CHAPTER TWO
In Waterdeep, a city that lived and died by gossip, Rampage Stunk somehow discouraged speculation about the size and extent of his fortune. His personal wealth, like his stomach, was known to be much larger than the ordinary man’s and that seemed to be the extent of others’ knowledge of Rampage Stunk’s business.
Sophraea found him an unpleasant man. Something about the way he thrust himself forward, his stiff black hair looking as if it had been dipped in ink and then slicked down with grease, his head always cocked at an angle on his shoulders as if listening for gossip about others. Even the heavy tread of his peculiar swaying walk seemed to state that here was a man who did not mind crushing those beneath him.
Stunk strode into the yard as he had many times before, as if he expected everyone to move out of his way, swinging his arms with his hands curled into meaty fists. With no regard for courtesy, he bulled his way past her waiting uncles and Sophraea’s other relatives.
As usual, a retinue of servants trailed after the fat man from the North Ward. Besides being one of the most cutthroat of negotiators, it was said that Stunk also was quicker to take offense than most men, often seeing an insult in the most innocent remark and not at all reluctant to retaliate with force. Certainly, wherever he went, he took a host of unpleasant types with him, all of whom were always ready for a fight.
Stunk stopped in front of Astute Carver, shifting a little from side to side as was his habit. He thrust forward a scroll, the greasy marks of his hands clear on the parchment.
“The pediment was too plain,” he said. “I made some changes. It is much better now.”
Astute Carver took the scroll from his client with a stifled sigh. Some months before, Stunk had commissioned a large memorial for the remains of his long-dead mother and, as needed, his other family members.
Eventually, Stunk planned to occupy the center sarcophagus, a creation of his own design. Every month or so, he visited the Carvers, adding details to the work. Currently he favored a barrel-design tomb set to one side to hold the bones of “lesser family members” as he called them; two pedestals to hold the urns for the ashes of his mother and, eventually, his still living wife; a colonnade of ornamented pillars surrounding his own resting place; and a number of other stone ornaments scattered about to memorialize his self-claimed attributes and achievements.
It was, in the words of Sophraea’s uncle Perspicacity, “quite the most florid and horrid design ever to be visited upon us.” Her other uncles Judicious, Vigilant, and Sagacious had all rumbled their agreement.
However, Stunk was willing to pay for his folly, as Astute reminded his brothers, and the family never turned down a good commission.
Work progressed slowly. So far, only certain ornamental pieces such as funerary urns had been completed as Stunk tinkered with his design, but those two pieces alone were large enough to fill one whole room in the basement of Dead End House. Stunk’s mother still rested in her original plot in Coinscoffin, the merchants’ graveyard, and Stunk seemed more concerned about getting his eventual monument carved to his satisfaction than moving the old lady.
Sophraea suspected Stunk’s only motivation for his plans to bury his family near him was to be assured of a crowd of sycophants to surround him in death as they did in life.
Fidgeting on the edge of the crowd of younger Carvers waiting for the business to conclude, Sophraea noticed that Stunk’s current retinue contained the glowering brute who was said to be his bodyguard, the pale and sneering manservant with the six knives clearly sheathed around his person, the two young red-haired louts with the scarred hands and the flattened noses of dockyard bullies, and the hairy man in the livery of a doorjack who always hung at the back of the group.
The last man had a bestial cast to his face, a mid-day scruff of dark beard and greasy lank curls doing little to hide his generally unpleasant visage. As always, the hairy one turned toward Sophraea and sniffed the air in her direction. His pink tongue darted out and licked his chapped lips. Then he smiled at her.
Sophraea shuddered. There was a man that she would be happy to have her brothers walk through the City of the Dead and drop into the nearest open grave. Maybe even throw a little dirt on top of him.
“They get uglier every tenday, don’t they?” whispered Leaplow to his sister. “Where does Stunk find his servants? Wonder if we could beat them in a fair fight?”
Although slightly older than herself, Leaplow often seemed far younger, at least in Sophraea’s opinion. Like the rest of her brothers, he had inherited their father’s dark curly hair and pleasant grin, but not half of Astute’s clever patience. As nearly everyone in the district knew, Leaplow was a notorious scrapper, fond of picking fights for the fun of it. Sometimes Sophraea felt more like Leaplow’s keeper than his younger sister, attempting to teach him some good sense.
“Hush,” Sophraea said, knowing how her brother always was tempted to do something foolish. Her cousins Bentnor and Cadriffle (who were exactly the same age as Leaplow) also were constantly in scuffles and liked earning extra coin by wrestling and boxing whenever they could find a match (although they had run out of men in the neighborhood willing to challenge them). But the twins could at least keep a cool head in a fight and knew when to run. Not that they’d needed to run after they’d grown to their full size. Leaplow, however, never backed down from any fight. He enjoyed the excitement too much and would keep swinging until someone was unconscious. Then he was just as likely to pick up his opponent, clap him over the shoulders, and buy him a drink.
“I’m sure I could take that hairy one,” Leaplow muttered to his sister.
“Shush,” she said, firmly treading on his foot closest to her. “You still haven’t paid Father for all the damage you did last spring.”
That fight, which Leaplow called a “wonderful way to spend a day” and the family called “a disgrace to our good name,” had nearly wrecked some of the most important southern monuments in the City of the Dead.
Leaplow chuckled in happy remembrance. “That dusty fellow gave me some exercise. You’re right, just one hairy doorjack would not be nearly as much fun. How about I take on those red-haired brothers?”
“The City Watch would not like it,” answered Bentnor, leaning over Leaplow’s shoulder to size up Stunk’s retinue. “They’re still a bit cranky about that last mess you started and we had to clean up.”
“You’d think they’d be happy we did their work for them, knocking out those thieves,” Leaplow answered back. “Still, I felt sorry for the one that ended up with that broken nose. Guess nobody ever told him not to pick a Carver’s pocket.”
In their neighborhood, the bully boys and other miscreants left the Carvers alone. After all, it was a well-known fact in neighborhoods north of the Coffinmarch gate that anyone foolish enough to punch one Carver had to deal with a dozen extraordinarily stalwart lads punching back. Or, and there were certain members of the thieves’ guild who said this was even worse, all the Carver wives laying about with their brooms and pots and pans. The Carver men tended to marry strapping big women, the sort who could drop a man with one kick of a boot or one full swing of a fist.
Only Myemaw Carver, Sophraea’s grandmother, and Sophraea were tiny women and at least looked harmless. Except, as Binn the one-eyed butcher’s boy often said, “the little ones are even tougher than the big ones in that family!” Binn had never really forgiven Sophraea for clouting him when he tried to sneak a kiss.
But there was something different about Stunk’s men and Sophraea was glad that Bentnor had distracted her hotheaded brother. Like Stunk, his men tended to push their way into the center of the crowd. They all had an angry air, as if they liked a fight too, but in a bloodier and more deadly way than Leaplow’s constant sparring. Sophraea doubted that Stunk’s men would just use fists or feet like her brothers or her cousins. The retinue clustered around the fat man all wore blades or, in the case of one redhead, stout cudgels.
Astute Ca
rver had warned her and her brothers more than once to be careful around Stunk’s servants: there had been tales in the streets of the people who crossed Stunk or his retinue being ambushed by “unknown” assailants.
So, “hush and don’t cause trouble,” Sophraea reminded Leaplow again, reaching up to tug his ear down to her level despite his yelp of protest.
“So are you ready for us to start the foundation?” Astute Carver asked Stunk, the merchant’s drawings still rolled up in his fist and ignored.
The fat man rocked back and forth a couple of times before ponderously nodding. “Your work on the urns appeared satisfactory,” he said with an odd note in his voice, as if he wished he could find some further fault.
“Then in which part of the Merchants’ Rest shall we be building?” asked Astute, using the more polite name for Coinscoffin.
Stunk had no such refinement. “Coinscoffin! As if I would be buried there with all the paltry shopkeepers, miles away from Waterdeep proper.”
“But that’s the only place with enough room for a plot of this size!”
Astute unrolled the scroll to show two smaller buildings that flanked the semicircle of columns surrounding the main tomb where Stunk’s sarcophagus would eventually lie.
“My tomb will be there,” said Stunk, pointing across the wall to the City of the Dead to the astonishment of the entire Carver family. “As befits a great man of Waterdeep.”
“There’s no land left within the cemetery’s walls. Every scrap of ground is already claimed.” Astute only voiced what the rest of the Carvers had known from childhood on.
“You will build my tomb inside the City of the Dead,” said Stunk, gesturing at his manservant. The lanky individual slid forward with another scroll and a sneer. “Tear down the structures as marked and begin building my tomb.”
“Tear down?” Astute took this new scroll and unrolled it. His brothers clustered close, each peering over Astute’s shoulder, muttering at what they saw. “There are two tombs in the City at this spot. My family has maintained them for generations.”
“And now you will take care of something far finer.”
“But what about the bodies?” Perspicacity asked, nudging his brother Astute.
Stunk shrugged his shoulders. “Everything is quite legal. And any removals will be handled with the utmost respect by my men.”
Astute stared at his brothers and they stared back at him. All five big men looked at Stunk with less than cordial expressions. Sophraea’s cousins and brothers began to cluster closer to their fathers. One of Stunk’s redheaded bullies unhooked his cudgel from his belt.
“Well?” asked Stunk, no more expression on his face than on a piece of blank granite.
“I need to see the deeds,” said Astute finally. “We cannot start such work without the proper papers.”
“You shall have them,” said Stunk. “And I will have my monument exactly where I have said.”
The fat man turned and walked with his rolling gait out of the yard, not bothering with even the slightest gesture toward a courteous farewell.
“What do you make of that?” Leaplow asked his sister. The pair wandered away from the muttering conversations of their older brothers, uncles, and father, toward the little gate in the wall that opened into the City of the Dead.
Sophraea peered through the gate at the tangle of bushes and trees overshadowing the path leading to the northern tombs. Was it the breeze that trembled the branches or was it something else?
“I think it is trouble,” she finally said. “How are they going to react if we start tearing things down?”
“We’re Carvers,” said Leaplow with his usual brash confidence. “They don’t bother us.” Then, obviously remembering his trouble last spring, he added, “Well, not usually. And never Father or the uncles.”
“Because we maintain the tombs, not destroy them.” As soon as she voiced that thought, Sophraea knew exactly the same idea would have occurred to every member of the family. No wonder her uncles were still in a huddle, tugging at their beards and rumbling their doubts at each other.
Still, the City of the Dead did look quiet. At least the bit that she could see from where she stood. She put her hand on the latch, the old prohibition against wandering through the graveyard alone, even at twilight, certainly no longer applied to her. Even her mother Reye had accepted that the shortcut through the City of the Dead was the fastest route for her daughter to use to certain shops in northern Waterdeep. Sophraea had walked the graveyard paths all summer long with no incident at all.
“That’s odd.” Leaplow startled his sister by bending around her to peer at the gate, almost bumping his forehead on the twisted iron bars. “Must be rust.”
“What?”
“That.” Leaplow tapped red marks that showed clearly on curlicues of iron.
Sophraea looked closely at the strange streaks marring the usually dull dark gray metal. Ten slender streaks curled around the bars, five on the left side, five on the right.
Slowly Sophraea put out her own slender hands and twisted her fingers around the bars. When she pulled them away, the marks of her hands remained for a brief moment before fading away. The marks were exactly the same as the red streaks, except reversed.
“Handprints,” Sophraea barely breathed, looking at the marks so plainly visible and so clearly the color of dried blood, the marks of hands that had reached through the gate from the graveyard side.
Leaplow shook his head in a fierce gesture of denial. “Can’t be. They leave us alone. They have always left us alone. The dead don’t bother Carvers.”
“Whatever it was,” said Sophraea, tracing the pattern on the gate with one slender finger and ignoring Leaplow’s protests, “it came from the City of the Dead.”
The rattle of branches scraping together startled both brother and sister. The pair leaped back from the gate. A splatter of rain followed the gust of wind.
As usual, a shift in the wind distracted her volatile brother. He shook the rain off his head and his worries out of his brain.
“I’m for supper,” said the always hungry Leaplow, heading back to Dead End House with a quick stride.
But Sophraea lingered behind. She put her hand on the gate’s latch again, remembering the odd light of the night before. Perhaps she could see something more on the other side. But the shadows shifted in the graveyard and another cold blast of wind hit her face like a warning.
With careful backward steps, Sophraea retreated. Behind her, the bushes swayed, as if someone invisible brushed by them, returning to the center of the City of the Dead.
CHAPTER THREE
Everyone told tales of the great duels and the unfortunate spells that had once filled the City of the Dead and spilled into the streets of Waterdeep. And everyone, most especially her ancient relative Volponia, said to Sophraea that those days were gone. The Blackstaff had tamed the wizards, the City Watch kept the thieves from stealing too much, the guards prevented riffraff adventurers from creating unusual trouble for ordinary citizens, and even the young lords and ladies were said to be a much more staid and responsible nobility than generations past. Although the broadsheets were always full of some tale of wicked mischief among the aristocracy and very entertaining to read too!
“Scandals,” Volponia had sniffed one morning, crumpling up an old copy of The Blue Unicorn that Sophraea had brought her, “not worth the ink on the paper. Some dressmaker going bankrupt. Some young lords teasing the Watch into chasing them. Huh! In my day, the misdeeds of Waterdeep’s famous and infamous rocked the heavens, toppled rulers, and changed the very boundaries of kingdoms.”
“Being so much older than the rest of us, dear Aunt Volponia,” said Sophraea’s grandmother Myemaw with the usual touch of acid in the honey of her voice, “you would remember such things.”
“I remember you sashaying through that courtyard below with a berry pie in one hand and a loveknot of ribbons in the other hand, girl,” shot back Volponia, with a sna
p of her elegantly manicured fingers at Sophraea’s grandmother. “Back before you married my handsome nephew, back when you were the scandal of the neighborhood.”
Sophraea’s granny began to giggle. “Oh, and you in your tall boots, Volponia, stamping here and there and shouting like you were still commanding from your quarterdeck. Oh, we were all the scandals then!”
The two old ladies fell to chuckling over the gossip sheets until Volponia yawned and said, “I miss those days. When the mangiest dogs had a real bite behind their bark. Why even the ghosts of Waterdeep were grander creatures than the colored mists that float through the streets now!”
Inspired by this memory, Sophraea hurried upstairs to talk to Volponia about the strange light that she’d seen the night before and the bloody handprints on the family gate. The rest of the Carvers were still in a buzz of argument over Stunk’s visit and his proposal to tear down tombs within the City of the Dead, but the old lady would listen to her.
When a firm voice told her to “hurry up and enter,” Sophraea slipped around the door into the great room that filled three-quarters of the top floor of the tower.
With three sets of windows facing north, west, and south, even the usual pearly light of a cloudy Waterdeep twilight was sufficient to reveal every knickknack teetering on the dozens of small tables and shelves cluttering up Volponia’s boudoir.
Volponia’s bed was covered with embroidered silk quilts and had a canopy of tapestry curtains protecting the occupant from stray drafts. The bed also stood closest to the south window. The previous evening, when Sophraea had paid her last good nights to Volponia, the bed had been shaped like a wooden sled, covered with red woolen blankets and azure furs, and been positioned closest to the north window.
How or why Volponia changed her bed quite so literally, nobody knew. The old lady still owned a number of trinkets purloined from faraway places during her days as a pirate captain. Some, like the crystal bell that was always close to hand, kept her well-supplied with the comforts that she craved and made her a very light charge upon the family’s resources.
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