The Shattered Mask

by Richard Lee Byers

  She had two other items to take on her errand: a truncheon of seasoned ash she’d borrowed from the salle and a blue leather pouch of the platinum coins called suns. She tucked both in the fringed, striped sash Larajin used for a belt, placing them in the small of her back where the cloak was sure to hide them.

  Lindrian had died an hour after sharing his secret. The old man’s obsequies had taken up the next three days, until his kin finally interred him in the Karn ancestral vault. Ever since then, Shamur had been trying to slip away, but in the daylight hours, with servants swarming everywhere, pestering her with their sympathy and their need for instruction, with friends and relatives popping up every few seconds to offer condolences, it had proven impossible. Not since the first years of her marriage had she felt so stifled and confined.

  At last it was night, and she fancied she could escape Stormweather Towers just as the adolescent Shamur had been accustomed to sneak out of Argent Hall. On how many nights had she yearned to attempt this very thing, only holding back because the stakes were too high. She would joyfully have risked her own well-being, but not that of her kin, nor in later years, of her children.

  She opened the casement, and a cold winter breeze stung her face. Plump snowflakes drifted down from the clouds. A coach passed on the street five stories below, the bells affixed to the horses’ harness chimed in time with their trotting.

  Leaning out the window, Shamur peered about. The conical tower housing her apartments rose from the back of the Uskevren mansion. On this side the house had no enclosing, protective wall like the one around the courtyard in the front. Rather, the westernmost face of Stormweather Towers was itself a fortification. Though entablatures, grotesquely carved rainspouts, stained-glass oculi, and other ornamentation abounded higher up, for the bottom two stories, the wall was forbiddingly smooth, with only a sparse scatter of lancet windows too narrow to offer any hope of entry. At the top of the mansion, crenellated battlements wound their way among the profusion of gables and turrets jutting from the roof.

  At the moment, no sentry was in view, and Shamur supposed she’d better get moving before one appeared. Despite the hindrance of her cloak and skirt, she agilely climbed out the window, then pushed the casement shut, making sure it didn’t latch. That accomplished, she started down the wall.

  Larajin’s shoes were too loose, and their soles were too slick for safety. If not for the cold, Shamur would have kicked them off and descended barefoot, although so far, with cornices, traceries, finials, and other decorations providing hand- and footholds, she was managing easily enough.

  She thought of how awkward it would be to encounter Thazienne now, sneaking out of the mansion in this same fashion, and just for a moment, despite her bleak mood, she smiled.

  In two minutes she reached the point where all the carved stone gingerbread abruptly gave way to an expanse of sheer, vertical granite. Larajin’s ridiculous slippers were still flopping and sliding around on her feet, and to make things even more interesting, her hands were going numb. Shamur supposed that, having failed to find the maid’s gloves, she should have worn a pair of her own. But she didn’t own any that weren’t sewn with pearls, made of the finest, softest calfskin, or manifestly costly in some other way, and she hadn’t realized the cold would seep into her fingers so quickly.

  She considered simply jumping, for in her youth, in more desperate situations, she’d dropped farther and survived. Yet on one of those occasions, she’d sprained her ankle. She couldn’t afford such an injury tonight, and besides, if she couldn’t climb down the wall now, how could she be sure she could climb back up when her errand was through?

  So she lowered herself once more, holding her body well away from the wall as Errendar Spillwine, the veteran housebreaker who’d taught her to climb, had always insisted. Her foot groped at the section of wall beneath her. At first, it felt absolutely flat, but according to Errendar, flatness was only a geometer’s fancy. No surface, whether found in nature or fashioned by man, was ever entirely smooth. A climber could always find a hold if he knew how to look.

  And perhaps the dear old reprobate had been correct, for eventually her toe caught in a slight depression, where the masons had failed to make the mortar flush with the blocks above and below. Considered as a foothold, it was precarious, but if her skill hadn’t deserted her, it should do. She tested it, making sure it wasn’t brittle, then trusted her weight to it.

  The next toehold down was more dubious still, a shallow hollow where time and weather had worn a bit of one of the stone blocks away. The one beyond that should have been easier going, since it was the sill of one of the lancet windows, but evidently the day’s sun had failed to warm the narrow recess, and the ledge still wore a veneer of ice.

  In short, the climb was as difficult as Shamur had expected. She needed all her strength and skill to negotiate such inadequate perches. But she never lost her grip, nor did she ever come to a spot from which it was impossible to descend farther, and in a few minutes she alit on solid ground.

  She felt a pang of satisfaction, but knew better than to stand about congratulating herself. A guard could still wander out onto the alure and spot her lurking at the base of the wall. She darted across the strip of frozen flowerbeds and pungent evergreens that ran along the rear of the mansion, vaulted the low wrought-iron fence, and scurried away down the street. She kept her hands inside her mantle and rubbed them together until they were warm.

  Selgaunt was a city that never truly slumbered. Some merchant nobles, hoping to gain an advantage over their competitors, ran their manufactories round the clock, and there were nearly always merrymakers carousing, be they aristocrats dripping lace and jewels or ragged apprentices with scarcely a copper among them. Yet Shamur soon discerned that tonight the streets were largely empty, and the night was unusually quiet. Apparently the cold and snow had driven folk indoors.

  At the first opportunity, she headed south, and as she neared the city wall, the houses and shops grew humbler, and on a few narrow side streets, downright shabby. Some of the men abroad in the night moved furtively, like mice sneaking through the domain of a cat, or wolves shadowing unwitting prey. Others strode with high heads and scornful eyes, displaying the arrogance of the seasoned bravo.

  Shamur decided it would be wise to traverse this particular precinct circumspectly. She wished Larajin’s cloak were black or charcoal gray, like the garments she herself had worn when committing her youthful indiscretions, but maroon would do, and at least the mantle was long and full enough to mask any trace of the white gown beneath. She swept every wisp of her pale, shining hair back into her cowl, then proceeded on her way. She didn’t move on tiptoe, crouch, or dart from one bit of cover to the next. She didn’t want anyone who might happen to spot her to realize she was trying to be stealthy. Still, keeping to the shadows, she blended into the darkness like a ghost. When a patrol of Scepters, the city guards, impressively martial in their black, silver-trimmed leather armor and green weathercloaks, came marching down the street, they passed within eight feet of her and never knew.

  The snow was falling heavier, and the frigid breeze off Selgaunt Bay was moaning louder by the time Shamur reached Lampblack Alley. The cramped passage was as dark as its name suggested, for unlike the residents of more affluent neighborhoods, none of the inhabitants had seen fit to leave a light burning outside his door for the convenience of callers and passersby. Still, she could see that several yards down, just where the alley doglegged to the left, hung a signboard daubed with an alembic, mortar, and pestle.

  Shamur strode toward the shop, and after a few paces, began to catch the telltale odor of an alchemist or apothecary’s establishment: a complex amalgam of scents, some sweet, some foul, and all mixed with the tang of smoke and burning.

  Light shone through the shutters, and voices murmured behind the four-paneled door as well. Pleased that it apparently wouldn’t be necessary to rouse Audra Sweetdreams from her bed, Shamur tapped with the tarnished br
ass lion’s mask door knocker.

  The voices fell silent, and the light went out. Shamur smiled wryly, for she suspected she knew what was going on. She’d lived through the same moment herself a time or two. The people inside were hastily concealing the evidence of some criminal enterprise, or perhaps even preparing to flee out another exit.

  “It’s not the Scepters,” Shamur called. “It’s no one who means you any harm. I need your help, and I’m willing to pay for it.”

  When no one answered, she stooped to inspect the lock, and saw that it was nothing much. With her long-lost set of thief’s tools, she could have opened it in a trice, and perhaps she could manage with a hairpin even now. But it might be quicker simply to kick in the door.

  A scraping sound prompted her to straighten up, whereupon she saw that dim light shone within the shop again, and a small panel above the lion’s mask had opened. A pair of dark eyes peered out of the spy hole. “What kind of help do you want?” asked a husky contralto voice.

  “The answers to a few questions,” Shamur said. “Are you Audra Sweetdreams?”

  “I might be. You mentioned payment.”

  Shamur reached behind her back, unfastened her pouch, extracted a coin, and held the white round up for the apothecary to see.

  The panel bumped shut, and Shamur heard whispering, though as before, she couldn’t make out the words. After a minute, the lock clicked and the door creaked open. “Come in,” Audra Sweetdreams said.

  The apothecary was a short, round-faced dumpling of a woman who, Shamur now saw, had needed to climb up on a stool to peek through the spy hole. She appeared to be in her fifties, and might have looked harmless, like some child’s doting grandmother, if not for the slyness in her dimpled smile. She wore a slovenly brown gown covered with stains and burn marks.

  In the corner lounged a dull-eyed fellow clad in a grimy scarlet doublet with the points undone. His skull was oddly shaped, pointed like an egg, and as if proud of this peculiarity, he’d shaved his head. He looked Shamur up and down, leered in approval, and casually saluted with the half-eaten chicken leg in his hand.

  The shop itself was a chaos of crates and kegs. Bundles of dried, aromatic herbs and desiccated lizards dangled from the rafters. Animal teeth, bits of bone, dead beetles, and mushrooms caps lay scattered about the bases of a series of ceramic jars. On the same shelf reposed half a dozen empty green bottles, formed by a glassblower into slender whorled shapes of surprising beauty. Shamur surmised that Audra must use the vials for expensive compounds concocted for aristocratic patrons.

  Compounds like poison and patrons like Thamalon, perhaps.

  “What do you want to know?” Audra asked.

  “First off,” Shamur replied, “I want to know if you’ve ever concocted a venom lethal to women but harmless to men.”

  Audra’s eyes widened in astonishment, or at least a simulation of it. “Mistress, this is a reputable establishment. How can you imagine I would ever deal in poisons? Well, to rid a home of rats and other vermin, but never for any sinister purpose.”

  Shamur tossed the platinum sun onto a stone table laden with retorts and an oven like those employed by potters. The coin shone in the light of enchanted bronze burners capable of producing a steady, adjustable jet of flame, which the apothecary evidently used like simple candles when not mixing remedies and elixirs. The noblewoman then brought out her blue leather purse, showing how fat it was. The money inside clinked.

  “It’s all platinum,” Shamur said, “and all yours, if you help me. But don’t waste my time. Do you brew such a poison or not?”

  The plump woman hesitated. “I know it exists. I might be able to make it.”

  “I need to know if you ever have made it.”

  Audra grimaced. “Please understand, I don’t know you, Mistress, nor do I know how you found me. I just might find my hand on the chopping block if I speak the wrong word in the wrong ear.”

  Shamur’s mouth tightened. “Do I look like an informer?”

  Audra shrugged. “I haven’t yet decided what you look like.”

  “I assure you, I don’t care about anything you’ve done recently, any affair in which the Scepters might still be interested. I want to find out about something that happened nearly thirty years ago, to Shamur Karn, daughter of Lindrian. No harm will come to you—”

  Something smashed into the back of Shamur’s head, and even as she fell forward, she realized what it must have been. She’d kept a wary eye on the shaven-headed lout in the corner, but unfortunately, Audra had another confederate in the room. Someone who’d hidden before Shamur ever came in, sneaked up behind her while the apothecary held her attention, and clubbed her.

  At first she hadn’t felt anything except a kind of shock, but as she sprawled on the floor, the pouch tumbling from her grasp, pain roared through her skull. It was so fierce that she wasn’t sure she could move, but she knew she’d better try. She couldn’t withstand a second such blow. If Larajin’s thick wool cowl hadn’t cushioned the first, she would no doubt be unconscious already.

  A man bent over her, a sap in his hand. Her vision was blurry, but she could make out a braided black beard and the stained, uneven teeth exposed by a malicious grin. She wrenched herself onto her back, drew her legs up, and drove her feet into her attacker’s gut.

  Blackbeard grunted and stumbled backward. Shamur rolled under a table and into the next makeshift aisle haphazardly snaking its way through Audra’s heaps of possessions.

  She knew the maneuver had only bought her a moment. She scrambled to her feet, nearly fell again when a wave of pain and dizziness assailed her, and fumbled the truncheon out of her sash.

  Meanwhile, Audra was saying, “Did you truly think a stranger could sashay in here and cozen me into confessing my complicity in a murder attempt? I think not! I don’t know what your game is, but you already know too much to suit me. I’m going to have the lads beat your head in and claim your money that way.”

  Blackbeard scrambled around a pile of boxes into the end of the aisle. He hesitated when he spotted Shamur’s weapon, then took in her useless two-handed grip on one end of it. She was holding it as if it were a greatsword, not a baton less than two feet long. Her apparent ineptitude must have given him confidence, because he bellowed and charged.

  She waited until he was nearly on top of her, then shifted to the “short grip” Errendar had taught her: single-handed with most of the length of the club extending back along her forearm. Blackbeard swung his leather bludgeon in a vicious arc. Shamur swayed backward, evading the stroke, then rammed the stub of baton protruding from the top of her hand into her opponent’s solar plexus.

  Or rather, she tried, but the lingering effects of that savage blow to the head were still making her clumsy. She only managed to hit Blackbeard in the ribs, hard enough to hurt but not to stop him.

  Now was the time for a two-handed grip, albeit not the preposterous one she’d employed before. She whipped the long section of her baton into her left hand then, gripping it at both ends, rammed it up at Blackbeard’s throat.

  And missed again. Snarling, she smashed the stick down at the bridge of her opponent’s nose. Finally she hit the target, crushing bone and cartilage with a crack! She pulled the truncheon back and drove it forward, breaking several of Blackbeard’s crooked teeth.

  He reeled backward, and she followed to finish him off. Then two brawny arms whipped around her from behind, one pinioning her arms and the other choking her. She realized that with her brains rattled, she’d forgotten all about the man with the shaved scalp.

  For a panicky second, her mind was blank, then she remembered the counter to a choke hold. She twisted her head into the crook of Baldhead’s elbow, relieving the pressure on her throat. Then she stamped, raking her heel down her assailant’s shin and smashing it down on his foot, and drove the long end of the baton backward into his belly.

  The assault served to loosen his grip, and she wrenched herself free. Pivoting, putting
all her weight behind it, she threw an elbow, her vulnerable forearm armored by the truncheon nestled against it. The stick crashed into Baldhead’s temple, snapping his head back. His eyes rolled up, and his knees buckled.

  Shamur heard footsteps pounding up behind her. She whirled just in time to keep her first attacker, his braided beard soaked with blood from his ruined nose and mouth, from smashing his sap down on the back of her head a second time.

  Blackbeard feinted with the leather bludgeon, then lashed out with a kick to the stomach. Gripping the baton two-handed to make a horizontal bar, Shamur blocked the attack by jamming her weapon into the wounded man’s shin. Then she smashed the stick up under his chin.

  She’d hurt him again, but clearly, he wasn’t done, because he took another swing with the sap. She stopped its descent as she’d stopped the kick, then used another elbow strike. He still wouldn’t fall down, so she hooked the truncheon behind his neck and grabbed the long end with her left hand. Squeezing his throat behind her crossed arms, she choked him until he collapsed.

  Shamur pivoted toward Audra. The apothecary stood gawking at the carnage, her eyes filled with a horror that afforded the victor a moment of dark amusement.

  “There was no need for this,” Shamur panted. “I told you I wasn’t going to make any troub—”

  Audra bolted. Shamur cursed and scrambled after her.

  Her short legs notwithstanding, Audra made it to one of the cluttered shelves on the wall just ahead of her pursuer. She grabbed a corked beaker of some gray, bubbling fluid and swung it back behind her head to throw it.

  Shamur dived and tackled the fat woman, slamming her backward into the shelves. Tangled together, the combatants fell to the floor. Shards of leathery orange eggshell, an old brown book, and the preserved head of a huge black bat, the fangs of which had been scraped and filed, showered down around them.