Under Cover of Darkness

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Terizan waited a moment for her eyes to readjust to full dark, checked that there were no more cloaked conspirators approaching, and flipped down to the ground. The gate was heavy for one person, but she didn’t need to open it very far. She slipped through, closed it, and, keeping her fingertips on the center crypt, made her way to the back wall. By the time she reached it, she was in total darkness. She knew she was holding her hand in front of her face but she couldn’t see it.

  Fortunately, it was impossible to get lost.

  There was room to stand on the other side of the corpse shelf but just barely. Her fingertips danced over rough stone; a crack in the rock, a natural fissure. She counted twelve paces, felt the air currents change, and stopped. Barely an arm’s length from her face, the fissure opened up into a much wider passageway.

  When she held her breath, she could hear a quiet hum of sound. When she crept silently forward and peered out of the crack, she could see a faint graying of the dark off to her right.

  The conspirators were meeting in one of the catacombs’ square tomb-within-a-tomb areas and enough light spilled out the entrance that Terizan could just make out the carters’ crest carved over the arch. As she came closer, the sound fractured into a number of voices all making the kind of anticipatory small talk that suggested the meeting had yet to start. Since there were more people present than the two she’d followed, there were clearly other routes in.

  She could lie down and peer around the corner into the tomb well below where most people would even think of looking for intruders, but there was no way of telling how many more conspirators were still to arrive and that would leave her exposed—provided this was the meeting of conspirators the Council had hired the Thieves Guild to find. For all Terizan knew, she’d stumbled on a social club for necrophiliacs.

  Pressed up against the stone niches that lined the passageway, she glimpsed a line of gray at the edge of her vision. Peering over the shrouded body on the shoulder-level niche, she could see a crack in the rock as wide as her thumb. Moving quickly, she scooped up the corpse—breathing through her teeth at the intensified smell of rot—and stuffed it in with the body occupying the niche below. Any small sounds she made were covered by the sudden rhythmic rise and fall of a single voice inside the tomb. It sounded like . . .

  Poetry?

  Not surprising, given the venue, images of death were prevalent.

  The niches were narrow and not easy to get into, but Terizan had been in more difficult places and, with a minimum of bruising, she managed to get her right eye lined up with the crack. There were seven cloaked figures in the tomb. Not a large conspiracy, but she supposed seven motivated people could do some damage. After all, she’d managed to destabilize the throne of Kalazamir all by herself.

  As she watched, the poet finished, slid the scroll into a pocket, and blew his nose, clearly overcome. She could see three faces clearly and didn’t recognize any of them. Then a fourth raised both arms, the cloak sliding back as he gestured for silence and with some surprise Terizan recognized the heavy gold links he wore around one wrist. She’d had her eye on that bracelet for a while. It seemed as though Ajoe the Candle-maker was involved and not only involved, but in a position of some authority. Maybe grief at the death of his wife and infant son had addled his brains and turned him from law-abiding artisan to . . .

  Poet?

  “We ask justice for the dead,” Ajoe declared, his voice rough with grief.

  Terizan hoped the next couple of lines would rhyme. She liked Ajoe and didn’t want him involved in anything that would result in his head on a spike in the Crescent.

  “Overcrowded streets slow the arrival of what few healers there are. The high taxes paid by the apothecaries keep medicines too expensive. The rulings of the Council kill those we love. Those who lead have failed us and must be removed.”

  Not poet.

  “Who will lead us to justice?”

  The other six mirrored his position, arms up. “Who will lead us?” they repeated.

  Terizan had assumed the question was rhetorical, the sort of thing secret organizations chanted to get in the mood for conspiracy, but as she watched a translucent figure floated down from the ceiling in the far corner of the room. Pride kept her from bolting this time. Pride and—well—it seemed there was some truth in familiarity breeding contempt.

  It took her a while to recognize the ghost but, in her own defense, the last time she’d seen Councillor Saladaz, his head had been on a spike in the Crescent after he’d been executed for betraying caravans to the bandit chief Hyrantaz for a percentage of the stolen goods.

  He seemed to have gotten his head back.

  His voice a distant whisper, he began to speak of how the Council had been responsible for countless deaths in Oreen. Men, women, and children all lost to life and love because of the actions or inactions of the Council. “We all know the Council is corrupt. We all know the Council must be stopped before more loved lives are lost.” Thought about rationally, nothing Saladaz said made much sense, but it was obvious to Terizan watching the seven people listening that they weren’t thinking rationally. Like Ajoe, these men and women were lost in grief, and that grief was being expertly manipulated by the dead councillor. He’d always been able to work a crowd into near hysteria; while death had lowered his volume, it had focused his skill.

  In a weird way, she admired Saladaz’ ability to hold a grudge beyond the grave. The Council had him executed, and now he was using what he had—grief-stricken visitors to the Necropolis—to exact his revenge. It was probably a good thing he didn’t know she’d been the one who’d exposed his dealings with Hyrantaz.

  “The Council must be removed,” Saladaz whispered, moving about the tomb and touching each of the conspirators in turn.

  They shuddered and chanted, “The Council must be removed.”

  Terizan shuddered with them, remembering the weaver’s touch. It was a small step from grief to despair.

  “The dead must have justice.”

  “The dead must have justice!”

  Terizan would have bet serious coin that when Saladaz spoke of the dead, he meant only himself.

  “We must take action to avenge our dead.”

  “We must take action to avenge our dead!”

  “When the time of mourning is done, we will take action,” Ajoe the Candle-maker added in a tone as definite as the dead councillor’s had been suggestive.

  Saladaz’ face twisted as the other six repeated, “When the time of mourning is done.” Throwing off their cloaks, they began to wail and beat at their chests. His mouth moved, but it was impossible to hear his rough whisper over the grieving, and finally he surrendered to the inevitable and wafted back up through the tomb’s ceiling.

  Leaving seemed like a good idea to Terizan. Besides Ajoe, she’d recognized another of the seven by the silver-and-lapis clasp that bound her thick gray hair. She didn’t yet know the woman’s name, but she knew she worked on Draper’s Row—and that was enough. Sliding silently out of the niche, she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust and then, fingertips stroking the stone, moved into the dark of the catacombs, counting her footsteps back to the crack in the tomb wall.

  The name of the woman who’d owned the silver hair clasp was Seriell Vanyaz; her eldest son had recently died in a construction accident in the new city, crushed under a load of stone. Terizan settled the clasp in her pocket and crossed the bridge into the Necropolis. It would be easy enough now to find the other names. All she had to do was ask an acolyte for the names of those who’d been interred over the last few months and match the faces of the mourners to the faces of the conspirators.

  She could hand the names to the Tribunal a day early. The Tribunal would hand them to the Council and then, probably before Terizan had even counted her share of the payment, the Council would add another seven bodies to the City of the Dead.

  She’d thought about telling the Tribunal that Councillor Saladaz was the only actual consp
irator.

  “A dead Councillor? Not only dead but beheaded? You saw him then? Conspiring? Alone?”

  Council might believe that Saladaz wanted revenge; they’d known him in life after all, but they’d never believe a dead man was working alone. Ajoe and the others might be grief-addled puppets, but they were conspiring.

  Of course, now she wanted an acolyte there were none around.

  She stood for a long moment outside the tomb that held the entrance to the catacombs and, frowning slightly, traced on the surface the path of the underground passage, climbing up and over terraces and tombs. When she was fairly certain she was as close to the meeting room as she could get, she began to read the names carved into the stone.

  Councillor Saladaz’s family name was Tyree. Terizan knew it because she’d robbed his town house once. Well, twice actually, but it hadn’t been his town house the second time because he was already dead.

  The rear wall of the Tyree family tomb was directly over the part of the catacombs where the meeting had been held.

  “The carving of the colonnade is thought to be exceptionally fine.”

  Terizan had often been accused of walking silently, but the Ayzaruites could give her lessons. Heart pounding, she turned to find the same older man who’d spoken to her the day before. At least she assumed it was the same man; one acolyte looked pretty much like another and, besides, she was better with jewelry. “The what?”

  “The decorative columns.” He gestured helpfully.

  “I was wondering . . .”

  “About the mason?”

  “No!” She didn’t think she could cope with another lecture on stone carving. “I was wondering about the recently . . .” She paused and stared into the Tyree crypt. Saladaz had been dead for nearly a year. “I was wondering why the ghosts of the Necropolis don’t move out into the city.”

  “They are tethered to their bodies by my Lady’s will. They are not alive, and she will not give them the freedom of life.”

  “She won’t?” That was interesting. “She seems a little annoyed about it.”

  The acolyte shrugged. “My Lady is the Gateway and she would prefer the dead accept her assistance.”

  “But if the body was moved out of the Necropolis . . .”

  “If a body with an active spirit was removed from her influence, then it could go where it would.” His tolerant smile suggested he didn’t know why he was bothering to explain what everyone knew. “Except back into the Necropolis, of course.”

  That answered the one question that had really been bothering her. None of the seven conspirators were violent people. Violent in their grief, maybe, but not the sort to start whacking councillors even with the encouragement of a dead politician. She couldn’t believe it of Ajoe the Candle-maker, and she doubted the others were much different. So what was Saladaz actually working them up to?

  He wanted them to remove his body from the Necropolis.

  Once he got them to commit, they probably wouldn’t bother being subtle; they’d crowbar the gate off the tomb, bundle him up, and bury him secretly in the city somewhere. After that, he could haunt anyone he wanted to.

  Terizan rubbed her arm. If forced to choose, she’d take Ajoe and company over the Council in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, unless they were going to move Saladaz tonight, she didn’t have that option. The Council would have either the names of the conspirators or proof there was no conspiracy by tomorrow or they’d begin to implement their extreme new security measures. As a thief, Terizan wasn’t fond of the idea of extreme new security measures.

  Nor, as it happened, did she particularly care for the idea of someone like Saladaz wafting about Oreen.

  If she gave the names to the Council, they’d deal with both the living and the dead, and things in Oreen would continue on the way they had been. No extreme security. No dead Councillors being a bad influence on the grieving. No Ajoe the Candle-maker. No Seriell Vanyaz. She reached into her pocket and stroked the silver-and-lapis hair clasp.

  Good thing the Council had given her another option.

  The acolyte cleared his throat, breaking into her reverie. “It is, of course, a crime to steal a body from the Necropolis,” he declared.

  “How do you prevent it?”

  He stared at her as though she was out of her mind. “We are a presence in the day and no one comes into the Necropolis at night. The Necropolis is haunted.”

  Terizan sighed. “Trust me, that’s not the deterrent you think it is.”

  “He’ll let her use my loom!”

  Terizan backed away from the crypt. Hanra Seend followed.

  “He’ll let her use my loom!”

  And a little farther away.

  “She won’t take care of it. I know she won’t.”

  And farther still.

  “You have to tell him not to let her use my loom!” Between my and loom, Hanra stopped following.

  And that gave Terizan the rough length of Ayzarua’s tether.

  Terizan moved quickly between crypts and tombs, touching nothing. Unfortunately, there was one ghost she couldn’t avoid, but she did her best to delay the inevitable by waiting until she saw a pair of cloaked figures slip into the catacombs and then humming all twelve verses of Long-Legged Hazra. If tonight’s meeting followed the same pattern as last night’s, that would give Saladaz time to appear and begin talking.

  Motivated, Terizan got through the three locks on the Tyree tomb in record time. Once inside, she carefully lit her tiny lantern and swept the narrow beam around the shelves. It wasn’t hard to find the Councillor’s corpse; he was the only member of the family to have been beheaded.

  Breathing through her mouth, she wrapped the shrouded body in waxed canvas and tied off the ends, leaving a length of rope just a little longer than Ayzarua’s tether. Then holding the end of the rope, she dragged the body out of the tomb.

  “The dead must have justice!”

  Apparently, she’d pulled him away from his rant. She kept moving and didn’t look back.

  “Thief! Stop, thief!”

  He could yell all he wanted. Unless there was a horde of dead constables around, there was no one to stop her. A quick, nervous glance from side to side determined that there were no hordes of dead constables.

  “Do you know who I am, little thief? I am Councillor Saladaz Tyree!”

  “You were,” Terizan muttered, picking up speed on the raked gravel off the path. The ranting turned to threats behind her until she stopped by the tomb with the loosened bolts and the entrance to the catacombs.

  “Fool! I learned the secrets of the City of the Dead. I gathered those who would hear my voice. Everyone knows you cannot stop the dead! I will have my revenge.”

  Terizan ignored him and moved one tomb further.Her arm barely fit between the bars, but she managed to put the end of the rope in Ayzarua’s outstretched hand. The moonlight extended just far enough for her to see the Goddess’ welcoming expression turn to grinning bone.

  A little unnerved by the sudden quiet behind her, she turned to come face-to-face with Saladaz. He roared and reached for her. With the rope in the Goddess’ hand, his body was now close enough that she was just within the limit of his tether.

  Oh, that was clever!

  She spun around, pressed hard against the bars, and stared into the darkness behind the Goddess. The acolyte had said that if she stared long enough, the gateway would open.

  She needed that gateway open.

  Goddess. Skull.

  Skull. Goddess.

  Five lines of icy cold down her back. Again. And again. Overcome by a despair so deep she wanted to die, Terizan sagged against the bars and reached to take the Goddess’ hand.

  When flesh touched stone, the darkness behind the statue lightened. A tiny circle of gray growing larger and larger until the Goddess was silhouetted against it. Only the cold wind roaring past her into the gray kept Terizan on her feet.

  One last glimpse of Saladaz’ face. Not a cold wind roa
ring past her then but his spirit being assisted through the gate. His translucent form stretched into caricature, he howled, “The dead must have justice!” as he disappeared.

  Terizan lifted her other hand just far enough to flash a rude gesture.

  She dropped to her knees as the gateway closed. Dragged her tongue over dry lips. Realized with the clarity that came from nearly dying, that it was the despair brought on by Saladaz’ touch that had opened the Gateway. Without it, she could have stared into the darkness until she starved and nothing would have happened.

  Well, if she’d starved to death, the Gateway would have opened, but she didn’t have that kind of time.

  She took a moment to convince herself that she’d meant to do it that way.

  As soon as she could stand, she’d put the body back in the tomb. Without Saladaz, there was no conspiracy, just seven grieving men and women.

  Unfortunately, the Council had asked for proof of nothing, but even she wasn’t that good. She’d have to bring them proof of something else.

  In the morning, she needed to have a word with an acolyte and get those names.

  “There is no secret organization meeting in the Necropolis and conspiring against the Council.”

  One steepled her fingers and smiled over them. “Prove it.”

  Terizan threw a small crumpled scroll on the table. She’d picked the poet’s pocket when he left his shop to get some lunch.

  Two snatched the scroll from Three’s fingers before it could get covered in scented oil. Unrolled it. Frowned. “This is a ballad mourning a dead love.”

  “And not a good one either,” Three muttered reading over Two’s shoulder.

  “Poets?” One asked, lip curled. “There are poets in the Necropolis?”

  “Dressing in black. Wearing silver jewelry. Rhyming into the darkness with broken hearted. And I’m not going back in there for another poem, I barely escaped as it was.” Lines of cold across her back. Her shudder was unfeigned. “You can send someone else if you need more proof.”