

The old man grinned. "Three dragons. Chair's extra."

Mrelder rolled his eyes, dropped a third coin into the man's palm, and ascended. He was only half-surprised to discover a dusky-skinned, scowling titan of a sailor and a pale, thin girl who seemed to be clad entirely in scabbarded daggers there already, seated in chairs at the lone open window. It seemed there was a deep daily local interest in the comings and goings at Mirt's Mansion.

Either that or half the city already knew Lord Piergeiron was inside the stylish fortress. Mrelder settled himself in the last chair-a crack-seated, wobbly wreck, of course-just in time to see a very drunken young man in splendid but disheveled garb carried down the mansion steps by Mirt's doorguards and loaded into the moneylender's carriage. The glittering blue cloak marked the drunk as one of those who'd sworded sailors in a recent brawl.

"Lord Korvaun Helmfast," the dagger-lass chuckled. "My, he must drink fast?"

The sailor's dirty laugh broke off in a grunt as the guards went inside and a sudden singing shimmering sprang from rune-pillar to rune-pillar. "They've set the night-wards," he growled in surprise. "That's it, then. No one'll be leaving 'til morn."

The girl spat thoughtfully out the window as Mirt's carriage rumbled past, and Mrelder sat frowning and thinking.

Then he sprang to his feet and hurried down and out, following the carriage. About half the watchers who'd been loitering in Tarnished Silver Alley had suddenly found good cause to be elsewhere; Mrelder saw only two others oh-so-casually strolling from shop to shop along the route he was taking.

"This window's the best," a hoarse voice came down to him, as he passed under the open windows above one ramshackle shop, "and a good arrow's a small price to pay for a new Open Lord who's not quite so firm and upstanding, if ye take my meaning."

Mrelder hurried on. Best to pretend he'd heard nothing and keep in close under awnings and downspouts, where no arrow might find him. Of course there'd be folk in Dock Ward who'd want Piergeiron dead and welcome all the accompanying tumult. Why He stopped. Ahead, Mirt's carriage had halted outside a large, new-looking building. Mrelder vaguely recalled that an old rooming-house, its roof sagging into collapse, had stood there as sahuagin had raged down the streets. Newly rebuilt, it now sported steps up to elegant double doors flanked by formidable-looking doorguards, beneath a truly splendid signboard.

"The Gentle Moment," he read, then deciphered the more fanciful script below: "Skilled hands to tend all your hurts and needs."

The horses, their heads tossing, were already unhitched and being led around to the near end of Mirt's carriage, to draw it right back down the street to the moneylender's stables.

Mrelder frowned. His purse was now slender enough to make the prospect of following some drunken noble blade-whose connection to the Lords of Waterdeep was probably nonexistent-into a brand-new and surely overpriced house of healing and pleasure rather less than appealing.

A woman who wore little more than a collar adorned with long strips of glittering cut-glass "gems" suddenly burst out of the doors, planted herself on the steps in a pose that showed Mrelder and everyone else on the street all the charms the gods had given her, and blew a horn.

A Watch horn.

Before Mrelder's jaw could even drop, she'd vanished back up the steps in a flashing of false gems and a bouncing of trim flesh, and voices could be heard shouting inside the Gentle Moment-angry male voices.

A brawl must be brewing. Mrelder strolled away from the house of healing to somewhere he could lean casually against on the far side of the street. Mirt's carriage rumbled away, and from the east came the hasty jingling of scabbard-chains and the bobbing of torches.

The doorguards stood motionless, staring coldly at Mrelder and several other curious Dock Warders who'd heard the horn and come to see the trouble-or being as this was Dock Ward-the fun.

They stared back and forth, the guards on the steps and Mrelder and the others across the street, both casually ignoring the Watch patrol who rushed up the steps into the Gentle Moment, then sent out two Watchmen to blow another horn-call.

The Watch wagon that responded to that summons was rather less elegant than Mirt's carriage and sported enough window-bars and firequench-glowing metal plates to seem part of a fortress rather than a conveyance.

The doors of the Gentle Moment opened again and another unconscious young noble-this one wearing a gem-bright cloak of a soft rose hue-was carried out, unconscious, and stuffed through a hastily slammed hatch into the armored wagon.

"Where's he off to, I wonder?" Mrelder murmured aloud.

An old salt standing near threw him a sharp look, spat on the cobbles while deciding to humor a visiting outlander, and growled, "Palace dungeons, o' course. Watch wagons go nowhere else-unless they're carrying deaders to be burned at the Castle."