Which implies that there’s a watchman, Eslingen thought. “I don’t see anyone.”
Rathe shrugged. “No time like the present.”
Eslingen pushed the door open further and, when nothing moved in the shadows, slipped out into the hall, Rathe at his shoulder. They eased the door closed again, and Rathe looked around. “Where to?”
“The warehouse is this way,” Eslingen answered. “And it’s worth mentioning that Dame Gebellin made sure I knew that fact.”
“Did she, indeed?”
Eslingen nodded, his own smile wry. “Which rather supports your point, yes.”
“If we run into the watchman—let’s hope there’s only one—we found the side door unlocked and came in to warn him,” Rathe said, and Eslingen nodded again.
They groped their way to the main corridor, the tiny mage-lights just enough to find their way, and paused again to listen for a watchman. The doors at each end of the corridor were closed, and Eslingen hoped they weren’t locked. Surely not, surely it would take too long to lock and unlock each door, give too much time and warning to a would-be thief.
There was a soft sound, so dull and muffled that it was almost impossible to tell where it had come from. Eslingen cocked his head, but it wasn’t repeated, and he looked at Rathe. “The warehouse?”
Rathe shook his head. “Upstairs.”
There were only two rooms upstairs, the counting room and the workroom where he had spoken to Redel. “Into the warehouse. Better make it quick.”
Rathe was moving even as he spoke, slipped noiselessly down the corridor to test the latch of the warehouse door. A satisfied smile spread across his face, and he pressed the heavy latch, leaning close to muffle any noise. The metal gave way with only the smallest of sounds, and he eased the door open.
Another noise came from upstairs, a scuffle and then the sound of feet on the stair. Eslingen flinched, tapping Rathe’s shoulder. “He’s coming.”
“Looks clear,” Rathe said, and pushed the door open further. Eslingen slid through after him, and they closed the door behind them, wincing in unison as the latch clicked into place.
The warehouse opened before them, a cavernous shadow lit by another string of watchman-lights that hung from the central beam, casting deeper shadows between the stacks of boxes. A brighter light glowed over the rows of cabinets, and another showed in the distant corner. Eslingen pointed to it.
“That’s the tunnel entrance. There’s a barred gate, though.”
“Let’s take a look.” Rathe drew him toward a gap between two piles of boxes. Eslingen followed, wincing as some bit of leaf crunched beneath his shoe, and they wound their way into the maze of stored goods. There was a soft click, almost too soft to hear except that he’d been listening for it, and the light changed as the door opened again behind them. Rathe breathed a curse, and they flattened themselves together against a stack of crates, putting it between themselves and the watchman. Surely he’d only check the cabinets, Eslingen thought. It would take four or five men to steal any of the crates, and that called for an entirely different sort of patrol.
He saw light flash against the ceiling, drowning the mage-light and flicking quickly over the beams and along the stones of the wall, but there was no shout, no sound except the faint shuffle of footsteps on the stones. The light flashed again, more distant, swinging across the crates on the other side of the warehouse, and then disappeared again. Eslingen waited, head cocked to listen, and at last they heard the sound of the door closing again. Eslingen allowed himself a sigh of relief, and Rathe peered cautiously around the edge of the crates.
“It’s all right, he’s gone.”
“That should give us some time, then,” Eslingen said.
They worked their way through the stacks of crates to fetch up at last in the corner where the tunnel ended. It wasn’t much, Eslingen thought, just a stone-lined basin barely large enough to hold one of the smallest river barges. The outgoing tide had left the basin almost empty, barely a foot of water covering the stones, and the same falling tide revealed that the iron grate ended a few feet above the bared surface.
“You’d think they’d take better care than that,” Eslingen said, and saw Rathe nod.
“I suppose they think no one can get a boat up here, and there’s nothing to steal that doesn’t require a boat?” He took out his own lantern, let the beam play over the gate and its mechanism, then shuttered it again. “I think it used to come down farther.”
“Or it’s part of the trap,” Eslingen said.
“There is that,” Rathe said. “On the other hand….”
“I know.” Eslingen sighed. “There’s even a ladder.”
It was only wooden rungs lashed to metal staples hammered between the stones, but it proved solid enough. The bottom of the basin sloped toward its center, exposing a strip a foot wide of stone and gravel, and when they crawled under the grate, the tunnel beyond showed the same thing. It would widen further as the tide continued to fall—it would be useful to see how far, Eslingen thought, see if they were open enough to free the Riverdeme. Of course, it would all be full again at high tide, but by then they should be well gone—and anyway, he told himself, the walls of the channel were barely shoulder high.
Rathe cast his light around again. “There’s a footpath up there.”
Sure enough, a narrow walk ran along both sides of the tunnel, not wide enough for two to go abreast, but wide enough for someone in harness to help move a boat along. Eslingen dug his own lantern out of his pocket, whispered the word to wake the fire at its heart. “On both sides, it looks like. But no ladder. We could probably climb the stones, though.”
“Let’s walk down here a bit,” Rathe said.
“You’ve seen something?” Eslingen let his light follow Rathe’s.
Rathe shook his head. “Just a feeling.”
They followed the tunnel for some hundred ells, ears cocked for the sound of any other presence. The air was dank, and smelled of mud, but seemed clean enough—a torch would burn here, Eslingen decided, and tried to feel reassured. He could hear moving water, barely a rustle of sound, softer than their own quiet footsteps, but it was enough to make him think again about the Riverdeme. If the water flowed freely through the system, bypassing the bridges and their bindings, she might well be loosed again. At least the water here was too shallow to hide a bait fish, much less anything the size of the dogfish that had attacked the pontoises’ boat.
The sound of the water was growing louder, and Rathe stopped abruptly, dropping his light so that it focussed only on the ground at his feet. “Junction.”
Eslingen shuttered his own lantern, and paused to let his eyes adjust. Yes, that darker shadow ahead was indeed a break in the smooth stone wall, though there were none of the helpful watchman-lights, and he eased closer to Rathe. “Hear anything?”
“Just water.”
They moved carefully down the tunnel’s slope. Abruptly Rathe flung out his free arm to block the way. Eslingen froze, and then saw it. The cross channel cut through the tunnel at a greater depth, and it was full of water, water that seemed to be flowing past at a healthy clip. Someone had lashed a set of heavy beams across the western opening, enough to keep a boat from passing but not enough to slow the flow of water; on the eastern side, a wooden gate completed the tunnel wall, though the lower edge had rotted away sufficiently that the water swept through there as well.
“That’s on a spring.” Rathe focused his light. Metal stretched diagonally across the boards, running from near the top of the gate to another staple fixed in the wall. When enough water pressed against it, Eslingen realized, it would overcome the force of the spring and let the gate open, but once the water receded, the spring would pull it closed again.
“That can’t be as old as the wood,” he said, “or it would have rusted out.”
Rathe nodded and turned the light left and then right, reaching out into the channel so that the light went as far as it could. Eslingen
leaned more cautiously after him, but it showed nothing but water and the arched roof of the cross channel. It was brick, chipped and crumbling, with the same narrow walkway on each side of the channel.
“Which way?”
Rathe lowered the lantern. “We’re very nearly in the middle of Point of Sighs, I don’t know that it matters much.”
“It does suggest someone’s been going this way on the regular.”
“Yeah.”
“And look.” Eslingen opened his own lantern again. “There’s another ladder.”
This one was just the iron staples driven between the stones, but it was strong enough to hold their weight. They clambered up onto the walkway to discover a gap just large enough to admit a grown man between the tunnel’s wall and the post of the door. Rathe shone his light through, shrugged, and shuttered it again, flattening himself against the stone to wriggle his way through.
“All clear,” he said, and Eslingen closed his own lantern. It was a tighter fit that he liked, the stone cold and unrelentingly solid against his back, but he managed to twist and drag himself through the gap, pulling the lantern after him. Rathe was prodding at the door.
“It swings both ways,” he said. “Look. There’s another spring on this side.”
“And a hook here,” Eslingen said, playing his own light across the walkway and the sides of the arch. “So. You were right, this section, at least, is in use.”
“Lovely.” Rathe eyed the water uneasily. “I’d give a great deal to know how deep that it.”
“Too deep for me,” Eslingen said, with more feeling than he’d meant, and he was glad that the darkness covered his blush. “Eastward?”
“Eastward,” Rathe agreed.
The walkway widened as they went, until it was almost wide enough to let them walk side by side. The channel remained the same, water flowing softly in its depths, though by the marks on the stone walls, at high tide the water would nearly overflow its banks. The further they went, the more worn the brickwork seemed, mortar crumbling to leave great gaps between the stones. Eslingen heard something squeak in the depths of one of those holes, and guessed they’d become a haven for rats. Although…. He cast his light around curiously, found neither tracks nor droppings on the worn stones. Rathe looked back.
“What?”
“No sign of rats.”
Rathe cocked his head, considering, and let his own light play over the walls and the walkway on the opposite bank. “That’s…odd.”
Every city had rats, and Astreiant was no exception, particularly along the waterfront. They were so common that they were one of the signs of the lunar zodiac, and fat, long-whiskered rats capered cheerfully on many a purse or decorated a house-sign. Even cradles, though there they were totemic, warning away the real beasts from a child born beneath their own sign…. “Rats belong to Bonfortune,” Eslingen said aloud. “And he’d stand in opposition to the Riverdeme, wouldn’t he?”
“The god of the merchants-venturer against the river’s spirit?” Rathe considered. “You could argue that.” He paused. “You think loosing her has driven off the rats?”
“I’m thinking it’s possible,” Eslingen answered. “At the very least, it’s one more sign.”
“Yeah.” Rathe opened the shutter of his lantern a little further. “Look there.”
The brighter beam picked out a heap of rubble half blocking the walkway. It spilled down into the channel as well, though the water ran swiftly through a gap in the rubble. “You said these channels were supposed to be closed off.”
“They didn’t do a very good job,” Rathe said. “It doesn’t actually prove anything, there are plenty of smugglers and thieves great and less who’d be very happy to make use of these tunnels. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more signs of them.”
“That also seems suggestive.”
“Yeah.”
They were close enough now to see that what had looked like a random heap of stones and dirt had once been a more solid wall, built to block the channel as much as the walkway. Now the channel was almost clear—at high tide, Eslingen guessed, you could get a boat through, though it would be scraping the highest stones—and there was a break in the stones blocking the walkway where a careful woman could work her way through. It had the look of a well-worn path, and Rathe let his light follow it around the heap of rubble.
“Looks clear enough.”
Eslingen resolutely did not look at the channel to his left. The water there was only a few feet deep, though a fall on the stones would be serious. “Be careful.”
Rathe hooked his lantern onto his belt and climbed carefully onto the stones, bracing himself with one hand on the rocks beside the wall. He teetered for a moment, then found his balance and stepped quickly forward, dropping out of sight as he jumped down onto the walkway.
“It’s clear.”
Eslingen hung his own lantern on his belt and stepped onto the first stone, then onto the second. Dirt sloped sideways ahead of him, dirt and loose pebbles ready to slide out from under him and drop him into the channel. He scowled at his fears, leaned forward to brace himself against the rocks, and took two quick steps. Pebbles slipped under his shoes, and he flung himself forward, scrambling ungracefully over the rockfall. Rathe caught his arms and steadied him onto the walkway.
“All right?”
Eslingen nodded, not quite trusting his voice, and busied himself with his lantern. The channel was much the same on this side of the barrier, the long channel running straight between the paired walkways, the brick walls interrupted by arches of darker stone. The air was different, though, smelled more of the riverside, of rotten fish and decaying mud, and he couldn’t help wrinkling his nose.
“I smell it, too,” Rathe said.
“Lovely,” Eslingen muttered, but followed him along the walkway.
The smell grew stronger as they went: something was unmistakably dead nearby, and had been for some time. Eslingen drew out his handkerchief and pressed it to his mouth and nose, wishing it carried more scent, and ahead of him Rathe gagged, and turned it into an unconvincing cough. They were approaching a tunnel—no, Eslingen realized, not really a tunnel, there was no connection to the river, but a break in the channel wall, one just large enough to hold one of the two-woman lighters that carried small cargos to and from ships moored away from the docks, and as they got closer, Eslingen could see that the gap in the walkway had been spanned by a wooden grate.
The smell was so thick and rotten, that Rathe pinched his nose shut, cupping his palm over his open mouth, then went to one knee at the edge of the grating. “Astree’s—”
He broke off, gagging again, and Eslingen pressed his handkerchief tighter to his mouth. Rathe’s light swept the gap below, picked out a hump of clothes and torn flesh lying in the foot-deep water—a man’s body, Eslingen thought, but you’d know it only by the clothes. He focused his own light, and found a second body, caught on a sloping ledge just short of the water. Another man, a sailor by his cap and the shredded jersey, though the head had fallen back at an angle that left the face mercifully in shadow. His torso had been ripped open from chin to crotch, what was left of guts and organs spilling out as though the fish had been at him—as though he had been fresh catch, Eslingen thought, swallowing bile, gutted on the fishmonger’s slab.
“What now?”
“Nothing we can do for them,” Rathe said, his voice muffled, “and there’s no way to get down there to see who they were.”
Thank Seidos for that, Eslingen thought, but the thought of searching those bodies, stinking and devastated, was beyond him.
Rathe let his light play over the grate, searching for breaks or weakness, then grabbed Eslingen’s arm. Eslingen braced himself, leaning back as Rathe put his weight on the wood. It held, and Rathe nodded, clapping his hand over his mouth again. “We go on.”
They crossed the grate without incident, following the channel as it curved gently to the south. They were following the line of the rive
r as it bent toward Point of Graves, Eslingen guessed, and wondered how long they’d been walking. Certainly the tide was still running out, the water falling in the channel: plenty of time left, he told himself, but he wasn’t sorry to cross another tunnel. It was closed by barred gates, but there was enough space between the edge of the grate and the channel walls for them to squeeze through. The tunnel was nearly dry, the channel cut deeper than its silted bottom, and it was easy enough to climb down and cross the tunnel dry-shod. There was even another ladder on the far side, and Rathe paused to examine it and the gate closely.
“I’d say this one was in regular use. I wonder where it goes.” He turned his light down the tunnel, looking for house-marks on the walls, shook his head when he found none.
Eslingen shrugged. He’d lost all sense of how the underground passages matched the streets and buildings above, was grateful that the channel had been a single path so far. “Those men back there—sailors, I think?”
“I’d say so, yeah.” Rathe hauled himself up the ladder to the channel’s walkway.
“What do you think killed them?” Eslingen climbed up after him, pulled the lantern from his belt to examine the path ahead. It looked exactly the same as the areas they’d already passed through, and he suppressed a sigh.
“I couldn’t tell.” Rathe did the same, carefully not meeting his eyes. “What we saw—that could have been done after they were dead.”
“But by what? Fish?”
“We’re both thinking dogfish,” Rathe said.
Eslingen glanced at the water in the channel. It looked deeper here, the current moving more smoothly over the stones. Still not deep enough for one of the big dogfish, he told himself firmly, and made himself look away.
The tunnel receded behind them, and the channel made a sharper turn, the water running more quietly in its bed. The light from Rathe’s lantern found a set of chalked symbols on one of the arches, and a heavy iron ring set into the side of the channel.
Point of Sighs Page 29
