Evening came down over the city in stages — first the lamplighters moving through the better wards, then the torchboys working their way outward, then the Dock Ward coming alive in the way only the Dock Ward did after dark, with the smell of salt water sharpened by fish oil and spilled ale and the particular kind of noise that meant people were looking for things they wouldn't ask for by daylight.
Caelith changed into his common clothes at Trollskull Manor. Chain mail in a city tavern was a liability he'd already catalogued — it announced him before he spoke, and the Dock Ward was not a place to announce anything. He was going to Blackstaff Tower tonight, not to the docks, but the logic held. A paladin in his armour climbed those tower steps to make a report. A man in a plain coat came to have a conversation. He intended to have a conversation.
Corrin had been ready for an hour. He had a way of being ready — not restless, not drumming his fingers, just present in the particular stillness of someone who had decided what they were doing and was simply waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. Lylnyler pulled on his coat. Neither of them said much. There was a comfort in that now: three people who had spent enough time in rooms where talking too much was dangerous had learned, without discussing it, that silence between them meant readiness.
The Split — Trollskull Alley, where three paths become two
They parted at the end of Trollskull Alley — Caelith north toward the Castle Ward, Corrin and Lylnyler south toward the docks.
Caelith was shown up without being kept waiting. Vajra Safahr was at her desk, the way she always was, quill in hand. She set it down when he came in — not as a gesture of welcome, he had learned, but as a signal that she was switching modes. The quill was for work that could wait.
"Sit or stand — suit yourself."
Caelith stood. He told her what he had: a man around forty, dark hair, a good wool coat, a signet ring worn crest-in. A woman younger, sharp-faced, trained — the kind of trained that showed in how she watched exits rather than people. Both had arrived at the harbormaster's office and The Hanged Man two days ago asking about Jalester Silvermane by name, with an accurate physical description already in hand. Corrin's gut read was Zhentarim. Renaer had said it could be — the signet ring worn crest-in, the trained fieldwork — but neither had confirmed it.
Vajra did not move when he finished. She placed it on the timeline the way she did with anything that mattered — not as a reaction, but as a piece that needed to fit somewhere.
"Two days ago. Before Xanathar gave you the task."
She was not asking. She was thinking aloud. The fabrication she was building for Xanathar — a retired cipher named Corvel Dast, a Baldur's Gate dead end, a trail that closed cleanly — had been built around the assumption that Xanathar was the only party asking questions. Now there were two audiences. And the second audience had not arrived in Waterdeep to start from nothing. They had arrived with a file.
"I need to know how much they already have. If they've been watching him long enough to build a file, they may already know his pattern better than I do. And if Corvel Dast doesn't hold up against a second independent sweep, the fabrication doesn't just fail — it flags that someone made it."
Caelith said the obvious thing: assume the worst, be careful about the false facts.
She paused — not to disagree, but to find the plainest way to say something.
"The false facts aren't the problem. Any fabrication I write will be factually clean — dates that exist, a ship that actually sailed, a name registered at the harbormaster's office. That's the craft of it. The problem is Corvel Dast. He needs to be real enough that when the Zhentarim pull on his thread, they find themselves at a dead end and believe it's a genuine dead end. Not a wall. An absence. Xanathar's people will read the report and accept it because they want the matter closed. The Zhentarim won't want it closed — they'll want to know why they came up empty. Those are two different audiences, and a fabrication that satisfies one may advertise itself to the other."
She needed one thing to work from: at The Hanged Man — had they come in with the name, or with only a description?
Both, Caelith told her. At the Hanged Man, they named Jalester Silvermane. Described him accurately. What they asked at the harbormaster's office he couldn't say.
A stillness. Not surprise — something Caelith recognised from soldiers who received information they had half-expected and didn't like having confirmed.
"Then they didn't build the file here. You don't arrive in a city with a name and an accurate description unless the file was assembled somewhere else, from a source that already knew him. Which means the Zhentarim have had eyes on Jalester — or on someone close to him — for long enough that this trip to Waterdeep is a follow-up, not the start of something."
She turned the parchment on her desk face down. The Corvel Dast draft, whatever it currently said, no longer applied in its current form.
"The fabrication can't just be a dead end. It has to be a dead end that explains why their existing file points here and then stops. Corvel needs a history that reaches back far enough to predate whatever they already have — or the cover story needs a reason why Jalester's trail changed hands. I'll need to revise the approach. The broad strokes hold. The details don't."
She had already revised it twice. She told him that without embarrassment — it was information about the timeline, not an apology.
Caelith said he could investigate further and return by the following day.
She stood — the clean signal that the meeting was done — and gave him two tasks. The pair's lodging: where Zhentarim operatives on a follow-up assignment stayed told her something about the chain they were reporting into. A city lodge meant local operations. Outside the walls meant someone had brought them in specifically. That distinction changed how long she had before the report reached whoever sent them.
And second: whether the man's description had been enough for the harbormaster to offer a name in return. If the harbormaster had recognised the description and given them a name — any name — she needed to know which one. If they had left with nothing, the file was still sealed to what they had brought in. Two different problems.
"I need what you find before the end of the second bell on the day after tomorrow. The fabrication can be revised — I've revised it twice already — but there is a point past which I cannot hold the report without Xanathar noticing the delay. You understand. That's all."
Blackstaff Tower — Caelith and Vajra working out how to deceive two factions at once
Caelith left her with the parchment still face-down.
The Muleskull Tavern sat at the edge of the Dock Ward the way a man sits at the edge of his own problems — close enough to see everything, not interested in moving. It was the kind of place where the benches were worn smooth from use rather than care and the fire burned steadily because someone had learned the hard way what happened when it didn't. Corrin spotted Praxton at a corner table without asking. He had that quality: knowing which person in a room was the one they were looking for.
Muleskull — Corrin and Lylnyler box Praxton into a corner table
He sat down without being invited. Lylnyler took the seat on Praxton's other side, and for a moment the half-orc dock worker looked at both of them with the flat, careful expression of a man deciding whether he was in trouble.
"You've got the wrong man."
He said it quietly, the way someone says it when they mean the opposite.
"Look, you're not in trouble. We just need to have a talk."
"Even if I wasn't the wrong man — which I'm not — 'we just need to have a talk' is what someone says when they want something, and they'd rather not say what. So. What do you want?"
Corrin told him: the Sable Moon, a man being brought aboard who moved like a man walking in his sleep. They'd heard Praxton saw it.
The name Mira sat unspoken between them. Praxton breathed out slowly through his nose and looked at the table for a moment.
"All right. Here's what I saw. Night crew. Sable Moon was berthed at the north end — no registration flag, which you notice when you're used to not noticing things. Two figures, hooded. The man between them wasn't unconscious. He was somewhere between walking and being carried — his feet were moving but nothing else was. Like the body remembered how to walk but the person inside had gone somewhere else."
He looked up.
"That your man? What's your interest?"
"He was a good friend of mine. I'm trying to find him. Do you know where the boat was going? And can you give me more details about the two people who were with him?"
"North. That's the heading she took when she cleared the harbour. Whether she held it or turned, I couldn't say — I'm not a navigator. Two figures. One was big. Human or close to it — just muscle, nothing remarkable. The other was smaller. Pale hands, thin fingers. I noticed the hands because they were the only part of either of them the lamp caught properly."
He stopped. His eyes went to his cup. There was something else. Whatever it was, he had been deciding whether to say it for three weeks, and he hadn't said it yet.
Lylnyler sent the words directly into Praxton's mind — a whisper that cost nothing, travelled thirty feet, and arrived only for the intended ear.
"Look, I get you don't want to tell this slimy fellow next to me more, but you can tell me and I'll keep it to myself."
Praxton went still for just a moment. Then the corner of his mouth moved — almost a smile. He set the cup down. He did not answer the Message directly. He turned his gaze forward and spoke low enough that it was not meant for the room.
"The smaller one turned at the top of the gangplank. Just for a moment — checking the dock, I think, before they went below. The lamp was behind me. It caught their eyes."
A pause. He chose the words carefully.
"Wrong color. Like a cat's in the dark, the way a cat's eyes catch light and throw it back. But worse than that. Like — nothing behind them that cared. Not cruelty. Just nothing."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I've been sitting on that detail for three weeks. Didn't tell Mira. Didn't tell anyone. Wasn't sure what telling it did except make me the man who told it. Is he coming back? Your friend."
"I hope so, if we can find him."
"Then good luck to you."
He picked up his cup and looked back toward the bar. The conversation was over.
The Hanged Man was doing steady trade. The Dock Ward crowd moved through it with the particular comfort of people who had been coming to the same place long enough that the room no longer noticed them. Corrin spotted the man from Brennar's description before they were through the door — mid-forties, dark hair going grey at the temples, good wool coat, a signet ring turned crest-inward on his right hand. Corner table. Back to the wall.
Lylnyler walked over and sat down.
"Nice ring you've got there. Are you married?"
"Not anymore. You looking for company, or just making conversation?"
Easy, unhurried, the answer costing him nothing. He glanced up at Lylnyler with the mild, polite interest of a man who had nowhere else to be.
"A bit of both, to be honest."
He gestured at the empty chair.
"Sit, then. I've got time."
Lylnyler sat. They talked around the ring for a few exchanges — the man said old habit, turned his hand over to show the crest face-up, a merchant's scales mark worn smooth. He asked where Lylnyler was from, noticed he was not from the docks, filed it without comment. His drink sat at the level of a man who was nursing it, not enjoying it.
"I've been looking for someone. He's not here."
"Shame. Friend of yours, or business?"
"A good friend. How about you — you got any friends?"
"One or two."
He glances toward the bar, then back.
"They're not here either."
Lets that sit a moment, then tilts his head slightly.
"Your friend — he a regular here? Only I've been in a few times this week and the faces start to blur together."
He paused.
"No. My friend and I are both looking for our friend."
"Both looking. How long's he been missing?"
He repeated it quietly, tasting it.
"I never said he was missing. We were just supposed to meet up, but he may be late."
At which point Corrin arrived from across the room carrying a tray of beers, moving through the crowd with the unhurried confidence of a halfling with business to attend to, and then tripped — or appeared to trip — on nothing visible, and the tray went over the man, the table, and the wool coat in a single cascading disaster.
The man was on his feet before the tray landed. Whatever he was, his reflexes were not a civilian's.
"Gods—"
Flat, controlled. He held his arms away from his body and looked down at the beer spreading across his coat. His jaw tightened once. Relaxed.
At the adjacent table, a woman Lylnyler had registered as part of the furniture was suddenly on her feet, eyes moving across the room — not at the spill, at the exits.
He blotted his sleeve. Picked up his coat. Dropped a few coins on the table for the mess.
"Kaela."
One word. The woman was already moving toward the door. The man headed for the door. Behind him, Lylnyler called out.
"I thought your friends weren't here."
The man didn't stop walking. At the door, one hand on the frame, he glanced back over his shoulder.
"They weren't."
Then through the door. His partner two steps behind, already scanning the street.
On Corrin's hand, tucked into the curl of his fingers, was the signet ring.
They followed the pair from The Hanged Man. Corrin dropped back to a following distance that was not a following distance to anyone watching — he was simply another person in the same direction, a coincidence, a halfling going home. Lylnyler hung further back, tall enough to see over the crowd and far enough that the two people ahead of them would have needed to be looking for a tail to find one.
North at Sail Street. A narrow lane cutting east. The pair moved at a pace that was not hurried and not casual — it was operational, the pace of people covering distance with purpose, with no interest in being observed making the decision to go somewhere.
The Raging Lion inn, Trades Ward. Both figures went in without pausing at the door.
Corrin and Lylnyler waited a few minutes on the street, then entered. The night clerk had the look of someone who had been awake longer than they wanted to be and was not expecting anything to require effort from them.
The Raging Lion — working the night clerk
"A woman and man just came in here. Do they have a room here?"
The clerk was cautious. Guest information was not given out to people off the street.
Corrin's face shifted into an expression of gentle excitement.
"Oh — I'm a friend of Kaela's. I'm throwing her a surprise party for her birthday. It would help me so much if I knew which room she has so we can set up the surprise when she goes out."
The clerk opened the ledger.
"Room 7, second floor. She and her husband checked in three days ago. She usually heads out mid-morning. He goes earlier."
Room 7. Checked in three days ago — before they had started asking about Jalester. Corrin asked about a spare key. The clerk declined. Lylnyler leaned in.
"But it would be so much more fun for her if it's really a surprise. If we need to ask her to let us in, the surprise isn't really there anymore."
The clerk wavered. A key appeared from under the desk.
"I really shouldn't... Just have it back by morning."
"By morning? But that's not enough time — you said she'd leave in the morning, so we can't plan something before that."
"Fine. Keep it until noon. But I want it back — and if anyone asks, a guest lost their key and I issued a replacement. Neither of you were here."
"Thank you so much! This is going to be the best party ever!"
They left the Raging Lion with the room key, the woman's name, and a window until noon.