The City of Ravens

by Baker, Richard

  The Red Wizard stood and turned on her heel, marching out of the room with her fury blazing like a brand in the night. Longshoremen and teamsters twice her size caught one glance of the expression on her face and fell over themselves trying to get out of her path. Jack raised his goblet to her back and smiled.

  “Your health!” he called. “I shall see you in two days!”

  Jack lingered another hour at the Tankard, enjoying the sense of security engendered by passing time in a room crowded with familiar faces while he planned his next move. Zandria had given him much to think about; he fished the ring out of his pocket and examined it again. It was a single piece of smooth gray stone flecked with red, quite handsome in its own way, although not particularly valuable at first glance. He whispered a few words and worked a minor magic to detect whether or not it was enchanted, and blinked in surprise—the stone ring radiated magical power to any who could sense such things!

  “Perhaps you might be worth keeping after all,” Jack said. He slid the ring back into his pocket.

  The next Game event was three days off. Before then, Jack decided he had three things he needed to do. First, he needed to find his shadow double and take whatever steps were necessary to stop the fiend and discover its origins. Second, he needed to plan a safe and equitable exchange (or a shameless confidence game) to obtain the thousands of gold crowns that were rightfully his. And last, but certainly not least, he needed to stay out of the sight of the various parties who meant him ill, including but not limited to Iphegor the Black, Marcus and Ashwillow, Morgath and Saerk, Tiger and Mantis, and possibly the Warlord Myrkyssa Jelan.

  “It is probably a bad sign when one’s enemies significantly outnumber one’s friends,” Jack said sadly.

  He drained the last of his wine and stood up to leave. Jack was so distracted by the plots at hand that he almost walked right out of the Tankard’s front entrance with no regard for who or what might be watching. He paused in the rickety swinging door by the taproom’s mossy walls and ducked back inside at once, cursing his carelessness.

  “Having just discovered considerable wealth on my own person, it would be unwise to stumble into my enemies’ hands again,” he told himself.

  Instead, he made himself invisible and used the spell of shadow-jumping to whisk himself to an empty rooftop he knew of three blocks away. The tactic seemed to work; he was not followed or accosted on his way to the Ladyrock. By the time he reached the hovel by the paper mill, midnight was hours past.

  Jack passed the rest of the evening in a restless, vermin-pestered slumber. He eventually dozed off until well after noon on the following day, when he was awakened by a gang of neighborhood children engaged in a game of throwing stones through the rotting shakes of his cottage roof.

  Jack groggily chased off the ragamuffins, ate a cold breakfast of old bread and hard cheese, and considered his schemes and designs. “My appointment with Zandria is not until tomorrow evening, leaving me a day, a night, and a day to occupy myself,” he observed to an attentive cockroach who shared his quarters. “I should keep an eye on Zandria to make sure that she doesn’t forget the terms of our bargain again. I should take steps to ascertain the current whereabouts of my accursed shadow. And I should also seek to unravel whatever plot Toseiyn Dulkrauth, the esteemed Lord Tiger, is up to. What to do first?”

  None of the vermin infesting the premises offered any suggestions. In fact, they were so unhelpful that Jack resolved to spend the rest of the afternoon improving his conditions by effecting what minor repairs he could to the cottage and using various noxious magics to render his domicile unappetizing to rats, mice, insects, and their ilk. This involved the theft of quite a large amount of timber, straw, tools, and plaster from various businesses nearby, which Jack accomplished without any real challenge. With that attended to, he pilfered several days of foodstuffs and other supplies to see him through the week.

  Finally, when he had rendered the cottage as tolerable as he could make it, Jack decided that it was worth a few hours of his time to learn more about the ring and the blade he’d stolen from the Guilder’s Vault. He took both objects out and set them on the battered wooden table before the hearth. Then he slowly and methodically worked out a spell of identification, an enchantment that could analyze and decipher the spells folded into the very being of the ring and the dagger.

  The dagger, he learned, was a highly enchanted weapon wrought with spells of secrecy and silence, the perfect blade for dark deeds and backstabbings in shadowed alleyways. It seemed well suited for his hand, a blade made for a rogue such as he. It also possessed the very curious property of retaining its enchantment in places where other magics failed.

  “Potentially useful,” Jack admitted, “but I cannot guess why I would willingly go into such an environment.” He shrugged and returned the dark blade to his boot.

  The ring, on the other hand, was a device whose maker cared little for subtlety. It was a manifestation of the power of stone and earth, fused with potent magics allowing one to command elementals or even the earth itself to do one’s bidding. Passages might be opened where none existed before, walls raised or torn down at will. The user might even call upon the ring’s power to imbue himself with the strength and toughness of stone itself.

  “Very useful,” Jack grinned. “Defense, offense, transport, and general utility all incorporated in one superbly wrought dwarven ring. I can see why Zandria lusts after you, my little prize.”

  Since he was loath to part with either device, Jack decided that he would have to strike a different bargain with Zandria. He’d keep the ring and the dagger as his two-elevenths of the hoard proper, leaving him with the ten thousand gold crowns associated with the reward for the return of the Orb. The gold was certainly sufficient to his means for the moment, and with the magic of the Guilder’s artifacts, he could easily steal more anytime he liked.

  “The only trouble lies in persuading Zandria to accept a renegotiated deal,” he said aloud. “She probably cares little for the gold itself, and is far more interested in acquiring the magic in my possession; Red Wizards are like that. It might be useful to make sure that Anders and Tharzon are nearby, in case she is unusually resistant to the notion.”

  Without further delay, Jack departed the Ladyrock and set off in search of Anders and Tharzon. Both Northman and dwarf hadn’t seen much reward for their labors in Sarbreen, so an opportunity to enjoy a cut should be welcomed by both. He decided to call on Anders first, taking the ferry over to Bitterstone and then heading north into the Temple District. The streets were crowded with workers heading home after a long day’s labor, women scurrying out to purchase something for the stew pot, and gaily dressed rakes and ladies beginning the night’s revelry a little early. Jack liked crowds; they provided him with a comfortable anonymity and plenty of opportunities.

  He followed Blacktree Boulevard all the way through Holyhouses and Gowntown to the Market District. Anders rented a small room in the shadow of Purtil’s Tower, a ramshackle structure of stone and rusted iron that comprised the city’s oldest water tower. Jack turned east on Broken Bit Lane and then north again into the narrow alleyway winding almost beneath the dilapidated columns of the water tower. He crossed a small, sodden courtyard strewn with garbage and climbed up the wooden staircase that zigzagged across the back of Anders’s building. The Northman lived in a very modest room on the uppermost floor.

  He had just set his foot on the topmost stair when the deluge struck. From the water tower’s flank fifty feet above, a great torrent abruptly broke loose. Metal groaned and stone creaked ominously as tons and tons of water poured out of the torn side of the tower and fell atop the boarding house where Anders lived. Jack was washed back down the stairway, striking step after step until he caught himself halfway down and found his feet again.

  “Catastrophe! Calamity!” he cried in astonishment. “What now?”

  As if in response to his question, the roof of Anders’s building gave way beneath the
weight of water falling from the tower overhead. Jack recalled that it was not much of a roof in any event, a frail structure of wooden shakes that admitted freezing drafts in wintertime and clouds of noxious insects in warm weather. The cascade of water continued from the breached tower, filling the upper floor faster than it drained away to the floors below.

  The entire building groaned horribly. Inside, beams cracked beneath the watery assault, and the boarding house started to lean noticeably to Jack’s right. The rogue hurried down the stairs and dashed out into the open courtyard to get clear of the failing structure. Rivulets of water ran past his feet.

  “Anders!” cried Jack. “If you can hear me, run for your life!”

  At that moment the Northman’s door on the uppermost floor burst open, revealing the tall warrior. Anders Aricssen was soaked to the skin, and a torrent of water followed him out of the doorway. He was burdened with a double armful of whatever possessions he’d managed to gather up. Without ceremony Anders hurled his valuables from the porch. Then he caught sight of Jack in the courtyard below.

  “You fiend!” he shouted. “You backstabbing, underhanded wretch! You whelp of a she-goat and a goblin! If I—”

  The Northman was interrupted by watery disaster. The boarding house sagged over entirely on its side in a rumble of falling timber and a gush of water from every window. The wooden stairs collapsed like matchsticks, leaving Anders comically suspended in midair for one brief instant before joining the general ruin of his home. A wave of water half a hand high washed over Jack’s feet where he stood, rooted to the spot in amazement. The torrent pouring out of Purtil’s Tower slowed to a stream, then a drizzle, and finally a drip.

  Jack looked up, craning his head to study the side of the water tower. Dozens of neighbors and passersby stood gawking at the scene, just as he was, but atop the tower he caught sight of a familiar black-clad figure—his shadow!

  “It seems my twin has a great liking for mischief,” Jack muttered.

  The dark figure leered down at the ruined building, white teeth flashing in a fierce grin, and then vanished from sight. Jack sighed and doffed his cap, wringing water from it. Jack approached the sodden wreckage of Anders’s house carefully, looking for any sign of the Northman.

  Anders was pinned under a tangle of heavy wooden beams that should have killed him outright, but some fluke of chance had left him mostly unharmed from the building’s collapse. Battered, bruised, and dazed, the Northman stared up into the sky, speechless.

  “Good Anders, are you all right?” Jack said, picking up a board and heaving it aside. “Can you speak?”

  “When I can stand,” Anders said from beneath the rubble, “I mean to rend you limb from limb.”

  Jack paused in his efforts to extricate his friend, and surreptitiously rearranged the wreckage to hinder Anders if he suddenly tried to get up. “What offense have I given you?” Jack said slowly, although a terrible suspicion was forming in his heart.

  “What offense have you given me? What offense? You have ruined my house and inundated my belongings! You came within a whisker of killing me! What offense have you given me?” Anders howled in rage and struggled to find his feet again, shrugging off hundred-pound timbers like matchsticks. “I am going to tear off your arms and beat you to death with them, O very prince of dung beetles!”

  Jack backed away cautiously. “Anders, I should take this opportunity to advise you that I have been illicitly copied. For the last three days, a dark and sinister copy of me has been prowling the city, causing all kinds of mischief. I am afraid that the scoundrel has wrought the destruction of your house. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “You don’t recall taunting me not ten minutes ago? Calling me an unwashed barbarian and promising me a bath? Twisting my nipple and pulling my beard?” With each exclamation the Northman heaved another board out of the way, drawing closer to freedom. “I take great pride in my personal hygiene, Jack. I swim every day. I am hardly unwashed, and I did not need a bath!” Anders staggered to his feet, bruised and bleeding, eyes burning like coals.

  “Anders,” said Jack, “how am I dressed?”

  The Northman kicked a broken step out of his way and closed on Jack. In fact, Jack was dressed handsomely in red and yellow, with a plumed cap and a blue velvet waistcoat. Anders halted, squinting at the rogue.

  “Ten minutes ago you wore gray and black. When did you change?”

  “As I said, I am plagued by a duplicitous doppelganger who delights in harrying my friends. Two days past he pulled down Ontrodes’s tower. Today he visited you. Believe me, the minor inconvenience you have suffered in the loss of your home and the destruction of your personal property is nothing compared to the lasting damage the villain has inflicted on my good name and honorable reputation.”

  “If this is some kind of trick—” Anders growled.

  “Anders, would I stand here before you and tell you a story of such an outlandish nature if it were not strictly true?”

  The Northman glowered. “I suppose you are going to tell me that you had nothing to do with the fire started in the Smoke Wyrm yesterday by someone answering to your exact description? Or the shameful fashion in which noble Tharzon’s beard was dipped in flammable wax first, so that he ran down the street with his head on fire until he managed to smother the flames by plunging his face into a filthy mud puddle in the middle of Manycoins Way?”

  “Tyr’s eyes! My deceitful shadow did that?” Jack swallowed nervously. Tharzon would simply kill him on sight; there was no way he could ever stumble across the dwarf again, explanation or no explanation. “The dastard!”

  “Not only that, but you—your shadow, I guess—hired seven street mimes to ape poor Tharzon’s flight and extinguishment directly afterward, thus shaming the poor fellow seven times over in front of hundreds of passersby on the busiest street in the Market District.” Anders raised an admonishing finger. “That was ill done.”

  “Street mimes?” Jack fought hard, very hard, to keep a straight face, despite a twitching of his lips and a snigger in his voice. He could see them blundering down the street, beating at their heads, only to fling themselves into the nearest pile of ordure—“I tell you, friend Anders, not in a thousand years could I have imagined such a base deed. I am responsible for neither Tharzon’s scorching nor your drenching!”

  “I believe you—for the moment, but if I should ever learn otherwise …” Anders held Jack’s gaze for a long moment, naked anger riveting the rogue to the spot. Then he harrumphed and kicked the wreckage aside. “You’d best find out who is imitating you and bring this to an end, or you won’t have a single friend in this entire city!”

  Jack glanced skyward, scanning the rooftops. There was no sign of his dark twin, although that did not mean that the villain was not lurking there invisibly.

  “I shall henceforward devote my entire existence to the discovery and punishment of this fiend,” he promised.

  Leaving Anders to the unenviable process of drying what little was left of his material possessions, Jack spent the rest of the evening and all of the following day searching all of his favorite haunts and places, asking people he knew when they’d seen him last.

  The barkeep at the Cracked Tankard gave him a strange look and said simply, “Last night. Why do you ask?”

  At the Wizard’s Guild, the doorman squinted and muttered but admitted he hadn’t seen Jack in a week or more. He checked various food stands, alehouses, and taprooms all over the waterfront, to little avail, and he avoided the Smoke Wyrm, because he already knew his shadow had done its work there.

  “It would seem,” he told himself after hours of wandering the city, “that my shadow twin frequents different establishments than those I favor.” Finally he turned his steps toward the Cracked Tankard again, expecting any kind of mischief from the various parties that he’d learned were looking for him. The Knights of the Hawk had apparently been asking after him all over the city, along with a mage who might or might not hav
e been Iphegor, and a pair of thieves who might or might not have been Morgath and Saerk.

  “Zandria!” Jack stopped and put his hand to his head. “We are to meet this evening and discuss the division of the loot! I’d forgotten!” And he had no preparations at all for allies to back him up in the event the Red Wizard chose to deal dishonorably. He stepped off the street and onto the covered boardwalk running along Waelstar Way, perching atop a barrel of pickled herring outside a provisioner’s shop while he thought. Anders wanted little to do with him, Tharzon he dared not approach, and any other blackguard he could think of was simply much too untrustworthy. Ontrodes was a drunkard, and Illyth a noblewoman—and neither would be much use in dissuading Zandria from treachery if the sorceress were so inclined.

  “Elana would be a good accomplice,” Jack muttered, “as she is extremely competent and claims to be immune to magic, a handy thing when one is confronting a wizard. It’s a shame that she is the Warlord, and her minions are trying to kill me. Otherwise she’d be perfect.”

  Reluctantly he decided that there was nothing to do but trust in Zandria’s honorable nature, so he hopped down from the barrel and continued on his way. She had agreed, after all, to pay him two-elevenths of the treasure plus ten thousand gold crowns of the reward—all told, a sum that must be close to thirty thousand gold pieces. “I could never transport such wealth,” Jack thought. “I shall have to arrange for a detail of guards from some reputable counting-house to take custody of the coinage and convert it into more convenient sums later. If I do so, Zandria will see that I mean business and will not easily be cheated. And I can always try to ransom the ring and the knife back from her by offering cash for the articles of interest.”

  Quickly Jack hurried to the offices of House Albrath and there contracted for the services of six sturdy armsmen and a secure coach to await his negotiations with Zandria that evening. The cost was exorbitant—more than two hundred gold crowns—but Embro Albrath himself assured Jack that discretion was his watchword. For the deposit and a mere five percent of the value of the transaction, the mustachioed Albrath would see to it that Lord Jaer Kell Wildhame’s wealth reached a secure location and that Jack was provided with the means to access his gains or convert them into other currencies at his leisure.