The Duchess of the Shallows

by Neil McGarry

  This turn of conversation was suspicious, but there was nothing for it but to answer. "I know the Walk, and the parts around Beggar's Gate."

  He nodded impatiently. "Yes, of course you do...how else would someone like us get into Temple District?" So now she and Hector were an us, she noted. "But what do you know of who lives there?" She wasn't certain where he was going, so she replied with a shrug.

  "You'll need to do some footwork, then. Good. That'll make this a better test." He raked back gray-brown hair and went on. "Two nights hence, the Baron Eusbius is throwing a little party on his newly purchased and refurbished estate in Temple." Something about the way he said baron dripped contempt, but she filed that away for later consideration. "Most of the petty nobility will be in attendance, if only to gawk at the new lord." The word new caught her ear, but he went on before she could ask. "The baron is known as something of a collector: artifacts, paintings, other objects of art. Bastard doesn't have an eye for it, mind you, never did, but he knows value, and has a habit of acquiring what he wants. This party is mostly an excuse to show off the new estate, as well as his latest acquisition, a fancy dagger he got somewhere." Hector flashed a cold, yellow smile. "I want that dagger to vanish."

  She looked at him. "You want me to steal a dagger?" This was more than she'd bargained for; she was no burglar.

  Hector's grin widened. "I'm afraid it's not that simple. The importance of this party can't be understated. It's the baron's first public event since he came into his title, and the nobles will be watching." Hector leaned in closer, warming to his topic. "You see, he..." He caught himself and smiled smugly, folding spindly arms across his chest. "Suffice to say Eusbius reminds the lords of something they'd rather forget. And more than a few of them have been waiting for him to trip up. So if he were to bungle the party, say, by losing the main attraction…well, the good baron would be very embarrassed, wouldn't he?"

  Duchess considered this. "But if this dagger goes missing, won't he just cancel the party? Then nobody is embarrassed."

  Hector nodded, a glint in his eye. "That's why the dagger can't disappear tonight or tomorrow. It has to disappear during the party." A cold finger touched her heart. Hector was asking her not only to break into a baron's estate in Temple District, but to do it while that estate was crowded with guests. They’d take both her hands if they caught her.

  Hector went on heedlessly. "If the dagger disappears just before he can present it to the guests, he'll be the laughing stock of the city, and I will open your door. And," he continued with the air of one conferring a great favor, "I'll pay a fair price for the object."

  Her stomach had turned to ice and her legs to jelly, but she kept her face a mask. She had no idea how she would even begin. "What does this dagger look like?" she asked, hoping she sounded braver than she felt.

  "Silver, with a sinuous blade and an engraved handle. It's an antique, or so I'm told, although I haven't seen it myself. Just make sure it's there when the party starts and gone before it's shown." He gave her a suspicious look. "If I wake up tomorrow and hear that a certain dagger has vanished too soon, you and I will never do business again, mark or no mark. Understand?"

  Her head was spinning and her tongue was dry in her mouth, but she nodded as if she received these sorts of requests every day. "I'll get your damn dagger," she said, wondering how the hell she would.

  "Then we're done. The party is in two nights; I'll see you in three."

  Chapter Three:

  Over a barrel

  It was her own fault. She hadn't been watching where she was going.

  The streets were busier since the rain had ended, although she would hardly have noticed if there had been a riot. She wondered what Lysander would say when she told him she'd agreed to creep into Temple at night, where someone like her was not allowed; that she planned to sneak into a noble estate during a party, behind the backs of guards and guests alike, to steal a one-of-a-kind piece of art. He'd probably ask if she'd leave him her florin when she died. And it would be death if she were lucky; the law was not notably kind to thieves, particularly those who deliberately set out to humiliate barons.

  There was more than the law to consider. Hector clearly had some grudge against Eusbius, and this task might be only the latest round in a petty war between the two. If so, Duchess made a poor foot-soldier. She was no Naria of the Dark, who in the stories could climb walls like a spider, tickle locks with the flick of a finger and pass closed and guarded doors like smoke. Duchess had some skill with a lockpick, true, but that was where the comparison ended. And even if she managed the unlikely and got away with the dagger, would she then make an enemy of Baron Eusbius? Joining the Grey was well and good, but buying the enmity of a noble, no matter how minor, could prove fatal. By every god of the Walk, it was far safer to simply find a job at another bakery and throw the damned mark in the harbor.

  Or was it? She might secure a job with some other craftsman only to find herself thrown out on the street by another letter with another brass coin. Was she willing to spend the rest of her life running from place to place, always at the mercy of whatever soul had taken her in this time? Was she prepared to simply turn her back on the mystery of what had happened to her family that night of the fire? Or was this an instance in which safe was not always best? Eight years ago Duchess had been dragged from her home without a word of why, and two days ago she'd been ejected from the bakery just as mysteriously. The reason Noam had taken her in and the reason he'd let her go so easily were one and the same, she was certain. Behind it all was P and the Grey.

  Still, it was one thing to play at rumor-mongering and lock-picking with Lysander; quite another to risk her life on some fool's quest prompted by a bit of brass and a letter that was now ash.

  The thought of returning to the empty garret was depressing; by now Lysander was half-blind with drink, wandering from winesink to winesink with the rest of the ganymedes. She thought fleetingly of heading to the Vermillion, but that was no better an idea. The brothel was full of pricked ears and prying eyes, and Duchess shuddered to think what Minette might do should she learn that Duchess had been asked to steal Eusbius' dagger.

  Alone, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but worry and wander the city's wet, gray streets, she suddenly felt sick and tired of the Shallows, the fog, and the endless gray stone. "Grey above and gray below and wet in between," she muttered. "You were right, father."

  She suddenly felt very keenly the hole Marcus Kell's disappearance had left in her life, and how much she missed the long hours they'd spent talking about history, or geography, or politics, or whatever else she'd found in some book or crumbling scroll. By eight years of age, Duchess had read half her father's library, and one of their favorite topics of discussion had been the history of the great hill and the city that had stood there centuries before Rodaas had been founded. History painted Domani as a wonder and a paradise, possessed of libraries filled with long-forgotten knowledge and gardens of surpassing beauty. Most of the city's present-day miracles of architecture – the Avenue of Trees, the Godswalk, the sewer system, the foundations of the imperial palace – had been constructed during those ancient days. Stories even spoke of a vast underground city of the dead, a grand necropolis, deep beneath the hill of lost Domani. All of these were built from the ubiquitous gray stone that still graced the hill and could be found nowhere else. The people of the city, the Domae, had according to the tales been so wise and skilled that no other nation dared trouble their eternal gray walls. Domani was as peaceful inside as out, the story went; the Domae themselves so law-abiding they needed no blackarms to keep the peace. A paradise upon earth, rivaling any of Ventaris' heavens.

  "Our people – we call ourselves Rodaasi now, though at the time we were little more than warring mountain clans – found this city more than eight hundred years ago. And I mean they literally found it, fully intact." She had frowned at intact, and her father smiled. "Intact meaning complete, without damage. There were h
ouses, palaces, gardens, streets and alleys, as solid as the day they were built...and empty."

  "Where did the Domae go?" Marina had asked, intrigued. They were in Marcus Kell's study, sitting in chairs near the windows, which were gray with early evening.

  "That's the question, isn't it?" Her father sat back in his chair, relishing the exchange. "You can hear a thousand and one tales, most of them nonsense. Some say that a great cataclysm befell the place, leaving its people dead or scattered, but if that were the case the city should have been a ruin, which it was not. Others have held that a madness crept into Old Domani, and that its people slew each other in civil war and feasted upon the flesh of their dead." Duchess shivered at that, and her father had smiled reassuringly. "More nonsense. If that had happened the city our ancestors found would have shown signs of battle, and been filled with bones, which it most certainly was not. Some say the Domae simply became tired of living behind their great walls and returned to the land. Whatever happened to them, they left a good deal of stone behind, and the first emperor of Rodaas simply knocked down the old buildings and allowed commoner and wellborn alike to use the broken stone to build anew." She loved him most at times like this, when he talked to her not like a little girl but like the blue-robed scholars whom he sometimes entertained at dinner. They would discuss and argue and expound for hours, never seeming to grow tired of it. She sometimes imagined herself in those deep blue robes, even though she knew women were almost never allowed to wear them.

  "But what do you think?"

  "Wherever they went, they did not bother to take much with them. In the ancient records, one can find lists of what the Domae left behind: gold and silver, gems, silks and other treasures, full granaries, and cellars bursting with wine...and that accounts only for what the first Rodaasi found. One wonders what else the Domae abandoned that did not survive to be discovered later."

  "But what do you think?" she persisted. Her father had told her that unanswered questions were like mice: where there was one, others would soon follow.

  Marcus Kell had laughed. "No mice for you, then?" He sipped his wine. "Perhaps you can answer that question yourself. When we leave for the country house in the summer, what do we do first?"

  Marina considered. "We put our clothes away in chests and put them all on a wagon. You take the little metal box with the money, and some books for us to read during the summer. Oh, and the servants use up all the food so it doesn't rot, and they close up the windows and lock the house so no one will steal anything while we're gone." She thought for a moment. "But the Domae left their money and their food, and they didn't lock their doors. Weren't they afraid someone would steal something?"

  Her father shrugged. "The only Domae left wander beyond the westerlands, except for the few who live in the Foreign Quarter, and none of them remember or care to tell us." He grew more serious. "I think," he said quietly, "that the Domae were afraid, but not of thieves. They were afraid enough to leave all at once, and without fighting over what to take and what to leave." He smiled ruefully, not seeming to see her. "Getting Rodaasi to agree on anything is like trying to bottle fog, but the Domae managed to reach a consensus that as far as I know has never been matched in all of recorded history, an entire people who simply chose leaving over staying..." He trailed off, his gaze going to the window, where the evening fog was pressed against the glass. Then he gave her a sideways look, which even at that age she knew meant there was something he didn't want to tell her. "I also think someone's been up reading when she should have been in bed."

  She was lost in memory when the drunken man lurched out of the alley. On any ordinary evening she would have seen and avoided him – Duchess had learned young not to walk too near the alleys in the Shallows at night – but then this was no ordinary evening. She struck the man squarely, whacking her head on his shoulder and biting her tongue in the bargain. He wheeled around belligerently, showing small eyes under a beetled brow, and she said, "Pardons, sir," around a mouthful of blood. The man was taller than she, broader by half, and smelled of cheap wine, and she wanted no trouble on this of all nights.

  Evidently the man felt differently. "Pardons yer arse," he slurred in a voice thick with drink, squinting against drunkenness and poor light. She stepped aside, trying to get around him, but he grabbed at her. She backed away and feigned a spasm of coughing, a tactic that had rarely failed to discourage unwanted attention from beggars, cutpurses and other night-folk. There was too much sickness in the Shallows for anyone to ignore, but wine had made the man bold. He reached for her, moving more quickly than she had expected and catching the shoulder of her new cloak. She pulled away but the cloth was too new to tear yet too dry to slip from his grasp. Without thinking she swept out her blade and jabbed at the cloak, thinking she could cut herself free from his grasp and be off and running in a moment, and on any other night it would have worked. That night, however, she was distracted and her aim was off, and in an instant the man was howling and jerking back a bloodied hand. His reddened eyes met hers, and she realized belatedly that this drunken lout was not one to be driven off with a stab and a glower. His scowl turned into something darker, and he balled large fists and stalked towards her.

  Confident she could outdistance the man in a footrace, Duchess faked left and darted right, but she slipped on the muddy cobblestones and nearly fell. She recovered quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid the heavy, clumsy fist that caught her on the left shoulder with a muffled thud. It was a glancing blow, but still heavy enough to send her staggering back against a barrel someone had set out to catch the rain. The barrel rocked, heavy with water, but did not fall over. This man would not be satisfied by knocking her into the mud, she realized with a jolt of fear. A quick look revealed that the street was for the moment empty, although she never seriously considered shouting for help. In the Shallows, shouting for help never got you any.

  She moved to keep the barrel between them, and he smiled menacingly. "Here's your pardon," he growled, swiping at her over its open mouth. She ducked the blow and the one that followed it, but he kept on, moving clumsily around to get at her. Crazily, her mind jumped back to Hector and his dagger, and that brass coin in her pocket, and in that instant one drunken man in the Shallows seemed far less formidable. She was armed, he was drunk, and by Anassa, if she couldn't deal with one drunken man how could she ever survive on the Grey? In that moment, she was all Steel.

  She stepped out into the open again, held out one dagger and drew the other from her boot, ready to move. Undeterred by her steel, the man lurched at her. She slashed at his face with her left blade and he jerked back, then she jabbed at his belly with her right. He avoided that one, too, but then it was his turn to slip in the mud. He fell heavily, cursing, and one of his flailing hands struck the rain-barrel on the way down. That gave her an idea. She threw herself against the barrel, pushing mightily.

  It rocked, tilted, and then fell over heavily, landing partly on the man and drenching him with its contents. He thrashed and gurgled out a watery ooof. Although Silk was clamoring for retreat, Steel noted the fat purse dangling from his belt; evidently the man hadn't drunk up all of his sou. Ignoring Silk, Duchess stooped, sliced the cord that attached purse to belt, and was up and away. He howled in protest and shoved the barrel aside, but she was off before he could climb back to his feet. Soon enough she heard his footsteps slapping wetly against the cobblestones behind her, and she knew the race was on.

  The man was broader and stronger, and energized by anger, but he was clumsy from whatever he'd been drinking. Duchess, on the other hand, had been quick and nimble even as a little girl, and she hadn't spent the last eight years pushing a bread cart around the Shallows without learning every crook and bend in every lane. She bolted along the dark street, her eyes darting back and forth in search of an escape while she silently offered a prayer to whatever gods were listening that she wouldn't slip on the mud once more.

  She darted around the corner of a house abandoned
by a candle maker years ago, by instinct avoiding the loose cobbles that had often tripped her before she'd learned to avoid them. Her pursuer, less familiar with this street, cursed and stumbled, but he kept up the chase. Still, the delay bought her a few extra yards, which she used to take stock. This was Pike Street, she thought, but if she cut through the lane to her left, she should find the Wynd, along with something else she was looking for.

  She ducked into the lane, skidding briefly in a puddle, and emerged on – she thanked the gods – the Wynd, a wide thoroughfare that looped around the Shallows and ended up near Bell Plaza. It was a favorite of the nobles when they were slumming, and sure enough, there was a cluster of them attended by a half-dozen lightboys. The nobles were dressed better than anyone in the Shallows had a right: the men wore thigh-high boots, tight satin breeches and brocade jackets, while the women were regal in gowns of silk and satin, held carefully up around their ankles to avoid the mud. They chatted gaily, but their conversion broke off as Duchess bolted towards them, with her pursuer not far behind. They stared idly, as if watching street performers, but the lightboys were more wary and produced their sticks with almost military precision. The man behind bellowed something that sounded like backbarn, but Duchess barely heard him over the pounding of her heart against her chest and her new boots against the cobbles. She headed straight down the middle of the street, praying that the boys would recognize her before they brought their sticks to bear.

  She was in luck. The lead boy was Zachary, a favorite of Lysander's, and when he saw who she was he put up his stick and moved aside to let her pass, and the other lightboys followed suit. She blew him a kiss as she passed and then plunged directly through the group of primped and perfumed nobles:

  "Great gods, woman!"

  "Ewww...she's filthy!"

  "...all thieves down here, I told you."