"Not your-"

He bit off his own snarl to stare at both of his daughters. Mayhap there was something to that notion…

"The Lords Helmfast, Hawkwinter, Jardeth, and Thongolir," said Faendra, "men of proven honor, Father."

"Men of powerful houses," Naoni pressed. "The Lords would have to want you very badly indeed to risk angering so many nobles."

"One of those young lords is the heir of his house," Varandros mused. "Two more aren't far behind. The Lords would hesitate to spill blood so blue." He frowned again. "But what if they're the very Lords who're after me? Or are working for them?"

Faendra hissed in exasperation, but Naoni made a slashing gesture to cut her off. A familiar gesture. His own. Varandros blinked as sudden affection rose in him. Suddenly his serene, quiet elder daughter was not so unknowable as she'd always seemed.

"If they're what you fear, then you're right where you are now, Father, except that they'll be standing within your reach, if you… dare to try that way."

"You were going to say if I was foolish enough to try that way, weren't you?" he asked quietly.

She nodded, meeting his gaze squarely, then raised her chin and said, "Yes, because you would be."

Varandros gave her a crooked smile. He sat back, his tankard warm in his hands, and told the ceiling huskily, "Thank you, gods, for giving me two daughters such as these."

He sipped soothing cider and then asked, "Can you bring your young nobles here? Or would it better if I went to meet them?"

The Dyre girls exchanged surprised glances.

"Well, ah…" Naoni began.

"We hadn't reckoned on getting this far so swiftly, Father," Faendra said sheepishly. "We'd expected to be wearing that cider by now."

Varandros Dyre stared at her for a moment and then bellowed with laughter. His roars of mirth echoed back to him off the ceiling, louder than he'd laughed in many a year.

After a moment, with a hesitation and uncertainty that made him suddenly want to weep-gods, were they that afraid of him?- Naoni and Faendra Dyre started to laugh, too.

Elaith Craulnober stalked through the tunnel, his mood darkening with every stride. It boasted a dry floor, fine stonework, and an arched stone ceiling high enough to allow his little band to walk upright, but it was still a sewer. Worse, it was a new sewer, so new that it wasn't on the most recent maps.

He turned to face the two roughblades dragging the dwarf. Their captive's just-broken legs trailed limply, and his gray beard was matted with dried blood, none of which had dimmed the defiance in his rheumy old eyes. Nor did the dagger Elaith drew from a wrist sheath.

"Who ordered this work?" the Serpent demanded, waving his fang in a sweeping circle at the tunnel all around.

Battered and swollen lips cracked into a sneer. "Bunch of stinkin' drow. Said they knew yer mother real well."

"Very amusing." The elf looked at his men. "Kill him."

Knives flashed, and the dwarf who'd for years been Waterdeep's most knowledgeable tunnel builder thudded unceremoniously to the stones.

"Heavy bastard," one of the slayers observed, cleaning his knife on his victim's tunic. "Not much for talking, though."

"Indeed," Elaith agreed. The dwarf had been his "guest" for some days now, and in all that time had adamantly refused to say a useful word about recent activities beneath the city streets.

No matter. Living or dead, they all talked in time. Elaith nodded to the pale woman in black and purple at the rear of their small procession. The symbol of the god of the dead, the Bone-hand clutching golden scales, was emblazoned on her tabard in glittering thread-perhaps the gem-spun thread now creating an uproar in Waterdhavian fashion, and clear proof he was paying this priestess far too much.

This whole affair was becoming damnably expensive. His recent adventures in Tethyr had strained his coffers, and he'd lost two valuable properties this tenday. There must be an end to this, and soon.

Elaith watched intently as the Kelemvorite knelt by the body, held out her hands, palms-down, and chanted an eerily tuneful prayer.

A faintly shimmering cloud rose from the corpse, swiftly taking on the shape of the dwarf-but whole, showing no signs of the injuries inflicted on him over the last few days.

The apparition stared at the priestess with contempt and then glared at Elaith impatiently. "Well? Get on with it. I got places to go, friends to meet, tankards to drain."

"Three questions," the Skullsister intoned, as if she hadn't heard the spirit. "The Lord of the Dead grants me the power to hold you until three questions are answered fully and truthfully."

The ghostly dwarf snorted. "Ask away."

The priestess looked to her employer.

"Who laid this stonework?" Elaith snapped. The priestess echoed his words exactly.

The spirit sneered at that.

"I told you I knew not. Use truth more often, Slyboots, an' you might know the sound of it." The apparition seemed to grow a little fainter. "Stones well-trimmed and tight-fitted, not half-bad work. It'll hold a good long time. Not up to dwarf standards, of course, but close as Tall Folk are likely to get. Done by either folk newcome to Waterdeep-stoneworkers I never heard of-or Varandros Dyre. One or 'tother."

Elaith bit back a curse. Witless humans, endangering their own properties-and infinitely worse, his as well! "If the tunnel's sound, what brought the building down?"

The dwarven spirit's reply was swift and firm. "This digging's too close to one of Ahghairon's old wards. There's a warren of sewers under this city, and under that levels upon levels of caverns and dungeons and what-have-you. D'you think Waterdeep stands on that anthill thanks to human 'stonecraft'? Bah!" The ghostly form was noticeably fainter now.

It was Elaith's turn to sneer. Stonecraft? Hardly. Ahghairon? Well, perhaps the human had renewed or augmented the high magic he'd found, left behind from Aelinthaldaar. That was what kept half of Waterdeep from tumbling into the depths… A remembrance of his long-ago fosterage rose unbidden to mind. A particularly creative nurse once brought to the royal nursery a wonderfully complex toy made of hard-spun sugar in rainbow hues. As she told a tale about a powerful human wizard whose spells bored through the depths beneath his city seeking gold, the children had taken turns breaking off and eating bits of candy, until the toy collapsed into fragments-a lesson, of course, about the fragility of magic and the dangers inherent in hasty greed.

That game had fixed the tale in his memory so firmly that Elaith still saw it clearly, all these years later. He'd known enough to break off small bits, not pieces that were part of the supports, but little Amnestria, her sapphire hair a curly halo around a face sticky from the treat, had known less restraint. Her sweet tooth, impatient nature, and grasping little hands had brought the sweet wonder down in short order.

Firmly banishing that memory, Elaith spread out the map of Waterdeep's underground passages on the tunnel floor. Taking quill and ink from a belt-pouch, he addressed the dwarven spirit for the third and final time.

"Where are the wards of the wizard Ahghairon? Fully describe the locations and natures of all that are known to you."