Piergeiron lived. He had returned. He’d risen during his own funeral to tell a tale of such mythic force that two dozen bards were writing ballads, in moments snatched between the leap-dances and reels demanded by the crowds. The very sewers of Waterdeep throbbed to the tread of thousands of dancing feet. Piergeiron himself had blessed the revelry from his balcony. Khelben expressed his delight in the form of green and gold fireworks, blazing and popping above the harbor. It seemed only Noph wasn’t rejoicing. He stood in the cell where he’d met with his father, and a fictitious fireball had blasted Artemis Entreri and Trandon into twin piles of ashthis wood ash, by his boots. Noph growled to himself. Appearances, facades, deceptions; how could Khelben nod so sagely at Piergeiron’s morality tale when the Blackstaff himself had just perpetrated a treasonous deception on the entire city? “Being a hero is the most confusing job in the world,” Noph complained aloud.
