Leaplow chuckled in happy remembrance. "That dusty fellow gave me some exercise. You're right, just one hairy doorjack would not be nearly as much fun. How about I take on those red-haired brothers?"
"The City Watch would not like it," answered Bentnor, leaning over Leaplow's shoulder to size up Stunk's retinue. "They're still a bit cranky about that last mess you started and we had to clean up."
"You'd think they'd be happy we did their work for them, knocking out those thieves," Leaplow answered back. "Still, I felt sorry for the one that ended up with that broken nose. Guess nobody ever told him not to pick a Carver's pocket."
In their neighborhood, the bully boys and other miscreants left the Carvers alone. After all, it was a well-known fact in neighborhoods north of the Coffinmarch gate that anyone foolish enough to punch one Carver had to deal with a dozen extraordinarily stalwart lads punching back. Or, and there were certain members of the thieves' guild who said this was even worse, all the Carver wives laying about with their brooms and pots and pans. The Carver men tended to marry strapping big women, the sort who could drop a man with one kick of a boot or one full swing of a fist.
Only Myemaw Carver, Sophraea's grandmother, and Sophraea were tiny women and at least looked harmless. Except, as Binn the one-eyed butcher's boy often said, "the little ones are even tougher than the big ones in that family!'' Binn had never really forgiven Sophraea for clouting him when he tried to sneak a kiss.
But there was something different about Stunk's men and Sophraea was glad that Bentnor had distracted her hotheaded brother. Like Stunk, his men tended to push their way into the center of the crowd. They all had an angry air, as if they liked a fight too, but in a bloodier and more deadly way than Leaplow's constant sparring. Sophraea doubted that Stunk's men would just use fists or feet like her brothers or her cousins. The retinue clustered around the fat man all wore blades or, in the case of one redhead, stout cudgels.
Astute Carver had warned her and her brothers more than once to be careful around Stunk's servants: there had been tales in the streets of the people who crossed Stunk or his retinue being ambushed by "unknown" assailants.
So, "hush and don't cause trouble," Sophraea reminded Leaplow again, reaching up to tug his ear down to her level despite his yelp of protest.
"So are you ready for us to start the foundation?" Astute Carver asked Stunk, the merchant's drawings still rolled up in his fist and ignored.
The fat man rocked back and forth a couple of times before ponderously nodding. "Your work on the urns appeared satisfactory," he said with an odd note in his voice, as if he wished he could find some further fault.
"Then in which part of the Merchants' Rest shall we be building?" asked Astute, using the more polite name for Coinscoffin.
Stunk had no such refinement. "Coinscoffin! As if I would be buried there with all the paltry shopkeepers, miles away from Waterdeep proper."
"But that's the only place with enough room for a plot of this size!"
Astute unrolled the scroll to show two smaller buildings that flanked the semicircle of columns surrounding the main tomb where Stunk's sarcophagus would eventually lie.
"My tomb will be there," said Stunk, pointing across the wall to the City of the Dead to the astonishment of the entire Carver family. "As befits a great man of Waterdeep."
"There's no land left within the cemetery's walls. Every scrap of ground is already claimed." Astute only voiced what the rest of the Carvers had known from childhood on.
"You will build my tomb inside the City of the Dead," said Stunk, gesturing at his manservant. The lanky individual slid forward with another scroll and a sneer. "Tear down the structures as marked and begin building my tomb."
"Tear down?" Astute took this new scroll and unrolled it. His brothers clustered close, each peering over Astute's shoulder, muttering at what they saw. "There are two tombs in the City at this spot. My family has maintained them for generations."
"And now you will take care of something far finer."
"But what about the bodies?" Perspicacity asked, nudging his brother Astute.
Stunk shrugged his shoulders. "Everything is quite legal. And any removals will be handled with the utmost respect by my men."
Astute stared at his brothers and they stared back at him. All five big men looked at Stunk with less than cordial expressions. Sophraea's cousins and brothers began to cluster closer to their fathers. One of Stunk's redheaded bullies unhooked his cudgel from his belt.
"Well?" asked Stunk, no more expression on his face than on a piece of blank granite.
"I need to see the deeds," said Astute finally. "We cannot start such work without the proper papers."
"You shall have them," said Stunk. "And I will have my monument exactly where I have said."
The fat man turned and walked with his rolling gait out of the yard, not bothering with even the slightest gesture toward a courteous farewell.
"What do you make of that?" Leaplow asked his sister. The pair wandered away from the muttering conversations of their older brothers, uncles, and father, toward the little gate in the wall that opened into the City of the Dead.
Sophraea peered through the — gate at the tangle of bushes and trees overshadowing the path leading to the northern tombs. Was it the breeze that trembled the branches or was it something else?
"I think it is trouble," she finally said. "How are they going to react if we start tearing things down?"
"We're Carvers," said Leaplow with his usual brash confidence. "They don't bother us." Then, obviously remembering his trouble last spring, he added, "Well, not usually. And never Father or the uncles."
"Because we maintain the tombs, not destroy them." As soon as she voiced that thought, Sophraea knew exactly the same idea would have occurred to every member of the family. No wonder her uncles were still in a huddle, tugging at their beards and rumbling their doubts at each other.
Still, the City of the Dead did look quiet. At least the bit that she could see from where she stood. She put her hand on the latch, the old prohibition against wandering through the graveyard alone, even at twilight, certainly no longer applied to her. Even her mother Reye had accepted that the shortcut through the City of the Dead was the fastest route for her daughter to use to certain shops in northern Waterdeep. Sophraea had walked the graveyard paths all summer long with no incident at all.
"That's odd." Leaplow startled his sister by bending around her to peer at the gate, almost bumping his forehead on the twisted iron bars. "Must be rust."
"What?"
"That." Leaplow tapped red marks that showed clearly on curlicues of iron.
Sophraea looked closely at the strange streaks marring the usually dull dark gray metal. Ten slender streaks curled around the bars, five on the left side, five on the right.
Slowly Sophraea put out her own slender hands and twisted her fingers around the bars. When she pulled them away, the marks of her hands remained for a brief moment before fading away. The marks were exactly the same as the red streaks, except reversed.
"Handprints," Sophraea barely breathed, looking at the marks so plainly visible and so clearly the color of dried blood, the marks of hands that had reached through the gate from the graveyard side.
Leaplow shook his head in a fierce gesture of denial. "Can't be. They leave us alone. They have always left us alone. The dead don't bother Carvers."
"Whatever it was," said Sophraea, tracing the pattern on the gate with one slender finger and ignoring Leaplow's protests, "it came from the City of the Dead."
The rattle of branches scraping together startled both brother and sister. The pair leaped back from the gate. A splatter of rain followed the gust of wind.
As usual, a shift in the wind distracted her volatile brother. He shook the rain off his head and his worries out of his brain.
"I'm for supper," said the always hungry Leaplow, heading back to Dead End House with a quick stride.
But Sophraea linge
red behind. She put her hand on the gate's latch again, remembering the odd light of the night before. Perhaps she could see something more on the other side. But the shadows shifted in the graveyard and another cold blast of wind hit her face like a warning.
With careful backward steps, Sophraea retreated. Behind her, the bushes swayed, as if someone invisible brushed by them, returning to the center of the City of the Dead.
THREE
Everyone told tales of the great duels and the unfortunate spells that had once filled the City of the Dead and spilled into the streets of Waterdeep. And everyone, most especially her ancient relative Volponia, said to Sophraea that those days were gone. The Blackstaff had tamed the wizards, the City Watch kept the thieves from stealing too much, the guards prevented riffraff adventurers from creating unusual trouble for ordinary citizens, and even the young lords and ladies were said to be a much more staid and responsible nobility than generations past. Although the broadsheets were always full of some tale of wicked mischief among the aristocracy and very entertaining to read too!
"Scandals," Volponia had sniffed one morning, crumpling up an old copy of The Blue Unicorn that Sophraea had brought her, "not worth the ink on the paper. Some dressmaker going bankrupt. Some young lords teasing the Watch into chasing them. Huh! In my day, the misdeeds of Waterdeep's famous and infamous rocked the heavens, toppled rulers, and changed the very boundaries of kingdoms."
"Being so much older than the rest of us, dear Aunt Volponia," said Sophraea's grandmother Myemaw with the usual touch of acid in the honey of her voice, "you would remember such things."
"I remember you sashaying through that courtyard below with a berry pie in one hand and a loveknot of ribbons in the other hand, girl," shot back Volponia, with a snap of her elegantly manicured fingers at Sophraea's grandmother. "Back before you married my handsome nephew, back when you were the scandal of the neighborhood."
Sophraea's granny began to giggle. "Oh, and you in your tall boots, Volponia, stamping here and there and shouting like you were still commanding from your quarterdeck. Oh, we were all the scandals then!"
The two old ladies fell to chuckling over the gossip sheets until Volponia yawned and said, "I miss those days. When the mangiest dogs had a real bite behind their bark. Why even the ghosts of Waterdeep were grander creatures than the colored mists that float through the streets now!"
Inspired by this memory, Sophraea hurried upstairs to talk to Volponia about the strange light that she'd seen the night before and the bloody handprints on the family gate. The rest of the Carvers were still in-a buzz of argument over Stunk's visit and his proposal to tear down tombs within the City of the Dead, but the old lady would listen to her.
When a firm voice told her to '"hurry up and enter," Sophraea slipped around the door into the great room that filled three-quarters of the top floor of the tower.
With three sets of windows facing north, west, and south, even the usual pearly light of a cloudy Waterdeep twilight was sufficient to reveal every knickknack teetering on the dozens of small tables and shelves cluttering up Volponia's boudoir.
Volponia's bed was covered with embroidered silk quilts and had a canopy of tapestry curtains protecting the occupant from stray drafts. The bed also stood closest to the south window. The previous evening, when Sophraea had paid her last good nights to Volponia, the bed had been shaped like a wooden sled, covered with red woolen blankets and azure furs, and been positioned closest to the north window.
How or why Volponia changed her bed quite so literally, nobody knew. The old lady still owned a number of trinkets purloined from faraway places during her days as a pirate captain. Some, like the crystal bell that was always close to hand, kept her well-supplied with the comforts that she craved and made her a very light charge upon the family's resources.
The only demand that Volponia ever made was that the other turret bedroom, the one that shared the same floor with hers, "not be occupied by one of those great galumphing male Carvers. I love my nephews, my grandnephews, and my great-grandnephews, but they all take after my brother. He snored loud enough to wake every soul in Waterdeep and I have enough trouble sleeping without listening to such thunder every night."
So, as the only girl born in two generations and a silent sleeper, Sophraea occupied the other bedroom and received regular doses of Volponia's advice growing up. Also a fair amount of criticism as in "well, why are you standing dithering in the doorway. Step in or step out, but don't make a draft!"
Whisking her skirts around the tippy tables and wobbly china and crystal mementos with the ease of long practice, Sophraea hurried to the bedside and kissed Volponia's parchment dry cheek.
"I came to ask about a glowing light in the graveyard, not to be scolded," she said with mock severity as she plopped down upon the bed. The mattress was very firm, probably stuffed with horsehair, Sophraea guessed.
"A light in the graveyard?" said Volponia, hitching herself higher on her satin-covered feather pillows. "What was it?"
"I don't know," said Sophraea, "but it moved around the City of the Dead, from far to the north along the paths to our gate."
"Well, I can't see the City from my windows. Just a bit of the wall and watchtower. A dark night, last night, and a stormy one. I barely slept with all the rattle of the wind and rain. I'm sure I would have noticed any light if it had moved around the house."
"The rain woke me too. That's why I saw the light. It was definitely inside the City and never passed the gate."
"Perhaps it was the Watch upon patrol."
"No," Sophraea could be just as firm as Volponia. "I've seen the Watch chasing thieves through there before. Lots of torches and shouting, lots of lights. This was just one light, and it seemed to move around on its own."
Volponia frowned. "A haunt?"
"It didn't look like a spirit," replied Sophraea with the sophistication of a seventeen-year-old who had grown up in Waterdeep. "At least not the sort of ghost that you usually see. It was brighter, or moved differently. The things you see on the streets, the mists, they tend to float around. This looked like it went where it intended to go."
"Magic, perhaps?" Volponia speculated with a frown. "But it would take an unusually brave wizard to be casting spells in the City after dark. There are things buried there who don't like disturbances. And I can't see the Blackstaff being all that kind to anyone who meddled with magic inside the graveyard. Perhaps you should tell your father. He can always get a word to the right ear."
"Perhaps," agreed Sophraea, "if I knew what to tell him. It was just one light, and rather small. But there were these handprints on our gate today. Leaplow thought it was rust at first…"
"But?" asked the shrewd Volponia.
"I thought they were handprints, dark red-brown handprints, from somebody reaching from the City's side."
"The color of old blood?" Volponia spoke with the relish of a former pirate captain. "Just the sort of trick that ghosts like to play. Or those who mean you to think the dead are making trouble. You should talk to your father; Astute's no fool."
"He's busy. Stunk came today."
"A troublesome man, from all that your grandmother has told me," said Volponia. Although the old lady never left her bed as far as the family knew, she liked to hear the news and Myemaw was her major source of information.
"I don't like him," admitted Sophraea.
"If you really want to know what that light was, you should ask a wizard," Volponia stated.
"I don't know any," Sophraea replied. Then she thought of Gustin Bone, but she wasn't sure what he was. Did making all the laundry jump on the line make him a wizard? Maybe he was just an adventurer with some type of magic ring or conjuring piece. Such things were not unknown in Waterdeep.
"There's that old woman down on Coffinmarch, but everyone says she is crazy mad witch," Sophraea added, because she did know where Egetha kept her shop and she had no idea at all where Gustin Bone had come from or where he went.
&
nbsp; "That's just your brothers' opinion of Egetha and that's just because she caught them sneaking around her back windows, trying to watch her conjure. But Egetha never did much more than sell beauty charms to old maids and protections for young men with mischief on their minds."
"Really, I didn't know that."
"Exactly how old are you? I keep losing track with your generation." "Seventeen."
"That's still too young for me to be discussing most of Egetha's stock with you. Go ask your mother if you're curious." Volponia fidgeted in her bed, obviously dismissing the topic to the disappointment of Sophraea's curiosity. But her next words caught the girl's wandering attention.
"The quality of magic may have sadly deteriorated from the days of my youth, as have a great many other things," said Volponia, "but there must still be a place where you can find a decent wizard for hire in Waterdeep."
"I'm sure I don't know where, Auntie," said Sophraea, "and I'm certain that I wouldn't know how to pay one if I did find him."
"When I was still captaining my own ships, you went to Sevenlamps Cut if you wanted a wizard, especially the cheap kind whom nobody would miss if they drowned or were eaten by sea serpents." Volponia sniffed. "If you asked around, you could find someone to hire out on the streets."
"Well, wizards cost money and I don't have that much."
"Promise to pay with a kiss." Volponia actually smirked. "Used to work for me when I was your age."
"I'm not going to kiss some smelly old wizard, you wicked thing!"
"That's the problem with your generation. No imagination." The old lady rooted with one hand under the covers of her bed and pulled out a tarnished brass box, decorated with strips of faded green ribbons. She shook it and listened with a frown to the tinkle of the contents. Twisting one end of the box open, she emptied a single silver ring onto her covers. Handing it to Sophraea, she said, "There's probably half a wish still left in that ring and that might interest the right type of wizard."
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