"You've the right of it, Smedge: A corpse is what's needed! If we can't find the Hidden Lords, get the one we know. That ought to lure the rest of 'em out!"

There was an uncomfortable little silence.

"That's… that's lawless talk, that is. You sure you're Waterdeep born?"

"So my mother says, an' I doubt she'd've reared me on Ship Street if she'd been able to claw up coin enough for us to get out the gates an' live anywhere else! So don't be trying to wave my words away as some dark outlander plot 'gainst the Deep!"

"Why talk of stringing up poor Piergeiron's corpse, then, if you love Old Stinkingstreets so much?"

"Use your head, man! If they can take down Varandros Dyre-a guildmaster, mind-while we stand and stare and do naught, what's to stop them coming for you next? Or you-or you? Or me? When the walking fish came, we fought! When the orcs came, years back, we fought! Well, these're just as bad-and they're inside the walls with us!"

The chorus of curses that followed was heartfelt, and the hearts were not happy.

Sunset was a bell away as Naoni left the cool green shade of the City of the Dead behind and stepped into the Coinscoffin. Merchants' Rest, more properly, but only haughty folk ever called it that. Down its tiled, high-vaulted, echoing forehall she walked, not looking at the statues of the mighty, and stepped through the everglowing arch she'd hated for years.

Her next step was bone-chilling, as always, and then she was shivering in a wooded garden, on a path somewhere far from the sound and bustle of the city, heading for a familiar glade.

All around, flanking the ribbons of winding paths, was a rough pavement of small, flat stones set into the ground, so numerous that the open space between the trees looked very much like a huge cobbled courtyard. Naoni was in the Guildbones.

Every stone was a life gone, and every grave was covered with a row of them, for guildworkers and their families were buried in layers. Some guildmasters were wealthy-and arrogant-enough to buy grand, statue-guarded vaults in the forehall before their passing, but Naoni's father had been a long way from guildmaster when his wife died.

More than that, Naoni knew he'd have to resign the mastership the moment Master Blund recovered from brain-fever. He'd been chosen as acting guildmaster purely because guild rules prevented anyone with standing in another guild-and Varandros Dyre was a member of the Stonecutters and Masons as well as the Carpenters and Roofers-from permanently warming the master's chair, so no one had to fear he'd try to keep it when the Hammer returned.

So like the stillbirths of the lowliest apprentices' wives, Naoni's mother "rested" in a simple wooden box with two sailors below her, a carter and a wool-carder above, and layers of dirt and lime between them all. Years from now, this glade would be dug up to make space for the newly dead, and any bones left put into a common vault. The markers would be given to descendants, unclaimed ones to the stoneworkers.

Playing in her father's workshop, Naoni had spent much childhood time wondering about the forgotten lives graven into such stones. Few folk knew nearly every building in Waterdeep contained at least one of them. Small wonder tales of ghosts abounded in the city!

Naoni knelt, placed a small spray of blueburst on the marker that read "Ilyndeira Dyre," and then sat back on her heels to wait for memories of her mother to ease her heart.

Or, perhaps, firm her resolve.

Ilyndeira Dyre had loved a noble and come to grief because of it. Naoni had known this since her twelfth summer, after her mother's death, when she'd found Ilyndeira's hidden journal, letters, and a few sad little keepsakes. Her mother had never forgotten, and Naoni had sworn she'd never forget, either. Yet when she looked into Korvaun Helmfast's steady blue eyes, she found herself in danger of breaking the oath she'd sworn over her mother's grave.

He seemed a good man, and growing into his own before her eyes. Quiet ways and all, Korvaun was fast becoming a leader of men; she'd seen his friends' faces when they looked to him, and she was only a guildsmaster's daughter and housekeeper, a simple spinner of threads. He was courteous to commonborn women, and had honored a servant girl at the funeral, before many nobles. None of that swept away the fact that he was a noble of Waterdeep.

Everything was happening so fast. Father had come roaring home, bellowing orders and all but dragging them from the house! She'd barely had time enough to seize her spinning tools before he hustled them to an inn. Faendra, of course, had been pleased at the novelty and the prospect of some leisure, but Naoni wanted silence and solitude, the solace of soft shadows, in green places like this one. Grand folk had their private gardens and arbors, but this garden of the dead was the only haven available to the likes of Naoni Dyre.

So she sat in silence, waiting for the quiet green peace to find its way into her heart.

"Another building's down! The Lords did it!"

Heads turned as the shout rang back off magnificently carved tomb walls.

The City of the Dead was crowded with folk escaping the stink of Dock Ward fish-boilings and a harbor dredging. There had been many mutters of "The New Day, they call themselves!" and "Piergeiron's dead, and they've shoved someone else into his armor to fool us! He crossed some Hidden Lord or other, and they killed him for it!" and even darker sentiments as peddlers and stroll-cooks moved through the throngs.

There was a restless mood in the parklike cemetery. The Watch patrols, walking their usual patrols, felt it. As angry talk swelled around them, they kept their mouths shut and pretended not to hear, where at other times they'd have stepped forward to warn and remonstrate.

Nor were they the only ones treading lightly in the cemetery. Highcoin folk who might on other occasions have loudly called on the Watch to chastise and more, kept their peace and walked warily, listening instead of airily voicing opinions.

"The Lords are driving Dyre down, building by building!"

Heads turned.

"What's that? What building?" a merchant bellowed, in a voice that rang out like a warhorn.

"The Lords are smashing the New Day!" someone else shouted, bringing inevitable calls of, "What's the New Day?"

Folk were gathering quickly, striding frown-faced from bowers behind more distant burial halls. In the darker shadows of the tombs, half-seen ghostly shapes stirred restlessly, called forth into the sunlight by the sudden anger and fear riding the air.

"The Lords are against us all!" a man roared, waving his belt-knife.

A woman standing near shrieked, "They can blast down all our homes, and take our coins from among our bones, and build anew!"

"They're hunting Varandros Dyre in the streets right now," a breathless cap-merchant gasped, trotting up the cobbled path from the nearest cemetery gate. Others, standing near, took up that cry.

"They'll kill us all, if they think we're of the New Day!"

"What's this 'New Day'?"

"Get home and get your coins before they bring the walls down on your children! Fetch your swords! This is it!"

"The Lords are hunting the New Day! The Lords are after us all!"

"What by all the blazing Hells is the New Day?"

That exasperated outlander's shout was lost in the rising roar of angry Waterdhavians drawing belt-knives and gathering nose-to-nose to shout rumors into dark truths, and dark truths into war-cries.

A Watch horn rang out-then another-and suddenly the crowd knew its foe.

Heads turned, eyes peered, pointing arms shot out-and in an instant the Watch became the hunted.