The Ways of Khrem

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  “Go let the Captain in, Grabel. And just bring up that basket of day old rolls and some of that herbed butter for breakfast. I think the good Captain needs me for something and we may be in a hurry. He usually is.”

  With his eyebrows rising nearly to his hairline, Grabel turned and disappeared into the house. I sat and continued to stare out into the darkness. Waiting.

  I didn’t have long to wait.

  Another flash of lightning revealed the rooftops again. Only this time, the neighbor’s house down the hill no longer featured a very large tarantula on its roof.

  A friendly little reminder, I suppose.

  It was going to be a long and interesting retirement.

  Part Two: The Cistern

  Chapter One

  King Klyburn: Barius, my most trusted of servants, have you unraveled the riddle of this infernal plague that causes my limbs to shake with the ague, while my insides threaten to burst?

  Count Barius: Indeed my king, I have. It was the smallest of pins, poisoned with the venom of a Hesselian Shroud Viper, and hidden in your falconer’s glove.

  King Klyburn: Alas, treachery! And to strike a man by means of such a noble sport! What foul and twisted soul has hatched such an evil attempt on their king?

  Count Barius: It is my sorrow to report that it is your wife, Your Majesty, the fair Penole.

  King Klyburn: Again?!

  —Allot’s Challenges of King Klyburn

  All I wanted was to read my book.

  I lengthened the wick in the lantern beside my chair to better see my new copy of Allot’s Challenges of King Klyburn.

  I had jumped at the chance to acquire the manuscript, mainly from my curiosity about the man whose large statue crowned the hill on which I lived. After living in its shadow for the past two years, it only seemed natural to learn more about the monarch it purported to represent. Standing at a height of thirty-five feet, with his broadsword resting on his shoulder, the statue looked out across the city, as if contemplating the next move in a major battle. It wasn’t the largest statue in Khrem, far from it, but one of the more impressive just the same.

  Not that today was a very good day to admire it.

  Rain gloomed the afternoon, and I contented myself with sinking into my bedroom reading chair. The air felt thick with moisture, clammy with the oncoming autumn. The smell of wet leaves, newly fallen in the recent chill, hung in the atmosphere. Rain at this time of the year tended to be a slow, drizzly affair… nothing like the savage storms which sometimes lashed the city in the early summer. No storm wraiths howled around the spires of the Upperways today.

  The last shower ended about an hour ago, but the world outside still dripped under heavy clouds that darkened the day to twilight. The dimness made the lantern necessary, even this early in the afternoon. The soft glow of lantern light also filled the windows of houses down the hill. Most of the city was exploring the comforts of the indoors today, an activity I fully intended to join. I had gotten well into doing just that when I heard the gate bell ring downstairs.

  Crap.

  Looking up from my book, I listened as Grabel’s footsteps approached the front door. No business had been scheduled today, and I started to grow nervous that Captain Drayton had shown up to drag me off on one of his cases.

  The murmur of voices followed the sound of the door opening. While the words couldn’t be made out, the tone and length of the conversation were consistent with a message being delivered…a much happier circumstance than the prospect of being hauled out into the sodden gloom. After another couple minutes of low conversation, there came the sound of the door closing and the manservant’s footsteps returning to the warmth of the kitchen.

  With a mental shrug, I returned to my reading.

  Grabel would bring whatever the messenger wanted to my attention if it merited my involvement. The manservant could be snide and a pain in the nether regions, but he performed his duties with precise reliability…and he was an outstanding cook. My household rested in good hands, even if it meant putting up with the rest of him.

  Over the course of the next half hour, I warmed myself with the chapter on King Klyburn’s abduction of his future wife, Penole. Personally, I think he should have saved himself the time and effort, especially since she spent the next ten years trying to kill him. She bore him six sons, but it seemed she spent all her free time trying to make them fatherless. Some of her efforts showed a level of creativity only barely matched by their murderous intent.

  I guess some men like to live dangerously.

  I had just read to the part where she prepared to murder her husband with a poisoned duck when the sound of Grabel clearing his throat roused my attention. He stood at the top of the stairs with a covered tray.

  The smell of fresh pastry filled the room. My mouth watered and I wasted no time reaching for the tray.

  “They’re not for you, sir,” Grabel sniffed. “These are for you to take to the Solitos’ house, down the hill. It seems they have had a bit of misfortune.”

  “The kind they celebrate with pastries?”

  Picture me puzzled.

  “Apparently,” Grabel intoned with exaggerated patience, “their young son just fell down a hole into a well or underground cistern of some sort, that had been hidden in their back garden. The latest rain must have caused the earth covering it to cave in. As of half an hour ago, they were waiting to hear word from their two servants who were trying to see if the boy could be saved.”

  “That’s terrible, but what does it have to do with me and pastries?”

  Grabel has the remarkable ability to roll his eyes without ever actually rolling his eyes.

  “Sir, in polite society, it is customary to console a neighbor who has suffered tragedy by visiting them and bringing a tray of food. Actually, in my experience, it is customary in normal society as well. Regardless, sir, the gesture is expected of you.”

  And now we get to the other reason I keep Grabel.

  While I’m now a successful seller of rare books and tomes, that has not always been the case. I was brought to an orphanage at the age of seven, a street urchin, where I received a basic education in reading and writing from a kindly acolyte. Only a few years later, I escaped back to the streets with a small band of orphans, one step ahead of slavery in the ash mines. There we grew up, sneaking, stealing and fighting to live.

  Most of us didn’t make it.

  Khrem is not kind to the children who live on its streets, and by the end of my twenty-first year, I was alone. The streets had educated me on the fine arts of thievery of all types, and I later honed those skills to mastery.

  But nothing I learned in that life prepared me for the nuances and unwritten rules of the upper middleclass. I now moved in a completely different jungle, and the expectations of my new peers were complete mysteries to me.

  Such as bringing people pastries when their kids fell down holes.

  So that is Grabel’s other job, helping me navigate the treacherous terrain of social intercourse that comes with my new life. It’s a job he does with his usual skill and efficiency, and often with his own unique brand of snobbish prickliness.

  “Could I just send you with the pastries and my regards?” I asked, without much hope.

  “Yes, sir. But may I recommend, instead of pastries, you send me with a brick to drop down the hole? That way it will appear you are giving offense out of spite rather than simple ignorance.”

  Okay, point taken.

  “Very well, Grabel,” I sighed as I set aside my book and stood. “No, don’t hand me the tray, you’re still coming along. I’m sure nobody will think anything of me having my manservant accompany me to carry the food. Besides, I’m sure I’ll need you along to remind me not to eat with my hands, belch too loudly or wipe my mouth on the hosts’ curtains.”

  “Indeed, sir. I will do my best.”

  Chapter Two

  “Son, it’s worthwhile to attend a funeral in Khrem just for the food. Come to
think of it, their hangings bring vendors of every type of fare in the city around, too. I don’t know what it is about those people and how death makes them want to eat. Hells, that’s the only city I know of where losing a lot of friends can end up making you fat.” —Ulypky’s Tales of Kriegford the Wanderer

  The outdoors were as miserable as I feared.

  We managed the walk down the winding lane on Klyburn Hill without mishap…not an easy feat, considering the cobblestones were slick. Even the horses pulling the two carriages we encountered were slipping on the incline. Fortunately, it quit raining, so we weren’t forced to don the cloaks we carried over our shoulders. They would have been stifling in the humidity, especially with the exertion of maintaining our balance on the steep grade. As it was, we were both sweating by the time we reached the Solitos’ house halfway down the slope.

  It appeared they had company.

  “At least nobody from the Silent March is here,” Grabel observed. “That’s a promising sign.”

  “Not really,” I replied. “They never show up until after the person has died, and they don’t show up if the body is unreachable, in any case.”

  The Order of the Silent March are Khrem’s collectors of the dead.

  I don’t know much about The Order’s tenets, or even the name of the deity they serve, but you can often see their members in their dove gray robes walking the streets, or pulling one of their covered carts to the different burial sites while ringing the brass bell hanging from their belts. And they never talk.

  Ever.

  But they have this gift, or power of some kind, when it comes to finding the dead.

  If a person dies alone in their apartment or house, there will be a member of the March standing by their door within an hour, waiting for the proper person to let him in and collect the body. If somebody dies under a pier, in an alleyway, or in an old abandoned building, a silent gray-robed figure will find and recover the body. Don’t ask me how they know, they just do.

  Their talent also includes knowing the correct destination for the deceased…whether it be the catacombs of a particular faith, the great funerary barge that leaves the lower harbor every day, the necropolis north of Khrem, or the burial pits outside the gates.

  They simply know.

  On the other hand, if the body is concealed, the story is different. They do not show up and expose the secret graves of the murdered, nor do they venture into the Undercity or on to the Upperways. I remember how the lightning-blasted corpse of Shinglefoot Gheri lay slumped against a gable on the back of the Lucerna Cathedral. It remained there until the crows and seagulls picked it down to disarticulated bones.

  I don’t know why, but it’s the way they work, and nobody asks any questions.

  The followers of the Silent March are as accepted as they are ignored, a necessary part of the great city, but one people prefer not to think about.

  Still, they wouldn’t be a welcome sight right now.

  While no members of the Silent March were to be seen, several coaches were drawn up on the street in front of the house. A small knot of coachmen were talking together and smoking pipes at the coach closest to the front gate.

  Through the iron fence, I could see other men milling about near the front door, also smoking their pipes and engaged in low conversations. The smell of numerous types of tobacco blended unpleasantly in the moist atmosphere. No women were visible, but I imagined they were inside, avoiding the damp and the smoke.

  We squeezed past the coaches and walked through the front gate toward the house.

  The Solitos’ were obviously doing well for themselves.

  It was a larger house than mine, with a spacious covered porch framed by tall poplars. Flowerbeds running the length of the house on both sides of the porch had recently been planted with late blooming flowers, suggesting appearances were important at the Solitos house. Despite my retirement from the business, my professional eye marked this as a house well worth some skillful burglar’s time.

  Grabel cleared his throat in my ear.

  “Harlo Solitos is an importer of fine furs and silks,” he coached me as we walked up the porch. “His wife is named Venita and hosts an embroidery circle many of the wives of this neighborhood attend. Her opinions carry weight, and she sits at the center of the web of gossip in this area. Let’s try to be our gracious best and not offend her, sir.”

  “Yes, Grabel. I get it, no peeing in the corners.”

  “The boy’s name is Holik. He is, or was, seven years old… the eldest of three.”

  “Understood.”

  The front door stood open and a manservant ushered us into a large dining room right off the entry hall.

  Large silk tapestries from at least six different countries hung from the walls and two pelts of Bardockian Direbison warmed the floor. Harlo’s dining room was a showcase of his trade, and I imagine he often conducted his business transactions in there. Any potential customer would certainly be impressed with this lavish display.

  Neighbors crowded the room, filling it with warm bodies and the low mutter of hushed conversation. It was packed pretty tight, but the crowd still parted enough for the Solitos’ manservant to lead me across the room and introduce me to the distraught mother.

  Venita Solitos sat in the middle of a large group of women, clutching two small boys under her arms while the women attempted to console her. A large, matronly woman, she wore her dark hair in a tight bun on top of her head. The anguish on her face made me feel uncomfortable and intrusive as I mumbled my condolences after my introduction.

  She collected herself enough to give me a gracious nod, and then the circle of women closed protectively around her again.

  I retreated back to the edge of the room.

  “Okay, now what?” I whispered to Grabel after he dropped off the pastries on the large table and returned to stand by my side. He handed me a drink from the refreshment table, and used the movement as a cover to whisper an answer to me.

  “Now, sir,” he murmured, “I will join the other menservants on the porch. You can either stand here, out of the way, or wander around and talk to people. Spend at least half an hour being seen, and then it should be okay to leave.

  “Wait. You’re leaving me?”

  “Shhh…yes, sir,” Grabel whispered. “I do not belong in here. Just be polite, like you do with your customers, and you should be fine. You will probably find most of the men either in the garden out back or on the patio at the south end of the house. I point this out, sir, because in this room full of women, it wouldn’t take long for them to remember that you are an eligible bachelor of means… and I’m sure many of them have spinster sisters or friends.”

  Grabel turned and left, while I stood there with the dawning realization I had just become a rabbit, casually tossed into a room full of sleeping wolves.

  At least he had the courtesy of warning me first…or maybe he just wanted to see the look of fear this information elicited. With Grabel, it could be difficult to tell.

  My objective now became leaving as unobtrusively—and as fast—as possible. I noticed some guests were exiting by another door at the far end of the room, and followed them. Clutching my drink protectively against my chest, I eased my way down the wall to the doorway. I managed to make it without mishap, and then slipped around the doorframe into a little hall leading to the kitchen.

  Several more women were seated around a large cutting table in the middle of the kitchen and looked up when I entered.

  Yikes.

  This was turning out to be harder than dodging guards while robbing the Vestrulian palace.

  I started to feel trapped and mentally cursed Grabel for leaving me in this awkward situation. Although I couldn’t quite put my finger on how, I felt reasonably certain this entire situation was his fault. I could picture him on the porch with the other menservants, comparing notes on who did the best job of torturing their employers, and getting a round of applause for this latest bit of treachery.<
br />
  That bastard would pay for this.

  With a polite nod to the ladies at the table, I opened the door to my immediate right and walked into it. I found myself confronted by shelves of assorted jars and dried vegetables.

  “The pantry,” I announced to the women, who stopped talking and collectively stared at me.

  One of them actually nodded encouragingly.

  Closing the pantry door, I turned and noticed another, heavier door on the opposite wall. Aha! With another quick nod to the table, I strode across the kitchen and let myself outside, followed by the twitter of the ladies within.

  I found myself in a moderate-sized, walled garden.

  Poplars lined the walls, shielding the garden from the outside world. Several circular flower beds featured topiary of some abstract symmetrical design, and a narrow rock path wound through them. In the center, two small stone benches flanked a three-tiered fountain. Their allotment of the aqueduct feeding Klyburn Hill must have cost them some serious coin every year. This luxury served as a retreat of some kind for one or both of the Solitos.

  At the moment, a small group of men were standing around the fountain, watching a couple of other men with spades shoulder deep in a hole in the back corner of the garden.

  Crap.

  I had stumbled into the center stage of this drama, the very last place I wanted to be. Nothing to do now but put on my best face and perform my role as a concerned neighbor.

  I approached the group of men standing around the fountain.

  Thankfully, I recognized a couple of them. I saw Handell the Painter leaning against the fountain, and Nabul the Tax Assessor sitting on one of the benches. I immediately headed for Handell.

  I harbored no ill will for Nabul, but since I knew that Grabel often visited his wife when the paunchy tax assessor was out of town, I found Handell to be the more comfortable choice. I didn’t know if Nabul knew about my manservant’s depredations, or if he even cared, but prudence has always been my motto.