The Verse of Sibilant Shadows: A set of tales from the Irrational Worlds

by JM Guillen

  The throng of men roared as she took the stage.

  As the crowd grew rowdier, I watched ever closer. I didn’t know exactly who I was looking for. The woman on stage was belting out the chorus of a particularly lusty song I had no name for. I was enjoying her performance when Gia came to my table.

  “Judicar?” Her cute face had gone pale. “I’m, um, I’m glad you’re here.” Everything about her typically outgoing nature was subdued. There was the slightest tremble to her hand as well.

  “Gia?” I stood, my gaze flitting from her to the rest of the room. Nothing seemed untoward.

  “It’s Salinger. The owner.” She gave a quick nod toward the back offices while also gesturing me forward. “You’d better see.”

  I followed her slender form through the small crowd, Scoundrel perching on my shoulder. As we drifted past the people, I tried to see every face.

  No. No one was familiar.

  Gia led me through a small door in the back, which opened up to a small, dimly lit rental office. Behind that was the kitchen, and lying on the floor was a man I assumed to be Salinger.

  Salinger did not look well.

  He was a large man, laid out on the tiled floor. A slender, shallow cut stroked down the side of his face, from which he was bleeding profusely. Another of the young ladies, whom I did not know, was standing over him.

  “He won’t say who did it.” She looked up at me, all pretty green eyes and worried frown. I crouched, looking into Salinger’s dark eyes.

  “That right, Salinger?” I gave the man a smile. “You keeping mum on us?”

  “He normally won’t shut up.” Gia crossed her arms.

  The more I looked down at old Salinger, the more I realized the truth. It wasn’t that he was choosing not to speak.

  It was that he couldn’t.

  “He can’t move.” I looked from him to the ladies, and then back to him. “Isn’t that right, Salinger?”

  There was a low groaning sound, just barely audible in the back of Salinger’s throat. The confirmation was enough for me.

  I looked around the room, and as I did, I could see the scuffle. The back door was just a touch askew and a barrel had been knocked on its side. In the corner—

  “What is that?” I gestured at the small open trapdoor in the corner.

  “The cellar.” Gia looked from the door to me. “Never been down there. It’s where we keep the casks, and they’re too heavy for me to lift.”

  “Salinger will be fine.” I looked down at the man as I said it, giving him a firm smile. “He met with an unpleasant but insistent person. Isn’t that right, Salinger?”

  Another low sound. Salinger’s eyes were wild.

  “He will be unable to move for several hours. He can breathe, but that’s about all.” I looked back to Gia. “This time tomorrow, he’ll be fine.”

  Come. Danger. I signaled to Scoundrel who had leapt down to the floor.

  “Judicar?” Gia’s voice held some concern. “Where are you going?”

  “Into your cellar.” I gave her a grave smile. “You have spiders.”

  2

  The ladder to the cellar had five short steps to the bottom. The room was shrouded in shadows and smelled like earth and mold.

  One wall was covered in shelving, over half of which was filled with small casks. They were small enough to carry upstairs, but I was certain that the full ones were more than a touch awkward.

  The interesting bit was the ancient iron gate hanging askew on one hinge. It was surrounded by a wall of red brick, obviously newer construction than the rest of the building. I stepped toward it, stave at the ready.

  The wintersteel lock was fairly new—and shattered.

  “Thom!” Scoundrel’s call was, quite simply, the loudest sound I’d ever heard.

  I gave her a scowl, gesturing fiercely.

  Quiet.

  “Thom.” She muttered my name this time, as if to show that she was the one who decided how quiet she needed to be. She hopped closer, scratching at the ground.

  There was a splatter of blood, partially soaked into the dirt.

  I crouched next to it. The blood was fairly fresh. Perhaps it belonged to my new friend Salinger. Was this where he had received his dose of the Spider’s venom?

  There was no way to know. Standing, I crept toward the gate.

  In the end, it was a simple choice, even without the shadow of the Warren’s Spider looming ahead. The facts still remained: Rebeka had come to the Olde Path and vanished soon after. Also, it seemed that the Olde Path was one of the taverns that held a little-used opening into the Deepcity, an opening that now hung askew.

  Warren’s Spider or no, this was not a coincidence.

  Teredon was absolutely lousy with dilapidated and forbidden tunnels in the Deepcity, many of them dating from far before the falling of the Shroud. It was almost an inevitable byproduct of a city whose children were so protective of their secrets, where guilds fought in the shadows, and where thieves had troves to hide. The tunnels had even been sanctioned and improved at one point, as the legates had believed that we might need shelter from gloaming storms in caverns beneath the surface.

  But of course, those tunnels were not our salvation. No, they were the bane of judicars and inquisitors alike, providing the perfect holes for street rooks and heretics both. Shortly after, the bounds awoke to hold the gloaming at bay, but now there was an entire second city of criminals and murderers hiding beneath the streets.

  In those days, the tunnels were called “the Warrens.” It took a combination of closing those passages and a devastating fire for my borough to be renamed “the New Warrens,” and then later just “the Warrens.”

  There was an entire private guild, the Deepcity Watch, who was tasked with overseeing the various gates and walls meant to keep people out of the deeps. No one, myself included, was supposed to be mucking about down here.

  Like the judicars, the Deepcity Watch had the writs to execute those they found trespassing. I doubted it was a penalty that would be levied in my situation but still.

  “This is so not my jurisdiction.” I placed one hand on the gate, slowly swinging it open and looking into the vast darkness beyond.

  Wil and Ely would both be displeased.

  For a long moment, I considered going back upstairs and requisitioning a lantern. Even better would be stepping to the Alchemins and buying a handcart full of lucia lumen.

  Then I sighed. Neither option was good.

  My friend the Terrier had said it best. It wasn’t going to do me any good to walk into darkness while carrying a bright brand with me. I could imagine that almost anyone I met down here wouldn’t be friendly, and a lantern would sing to the heavens that I was here.

  Sighing, I stepped inside.

  The Deepingway

  Sundering, Third Bell, Dusking

  The dark was oppressive, like a living thing. It wasn’t as cool as I thought it should be, heated as it was by the various vents and steam pipes run beneath the streets. Casually, I wondered what happened when those pipes broke. Much of the success of the city was due to the great number of hot springs winterward; many businesses piped the water down from there to be used for steamworks and luxury both. Did the appropriate guilds ever have to come below for repairs? I assumed so, but it seemed a dangerous prospect.

  “Bad. Bad, bad, bad.” Scoundrel’s raucous voice echoed in the darkness, but it was oddly comforting. I wasn’t yet five strides into the deeps, but already the darkness was stifling.

  “I don’t want you to think that you’re always right,” I muttered beneath my breath as we came to a small, stone stairwell, “but in this case, I’d say you’re square on.”

  In the distance, I could see light drifting down from some street grate or another, and the light seemed brilliant compared to the sable darkness. As I approached, creeping through the darkness, I realized that the light illuminated even further downward, silhouetting the fact that there were at least four more sm
all sets of the steep stairs in front of me. In fact, the chamber opened up quite a bit, into a large underground cylinder the size of a storage silo.

  As my eyes adjusted, I could see that my current path wrapped around the side of the cylinder, and I could vaguely see other gates and passages to my sides, a morass of labyrinthine passages.

  And of course, there were stairs down.

  “This is new,” I mumbled to Scoundrel, more to hear the odd echo of my own voice than anything else. “I mean, I’m not accustomed to making horrifyingly bad mistakes, so this is a different experience.”

  “Bad.” Scoundrel’s opinion had not changed. I knew she was nervous, as she hadn’t moved from my shoulder.

  “I certainly hope I get to brawl with the Warren’s Spider while I’m down here.” I nodded as if she understood me. “Maybe she’ll leave me in a puddle of filth, unable to move.” I chuckled ruefully. “Oh, maybe the storm will pick up, and I can lie in the gutter and drown.”

  Muttering to myself, I edged forward, listening to the drips and runnels of water as they ran down from the city above. I traced my hand along one damp wall, more to keep on my bearing than anything else.

  That was how I found the box affixed to the wall.

  It was inoxydable steel, with numbers and sovereign lettering stamped into the front. I traced them, just able to make them out:

  FIFTH JUNCTURE- 117

  I edged my fingers around its edge, finding the latch. It snapped open with a sound I found to be far too ominous and loud.

  Inside were several small shelves, filled with small boxes and bottles. Cursing, I fumbled in my satchel and pulled out a small waxed container. Opening it, I fumbled one sulfur stick free.

  I only had a few of them. I needed to be careful.

  I glanced back into the darkness, knowing I was about to shine like a lonely star in the night. Listening, I heard nothing but the gentle murmur of water and the occasional small scurrying in the darkness.

  I struck the stick against my thumbnail, squinting against the sudden brightness.

  “Good Thom.” Scoundrel hopped down to the ground, as if our problem was permanently handled.

  “Well, not good yet,” I spoke quietly, peering into the box. “Let’s see what we have in here.”

  It was a supply box—that was readily apparent. It looked to be a combination of a control center and storage unit for workers or affiliate guildmen who might be blessed enough to come down here. The left side of the box housed small valve handles and spigots, all set into the wall and turned very exactingly to various specifications. The right side was the small shelves, positively loaded with supplies. The bottom shelf was the widest, holding a small collection of spanners, wockl wrenches, and three sets of calipers, all made of iron and brass.

  “Larceny from a city sponsored guildman or location is a tier three infraction,” I recited softly to myself, holding the sulfur stick closer and reading the labels on the boxes.

  Useless to me, in all honesty. It seemed as if they were mostly small replacement bolts and bits, cogs and gears. They all had the item designation on them, as well as the stamp from an associated guild, all quite official.

  The bottle on the other hand…

  “Lucia lumen.” I grinned. There was one of the small bottles, mixed in with two canisters of tar-gas and some firiminated salts. I took it, feeling at least a touch better at just having some reliable light in my possession.

  I started to close the door, but then noticed an engraving on the surface of its inside. Peering at it, I saw intricate, exacting marks, all straight lines with occasional sweeping curves. In the center of the door, there was a thick sovereign “X” scored into it.

  A map?

  It certainly seemed so. There were detailed scrawlings of the passage I was in, as well as the circular chamber and stairwells in front of me. East had tiny letters and numbers stamped alongside them, as did the scores of others branching off.

  “This…” my voice trailed off as I attempted to memorize the corridors on the door. “This is impossible.”

  “‘Possible.” Scoundrel’s mimic cut off part of the word.

  “No, you don’t get it. There’s just too many.” No sooner did I speak than the sulfur match went dark.

  “See?” I looked down at where she had just been.

  “Thom?” Scoundrel was only a few strides from me, toward the edge of the stairs.

  For just a moment, I wondered if the tools in the box would allow me to rip the door from its hinge. I could carry the map that way and perhaps not get hopelessly lost in the dark.

  No. That would never work.

  “Never fear, little rook.” I shut the door and stepped to the edge of the stairs myself, grasping the slick rail. “I’m still doing the stupid, impossible thing. I just thought I’d commit a little larceny first.”

  “Cheese?” She cocked her head at me.

  “I did not steal any cheese.” I chuckled.

  Together, we descended into darkness.

  2

  It was surprising how long that one beam of light, shining through the grate above, kept us on our way. The stairs bent downward, and then turned down again, each time stopping at a landing. At each landing, there was a metal grated floor that led around the edge of the cylindrical hole in the ground, often with platforms that led to iron doors or gates like the one we had come through. Many of them were dead ends, I knew, their egress hidden in an old foundry or some dusty warehouse.

  Still, I pressed downward.

  I didn’t have the map of the Deepcity memorized or even held clearly in mind. The things I had most prominently noted was that the way forward was the largest tunnel in my vicinity and that there were dozens of branches. In all honesty, I could only count on going forward for a time. The Spider could have slipped off in any direction at all.

  However, that one lone shaft of light kept this entire vicinity lit well enough, dim though it was. When the point came that I was tempted to use my lucia, that might be a different choice.

  “Thom?” Scoundrel’s tone was questioning as we descended the stairs. “What are we doing?” seemed to be the apparent question.

  “Just a little further, sweet girl.” She was back on my shoulder, freeloading a ride down the stairwell. I’ll admit, I was going slow, but the grated metal was more than a touch slick.

  “No. Thom!” Insistently, the raven pulled at one my stray hairs, as if my brown locks were the reins on her glorious Rossüm-bred mount. Then, she leapt off my shoulder, flittering down to the bottom of the stairwell.

  Where there was a corpse.

  I took the last few stairs in a bound, hoping that perhaps it wasn’t a corpse at all. If the Warren’s Spider had in fact come this way, then perhaps—

  No. The man’s throat was cleanly slit.

  “Thom?” Scoundrel looked up at me questioningly. I ignored her, crouching next to the man’s corpse.

  He had been left here. It was obvious to anyone who gave the idea a moment’s thought. The young man’s body was laid out at the foot of the stairs, neat and nice as someone asleep. One arm was splayed over his head, apparently pointing down one of the dark passages ahead.

  “No.” I looked closer, trying to decide if I was fooling myself. The more I looked, the more I realized the truth. A chill settled across my back.

  This man had been killed as a message to me. Not only was I on the correct path, but my quarry knew I was coming. Not only did my quarry know, but I was being encouraged forward.

  “That’s an unpleasant thought.” I sighed, leaning closer to get a look at the body. There just wasn’t enough light. “Well enough, if I’m already outed.” I frowned, reaching into my satchel for one of the bottles of lucia.

  Without taking my eyes off the dead young man, I pulled the stopper, which removed the thin piece of metal that hung in the clear bottle, keeping its ingredients separate. Discarding the separator, I pushed the cork back into its neck and shook the bottle
gently.

  The liquid within burst into a yellow glow as the reagents reacted with one another.

  The man had been fairly young and truly Teredi-born with brownish hair and a slight spice-color to his skin. He had come into the deep city prepared, I could see, with thick hobb-nail boots and a belt which carried various small tools. He had two scabbards, suitable for shortblades, but I saw neither of the weapons laying anywhere about.

  “Good morning.” I espied something on his wrist and leaned forward. Sure enough, there was a small dark tattoo there, something which looked like a shadowed dagger.

  Or, a poet might say, a Twilight Blade.

  “Well, there’s one less Blade at my back.” I muttered the words softly, trying to decide if I recognized the young man. I had seen several of his guildmen the night before, but it had been quite dark—

  He was holding something in his hand.

  I leaned forward, retrieving the small piece of paper from the dead man. On it, in clear, precise strokes, were four stark words.

  Judicar, she lies ahead.

  My hand trembled as I read the note, just a touch.

  This had easily been the most frustrating assignment I had been on in years, with constant dead ends and an absolutely awful quotient of fists to my face. It was difficult to admit, but some small portion of my heart had almost surrendered to the idea that I wasn’t ever going to find Rebeka Ortiz.

  “She lies ahead.” I read the words softly to myself, letting all the implications wash over me as I did. I stood, looking into the passage ahead. It was about twice as tall as I was, with a rounded top and a trickle of water running through it. Occasionally, some small grating or vent from the city above allowed in a touch of light, but very little.

  “As if secrecy matters.” I didn’t know whether to smile on that point or not. The Warren’s Spider—if that truly was who moved ahead of me—obviously knew I was here, and was toying me along. On the other hand, there were Twilight Blades down here as well, and she seemed more than capable of clearing the way.

  “Is that what you’re doing, clearing the way?” I whispered the words into the mist-filled shadows. It didn’t seem like a far throw. After all, we were both sent by Santiago. I had already made the argument that we were on the same side.