The Duchess of the Shallows

by Neil McGarry

  "How long ago was this?" Duchess interrupted. Minette raised an eyebrow and said nothing for a long moment. Minette hated being interrupted, she remembered too late. "Well, I just meant," Duchess said, abashed. "No one has called that Low District for years."

  "A noble of Scholars District, then." Duchess knew enough to keep quiet, and Minette went on. "Waverly's lineage was insufficiently old to permit him to move to Garden, so he resigned himself to indulging in a rather expensive habit to flaunt his power." She took another sip and smiled. "I'm sure some of the higher houses would say that's becoming something of an epidemic in Rodaas as of late." Duchess watched her warily, but Minette continued as if the comment had meant nothing. "Waverly began collecting birds of every size and breed. He bought birds from sellers of high birth and low, and when he had collected samples of all the local animals he paid foreigners to bring back birds they found on their travels. After a few years of this the aviary of House Waverly had become a local legend, containing birds of all sizes and colors." She turned her eyes toward some distant place, remembering. "Some of those birds hunted, others sang, and one or two even spoke. I don't need to tell you that Baron Waverly thrived on the attention and admiration brought by his collection, and deservedly so. It was a sight I won't soon forget."

  "You saw the aviary?" Duchess asked, forgetting herself and interrupting again. "But you couldn't have been older than I am now. However did you get in?" Minette merely smiled, and Duchess knew she wasn't going to get an answer to that question. Or the rest of the story, if she didn't keep her mouth shut.

  "His rise in status despite his low beginnings naturally brought enemies amongst the higher houses," said Minette, shifting closer to the table and running an eye over the board. "Namely one Lord Nevin, an old rival of Waverly's who'd done rather less well in business and in social circles." She placed a tile of her own and looked at Duchess levelly. "Your move."

  In more ways than one, thought Duchess. "And so, Lord Nevin decided to do something about the Baron's collection?" This story was sounding more familiar by the moment. She wondered if the tale were even true, or just a cover for Minette to convey advice. Minette merely nodded and gestured at the tiles, so Duchess realized she'd get no more help from that quarter.

  Duchess looked over the pieces before her, thinking six things at once. "But of course Nevin couldn't do anything directly," she ventured, fingering a tile. "That's not how the nobles work, is it? He'd embarrass himself and his House by admitting that Waverly's success had gotten to him." Duchess placed her tile at the center of the board, not bothering to place a coin. "He'd need a proxy. Someone to do his dirty work for him. Say, someone from the Grey?"

  "Well done," said Minette, referring either to the tile or the insight, Duchess didn't know. Minette placed one of her own coins atop the tile. "They came out of the woodwork, so to speak, when Nevin snapped his fingers. So many, in fact, that he became suspicious. Whom to trust, amongst thieves?"

  "How did Will get the job, then?"

  "By living up to his name. Amongst the plans and the promises, the marks and the money that the others demanded, Will merely asked for a single penny."

  "Why?" asked Duchess.

  "Precisely Nevin's response," Minette replied. "The offer got his attention, but more importantly, it appealed to his notoriously penurious nature. Still, Nevin was not quite a fool. He investigated Will as best he could, tried to find some connection to Waverly, but came up with nothing. But what sealed the deal was Will's own excitement, as if he wished to see Waverly brought low more than Nevin himself. In the end, Nevin accepted the offer."

  "And what did Will do?" Duchess leaned across the board.

  "Most people aren't sure how Will penetrated the defenses of House Waverly," said Minette, all innocence. "He entered with nothing but a dagger, and left with nothing but the same. He took two bowls from the pile the birds were fed from, and filled one with the sap of one of the trees that the Baron had planted to house the pride of his collection. Into the other went the feathers he plucked from the head of every single bird, from the drab and lowliest to the magnificent and most exotic. By the time Will was done there wasn't a feathered head in that room." Minette took another sip of wine. "Two surprises awaited Baron Waverly when he entered the aviary the next morning. The first was a room full of caged, bald-headed birds. The second arrived a moment later. Will had always been clever with traps and rigging, you see, and he showed his cleverness that day. The bowl of sap Will had rigged above the door, triggered by the wire he'd set, doused the baron's own head, followed shortly by a swirl of feathers from the other bowl Will had positioned."

  Duchess burst into delighted laughter, but Minette only smiled enigmatically and waited until she had finished. "That tale raced through the city like wildfire. Waverly had a thick head of lovely red hair, you see, so you can just imagine the mess. After much pulling, combing and cursing, in the end Waverly was forced to command his barber to shave his head entirely. It took a whole season for the nobles to tire of that story, and even longer for Waverly's hair to grow back, so Nevin got his wish." She swirled her wine, gazing thoughtfully into the cup. "Unfortunately, he also got a knife in the eye two weeks later as he returned home late from the theater."

  Duchess gasped. The nobles often played dangerous games with one another, but it was unheard of for them to resort to out-and-out assassination; they were far too vulnerable to similar retaliation. A noble might order the death of a commoner, but another lord? "That must have caused trouble," she said, hoping to draw Minette out.

  Minette humored her. "It did. But then all of this happened during the Color War, when things were of course already unsettled both up and down the hill. In the end, it was simply another pebble in the landslide."

  Duchess thought of the War of the Quills and the chaos that arose amidst the rise of the tradesmen, of what her father had once said of Emperor Vassilus, and the price of speaking hard truths. "Great Mayu, but things in this city never change easily, do they?" She said it lightheartedly enough, but was disturbed to see Minette go completely still, as if she were suddenly made of fine porcelain.

  "No," the woman said after a pause. "They don't." She gave Duchess a long look, and there was something so intense about that gaze that Duchess found herself quite unnerved. Then Minette relaxed and said, "But we were speaking of a knife."

  Duchess, smiled nervously, relieved that the strange moment had passed. "And I was about to ask you what paw wielded it." she said. She already knew the name of the cat.

  Minette shrugged, her face unreadable. "All that's known is that Will's reputation on the Grey was afterward much improved, and he certainly never turned up plus a knife and minus an eye. Why do you think that was?"

  Duchess paused, considering. "I think," she said at last, "that Will wasn't important enough to make revenge worth it. Nobody would have cared if Will turned up dead, but everyone noticed when Nevin did." Minette smiled again and turned her attention back to the board. Was this a hint that, should Eusbius be angered, he might not go after the hand that stole the dagger but the head that directed it? Encouraged, Duchess added, "So although it can be dangerous to be a cat's-paw, sometimes it's safer than actually being the cat."

  Minette made no reply, but the twinkle in her eye was all the answer Duchess needed. Flushed with victory, she watched as the older woman shuffled the remaining tiles and drew the next set. "Will was quite the tile player," Minette murmured, "and in life as in tiles, some pieces are so small they aren't worth the notice." Duchess said nothing and Minette went on, "Of course one might ask why one would bother with so small a piece in the first place." She sat back with her hands folded before her, her gloves a slash of red across the board.

  Duchess was suddenly very aware of the mark in her pocket and she resisted the urge to touch it. Clearly, Minette knew what Hector wanted to her to do, but did she know about P as well? She searched Minette's face for an answer, but of course that powdered visage reveale
d nothing. No, she decided. Even Minette's knowledge had limits, and she was probably just probing for information, testing to see how much Duchess would reveal. Minette was more subtle than Hector, of course, but the game was the same. The question was, could Duchess win?

  Duchess shuffled her tiles, looking for a way to lay them out. "I've been playing tiles with you as long as I could reach the board, but so far I win only through luck, not skill." She scanned the tiles, as if she were trying to better understand them, although she knew the real game was not on the board. "From what I can see, the secret to winning lies in how you play the pieces over time, rather than in just winning the pot." She glanced up. Minette was motionless, her dark eyes unblinking, hands still folded. "It's not the coin in the pot, but the bet on the tiles that matters. You can win the hand and the pot, but if you lose the pieces you've invested in…well, either way you walk away with a lighter purse."

  "Correct so far. Some of my customers would leave the Vermillion with more of their coin if they knew that."

  Duchess lifted one of her own tiles and placed it at her end of the board, revealing it as the lowliest piece in the game. "Take this piece, as far from winning as possible. It's not likely to make it to the end of the game, right?" She took the single sou from her pile, almost all she had left, and placed it on the piece. "But so early in the game, it's cheap to invest. If it manages to survive long enough, it becomes much more expensive, and if it reaches the other side it could become the most powerful piece on the board." She took a deep breath and pushed through. "So it's all about knowing which pieces will survive the game. Even if your opponent later invests the same piece, you have an advantage because you invested early, when it was cheaper. In the end, you might win more than the pot."

  Minette smiled. "I quite believe you have it." She sipped at her wine. "Of course, the smaller pieces are often sacrificed so that larger pieces can go on, particularly if they don't have the strength to go the distance." She looked levelly at Duchess for a long moment. "As to the work you're seeking, it so happens there's a party tomorrow night in Temple, given by one Baron Eusbius. He's a recent noble, and his household is too understaffed to handle this kind of event, so he'll be looking for pot-girls and scullery maids at Beggar's Gate tomorrow morning. I'll make certain you're picked from the crowd. I'm assuming you'll be there." She went back to the game, but just as Duchess was silently celebrating her victory, Minette murmured, "And just how far across the board, my dear, do you intend to go?"

  Duchess smiled. "As far as I can, Minette. As far as I can."

  Chapter Nine:

  Letters and lightboys

  After leaving the Vermillion, Duchess wandered idly across Bell Plaza. She was far too wound up to sleep, and in any case it was hardly ninth bell. Lysander was still wringing any useful information he could out of Brenn, and it would be a few more hours before she could meet him back at the garret to plan the next day's work. She considered visiting the Merry Widow but she wasn't fond of drinking by herself. She also knew she'd more than worn out her welcome at the Vermillion this evening. Besides, a little bit of Minette went an awfully long way.

  Most of all she did not want to be alone with her thoughts, worrying at her plans like a dog with a bone. She'd gone over and over it all in her head: how she would get in to the Eusbius estate, what she would do to search the place, how she might use the information she'd gotten from Brenn, where and when she and Lysander might meet during the party, how to deal with the Brutes...

  Such thoughts got her nowhere. To distract herself, she sat in a shuttered doorway and watched as those from up and down the hill wandered past for business or pleasure.

  Duchess had known of this place even before she came to live in the Shallows, and had never had to ask why it was called Bell Plaza when it clearly had no bell. Lord Marcus had not believed in coddling his children, and he'd taught them to read not from illustrated tracts meant for the young but from the tomes of history that made up House Kell's collection. One of those tomes had told of the long-ago emperor Vassilus, who, as age and senility set in, became far more adept at praying than ruling. From time to time His Imperial Highness would ensconce himself in the plaza, surrounded by a squad of Whites, and preach to whomever would listen about the evils of the city. As the sermons devolved from pious eloquence to utter madness, attendance became mandatory, and the emperor ordered the construction of a great tower with an enormous bell to be rung to announce the onset of one of these harangues. Shallows folk learned quickly to clear out of the streets when they heard that bell, lest they be rounded up and forced to listen to an hour of imperial berating about whoring, drinking, gambling, and whatever other vices had invoked the imperial ire that day.

  When she'd told her father about it that night at supper, he had related a somewhat different tale. Vassilus was rude and self-righteous, yes, but not mad. In his sermons he criticized the nobles for neglecting the unfortunates of the Deeps, the cults for focusing on worldly matters and forgetting their true faith, and the blackarms for letting the Red rule the lower districts.

  "Sounds about right," Justin had remarked. At fifteen, he was always taking strong opinions on whatever the topic. Sometimes this made her father angry, although she didn't understand why.

  Marguerite rolled her eyes. "No more politics at the table, please." She was only two years younger, but whatever position Justin took, Marguerite was sure to criticize it.

  "What's the Red?" Marina had asked them. How naïve she'd been!

  "Thugs and brutes," her father had said in that deep, rich voice that was both strong and yet strangely melodic. "But that's not important right now. That book you read…well, the facts are correct as far as it goes. The truth is another matter. Remember that history is often made by he who writes the books."

  Both the book and her father agreed that Vasslius' sermons had gone on for some time, until the nobles had finally had enough and had taken matters into their own hands. A brief but bloody coup ensued, which left Vassilus and a good number of the city's aristocracy dead and the bell tower destroyed. Vassilus' son, a more practical and earthly fellow, buried his father, pardoned the surviving rebels and put the incident behind him. There were no more public sermons, but one hundred years later the place was still known as Bell Plaza.

  "They killed him for talking?"

  Her father set aside his plate and took her on his knee. "No. They killed him for speaking hard truths, which are as welcome a guest as week-old fish."

  "Isn't the emperor allowed to say whatever he likes?" Justin laughed aloud at that, and Marguerite had patted at her mouth with a napkin, her expression unreadable.

  Her father raised an eyebrow at her siblings and smiled grimly at her. "In Rodaas, no one says whatever he likes."

  "But he was a good man, wasn't he?"

  "So many questions!" he laughed. "Was Vassilus a good man? It depends upon whom you ask." Her father never answered questions with just yes or no. "But compared to those that came before him, and most of those who came after, perhaps he could be considered such. He certainly thought himself so."

  "If the emperor was good, why did they kill him?"

  Her father had given her a strange look, and was silent for a long moment. "Because change never comes easily in this city," he said. In that moment he seemed far away, as if he were not speaking to her at all, his expression sad and even a bit haunted. At the time she'd only nodded uneasily and, for once, held her silence. That conversation had taken place years ago, yet every time she entered the plaza she never failed to remember it, every word and expression.

  Deep in memory, it took her a long moment to realize that someone was calling out her name from across the square. She looked up to see Zachary and the other lightboys from his band, weaving their way through the crowds of the plaza, making their way towards her.

  She was not displeased to see him. Not only had he saved her from the drunken man the night before, but he was a long-time friend of Lysander's. In
fact, he ran with the same group of lightboys to which Lysander himself had once belonged, known as the Tenth Bell Boys, or, more often, simply the Bells. The membership of the Bells had changed many times in the intervening years but the connection remained. The Bells were the source of much of the gossip Lysander shared with her, and he reciprocated by recommending their services to the noble clients he served.

  Zachary ruled the Bells much as Lysander ruled the ganymedes, and for some reason Lysander had always shown him an affection over and above the rest of the group. He'd even taught the lad to read, which was a rare skill for a lightboy and probably one of the reasons Zachary had come to dominate the Bells. That, and his skill with the infamous lightboy sticks.

  "The way I see it," Zachary said, striding up to her and flashing a gap-toothed grin, "you owe us a drink."

  * * *

  They ended up at the Widow, her usual hangout ever since that first taste of ale with Lysander so long ago. The ale house hadn't changed much in six years; Shari still ruled the place, although her gauntness had finally given way to rotundity, and the face that smiled at her from over the counter had become rounded and plump. Duchess thought the look suited her.

  "Ale for six," she said, laying a fistful of pennies on the counter. She could afford to be generous, and it was only fair since the money had come from the man Zachary and his boys had helped her escape.

  Shari looked over Zachary and his band with a skeptical eye, then turned back to Duchess. "Hope that's all your coin, m'dear, or else this lot will have the rest while you're not looking." Shari was not a fan of lightboys, Duchess knew, but she took their money all the same. Zachary opened his mouth to deliver some sharp reply when Duchess cut him off with a look and a shake of her head.