by Neil McGarry
Malia would no doubt have warned her to go directly to the day room, but Duchess had no intention of heading directly anywhere. She scouted the halls as far as she dared in either direction, pasting a confused look on her face as if lost. She saw neither guards nor guests, but from what Lysander told her, by the party's end there would be people hanging drunk from the balconies and chandelier. She hoped to be well away by that time. She supposed that a real member of the Grey would have tried the doors and pilfered the rooms, but she was terrified of discovery. Better to stick to the plan; she was taking risk enough as it was.
As she approached the door to the day room, she heard the murmur of low conversation from a balcony around the corner and pulled up short. A few daring guests, most likely evaluating the structural integrity of the balustrade for later acrobatics. If they didn't leave soon she'd have to pass them when she moved to the third floor. She'd leave the meal for Agalia before she tried it, so she wouldn't have to worry about rattling the tray as she sneaked by.
The day room was elegant in a simple way, with paintings of woodland scenes, a thick carpet that depicted entwined roses, and warm wooden paneling. There were more tall windows here, black with night, a large hearth containing a bright fire, and a scattering of chairs, sofas and small tables. One of these tables was outfitted with a white cloth and a small bell, for her use to signal the lady that her meal had arrived. A closed door next to the hearth no doubt gave access to the lady's personal chambers. Duchess purposefully made a bit of noise as she placed the tray on the covered table, then lightly rang the bell. Per Malia's instructions, she did not linger but slipped back into the hall and waited a few moments, listening at the door. There was no sign that Agalia had entered the day room, and Duchess dared to hope that the lady was napping or disinclined to eat. In either case, it was time to move.
The speakers were still on the balcony, so she crept quietly along, hoping to slip by unnoticed. Anyone who lived in the Shallows knew how to move quietly when necessary, and Duchess was better than most, so she was reasonably confident her passage would go unmarked. She kept an eye on the balcony as she passed and saw there were two people there, standing at the balustrade. One was the young man in the fox spirit costume, leaning over the rail, looking down on the party below. Dorian, the baron's stepson, she imagined. She tried to make out if he was as beautiful as Lorelei had claimed, but under the mask he could have been a young god or a cave troll. His hair was as glorious as Lysander's, that much she could plainly see.
The woman was tall and graceful and wore a pale blue dress with a plunging neckline that revealed enough to make Duchess feel like a breastless girl. She looked like a facet of Anassa, most likely the same one the hags had discussed, although her mask was different than those she had seen on the priestesses. Their masks had only a right eye, whereas this woman’s mask had also a left, and above them both spread a fan of peacock feathers. Duchess had never heard a real facet speak, but this one laughed and chatted freely, and in her long, delicate hand she held a flute of wine.
"I can't believe my mother married that toad," said the fox spirit.
"Why did she?" Anassa's voice was richly toned, and hinted at thinly veiled amusement. She toyed with the wine glass in her hand, and Duchess took the opportunity to creep along. A few more feet and she'd be safely past.
The man sounded not sullen but pained, as if he did not mind the question but hated the answer. "Everyone knows why. We needed the money. Father left us with next to nothing, and it was either this or take up a trade." Duchess was less than sympathetic, given how she had spent the last eight years.
"Why do you stay, then? You're a man grown, you needn't have come to the city."
"You ask bold questions, my lady, I must say." He turned from the balcony to face her. Duchess froze, but he was focused only on the facet, if that was what she was. "I have never known anyone like you. No, I needn't have come, but I've always wanted to live in the city, and at the time I thought it might be worth it." He shrugged and turned back to the railing, and Duchess edged forward. "I still wonder."
Duchess had very nearly slipped past when the woman turned her head and looked straight at her, unsurprised, as if she had expected to find a serving girl sneaking about. Duchess' heart leaped; would the woman call her out, summon a guard? She stood stock-still, terrified, pinned by the masked woman's stare.
The woman spoke to Dorian, all the while looking directly at Duchess. "So then you use him, yes? As he uses your mother, and as she uses him in turn. Sometimes we use tools, and sometimes we are tools. There is no shame in it, not in Rodaas." She laughed, and then raised the glass to Duchess in a toast. "In this city we are all pieces moved by another hand. All that matters is how far across the board we go." Duchess started; hadn’t Minette said something similar? Dorian did not reply, and after a sip from the glass Anassa turned her back on Duchess and joined him at the balustrade. The spell seemed broken, and Duchess moved along, unnerved. The woman had not raised the alarm, but she might change her mind. It was time to get that dagger and get out before anything else went wrong.
The third-floor stairs were just as Brenn had described. Blessedly, they were also carpeted, which would make creeping up that much easier. She paused, listening, and then began to climb. The stairs ended at a hallway, lit by oil lamps and graced with columns at regular intervals. Two men patrolled that hallway, not house guards but blackarms; Ophion's men, she guessed, not as presentable as the neatly liveried soldiers below but no less deadly. She stepped back before she was seen, her heart pounding, and crept back down the stairs. Just as she reached the bottom a figure stepped out of the shadows and she nearly screamed loud enough to be heard at the Vermillion, but just in time she recognized Lysander.
"Happy to see me?" he murmured, smiling, and she was so grateful to see his beautiful face she wanted to kiss him, or weep, or both. Instead, she released a shuddering breath and whispered, "Did anyone at the ball see you come up here?"
He shrugged. "So what if they did? They probably think I came up here to fuck you. You did ask me to make it up to you, remember, and don't think for an instant I'm the only one who heard."
She nodded. "Did those two on the balcony see you? Dorian and the facet?"
He grinned again, without modesty. "No. Dorian was too busy complaining about his new father. Did they see you?"
She made a face. "Never mind. There are two Brutes guarding the hall upstairs, probably Malleus and Kakios. I can't get past without them seeing me. Can you get them down here?" He nodded, brandishing the bottle of wine she'd seen him pick up downstairs. "So this is it," she said, eyeing the stairs warily and trying to still her thumping heart. "Great Mayu, I'm scared." Lysander took her hand.
"It's not too late to back out, you know," he said, looking at her levelly. "We can go back downstairs, you pick up your pay, and we can spend the night at the Merry Widow drinking it up."
For a single moment, she actually considered it. She had an extra sou coming to her from Malia, as well as the remaining coin from Noam; she could make do until she found something safer than this mad scheme of finding a place in a some strange association of thieves and rumormongers. So thinking, she looked again at Lysander and in that instant she realized that in a curious way, because of the hand-to-mouth life he'd led, selling his body and living by his wits Lysander had learned to take comfort and ease wherever he could safely find it. That survivor's instinct had led him up the hill, out of the dangers of the Deeps to the relative safety of the Shallows, but also into the trap of the good enough, of the known and easy. The part of her that he called Steel saw with frightening clarity that despite all his talk of secrets and the Grey, Lysander had most likely gone as far as he ever would. And it was Steel that made her shake her head, for she saw in his eyes that he would, in his innocence, strand her right along with him. Turning back now meant giving up any chance of joining the Grey, of making her own way in the city, or of ever learning the truth of that night
of fire. If she did that, she might as well throw P's mark in the harbor and go back to selling bread.
"I can do this," she said through numb lips. "Great gods, I can do this. Just give me a minute or two, and then you're on." Before he could reply she turned back to the stairs and started up, her legs wooden. If she looked back, she'd never be able to go on. As she climbed she promised herself, swore on every god and goddess she could think of, that she would see this thing to its bloody end. She would pull herself up though it killed her, and she would bring Lysander along.
Duchess crept back to the top, keeping near the wall, and saw immediately that the columns that flanked the hall were thick and she was thin. She'd have to hide behind one and hope that, when Lysander did his thing, the guards would pass right by without noticing. Before she could change her mind she slipped behind the nearest column and waited. Fortunately, the lamps were farther along the hall, so the column she had selected cast a decent shadow. She pressed herself into that shadow, made herself as small as possible, and waited, her life now in Lysander's hands.
When the song came from below she nearly burst into hysterical laughter, as it was one he'd sung not long after they'd met, and even as a girl it had made her laugh.
"My love is as wide as a river,
And her hair is as soft as a lamb's,
And I'd be the first in that water
If only she'd open the dam.
Lysander's voice was slurred as if with wine, but it was strong and sweet nonetheless. Singing was another of his talents, and he knew every bawdy song ever sung in the Shallows. He kept on:
My love is as deep as the ocean,
Where the mermaids play tiles with the fish,
And I'd dive in the deeps of those waters
If only she'd grant me my wish.
She heard a curse from the hall, and the thudding of booted feet on carpet; four feet, she hoped. Lysander began the third verse, sounding closer this time. Two men came into view, each wearing a black armband and carrying short swords in leather scabbards, and she stopped breathing, stopped even thinking, lest her thoughts somehow beckon them. They hurried past her hiding place, unseeing, and stomped down the stairs. The blades were still in their sheaths, she was relieved to note; evidently the baron had ordered the Brutes to show restraint. She hoped they remembered it.
My love let me swim in her river,
And this I can tell you my friend,
That water was cold
As my lady had told
And it...
She'd already slipped across the opened archway of the stair and into the shadows beyond when Lysander's singing was suddenly cut off in a strangled yelp that froze her where she stood. She pressed herself against the wall and strained to hear more. There was nothing for a moment, and then a sudden thud, followed by a choking, gagging sound. She'd almost taken a step back to the stairway when a voice carrying upwards caught her.
"What have we here, then?" it said, in a calm, sinister whisper. "Gotten away from the party, has it, lost little thing?" There was a frantic thudding, as if in response.
"Look at it kick," replied another voice in a dispassionate tone, as if it were commenting on the weather. "You'd think it didn't like us, wouldn't you Kakios?" The thudding went on. Gods, what were they doing to him?
"Aye, Malleus, you'd think," said Kakios. There was the sound of a blade being unsheathed and the thudding suddenly stopped. She heard Kakios laugh. "Oho...seems our little rabbit doesn't like the look of that now does it?" Lysander could talk his way out of anything, but he hadn't said a word.
"No," said Malleus. "No it doesn't. Look at its eyes, Kakios. Look how red its face is getting. Poor thing's embarrassed. But no worries, no, rabbit. No worries." There was a sudden gasp, a great drawing of breath, then coughing.
"My good sirs," she heard Lysander finally say, all drunken folly gone from his voice. He sounded as casual as possible, but to Duchess his fear was as plain as trumpets. "I fear there has been..." He was suddenly cut off by a horrible smack, far louder and harder than flesh on flesh. She heard Lysander cry out.
"Look at that, then," said Kakios calmly. "You'd think we cared what it thought."
"But we don't, do we?" answered Malleus, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "Not what we want the rabbit for at all."
"You see, rabbit," said Malleus, "Kakios and I haven't had our fun in quite some time." She heard Kakios grunt in assent. "We've been stuck looking after this so-called baron for ages now, and he wouldn't let us have our fun even when we caught that little whore near the galleries."
"Oh, he let us have a little," said the other, "but even then the fat fool was watching over us. Dragged down a chair and everything. Didn't trust us not to break his toy." Pressed against the wall, Duchess bit her lip until she tasted blood. They'd misunderstood the baron's intent; Eusbius hadn't watched Brenn's torments to enjoy them but to ensure the Brutes hadn't gone too far. This time the baron was otherwise engaged, and she'd dropped Lysander right into their hands.
"But he's not here now, is he?" continued Malleus. "Not here to say 'stop' or 'enough' or 'don't', then, is he? And the job's almost done. He'll be up here with the rest soon enough and no one will care where we are."
"There's time then?" whispered Kakios, and the cold anticipation in his voice froze her from head to toe.
"Time enough," answered Malleus.
As they began to drag Lysander away from the stairs, Silk and Steel warred within her more fiercely than ever before. If she rushed down to Lysander's rescue she would only give the Brutes two victims instead of one. But she could pretend to be Rina the serving girl, returning from Agalia's day room, and raise the alarm. Then the Brutes would only tell the baron that Rina had been coming not from the day room but from the stairs to the gallery, and then where would she be? But then she couldn't leave him to the Brutes; at any moment they might vanish into a room on the second floor, and then what would happen to her beautiful Lysander? Another part of her reminded coldly that Lysander had known the stakes as well as she, if not better. Just as he had to leave her to face the gallery alone, so she must leave him to the Brutes. There was no other choice. Lysander was bright and clever and lucky and he would be fine, or he would not. It was out of her hands and there was no more time.
"No," Silk whispered, ready to run back down the stairs, but Steel turned her about and walked her up and into the third-floor hall. Silk's throat was tight and her eyes were wet with tears, but Steel forced her onward.
Chapter Twelve:
Something sharp and pretty
She emerged from the shadows and crept along the hallway, wiping at damp eyes. Closed doors stood along both sides, and ahead the corridor bent to the right, and she realized that nothing Brenn (poor, foolish Brenn) had told Lysander could help her now. She chose a door that looked sufficiently important and pushed gently. She found it unlocked, and she stepped into a dark room, illuminated only by the moonlight streaming through the closed windows opposite the door. She swung it nearly shut, in case someone came along the hall while she was inside. She felt calmer now, colder. Concentrating on what was before her made it easier to forget what she had left behind.
Peering around she made out a huge oaken desk, an armoire, and the shadowy humps of a few more pieces of furniture - probably chairs - near a dark hearth. There was what she thought was a large coat of arms mounted on the wall, and she realized with a start she was probably in the baron's study. For a moment she considered poking around for valuables, but she quickly discarded the idea. She had yet to find the gallery.
She turned back to the door but froze at a rustling from the other side. Her breath caught and she pressed her ear against the wood, listening, but heard nothing more. After a long moment, she cautiously opened the door and peered out into an empty hallway. Her ears were playing tricks. Taking a breath to steady herself, she stepped out and eased the door shut behind her. There were no more sounds. She had to hurry. On impulse, she p
assed the other doors and peeked around the bend, and was relieved to see that the corridor ended at a pair of ornate wooden doors, ornamented with gold and reinforced with iron, flanked by more columns from which hung a pair of gilded lamps. The Eusbius heraldry, farmlands crossed by flail and pitchfork, were prominently displayed. She tested the door and found it locked, and she knelt to examine the keyhole, digging in her pocket for the picks Lysander had brought.
The lock was brand new, which was a relief. Older locks were usually rusty or dirty, which made the internals harder to move. She inserted a long, thin piece of metal with a hooked end, and explored, sensing the shape of the lock by the motion of the tool. Inside every lock, Lysander had told her, were a series of pins that had to be lifted before the lock would open. Keys were shaped to move those pins; those without benefit of a key had to be more careful and creative, hence his "skeleton keys." She pushed at the pins, one by one, to learn how well they moved, hardly daring to breathe lest she miss any subtle sensation. After a few minutes of probing she judged this lock more of a challenge than the ones in Noam's house, but nowhere near as difficult as Minette's office. She inserted a second pick, a flat piece of metal, wedged it into place at the bottom of the keyhole, and began to work at the pins. The trick, Lysander told her, was to be as gentle as a kiss until one had the pins out of the way, and then to pull like hell on the flat tool. Too much force too soon would drop the pins and possibly break the pick, jamming the lock so that it would no longer open for anyone. She worked slowly, sweat beading her forehead, trying to rein in the fear that the sentries would return and discover her. She could not afford to rush, but she dared not linger…
