"Actually," Darien replied affably, "I already know where this thing of import happens to be. So the task is all the simpler. I only need someone who can venture there and retrieve it."

The other man's hand inched across the table toward the gold coin. "And just where might that be?"

Darien spoke a single, quiet word.

"Undermountain."

Bent-Nose's hand began to tremble. Hastily he snatched it back.

"I can be of no help to you, stranger," he gasped hoarsely. "I'll not go back down there." His eyes went distant with remembered fear. "Do you hear me? I'll not go down there again!"

Darien watched the trembling man with a mixture of pity and curiosity. He had seen something below, something to break a man's will and send him seeking forgetfulness in drink. Something horrible. The pathetic wretch.

"Fear not, friend," Darien said in disdainful mirth. "I would hardly ask you to undertake this task for me." He tapped the gold piece with a finger. "But tell me-who shall I send on this crucial errand? Are any of these worth the price?" He gestured subtly toward the various roadworn freebooters and adventurers who filled the inn.

A strangled laugh escaped the other man's throat. "Those fools? Bah! None of them are worth the coin Durnan charges them to go down below. They'll come back mad and penniless. If they come back at all." His voice dropped to a mysterious whisper. "No, there's only one who might help you, stranger. Only one who could go down into a place like that, find what he's looking for, and come out… whole. But you'll not get him"

Darien pushed the coin across the table. His voice resonated with intensity.

"Tell me."

For a long moment Bent-Nose eyed the gold piece and his empty ale pot in turn. At last he reached out his still-shaking hand and closed it around the coin. Within the shadows of his hood, Darien smiled. He leaned forward to hear the other man's whispered words.

As the hours wore toward midnight, Darien moved through the inn, swathed in his disguise, approaching others who he thought might be compelled, with a gold coin or a pot of ale, to speak. They were more than plentiful. He asked each the same question. Who, better than any other, might go deep into Undermountain and find what he was charged to seek? Many names were given in answer. Some were heroes who had never existed other than in legends. Others were sots who at present snored drunk-enly in a corner of the inn. Neither were of any use to Darien. However, there was one name that was repeated again and again in awed voices.

Artek the Knife.

Darien had heard of the scoundrel before. Artek Ar'talen, known also as the Knife, had once been Waterdeep's most famous and elusive criminal. He had preyed most often upon the nobility, which made him all the more abhorrent in Darien's eyes, if not those of the common folk. It was said that there was no tower so high, no vault so secure, and no crypt so deep that Artek the Knife could not penetrate it and rob it clean. That made him the perfect candidate for Darien's task. There was only one complication. Artek the Knife had mysteriously vanished over a year ago.

At last Darien found one who knew why.

"The city watch finally caught him," the woman said, quaffing the ale Darien had bought her. By her leather garb and the myriad knives at her hip, she styled herself some sort of rogue. "I guess Artek wasn't as slippery as the stories claimed. The Magisters have him locked up in their prison." She clenched a hand into a fist. "And he can rot in there forever!"

"Let me guess," Darien replied musingly. "Ar'talen enlisted your help in a robbery, promising to cut you in on the take, only to disappear with all the loot."

Anger twisted her face, and by this he knew he had hit close to the mark.

"He won't do you any good either," she spat. "The Magisters will never let you near him."

"I wouldn't be so certain," Darien purred. "I am rather accustomed to getting what I want."

Just then a burly freebooter careened drunkenly into Darien. The noble swore hotly, but the man only lurched onward to join several compatriots at a nearby table. Darien turned back to the woman to see that her eyes had narrowed in sudden suspicion. Too late he noticed the silken ruffle now revealed where his cloak had been knocked aside.

She grabbed the cloak, ripping it away. Even to one who did not know his identity, his high forehead and striking features clearly marked him a noble, as did his long coat of rich purple velvet and his ruffled shirt of silvery silk. The rogue hissed the words like venom.

"A nobleman."

Instantly, a deathly silence settled over the common room. All eyes turned toward Darien. Inwardly he cursed the insolent woman.

"I have no quarrel with you," he said coolly. Yet, he added to himself.

She drew dangerously close to him. "No? Well, I have one with you-you and all your kind. I was only a child at the time, but I will never forget the day a nobleman cast my family into the street. He took everything we owned. Then he had my parents hauled away by the city watch. They were thrown into prison, and they died there. I remember standing in the gutter, crying. I didn't understand what was happening. And do you know what the nobleman said? 'Do forgive me.' " She shook with seething fury. "As if that could bring my parents back!"

Darien stared at her flatly. "You must understand, my dear," he said in a bored voice. "A lord can hardly be expected to indulge a tenant who fails to pay his rent. You see, if one allows but a single maggot into his meat, he will soon find it putrid with flies."

For a frozen moment, the woman stared at him in pale-faced rage. Then she reached for one of the curved knives at her belt. But Darien was faster and raised his right arm. Three barbed steel prongs sprang from the end of the Device. They spun rapidly, emitting a high-pitched whine. With a fluid, casual motion, Darien stepped forward and thrust the whirling prongs deep into the rogue's gut. He let them spin there a moment, then withdrew his arm. With a click, the blood-smeared barbs slid back into the Device.

Her eyes wide with shock, the rogue sank to the floor. There she writhed in soundless agony as she slowly died. Just as the insect had on the end of the Device. With a fey smile, Darien whispered, "Do forgive me."

He spun on a boot heel and strode through the silent common room toward the tavern's door. The rabble made no move to stop him. They didn't dare. And it did not matter that his disguise had been revealed. He had already gotten everything he needed.

"So you have managed to land yourself in prison, Artek Ar'talen," he murmured to himself. "Well, that is a small enough problem. For me, if not for you."

Laughing softly, Lord Darien Thai stepped out into the balmy spring night.