Tyvian stepped close to the man and whispered in his ear. “But then, sir, everyone would see that she is not my wife.”
The sergeant’s eyebrows shot up under his helmet. “Oh? OH! Oh . . . oh my . . .”
Tyvian nodded even as Hool began to snarl behind him again. “Surely, sir, you can see the delicacy of my situation, yes?” The ring was pinching him pretty hard at this point, but Tyvian let the pain work its way into the kind of anguished expression he was hoping for. “Surely there is some manner of arrangement we can reach?”
“AAAAAROOOOOOOGAAAAAAAARAAAAAA!” Hool arched her back and snapped her teeth at the air.
That settled it. The sergeant produced a notepad. “Just . . . just tell me where you’ll be staying, sir. We can check in with you tomorrow.”
Tyvian smiled. “My servant will fill you in on the details. For now, we must go with haste.”
The sergeant looked pale. “Welcome to Saldor, sir. And . . . and congratulations.”
Tyvian didn’t stop to respond; he, Brana, and Hool rushed from the station like any expectant parents should. A few brief lies later, Artus wasn’t far behind.
Tyvian spent one of their last silver crowns to hire a cab. It dropped them in a densely populated neighborhood. He and Artus left their disguises inside and they all got out. “We walk from here,” Tyvian announced. He tipped the driver a copper.
The street was narrow and claustrophobically so. Wood-and-stucco houses were piled upon one another, each building cantilevering itself with its neighbors, the result a series of buildings that looked like blind men holding hands on a long walk home. As Artus followed Tyvian through the labyrinth of tunnels, narrow alleys, and oddly placed gardens, he marveled that this mess was considered the greatest city in the world. It felt more like a rat’s warren.
“Where are we anyway?” he asked, looking up at the seemingly interminable series of laundry lines strung across the street, impeding any ability he had to see the stars or the moon. Were it not for the healthy orange glow of the feylamps set into the lampposts on nearly every corner, they would have been wandering in pitch-darkness. Even at this time of night people were about, walking in twos and threes here and there. Unlike Derby, where the only reason the streets were filled so late was due to wanton merrymaking, these people seemed to be busy somehow. They had places to go, people to meet. Artus spotted a man calling for a carraige, dressed as though he were about to attend a duke.
Tyvian stopped to pump a few swallows of water out of a brass pump built into the side of a building. “This is New Crosstown. It’s been technically part of Saldor since the Akrallian Wars about two centuries back, but you’ll still find a few throwbacks who see this section less as a part of the city and more as the moss that grows on the true city’s arse.”
Artus peered at the buildings in the dark, trying to figure out how tall they were. Each had to be four stories, at least. Many windows glowed with candlelight. “How many people live here?”
Tyvian shrugged. “Most of them.”
Hool and Brana stuck close behind Artus. They were still wearing their shrouds, but Artus could tell that it was wearing on them. They had abandoned all pretense of human posture and stalked behind Artus on all fours as much as on their two feet. Weirdly enough, this didn’t seem to attract any attention. Hool sniffed the air. “This is a bad place. I can’t breathe here. How do all these people live so close? How do they not go crazy?”
Brana yipped his agreement. “No space.”
Tyvian shrugged. “They get used to it, I suppose. The civil infrastructure here is marvelous—pumps or wells everywhere, magically purified to prevent disease, we’ve got parademons that eat the trash in an elaborate sewer system, we’ve got specters that clean the streets, feylamps everywhere. Honestly, I’m surprised more people don’t live here.”
“Does your mother live here?” Artus asked.
“Goodness gracious no!” Tyvian led them through a small garden festooned with various sculptures, mostly surprisingly life-like figures in a variety of bizarre poses. “I strongly suspect my mother has never set foot here in her adult life, which of course made it a very attractive place to go when I was a boy.”
Artus frowned, trying not to look too hard at a statue of a man with his hands outstretched and his face contorted in a grimace of either anguish or anger, though it was difficult to determine which. “Are we going to see your mother?”
Tyvian snorted. It sounded a bit like a laugh. “It’s very possible. Not yet, though—one does not simply walk into my mother’s parlor and say, ‘Hi, Lyrelle, what’s for dinner?’ ”
Artus couldn’t quite wrap his mind around a statement like that, so he tried to forget he heard it. His own mother would lose her mind if he walked in the door. Artus could only imagine how excited his sisters would be, too. If his ma found out he had snuck into town and not come to her straightaway, he was fairly certain he’d get paddled. He decided to change the subject. “What’s with these weird statues anyway?”
Tyvian glanced at the figure Artus was looking at—that of a young woman hugging herself, her head bowed in sorrow. “This is a penitentiary garden, Artus. These people are criminals, though with sentences short enough that the transmuters didn’t bother altering their original form.” He kicked back some of the ivy that had grown around the statue’s base. There, just barely visible in the faint lantern light, was a brass plate. It read: Annika Morosten, Arsonist.
After sounding out the words, Artus whispered, “Saints alive. Are they . . . are they really in there?”
Tyvian nodded. “Until a warlock utters the Rite of Release specific to the prisoner in question, yes.”
“This is a bad place,” Hool growled, pushing Artus along. “Stop looking and move.”
Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Hool, to you everywhere is a bad place.”
Tyvian led them to a cul-de-sac at the end of which was a taller building than most, with a painted facade that must have once been green, but the years and weather had led it to peel and crack, revealing a pale, bone-white beneath. In the flickering lamplight the paint looked like black flesh, rotten and cracking off the bony carcass of some long-dead animal. The silhouettes that moved behind the thick red curtains were indistinct, but numerous enough for Artus to get the sense there were a lot of people here. It wasn’t until they got closer that he made out the sign—a weatherworn wooden thing in the rough shape of a cook pot with the words The Cauldron painted on by a shaky hand.
“A tavern?” Artus asked, walking toward the front door.
Tyvian grabbed his arm and steered him toward the alley besides the building. “The classiest dive bar and whorehouse this side of the West Mouth, and a favorite spot for the young gentry to slum it from time to time. For many of my teenage years this was my home away from home. Now, everybody mind your manners; I was popular here once, but it’s been almost fifteen years since I’ve been here, so . . .”
Artus had been in enough dive bars to know what this meant. “No eye contact, hands on the purse, knife at hand.”
Tyvian smiled and slapped him on the shoulder. “Good boy. Now, follow my lead.”
The alley had a brick stairway that sunk into the earth and terminated in a heavy, iron-studded door. Tyvian trotted down the stairs with a spring in his step and knocked with the kind of force one usually reserved for occupied outhouses in emergency situations. After a second an eye-slot slid back, spilling yellow light onto Tyvian’s face.
A pair of black eyes with black, beetly eyebrows blocked that same light a moment later. “What?” The voice behind the door was heavy and sluggish. Artus conjured up images of every thick-necked bouncer at every bar he’d slummed around in Ayventry. He thought it was amazing how they all seemed to be the same.
Tyvian smiled. “It’s been a long time, so I don’t remember the password.�
��
The bouncer grunted. “Then go—”
Tyvian cut the bouncer off before the slot could be closed. “I do remember you, though, Maude. A man never forgets eyes like that—they haven’t aged a day.”
Those same eyes narrowed for a moment. “Kroth damn me. You’re Tyvian Reldamar, ain’t you?”
Tyvian shot Maude a wink. “That entirely depends on whether or not you’ve got a troop of Defenders hidden under your skirts, darling.”
The slot snapped closed. Artus grunted. “Maybe they’re mad at you or something.”
Tyvian ignored him and spent a moment straightening his jacket and taking a deep breath. The second he’d finished, the door-bolt snapped back and the door swung open. From it emerged the largest woman Artus had ever seen—as broad and thick and tall as an arahkan war-priest—wearing a studded leather jerkin, iron bracers, and a big, snaggle-toothed grin. She snatched Tyvian up like he was a daisy and gave him a hug that probably could have broken his back had it been given in anger. Maude spun Tyvian around, which was when Artus noted that she was, in fact, wearing a skirt. And heavy black boots with spiked steel toes.
Hool grunted approval. “Let’s go in. I like this woman.”
Maude set Tyvian down. There were tears in her eyes. “We heard rumors you was coming back but never believed it. Been talk about how the mirror men would pay a hundred marks for giving you up. Kroth’s bloody teeth, boy, it’s good to see you. Look at you, all grown!” Maude giggled, “I remember you when you was hanging around with that skinny fella—the Verisi, whatsit . . .”
“Carlo,” Tyvian offered.
“That’s the chap! Kroth, you weren’t more than fourteen then, were ye?”
Tyvian motioned toward Artus and the gnolls. “Maude, allow me to introduce my associates: Artus, Lady Hool, and Brana. Friends, this is Maude Telversham, co-owner of the Cauldron, and one of the people directly responsible for my corrupted youth.”
Maude’s eyes fixed on Hool and she gave a low whistle. “Hann’s boots, girlie, but you’re a looker.” She winked at Tyvian, “Always had good taste, eh?”
Hool’s nostrils flared. “We are not having sex. He is disgusting.”
Maude laughed so hard her face turned red. “Oh . . . oh my, I see you’ve got good taste, too, eh darling? Well, don’t stand there in the dark—come in, come in!”
Inside, the Cauldron was smoky and overly warm, with low-beamed ceilings and not quite enough lanterns. It was crowded, too, even though Artus judged dawn to be no more than an hour or two away. Maude had to duck under the beams as she led them to a big round table in a corner. Sitting around it were a trio of half-drunk young men in waistcoats. She slammed one fist on the table three times, making their tankards shake. “Off you go, gents—this table’s reserved.”
The men offered not a word of protest before moving off, and Artus tossed his pack under the table and sat down. Fatigue hit him like a wet blanket. He yawned. “Well, I guess they remember you.”
Tyvian nodded. “I guessed she might. I don’t see too many other people here I recognize. None of the barmaids, not the bartender, and I haven’t spotted any patrons I know either.”
“Is that a problem?” Artus eyed the other patrons. It was hard to make out faces in the smoky half-light.
Tyvian shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. The same faces might mean somebody might want to turn me in, I suppose. Different people means we don’t know what we’re getting into, and it’s concerning that Maude heard we were coming.”
“You should have kept on your old man disguise,” Hool said.
“Then we couldn’t have made it through the door, Hool,” Tyvian countered.
“I still have to wear this stupid magic disguise.”
“Hool, for the last time: there is a difference between disguising my human self as another human and you disguising your gnollish self as a different species altogether.”
Hool snorted. “Easy for you to say—you don’t have stupid knights wanting to mate with you all the time.”
Maude reappeared bearing four tankards of something that smelled like beer, but not very strongly. She set them down on the table with a clank, spilling some. Artus noted that the table was already sticky with . . . something. He hoped beer. “There you are, my darlings,” Maude said. “I take it you’ll need a room, then?”
Tyvian put a gold mark on the table—their very last one. “And discretion.”
Maude slipped the gold off the table and it seemed to vanish in her hand. “Claudia will set aside a room for you and the lady; the boys can sleep here. Last call is sunup, and nobody’ll bother ’em after that. As for discretion, well, there’s only so much I can do. Things have changed a bit since you’ve been here.”
Tyvian arched an eyebrow. “How so?”
Maude sighed and ran a hand through her thin iron-gray hair. “We’re owned by the Prophets, now. And lucky to have them.” The hard stare she gave Tyvian didn’t indicate any sense of fortune.
“They’re fine fellows, in their way,” Tyvian answered, also cool.
Artus blinked at this. “Who are the Proph—Ow!” Tyvian’s kick to his shin made his eyes water, and it was all he could do to not start crying. “Why’d you—”
“Who are the Prophets?” Hool asked. Artus noted, with some degree of bitterness, that Tyvian didn’t kick her in the shin.
Tyvian smiled at her. “Don’t worry about them. Old friends.”
Hool snorted. “You aren’t acting like they’re your friends.”
Maude cocked her head—somebody was banging on the door. “Catch up to you later. Good to have you back.”
When Maude had gone, Tyvian leaned in toward the rest of them and motioned that they lean close. Artus, his leg still smarting, half wanted to refuse out of spite, but he was too curious to resist. “The Mute Prophets,” Tyvian whispered, “are the crime syndicate in Saldor. I’ve not always been on the best of terms with them. They made contact with me back in Derby.”
“What did they want?” Hool asked.
“For me to stay away from Saldor.” Tyvian shrugged. “When I said no, their messenger tried to kill me, so I killed him first.”
Artus’s mouth popped open. “You never said anything about that!”
Tyvian grimaced. “If I had told you then, would you have furnished a cogent plan of action that would have capitalized upon the time between then and now?”
“Well . . .” Artus scowled. “You still shoulda told us.”
Hool folded her arms and flared her delicate human nostrils. “I agree with Artus. I think Artus has been right all this time. We should not have come here. Let’s leave.”
Artus grinned. “Finally! I’ve been saying that since forever!”
Tyvian scowled. “We can’t leave.”
“Yes we can.” Hool snorted. “We just go back to that awful place with the monster machines and ride one away. Easy.”
“We haven’t got any money, Hool, and we just defrauded a pair of Defenders there, remember?”
Artus scowled. “Fine, then—how about we walk? Get a horse? Stow away on a ship?”
“No boats!” Hool growled.
Brana grinned. “Boats! Yeah!”
Artus shrugged. “Anything’s better than staying here, where everybody wants us dead or turned to stone in one of those creepy gardens!”
Tyvian sighed and ran a hand through his hair, dislodging some of the dust from his earlier disguise. “Myreon is in one of those gardens, you know.”
Artus froze. “What?”
“Maybe.” Tyvian shook his head. “It’s a rumor, is all—I heard it back in Derby. It said that Myreon has been convicted of smuggling and petrified.”
A collective gasp. Artus looked at his hands; Brana also looked at Artus’s hands. Hool nodded. �
��I will get our things. We will go and save her.”
“No,” Tyvian snapped. “We will do nothing of the kind. It’s a trap—somebody framed her to get at me.”
“Then we will kill them and then save her,” Hool countered.
Artus blinked. “Who did it?”
Tyvian took a deep breath and then smiled faintly. “My mother.”
A million questions bubbled to the surface—Artus wanted to ask them all, but he found himself tripping over his words. He was about to stand up and start yelling at Tyvian for keeping this from them all, for taking them this far only to lead them into a self-admitted trap. He didn’t get the chance, though.
“Tyvian Reldamar! As I live and breathe! Is it really you?” Artus looked up to see a pale powder-cheeked man in an expensive cloak standing over the table. He had on a hat with a lot of feathers tilted at an angle that seemed to indicate it was either falling off or the wearer couldn’t decide whether his hat or his hair was more impressive and decided to display both. This seemed likely, since the fellow in question had blue hair the color of the sky, fashioned into ringlets that fell down on either side of his face.
Tyvian smiled broadly. “Gethrey Andolon. Been a long time, my friend.”
“That’s Master Andolon, you fiendish vagabond, you.” Andolon gave Tyvian a wink. “I heard a rumor you were coming back to town. The fellows down the club haven’t stopped talking about it for weeks. Weeks, I tell you!”
Tyvian put his hand behind his head and leaned back. “For me? Surely not—I doubt the boys even remember my name.”
Andolon pulled a chair from another table and sat himself down beside Brana. Brana sniffed Andolon’s shoulder surreptitiously. “Are you kidding, Tyv? We’ve got a whole bloody wing devoted to you! You have no idea what a draw you’ve been to new membership! Tyvian Reldamar, greatest duelist in the history of Saldor, wanted criminal, master smuggler, wealthy family—oh, my dear boy, I daresay I’ve dined off our friendship for well over a decade.”
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