Blood of the City

by Robin D. Laws

  The moment they turned down Wheatman's Lane, they spotted a pair of guardians in Derexhi livery. At languid attention, the two protected the stone wall of a black house gabled in the style of haunted Ustalav. Ontor greeted them by name: Chenward and Derovia.

  "Much trouble with squatters this year?" he asked.

  "No, sir, not hereabouts." Chenward, a weedy man with a shovel-flat face, appointed himself spokesman for the two of them. "Too many Derexhi guards here on Wheatman. Though, as your father commanded, we've taken note of them what haven't hired us and have had trouble with prowlers as a result."

  "Good to hear it," said Ontor. "We'll not rest till we've signed up the whole street."

  "Is there a place along here with a horse statue out front?" Luma asked. "Made of pink stone?"

  "No ma'am," Chenward answered.

  "I seen one like that on Brewer's Dale, when I was stationed there last year," said Derovia, a strand of chestnut hair escaping her well-polished helmet.

  Ontor thanked them and they made their way to Brewer's Dale.

  "It's not named for a grain," said Ontor.

  "But you need grain for brewing," said Luma, "so you can see why he'd get the association mixed up."

  "We'll see soon enough."

  After a few minutes of quiet walking, Luma added, "I bet when we do find it, it'll be the street with the fewest of our guardians assigned to it."

  "I suppose."

  "Our sentinels won't intervene to protect a house they aren't paid to, but robbers think otherwise. They take us for city guards. At the very least, they reckon our retainers will testify against them."

  "You're coming to a point of some kind. I can sense it."

  Luma sighed. "If we were better briefed on our own family business, we'd both be able to rattle off every assignment in the district. We could have started our search with the least-guarded streets. Every piece of information counts. And we aren't even versed in our own doings."

  "Back to that old hobbyhorse."

  "Doesn't it bother you—expected to be a genius in the field, and treated like a subordinate at home?"

  "Doing what you're told is agreeably simple. You should try it sometime."

  "I have been. That's the problem."

  "Just remember what I said, all right?"

  Luma lapsed back into silence. After a while, Ontor brought up a new subject: the likely guests at an upcoming ball over at Paleankari House, especially those of the young and female variety. As best she could manage, she indulged his chatter. The world of romantic conquest lay beyond both her interest and her understanding. One day she'd work it out, but likely not from Ontor's observations. He liked girls pretty and insipid, and Luma had no idea how to be either.

  When they reached Brewer's Dale, the house with the horse out front was waiting for them just around a bend. As Luma had guessed, few of the manors here kept sentinels out front. A few posted the crest of a rival firm, but none of its retainers were in evidence.

  Ontor and Luma hopped the locked gate and marched past the stone horse like they'd been paid to be there. Copper minarets fixed to the roof heralded the absent owner's connection to sand-swept Qadira. The building's shutters were closed and locked. The two Derexhi slipped around to the side, where they found the servants' entrance. Ontor produced his burglary kit and knelt to jimmy the lock, opening it without leaving a mark.

  The door opened into the kitchen. The pantry door swung wide. Dirtied plates teetered on a side table; flies buzzed around a pile of chicken bones.

  "Someone's certainly been living here uninvited," Luma said.

  Weapons ready, they prowled the manor, stepping into each room in turn. Whoever had been here was no longer present.

  In the master bedroom, Luma got down on hands and knees to peer under the bed. A ball of crumpled vellum rewarded her hunch. After straightening it flat, she scanned the contents: fourteen lines of verse, marred by scratch-throughs and inkblots. She read for a while, then set it aside, flushing.

  "He's flown the coop, but there was a poet here."

  Ontor picked up the poem and whistled. "Racy stuff," he said, folding it carefully and putting it in his pouch.

  "From the state of the kitchen, I'd say he hasn't been here in weeks," Luma said. "Or longer."

  Ontor nodded. "A dead end, then. Where else did they say he favors? The Triodea?"

  Luma threw open the shutters and looked for the sun's position in the sky. "It's getting late. We'll have to scour the opera houses and coffee shops tomorrow."

  "Singers and actresses. My favorite quarter!"

  The window afforded a view of the manor across the way. Furtive figures—Luma counted at least five of them—darted from ill-tended hedges into its main house. They were variously armored, with swords swinging from their belts. Luma called Ontor over, but by the time he reached the window, they were gone.

  "Another argument for Derexhi security," he said, after she'd described them.

  "Do we go for a look?"

  "Were they gnomes?"

  "No, humans. Or close enough."

  "Are we getting paid to nose in?"

  "Right. Nothing more to see here."

  Alert for signs of the lurkers across the street, they departed the Qadiran trader's manor. Luma waited until they were well away from Brewer's Dale before musing aloud. "So this is how I think it puzzles together."

  "We report, Luma. We don't puzzle."

  "Brewer's Dale is awash with squatters. I bet that's what's going on. This Noole character scouts out abandoned manors whose owners are too mingy to protect their homes and belongings. He either reports to Khonderian, or buys him off—no, it's Khonderian paying him, so the lord-mayor's man, or maybe the lord-mayor's office, is making money on the side renting out places they don't own. Noole doesn't seem to have looted his temporary roost, but who's to say the others aren't?"

  Ontor fiddled with a loose button dangling from his doublet. "So assuming this is our affair, who's paying Father to have us look into this?"

  "The traders? The lord-mayor, wondering what his man is up to? A rival to the lord-mayor, aiming to dirty him up? Iskola's been cozying up to plenty of important councilors lately."

  "I have to hand it to you, Mouse."

  "How so?"

  "That's a great many leaps to arrive at the dullest conspiracy ever contemplated."

  Chapter Eight

  The Hells

  Dusk edged into night as the two strode through the Marble District, rounding the sweeping curve of Dachari Avenue onto Avalos Lane. Servants of the various houses, as if in clockwork coordination, lit lanterns affixed to iron poles near their manor gates.

  Ahead, near Derexhi Gate, Luma spotted a low black carriage. Around it milled an assortment of armed men. She discerned a carved and painted wooden plaque on the back of the carriage: the mayoral crest.

  Ontor tensed. "I don't like the look of this."

  Their sister Ulisa dropped into lockstep with them, her stride suggesting that she'd been there all along. She had secreted herself, Luma guessed, behind a hedge of chirping rustflowers. A single petal, the color of dried blood, clung to the temple of her shaven head. "You're not to run," she told Luma.

  "Why would I run?"

  She took Luma by the elbow. "You'll be protected."

  "From what?"

  "Yes, from what?" Ontor asked.

  "We'll find out."

  Luma hesitated.

  "You are Derexhi," Ulisa told her. "Project inner strength."

  Luma quickened her step and did her best to straighten her spine. She brushed her hair from her face, though the wind blew it immediately back. As she approached the carriage, she saw the rest of the family arrayed on the other side of Derexhi Gate. They'd arranged themselves in a rough V formation, with Randred at its point and Yandine at his side. It would take a close observer to see that he was leaning against her. Arrus and Iskola flanked them, with Eibadon hanging back, swinging the chain of his clerical medallio
n.

  The lord-mayor's men parted as she approached, then closed ranks, encircling her. She went to her father. "What's happening here?"

  "They won't tell us." His hand shook as he reached out for her. She clasped her slim fingers around his thick ones, hiding his quavering from the mayoral guards.

  It had to concern the Khonderian business. Whatever that might be.

  With parade ground formality, the guardsman with the most braids on his uniform stepped forward. "Luma Arcadios Derexhi?" he asked.

  "That is me," she answered.

  "By the authority of Lord-Mayor Haldemeer Grobaras, I place you under arrest."

  Luma breathed in deep. "What are the charges?"

  "You will be informed of the charges against you in accordance with proper protocol."

  The arresting officer moved toward her, then froze, stalled by Randred's imperious gaze. True nobles or not, the gap in status between the head of a founding house and a mere bodyguard yawned like a chasm.

  Randred leaned in to whisper in Luma's ear. "It's politics. We'll get you out."

  Arrus spoke in her other ear. "Say absolutely nothing."

  Luma imagined what either of them would do in her place. They would command the situation. She turned, imitating the way father and son each squared their shoulders when pressed. Head held high, she said, "I will go with you." Though an unwelcome vibration marred her tone, Luma saw she had acquitted herself well: the officer bowed without quite realizing it. His gesture as he beckoned her to enter the carriage was that of a butler ushering one of his master's guests into a ballroom. She swept past him.

  "Mademoiselle," he prompted. "Your weapons."

  "Of course." Drawing out the process, both to avoid sudden movements and to maintain the superiority she wished to assert, she handed over her sickle, then her darts, then her sling and its handful of bullets, the dagger at her hip, and the one hidden in her boot. She considered holding out the last item, but if they found it, as they likely would, she'd be surrendering her place on the high horse.

  The officer pointed to the leather pouch tied to her belt. "And your ingredients."

  "Naturally," said Luma. She handed over the purse containing her prism, feathers, copper coins, and trio of vials respectively containing soot, insect legs, and a live spider. Their confiscation impeded her chances of escape far more than the loss of her weapons. There were still magics she could pluck from the citysong without them, but the most directly useful ones were now taken from her.

  A female guard, a buxom woman with a bent nose, patted her down, checking both boots. She did her job thoroughly; Luma was glad she hadn't tried a hold-out.

  The search complete, Luma breezed into the carriage. The last sight she caught on the way in were Arrus and Iskola, exchanging what she presumed were doubtful whispers.

  The coach rattled down cobbled avenues, the commanding officer and the female guardsman sitting across from her. Their demeanors discouraged conversation. The carriage took a hard turn from Avalos onto Dachari. As it fishtailed, Luma caught a flutter of dark motion behind one of the avenue's many marble statues.

  It was her distant watcher. She was as sure of this as of the number of fingers on her hand. A chill ran through her. Was he the one who had engineered this trap, and now watched as it was sprung?

  The carriage wheeled onto the Way of Arches, and from there into the heart of the Capital District. As it caromed toward the Pediment Building, Luma's confidence ebbed. In its proximity, the citysong darkened. Its percussion resolved into the slam of cell doors and the rattling of chains. Sharps and flats counterpointed into a duet between implacable lawkeepers and despairing prisoners.

  Now she could see the structure through the carriage window. Its gray, unadorned surface thrust up into the sky. In contrast to the city's other official buildings, it strove for neither grandeur nor beauty. The visible part of the building comprised only the top half of it. From the ground floor up, the Pediment housed the offices of the city guard and lord-mayor's forces. As many stories lay concealed below the surface in the Hells, the warren of cells and interrogation chambers for the imprisonment of wrongdoers and the extraction of their confessions. Luma heard their contribution to the citysong whenever she drew near the building, but had never been inside. Now she'd be an inmate.

  The carriage rounded the building, entering the compound through a back gate. The wail of the citysong grew ever louder in Luma's mind. She tried to shut it out, but couldn't. When she was distraught, her oneness with the city overrode her. The wretches of the Hells wished to be heard.

  When the carriage came to a stop, mayoral guards hopped to, pulling the doors open.

  "Off with the armor," the female guard ordered. Luma complied; the exercise left her in an under-tunic, linen breeches, and her boots.

  The arresting officer gestured for her to exit first. He followed her, producing a set of shackles.

  "That gate," said the female bodyguard, "was where your special treatment ended."

  Luma thrust out her hands. The guard clipped one set of shackles around her wrists and placed another on her ankles. The woman and another guard stood to either side of her; the arresting officer led the procession, its speed limited by Luma's ankle restraints, from the carriage into the building. Her captors took her through a forbidding iron door, scored with flecks of red paint. Inside, a ruddy-faced jailer sat at a high desk, its pine face painted with the crest of Magnimar. He belonged to the diminutive, broad-footed halfling race, a relative rarity among the city's peoples. Because the desk had not been modified for his shorter stature, its edge met him at the mid-chest. He jutted his fat-swaddled chin at Luma as if daring her to smirk at the awkwardness of his position.

  Quill pen in hand, he barked out questions, scratching away as Luma confirmed her name, age, and place of residence. Luma thought she detected an unease between the halfling and her escort, perhaps because he was regular city guard and they were of the quasi-official mayoral corps. The encroachment of the lord-mayor's swords into law enforcement was an innovation of the current regime, one that still rankled the regulars. This tension might be leveraged to her advantage.

  The halfling reached a new entry on his form.

  "Crime?" he asked her.

  "I am innocent," Luma said.

  The clerk assembled his face into an expression of unutterable boredom. "What crime are you accused of?"

  "Never mind that," the officer said, moving the procession along. They departed to the sound of the halfling's pointed paper-shufflings.

  A fetor assailed her as they entered the cells proper. It combined vomit, blood, rotting food, and generations of foul perspiration. Prisoners rose from their benches to scream unintelligible obscenities. The procession altered course as a stream of urine hit the corridor floor. The buxom guard struck out with her baton, catching a random set of fingers thrust through cell bars. Luma heard the crunch of fracturing bone. The victim howled; his fellow inmates bellowed in glee.

  Two sets of stairs and a series of snaking corridors took them to their destination: a holding cell about thirty feet wide and fifteen deep. Seven other women huddled inside. As one of her partners unlocked the barred door, the female guard unlocked Luma's shackles.

  "We'll see how long you stay the little princess," she said, shoving Luma into the cell and thudding its door shut behind her. The arresting officer was already halfway out of sight.

  "When do I learn what I'm accused of?" Luma called. No one answered. The remainder of the bodyguards departed, leaving Luma alone with her cellmates.

  Hunger gnawed at her. They'd arrested her right before dinner. To ask for a meal would only make her look weak, and therefore stupid. Surely there'd be no food till breakfast. She shrugged it off, as her father would have done, when he was hale enough to stand it. As Arrus or Ulisa or any of the others would do, if they'd been the ones thrown in here.

  The Hells' lamenting version of the citysong crashed in on her. She chose to embra
ce it, to sift it for clues. As feared as the place was, escapes were hardly unknown. Its stones and mortar and bars and barriers were as much a part of the city as any other structure. If she answered its song in the right way, it might reply to her, giving up its secrets.

  "What are you, hazed on flayleaf?" a harsh voice demanded. It was one of the other prisoners, who came abruptly for her. Luma ducked her shove, but another of them had positioned herself behind her. She pushed Luma into the first woman, who shouldered her back. Judging from their thick brows and jutting teeth, both of her attackers had a little orc in them. Each was half again Luma's size.

  "You're small," observed the first.

  "You'll be fun to play with," said the second.

  From the way they carried themselves it was plain that they had more than bulk going for them. These were seasoned brawlers. Luma could use some of the unarmed techniques Ulisa had taught her, but there were two of them, and she had little room to maneuver.

  "You two." The gruff statement issued from a small woman wedged between wall and bench. Without it, Luma would have sworn she was sleeping. Her short stature and barrel construction gave her away as a dwarf. Beyond that, a tightly wrapped blanket concealed any distinguishing features. "Don't make me open my eyes. Because if I have to do that, we're having another go-round."

  "Thaubnis ..." the first orc-blood whined.

  "She's under my protection," said Thaubnis.

  The orc-bloods backed away like scolded hounds. They settled in the corner of the cell opposite Thaubnis.

  Luma wandered tentatively toward the dwarf. She'd heard enough about the Hells to understand that certain offers of protection were dangerous to accept. This dwarf might be ally or exploiter; she could not afford to mistake one for the other. "Thank you," she said.

  "Shut up and let me sleep," said Thaubnis.

  Luma lowered herself to the cell floor, exhaustion falling over her. She rested without truly going under, a part of her remaining alert for sudden assault. The hours swam by as a fitful drifting.

  The clank of the key in the cell door lock returned her to full awareness. Her first thought was that the guards had come for her. Instead, they summoned the orc-bloods. The two of them exited the cells, shoulders slumped in dread.