Shadows of Ivory

by T L Greylock

  Cursing, spluttering, falling off balance, the Tortoise stumbled over his own feet and fell backwards against a bench, hitting his head with a sickening thud. He landed on the ground, limp, legs bent awkwardly beneath him. Eska raced to his side and crouched, feeling for a pulse. She exhaled with relief when her fingertips found a faint but steady beat at his throat. Without moving him, Eska felt the back of his head where it had struck the stone. Blood, but only a small amount. She looked up as Eden approached.

  “Alive,” she said. But before either of them could speak further, a resounding boom reverberated through the house.

  Eden cursed. “Ram,” he said. “It won’t hold for long.” He looked at Eska and she knew he was seeing her for the first time through someone else’s eyes. She held his gaze, willing him to believe in her. The ram hit again.

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  He seemed to reach a decision. Turning, the Regatta Master strode to the other side of the fountain, the water arcing gracefully above him, and reached down to lift a piece of slate disguising a hatch. He beckoned to Eska.

  “The tunnels. Go.”

  She approached, trying to read what was behind his eyes. “They’ll take you.”

  “I’ll be fine. Go.”

  Eska wanted to say more, wanted him to say more, wanted to make him follow his own advice, but the cracking of the ram against the door a third time propelled her down the hatch. Eden shut it most of the way, then he knelt and whispered through the crack, “Back the way you came. Two lefts, a right, and another left. The hatch with a white circle drawn in chalk will take you to a friend. She’ll help you get to your people.”

  And then he was gone and Eska was alone in a dark tunnel wearing nothing but a loose robe.

  Her eyes strained to take in something other than pitch-blackness, but Eska did not dare wait for her vision to adjust, knowing it would only be a small improvement. Feeling for the wall to her left, she worked her way along the tunnel, her fingers trailing against cool dirt, her bare feet quiet against the packed earth. Reason told her she would see anyone approaching, for surely no one else would be traveling the tunnels without a torch or lantern to light the way—but darkness has a way of convincing even the most reasonable minds that any number of unlikely things could happen.

  She found the first left without incident, her progress slow but steady, her vision improving minutely—just enough, it turned out, to make her question every step, sure she was seeing the outline of an obstacle that would send her sprawling, making her lose her sense of direction or, worse, incapacitate her and leave her at the mercy of whoever happened upon her first.

  Eska paused and forced herself to take several deep, slow breaths, suddenly aware that her heart was doing its best to emulate a galloping horse. When she had calmed it to a steadier lope—the best, it seemed, she could do—she continued on, making her second left soon after, and then switching to the right side of the tunnel.

  The right turn was so long coming, she began to be certain she had missed it. But that was not her only point of concern.

  “Even if I don’t get lost,” she muttered, “how do you expect me to be able to see the chalk mark on the door? And now I’m talking to you, and you’re not here, so this is perfect.”

  She had known, of course, that word of her supposed culpability for the death of Chancellor Fiorlieu would reach Cancalo eventually. When the daughter of a high-ranking diplomat is accused of murder, well, these things tend to get out rather quickly. She supposed, as she felt her way for that elusive right turn, that the Tortoise had heard the story from Toridium and, as one of only two people in the city on the shores of Lake Delo who knew her full name, decided to make a play for his own skin. Which all left Eska with only herself to blame. She had, after all, decided to approach the Tortoise and reveal herself.

  “Some risks are worth taking,” she said, smiling as at last her fingers met empty air on the right side of the tunnel. She made the turn, then immediately tucked herself back around the corner, blinking away the traces of the light she had seen bobbing through the darkness.

  Eska’s mind raced. The approaching light gave her some notion of what lay around her—in short, an empty tunnel, a far cry from the obstacle-riddled place her dark-addled mind had conjured. But there, back in the direction she had come, the remains of an abandoned, rotten crate. Eska ran to it, found it smaller than expected, but one side had clearly been smashed open by violent means. Avoiding the splintered shards of the planks as best she could, Eska wedged herself through the opening, pulling the hem of her robe out of sight just as the torch came into view around the corner.

  Eska peered through the slats and counted three, no four, figures. They moved without speaking and their strides were those of men trained to move efficiently. And they were all armed, Eska realized as they drew closer. Sword hilts glinted on their belts. One carried a spiked club. All wore deep hoods concealing their faces. Eska crouched as low as she could and held her breath.

  “Tell me again how we know the old git wasn’t lying?” one said.

  The man leading the group answered. “You ever see an animal cower in fear, Andros? That’s how I know. Never seen him look more like a turtle. All we need to know is that whatever was recovered from that vault in the lake is sitting there, ripe for the taking.”

  It wasn’t, of course. The ivory reliquary was safe with Gabriel and if she wasn’t so afraid of being discovered, Eska would very much have liked to have scoffed at the notion that she would have risked bringing her prize into Cancalo. As it was, she was beginning to feel grateful for the city watch’s timely arrival at the Regatta Master’s home. If not for that, she and Eden might have been moments away from having their throats slit by men unhampered by duty or conscience.

  Eska waited until the last light of the torch faded from view, then waited longer, letting herself readjust to the dark. She wormed free from the crate, brushing away spider webs and dust as she went, and resumed her blind navigation of the tunnel system.

  The final left came quickly, the tunnel dropping away from her touch. Eska followed it and began to strain her eyes for any sign of a trapdoor above her, a ladder, a rope, anything that might indicate her destination.

  In the end, she found the door because of the beetles.

  She heard them first, clicking away, their armored shells making music. She came to a halt, her mind processing the sound until she was able to place it. Eska had spent enough time underground to know that some beetles traveled in packs, and, if she had a light, she knew she would see a herd of shiny shells marching single-file along the wall of the tunnel.

  She followed the sound, tracing it along the wall until it arced over her head. And then vanished as the last of the beetles trickled away—perhaps, perhaps passing through an unseen crevasse, a crack in a door leading to, say, a cellar with a puddle of water or a tasty crop of spiders. Perhaps.

  Eska raised a hand above her head, feeling for a change in the surface of the tunnel. Her knuckle grazed against wood and she exhaled in relief. Standing on her tiptoes, she thought she could see a chalk circle—either that or she imagined it, but Eska didn’t much care. She felt along the wood, searching out its size and shape, then ran her hands across it, at last making contact with the iron pull ring. Grasping it, Eska pulled.

  It didn’t budge.

  She tried again, leveraging as much of her weight as she could, but the trapdoor remained steadfast. As it should, Eska reminded herself. After all, leaving it unlocked invited all manner of trouble.

  And so she knocked.

  Once. Twice. Three times. All the while weighing in her mind, like a goddess of fate balancing her scales, the likelihood that someone above would hear her before any of the aforementioned trouble came along the tunnel.

  The answering knock came so abruptly, it startled Eska off her aching tiptoes and she stepped back. Hesitating a moment, she repeated the pattern and was rewarded with silence for her efforts. She tried
again, and after what felt like an eternity, the trapdoor creaked open.

  There was no face to greet her, no words of suspicion, no drawn weapon to intimidate this stranger who had clearly failed the knocking test.

  Just a fist-sized object dropping down the hatch to land at Eska’s feet. The impact compressed it and it burst open, releasing a pale vapor.

  Had Eska been able to examine it, she would have understood it to be the stomach of an animal—goat or sheep or some such—and she would have smelled a strange blend of herbs and ale, or more precisely, the yeast used to ferment grain.

  But Eska was doing none of these things because she had collapsed to the tunnel floor.

  ***

  She awoke to the sound of wind chimes.

  Eska opened her eyes and saw a brilliant array of colors dancing over her head, sunset oranges and pinks, shades of blue both sharp and gentle, a green that seemed to whisper to Eska, and drops of crimson as bright as freshly shed blood. She blinked and tried to sit up but her muscles didn’t respond. She tried again, her mind thrashing when her body could not.

  “It will pass,” came a voice from somewhere outside of Eska’s field of vision. The knowledge that she could not even twist her neck set Eska’s heart racing. Above her, the wind chimes, forged from colored glass, played their melancholy song with no melody. And above them, the sun pierced a glass ceiling, sending the colors dancing.

  Though she could not move to see it, she could feel that she lay in a bed. There were soft linens beneath her, a thin woven blanket over her legs, and a plush pillow beneath her head. She swallowed, but the muscles of her throat seemed incapable of anything so dexterous as speech.

  A face emerged from above, a woman’s face, hard and angular, the sides of her head shaved, leaving a thick knot of dark hair at the crown of her skull.

  “Once, I would have used a harsher substance on any stranger who came knocking on my cellar door,” she said. “Fortunately for you, I’ve begun to find it more useful to extract information first. But make no mistake, I’m not one to forgive lies.” The woman leaned a bit farther over Eska, revealing a flash of silver ink at her collarbone. If she had been able, Eska would have sighed in relief. As it was, she was left to withstand the woman’s examination with no means to deflect the attention.

  The woman withdrew from Eska’s sight. The wind chimes continued their song. Eska watched the colors dance, merging, separating, spinning.

  Her body came back to her in a rush, her muscles twitching violently, nearly jolting her out of the bed. The convulsions ceased as abruptly as they had begun, leaving Eska panting.

  “I wouldn’t suggest moving. But I will allow you to speak.”

  Eska turned her head. The woman sat, stiff and straight-backed, on a divan, the sort of thing meant for elegant lounging and being used for precisely the opposite. She did not look like she had lounged a day of her life. She wore a black tunic belted at the waist with braided leather, but her legs and feet were bare, as though her morning had been interrupted—no doubt by a very unexpected knocking at her cellar door. Three concentric circles of silver ink lay across her collarbone and around her neck like a wide necklace. And she held a crossbow in her lap.

  Eska waited for her to ask a question, to begin the interrogation, but the woman stared silently across the room, her body impressively still, and so Eska ventured to begin.

  “You have ancestors from Venadascar.” Might as well launch a bolt of her own. It was a shot into, if not the dark, certainly a thick fog, for Eska was not certain the silver ink was a hallmark of Venadascar heritage. One piece of evidence does not make for a convincing theory, as Albus was consistently reminding her, but then, she didn’t have much choice. The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly before returning to their impassive state, suggesting her shot had found a mark. “I know this because of your tattoo and I know that because Eden San-Germain sent me here.” Eska paused. “I need your help.”

  The woman’s jaw worked a little as though she were chewing Eska’s words. “Is he all right?” she asked at length.

  “I don’t know,” Eska said. “The city watch came. He sent me through the tunnels.” She left out the part about the thugs below the city. And the Tortoise, the Tribune’s prejudice against Eden’s invention, the vault, the item inside—no need to mention all that. “I don’t know this city, but I have friends camped on the eastern shore of the lake. Eden said you could get me there.” Eska studied the woman. Friend, lover, family, simply a soul who shared a homeland, however distant—whatever she was, she kept the emotions she was feeling, if any, below the surface. “I can pay,” Eska added, “if that’s what it will take.”

  “Does it look like I need your money?” The words were the first the woman had spoken with something more than indifference.

  “It doesn’t,” Eska said mildly. It was true. The room was at odds with the woman occupying it. Beneath the glass ceiling and the wind chimes, the furnishings were rich, the windows large, the woven rug enormous and soft and obviously expensive. There was an elegance to the room—which is not to say there wasn’t an elegance to the woman. Her cheekbones, posture, and voice all possessed a sharp kind of luxury. But that was just it—the room was comfortable and delicate and she was not. “But I suppose it all depends if you’re in a mercenary mood,” Eska said.

  The subtle goad hit its mark. The woman stood abruptly, the crossbow hanging limply from her hand. She paced close to the bed, then turned back, her face writhing. “Is that what he said about me?”

  In fact, Eden San-Germain had said exactly nothing about the woman, but Eska wasn’t about to ruin the moment by admitting that, not when she had finally spurred her host to action.

  “I told him this day would come. Told him he’d eventually play the game against someone who couldn’t lose.” The woman rounded on Eska, who had propped herself up on one elbow. “Get up,” she snarled. She turned and pawed through a wardrobe, producing a tunic and trousers that billowed out before tapering sharply into a band below the knee. “Put these on,” she said, tossing the clothes toward the bed. Eska caught them and slipped out of Eden’s robe quickly, not about to give the woman any reason to slow down and think. It was only when she stood and cinched the tunic around her waist that the woman took note of her bare feet. Sighing with exasperation, she pointed to a pair of leather shoes designed to slip on. The shape felt strange to Eska, whose footwear usually consisted of tall and short boots fastened with laces. These were soft and flexible and the soles had little support to offer. But they were roughly the right size and Eska didn’t dare ask for something else. When she was ready, the woman, whose focused energy was still running high, charged out of the room, leading Eska out into a courtyard.

  Lacking a fountain or any greenery, it was in stark contrast to Eden’s. Indeed, it was little more than a dry, dusty patch of ground, and they crossed it quickly to enter a stone kitchen. From there, they descended to the cellar and the woman pulled a pair of torches from a barrel. These she lit from a lantern burning in the corner of the cellar and she handed one to Eska, then, first setting down her crossbow, she retrieved a large leather belt fashioned with several pouches and holsters—but not, Eska saw, for traditional weapons. She recognized two of the goat stomach devices dangling from the back of the belt, and there were vials and jars and countless other things—was that a bunch of feathers?—secured and stashed all around the belt. The woman fastened the buckle, reclaimed the crossbow, and pulled open the hatch to the tunnel below, then she looked up at Eska, a strange glint in her eye.

  “When you see him again, tell him I’m done with him.”

  And with that, she dropped into the tunnel, the flames of her torch nearly winking out at the sudden rush of air. Eska followed, landing lightly and hurrying after the woman, who, it appeared, had no intention of waiting.

  She soon lost track of their turns, but the increasing dampness of the ground beneath her told her they were surely headed toward Lake Delo. They e
ncountered three other parties on their route, but whether due to the furious glare on the woman’s face or to a shared desire for anonymity, not a word was exchanged—at least not the first two times.

  Against her better judgment, Eska attempted conversation after the second encounter. “This seems like a terrible liability. Why doesn’t the city watch blockade the tunnels?”

  The woman stopped moving for the first time since springing off the chaise. “Who do you think dug them in the first place?”

  Of all the possibilities, that one had not occurred to Eska, and she made a mental note to do some light reading on the history of Cancalo when she had the chance. At the moment, though, she was rather more occupied with the fact that another torch was bobbing toward them, this one at a much faster speed.

  Shouting soon followed, and then a man was sprinting toward Eska and her escort, his lantern swinging dangerously, the shadows bouncing off his face to reveal bruises and a blood-streaked cheek. Another light was in pursuit.

  Eska flattened herself against the tunnel and the woman did the same, but the man knew an opportunity when he saw one. Before she could react, he dropped his lantern and grabbed Eska, knocking her torch away and pulling her to him so she stood between him and whatever was chasing him. She struggled, but went quiet when the knife appeared in front of her. To Eska’s horror, her guide had vanished, slipping back in the direction they had come, her torch snuffed out. The only light remaining was the lantern’s feeble glow at Eska’s feet.

  “I’ll cut her!” the man screamed, his voice hoarse and hysterical. The approaching light slowed, then stopped for a moment before starting up again, cautiously this time. Eska’s wild gaze flitted around the tunnel, searching for anything she might be able to use against her attacker.

  “Got yourself a kitten to play with, I see.” The new voice was deep and full of smiles. “How convenient. Saves me the trouble of finding a woman tonight.” The speaker came to a halt twenty paces from Eska and her captor, close enough for her to see the long butcher’s knife, already wet with blood, in his hand. Eska squirmed and tried to kick the man in the knee with her heel, but her leather slipper slid off his leg harmlessly and the arm around her neck cinched tighter.