The Fall of Ventaris

by Neil McGarry

  The house was where she’d been told it would be, nestled just under the district’s eastern wall. Getting into the small enclosed garden had been easy. After climbing the inner walls of Tyford’s “office,” scaling a seven-foot mortared brick wall was child’s play.

  Then it was all crouching behind Teranon and waiting.

  She had watched carefully the end-of-day activities of the household. The mapmaker himself arrived home not long after Duchess was in place, and by the sounds went straight to dinner. Another figure could be seen moving through the house to the same room – either a servant or his daughter Darley, she supposed. Later, a middle-aged woman in servant’s garb left from the back door. A cook or a maid, she guessed, but not live-in, who would make her way back home to the Shallows and return in the early morning. Duchess was relieved to see her go. Two fewer ears to hear Duchess prying at doors and picking at windows.

  “Thiefing isn’t just about hanging from rafters and creeping through the shadows,” Tyford had once told her. “A good thief knows how to wait. You wait in the dark for someone to come, or go, or until the coast is clear. You wait and wait, trying not to make a sound or get a damned cramp. If you learn anything from me, girl, you better learn how to wait.” And so she had waited.

  To keep herself occupied through the long, slow count of the bells, she went over what she knew of the man on whom she was spying. Savant Terence’s wife had passed away some ten years before, and he did not visit whores, nor drink to excess nor gamble. Except for the fact that he’d been a close companion of the late Marcus Kell, Terence was a poor subject of gossip.

  His daughter, however, was far more interesting. Apparently, Darley had recently been seen in Wharves, in the company of a half-Ulari boy named Finn, a stevedore...or so he appeared. She hadn’t been able to get details, but apparently Finn made a side income from getting the high-born the things they wanted but dared not be associated with. A pairing to conjure with, certainly, although she wondered how Darley was managing to sneak away to see her paramour. The blackarms who guarded the district would be loathe to let an unescorted woman of status pass the gate by herself, at least without sending word to her father. A man of the same age and circumstance would most likely go unquestioned, she thought sourly.

  As for Terence, he apparently knew nothing of his daughter’s indiscretions, far too busy as he was with his work atop the hill. He wielded some influence on the imperial council, but Duchess had been unable to learn exactly how much. For all her fruning she didn’t understand much of imperial politics. Without knowing more she dared not openly approach the man. However, she’d come up with a plan. Like most scholars her father had faithfully kept a diary, and she thought that perhaps a look amongst Terence’s own would tell her much about his friendship with her father, what had become of the Freehold, and perhaps the current whereabouts of her brother and sister.

  Duchess waited and watched while the fog receded and lights moved from window to window, but by tenth bell all the windows darkened except for one on the second floor that overlooked the garden. Darley’s bedchamber, she guessed, as young women did not occupy rooms overlooking the street. More time passed, and the sleep that had eluded her that afternoon nagged at her eyelids. To keep awake she mentally compared this house to her father’s city estate. She seemed to remember her own had been larger, with more extensive gardens, but she’d been smaller then, of course. She smiled a little at the thought that she might well be crouching a hundred feet from where she’d once lived.

  Last bell had come and gone when a sound from the house snapped her to full alert. She looked up to see the shutters of a darkened third-floor window slowly folding open. A head poked out and turned this way and that, as if scanning the grounds. Duchess hunkered down behind Teranon, although she doubted she was visible in the dark. After a moment, a figure stepped out onto the ledge and began to climb down the ivy-entwined stone wall, moving with an unexpected dexterity. She watched as the shape — a young woman, Duchess now saw — placed her hands and feet with practiced ease. Clearly, this was not the first time she’d made the climb.

  The woman reached the ground safely and without making too much noise, and Duchess saw she was clad in a dress of black or dark brown with a matching cloak. Before Darley, for it must be she, covered her head with a hood of the same color Duchess made out long hair, but in this light it seemed only black. Instead of moving towards the lane that would take her to the garden gate and then the street, Darley stepped onto the grass, moving directly towards Duchess and her faithful hound.

  She felt a jolt of fear, and resisting the impulse to run, pressed herself more deeply into Teranon’s shadow. She was a fully cloaked member of the Grey, gods damn it, not some frightened child to run shrieking from a primped and perfumed scholar’s daughter. If worse came to worst she’d push the girl aside and flee, hoping to outrun the blackarms.

  Darley stopped about ten feet away, before the largest statue in the garden: a mail-clad man standing with one foot on his helmet and his hand on the hilt of a sword at his waist. Some military hero or another, although Duchess could not remember his name. The stone image stood fully seven feet tall, mounted on a wide plinth, any inscription long worn away by wind and weather. Darley knelt, and for a moment Duchess wondered if the girl were praying. Then she felt around the base with her hands. Seeming to find what she sought, she laid herself against the plinth and pushed with all her might. The statue slid slowly backwards with a low grate of stone on stone, revealing a dark opening. Darley descended into the darkness, vanishing from sight, and Duchess heard the scrape of shoes on stone steps. A faint light came from the opening, perhaps from a candle or small lantern. Then the statue slid slowly back into place, sealing the passage and leaving the garden once again empty except for Duchess and Teranon.

  After a long moment, Duchess rose, knees popping, and warily approached the statue. Darley was no mere scholar’s daughter, that was certain, and Terence no mere scholar. She wondered if the maps Terence made for the empress depicted not only what lay around the city but beneath it as well. Duchess’ own father had told her Rodaas lay atop the remnants of Old Domani, where Jana’s ancestors had dwelt for centuries before their abrupt departure. The great hill was riddled with long-forgotten tunnels and passages, and if rumor was to be believed, even a great necropolis. It would be easy for Darley to slip into her father’s study, peruse his maps and papers, and learn about this secret entrance. Now the mystery of how she escaped Scholars District was solved. Instead of moving through a gate, she was moving under one. The girl had courage, that was certain. Duchess herself had been beneath the city not long ago, and it was no place to idly wander.

  The general seemed to stare forbiddingly down at her, but Duchess ignored his stony gaze and knelt, feeling around the base of the plinth as Darley had. Soon her questing fingers came upon a small square of stone that seemed to jut out slightly. She pressed hard and heard a click from inside the statue. She pushed and the general slid obligingly back to reveal stone steps descending into darkness. There was no sign of the girl.

  Duchess hesitated, torn. Steel longed to explore the passage, but Silk reminded that she’d come here to unravel mysteries from her past and not to explore unknown tunnels. Still, there could be something valuable down there. She idly fingered a stub of candle in her pocket, debating with herself. She had no idea where that passage led or who might be lurking there. She didn’t fear Darley, of course, but she wondered if her Wharves boy might be below, perhaps with friends. And of course the last time she’d ventured under the city she’d sensed a presence more fearful than all the boys in the Wharves put together.

  The open window above beckoned, and she reminded herself that the penny in her pocket was better than the florin in her future. The scholar’s tunnel wasn’t going anywhere, but the night was passing and Darley would be back before too long. Best to be about her business before she returned. With mixed relief and regret, she stepped behind the gen
eral and shoved until he was back in place.

  As Duchess crossed the garden, she reflected that this night had just gotten much more interesting.

  * * *

  The thick ivy concealed a wooden trellis, which was surely why Darley climbed down from the third floor down rather than the second. To get to that trellis from her own window Darley would have had to traverse a ledge for about ten feet, and having dared a heart-stopping ledge walk of her own at the baron’s party, Duchess understood the reluctance.

  Moving with Tyford-trained precision, Duchess pulled herself to the third-floor window and then waited, listening intently. All was quiet. Darley had considerately left the window wide open and Duchess slipped carefully inside. Only faint light trickled in from outside, so she decided to risk lighting the candle she’d stowed in her pocket. By its flickering light she saw what appeared an office or private library, outfitted with wooden shelves, overflowing with more books and scrolls than she’d seen in one place since she’d last visited in her father’s study. In the center of the room was a massive oaken table, covered with quills, inkpots, sheets of parchment and neat stacks of bound books, next to a large wooden rack, perfect for holding maps. She moved in for a closer look.

  The mapmaker’s handwriting covered sheet after sheet of parchment in flowing lines and intricately drawn diagrams. He knew his trade. She found not just simple maps of the city and surrounding countryside, but figures detailing the relative elevation of everything from the harbor to the palace. She also found detailed drawing pictures of machinery – gearwork, pulleys, wooden platforms – each with the sigil of the imperial House drawn neatly in a corner of the parchment. She’d been weaned on her father’s library, but some of these complex charts, bursting with so many notes and numbers, made her head ache. Clearly, Ahmed had been correct about Savant Terence’s importance. Of course, the position of all the scholars had improved since the war...all but Marcus Kell’s, she reflected with a pang. Being back in a library made her remember him all the more clearly.

  She shook her head, angry at the tears that had sprung to her eyes. She had come for information about the fate of the Freehold and not to indulge her sentimentality. She lacked the time to examine each scroll and ledger so she scanned the shelves for a clue that might help her narrow the search. Rolled, folded and bound paper stared mutely and unhelpfully back at her, and she cursed silently. She might spend hours perusing the contents of the shelves, and who knew when Darley would return? Turning back to the table, she let her eyes linger on the piles of maps and other drawings until a thought came to her. If Darley were using Domae tunnels, she could only have learned of them from her father’s work — in this very room, most likely. Yet there were no such maps to be seen, which meant Terence had a place for such sensitive information. Any place he stored such things as maps of long-forgotten tunnels might also contain a clue to the Freehold.

  She swept her gaze over the room, looking now not for scrolls but secrets. She moved from shelf to shelf, testing to see if any held a hidden door or sliding panel, but each seemed firmly anchored to the wall behind. The floor was covered with a thick rug, which would have shown signs if any of the shelves swung open, but then she wondered if that rug itself might conceal a hidden compartment. She dared not try to shift the heavy oaken table — that would almost certainly wake the scholar sleeping below — but she quietly rolled back as much of the rug as she could, looking for anything that might reveal a trapdoor. All she found were smooth, polished wooden planks. She even moved from wall to wall, tapping gently for hollow spaces, but that was equally fruitless.

  She had just decided to search the rest of the house when her eye fell upon the bookcase furthest to the left. Like the others it was piled with books and papers, but it now seemed to her that there was an empty space on each shelf, in the same place, one above the other. She moved closer to investigate, holding up her candle for a better view. The gaps were a bit too regular to be chance, she decided, and so she peered into the back of the bookcase in search of a hidden lever or button. There was none, but as she leaned in to look she noticed that there were narrow grooves in the surface of each shelf, she saw....perfect for fingers?

  She set down the candle and reached for a shelf above her, feeling with her fingers for the groove she guessed was there and finding it. She set her foot on a lower shelf and began to climb as if the bookcase were a ladder. The shelves ended a few feet short of the ceiling, and when she reached the top she saw a rung mounted atop the case. “Here’s where you hold on,” Duchess muttered to herself, “while you open up...” It was too dark to see much, so she felt blindly around for the wall behind the case. Her fingers scrabbled over wood, and she probed until she felt a small ring, barely wider than her finger. She tugged and was gratified when a panel slid to the left.

  Feeling triumphant, she retrieved her candle so she might see what she was doing. Climbing a bookcase with a lit candle wasn’t easy, but no harder than hanging from a wall for an hour with a cranky old thief looking on critically. She set the candle atop the case and saw that behind the panel was a small, metal safe, but instead of the keyhole she’d hoped to find she saw instead a series of levers, slides and dials, all gleaming dully in the candlelight.

  She cursed again. A gods-damned puzzle lock. Tyford had not yet taught her much about them, and she’d not thought to find one here. If there were ways to tickle them open she did not know them, and in any case she’d need to be a far better thief to fiddle with such a thing while hanging from a bookshelf. The damned safe might as well be guarded by Teranon himself.

  Her heart sinking, she closed the little wooden door and climbed slowly back to the floor. She ran her hands through her hair, trying to marshal her thoughts. If patience was a thief’s sword, hers was getting blunter by the moment. She needed a different weapon. If there were maps of the Domae tunnels in that safe, Darley must have seen them, which meant she had somehow figured out the combination. Perhaps there was something in the girl’s room that might help. She didn’t want to risk heading downstairs, but it was either that or turn away empty-handed. She stepped away from table and moved quietly to the door. She saw a wooden staircase leading down, and her mind flashed to something Tyford had told her.

  “The real reason I trust stone? It doesn’t speak. Wood’s just as bad as a fucking guard dog. One wrong step on an old stair and before you know it the whole house’s up and screaming for the blackarms.” Tackling the stairs in the mapmaker’s house, she had to admit the grasping old bastard had a point. Carefully testing each step as she went, she found the guard dog halfway down, but eased up before it could bark too loudly. She stretched her leg to the next lowest riser, found it sound, and continued along.

  The second floor hallway was unremarkable, with two doors and a staircase leading to the ground floor. A window at the far end, set with clear glass, admitted just enough light to see by. She carefully shielded her candle as she went, listening at the doors. She paused at the first. There was no light to be seen around the cracks, but from behind came a steady snoring. The second door must be Darley’s.

  After another careful listen she slipped inside. The room was furnished in a surprisingly simple fashion: a featherbed that had seen better days, a small table with a rather splintery chair, a chest pushed up against the wall, and a large, battered wardrobe. A glass lamp flickered on the table. The window looked out over the garden, as she had guessed. She carefully crossed the room, alert for more guard dogs, all the while getting clearer on the situation in the savant’s home. Although Scholars District was not nearly as prestigious as Garden, the homes here had once belonged solely to the minor nobility, and this one must have cost a small fortune. The mapmaker probably spent his entire salary simply keeping himself and his daughter under this roof. Just her luck to have broken into the poorest house in the district.

  She bit her lip in frustration. Her investigation into the Freehold aside, some part of her had entertained hopes of stealing
enough from Savant Terence to pay off Antony. From what she had seen thus far, she’d have to lift the entire contents of the house to mollify the redcap.

  She was about to turn back in disgust when she found the stash hidden at the bottom of the wardrobe.

  The clothing was far finer than she would have expected in such a modest setting: silks and satins and damasks, all hidden under dresses of wool and modest linen. There was jewelry as well, pendants and brooches and, most eye-catching, a small green opal on a golden chain. Since these things had been hidden, she assumed the mapmaker had not bought them, and it seemed unlikely that the Wharves boy Darley was sneaking out to see had done so. Where had the girl gotten it all?

  Her hands itched to empty the cache. Surely Jana would know how to fetch the best price for the silks, and she from Hector she could get a good price for the jewelry...

  And fetch perhaps a few florin for the whole of it. If she were lucky, and if her fence didn’t cheat her, and if she weren’t caught hauling all of this out the third story window.

  The third if was enough. Her solution to the problem of Antony was not to be found amongst Darley’s treasures. But Darley’s midnight wanderings, and the tunnels, and the half-Ulari boy...there was a story there, and a secret.

  She almost closed the stash empty-handed. If Darley kept this hidden, she could hardly tell her father that it had been plundered. And she need not take it all. Now that she thought on it, perhaps she did not need a full twenty florin...

  The smaller the piece, the longer before Darley realized anything was missing. She slipped the opal neatly into her pocket and closed the secret panel and the wardrobe.

  She wasn’t certain how long she’d been here, but it felt too long. Wharves was all the way across the city from Scholars, but there was no way to know if Darley were making the full trip or simply meeting her boy in the tunnels. She might be back any moment. Duchess eased the wardrobe shut, and then was back into the hallway and up to the third floor, carefully stepping over the noisiest of the steps.