Shadowcloaks

by Benjamin Hewett

  Lucinda grunts. “How do you know this, Teacup?”

  Her tone says she couldn’t care less, except to keep me talking. I’ve always tried to be silent down here, but if it’s comforting for her to hear my voice echoing off the stone, letting her know that she’s not going to dissolve in the inky blackness and cease to exist, well I won’t begrudge her that. She’s the one who spent an entire day folded into a luggage crate.

  “Gerard told me.”

  “Gerard? The pensioner who always tries to grope me?”

  “There’s only one Gerard.”

  “I hate Gerard.”

  “Hmm.” I think about that for a minute. “Well, I don’t hate him. He lost his brother down here, lost his son in the King’s war, lost his wife about the same time as I lost Sarah. He’s lost himself, too. Doesn’t excuse his behavior, but I don’t hate him.”

  I hear the clink of the metal rings as she climbs and wonder how good a friend I really am. “I could knife him, though, the next time he tries?”

  Lucinda snorts and then sighs. “No. I can take care of myself.”

  “I know. But you don’t have to do it alone.”

  Another silence.

  “Teacup, you’re a better man than you let on.”

  “If you say so.”

  We stop at the top of the upshaft, dangling our ankles over the edge. We decide to stay roped together, but I unknot her pack and hand it to her. “Gerard worked down here after leaving the King’s service,” I say to break the silence. “Says they use that pressure shaft to flush the cesspools on every block. In the storms they work the traps that redirect the flow. Says they have counterweights and floats.”

  “How do we get out?” Her voice trembles a little, obviously not fascinated with the engineering.

  “Easy. We’ve reached the lateral lines. There’s a hub about two blocks away. Pick the right line and then we’re one more upshaft and a drainage grate away from the alley behind your old house.”

  “If we pick the wrong one?”

  “We won’t.”

  Lucinda mutters a prayer, and the scar on her arm starts to glow. Not as brightly as when she got angry with M’ma Ownie, but bright enough to cast light on the arches above. It’s better light than I’ve ever had down here before. Torchlight always seems to make things worse.

  Lucinda has to stoop a bit as we get moving again, but the height is comfortable for me. I never hit my head. The lines in Upper Ector are larger, better equipped for siphoning away the heavy rains and stormwater that come in spring. They’re probably even tall enough for Lucinda to walk upright. The hubs there are bigger than the average Ectorian cottage. I’ve heard that the system in Doward is cavernous, with a whole guild of people dedicated to its misuse, but I’ve never felt the need to go to Doward and find out for myself.

  As we walk I tell Lucinda about how the hubs allow the line pressure to equalize in all directions. The soft, white light from Lucinda’s arm illuminates puddles in the closely joined stones of the lateral line. Soon though, these puddles disappear, replaced by gaps appearing between stones.

  “Lucinda. Slow down.”

  She doesn’t listen to me, pretends not to hear. She’s in a hurry to get out.

  Beyond her, the gaps are larger. The stones seem uneven, sagging even.

  “Lucinda,” I say. “Please.”

  I can hear water flowing, can feel it around us, even though I can’t see it. At first I think it’s another lateral line, but that isn’t likely, unless this shaft has been blocked somehow. I feel the sodden air of the sewer moving around me, too, the muffled sound of it playing on my imagination. I see the spaces between the stones, wider than they should be. They seem to grow ever wider as I watch.

  She takes another step.

  “Stop!”

  The rope jerks as the stone crumbles beneath her. I stumble, and my instincts pull me flat, spreading my weight as one might do on a frozen river. I bury my dagger into the crevice between two stones.

  Black water sucks her down immediately, the oilcloth pack on her back driving her deeper.

  In the despairing darkness, the rope holds. The jangling tension around my waist intensifies, adding to the tension in my arm. I grip my dagger as insurance against the now slightly sloping masonry, trying to figure out what to do.

  The stone holds me silently. I can hear water rushing beneath me, heading in the direction of the river, and nothing else. Without Lucinda’s breathing, and her light, I am truly alone in the dark. I’m afraid to move, afraid that I’ll be pulled into the sinkhole by Lucinda’s weight.

  “Lucinda?”

  I’m pinned. If I edge closer to the giant hole, the edges might collapse. If I stand, I’ll be pulled in. Should I cut her loose? No. That only helps me.

  Haul her up.

  I laugh in the dark. How? She weighs almost twice as much.

  I say the first prayer I’ve said in seven years. “You’re a real bastard, Pan if this is how you repay her devotion.”

  Pan, if he even exists, doesn’t answer me. He never has, and I suspect he never will.

  There is long silence.

  Then I hear her gasping.

  “That’s not an answer, Pan,” I mutter, but the relief I feel is palpable.

  “Lucinda?”

  “Teacup,” she screams frantically, sputtering. “Don’t move.”

  “Like hell I’m going to move!” I shout back. “You’re cutting me in half!” I have to grip my dagger with both hands to keep from sliding in after her.

  I think about telling her I’m doing the hokey-hokey jig, but everything hurts too much. I humor her instead and try not to move.

  Then the sewer stops being dark.

  I risk a glance back and see one of her hands coming over the edge, and then the other, her sword ringing on the stone, followed by a sodden leg.

  “Arch beneath us,” she says, panting.

  Now she’s interested in architecture.

  Her swim in the sinkhole has obviously put her in a different frame of mind. How she climbed out of that hole with a sodden, oilcloth pack full of armor is beyond me. Then I realize she’s cut her pack loose. It’s just her, a not-so-white shift, and Mother Eleanor’s sword. And maybe that dagger she keeps strapped to her thigh.

  I don’t ask. The armor was priceless. There will be hell to pay if she ever makes it back to Fortrus.

  We lie on the sewer stones panting, thankful to be alive.

  “Well,” she says finally, “at least now there’s some extra space in here.”

  #

  Somewhere in the city above, gentle rain begins to fall. The trickling water helps to clear out some of the smell, but the early spring rain is ice cold. After the long night and day of rowing and an evening of navigating and re-navigating the sewers due to cave-ins, I’m beginning to worry about ever getting out.

  I don’t tell Lucinda, though. I just keep talking her through the process, calm as I would talk to Timnus or Valery, though that makes it harder for me. Pan’s beard, I miss my kids. I miss their laughter, Val’s shiny eyes, and Timmy’s mischievous grin.

  I need to focus. The sewers aren’t in as good repair as I remembered them. There are several collapses where water seems to be draining into large sinkholes rather than out in the intended way. I imagine giant holes growing insidiously under the city, hungry caverns waiting to swallow up the locals.

  It’s long past dark when we finally emerge from the upshaft that opens in the little alley beyond Lucinda’s place.

  I strip in the dark by the fountain and wash the filth from my only set of clothes, directly in the basin. By day, fouling the fountain is a punishable offense, but I’m too tired to care. Intelligent citizens know to take their drinking water from the flowing portion of the fountain anyway, not the basin.

  Nobody is going to see us. Lower Ector is dark, darker than it should be. Fewer lit lamps. Fewer street patrols. In fact, I don’t hear a single footstep on the dark, cobbled streets
during the time it takes to wash my pants and tunic.

  Maybe I’ve just grown accustomed to the safety and radiance of Fortrus, but it seems as if the whole night-world has stopped, ceding its bated breath to cold drizzle and the occasional crash of thunder.

  The night is wet, and I hear Lucinda struggling back into her soaking shift. “Dammit,” she swears again, bemoaning the loss of her armor for the fortieth time. “Magnus is going to kill me.”

  “No, he’s not,” I say. “He’s going to be happy you’re still alive.”

  This stops her from swearing. More importantly, it keeps her from waking up the neighborhood.

  NINE

  I can’t tell if Lucinda’s supporting me or if I’m supporting her when we stumble up the stairs to her small, single room apartment. She glares at me for a minute, rain trickling down her face in the flashing lightning, until I realize it’s my job to open the door.

  “I gave the only key to Carmen,” she reminds me.

  I nod, fumbling in my jacket for the picks, hoping I remember how to use them. I’m a bit rusty, since practice in Fortrus raised too many questions, but the lock is simple.

  It falls into my open hand, freeing a bar to slide behind the door. Lucinda kicks it open, not nearly as quiet and stealthy as we meant to be. Our exhaustion makes us loud as drunks.

  If the Nightshades are looking for us, though, they aren’t looking here. There are no footprints in the carpet of dust before us, no sound of muffled weapons, shifting feet, or heavy breathing.

  Except our own.

  “Ladies first,” I whisper.

  Lucinda glares at me again but darts in. There is a muffled thump and then the crashing of a tin plate on planking. She comes back to the door wincing and holding her hip. “Carmen moved the furniture.”

  My heart stops for a moment, hearing her name out loud, reminding me of just how far I’ve come to find her.

  “Don’t just stand there, Tee,” Lucinda says, yanking me inside. She fumbles with the flint, and then a candle casts long, dark shadows across the room.

  I’ve never actually been to Lucinda’s house before. It isn’t large, just big enough for a bed, a rug, and the now-overturned table. There’s a small alcove by the window where she keeps a shiny pitcher and a hairbrush, and a pile of scrap fabric in one corner. And a dress draped over a chair.

  The dress is much too short for Lucinda. Its hem looks black in the dimness, but I recognize the cut of the fabric and know it’s green. It sets off her hair, Carmen’s hair, like you wouldn’t believe. I run my hands across it, imagining Carmen here, working by candlelight, sewing, sewing, and discarding scraps. Determinedly making up for lost time and destroyed dresses. There’s a smoky smell on this one, rescued from the fire as it was, and no amount of scrubbing will completely erase it. Afterward, she only wore this one on laundry day.

  I check the pockets as I run my hands over the soft fabric and find a tired, pewter thimble. It’s not one of her best, but I take it anyways. For luck. In the other pocket there’s a note, once sealed with red wax pressed with a non-descript signet. The parchment unfolds to a single word of advice. “Hide.”

  Such an insubstantial piece of paper. So meaningless. I might be able to track the seal back to the person who sent it but I’d need days to sort out the signets of all the lesser nobles, and then Pan help me if it might actually be a secret one, not publicly known.

  I examine the room, looking for a better clue, something like what I found in Fortrus when hunting Sephram’s murderer, but I see nothing relevant. I can feel myself swaying in my stance, my eyelids drooping. “Lucinda, do you see anything unusual. Anything . . .” I can’t think. Pan’s beard, I’m tired.

  “Sleep first,” Lucinda says in a weary voice. She squeezes my shoulder and kneels at the foot of her bed, rummaging underneath for a spare blanket. “Here.”

  She knows I don’t need much to be comfortable. Or rather, that very little makes me comfortable nowadays. I curl up on the rug and pull it over me, asleep before she figures out what to do with herself.

  #

  I wake up to hear Lucinda’s bed creaking and the whuff of her breath as she blows the candle out. I sleep.

  #

  The planks are a grave that I can’t escape. I see Carmen screaming, hot irons pressed to her bare face, figures in black cloaks barking questions, leering at her in the red-hot light.

  I shout myself awake.

  #

  “Shhh, Teacup,” Lucinda mutters in her sleep. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  #

  I force my feet through the god-cursed blackness between us. It grips me like tar as I struggle forward, collapsing at her side, but she’s already three days dead. Ice cold and pale as a Dreadlord. I clutch her to my chest and cherish her cold blood on my bare skin.

  #

  “Shhh, Teacup.”

  #

  I watch from the gallows where I hang, neck broken but somehow still alive. They don’t even bother to bury Carmen. They toss her into the river, green and red sinking in the swirling, black current.

  #

  I sob myself awake, trying to shake off the horror of seeing her die a hundred different ways. The room’s temperature has dropped dramatically, and the air coming through the window isn’t so much drying out our wet clothes as it is freezing them. I stumble up to shut it, thankful for a distraction.

  As my eyes adjust to the few pale moonbeams slipping through the clouds, I see the rain has turned again to snow. A thin layer of it coats the rooftops, unconvinced that winter is over. Moonlight beats harshly upon it.

  The cold air cuts me, turning my feverish sweat icy. I’m not rested, but my desire for sleep is gone. Every second I wait is a second of torture and abuse for Carmen.

  Lucinda’s still snoring. Once she gets going, she sleeps as deeply as Magnus. Getting my wet pants and shirt on without waking her is no trouble. The mismatched boots are a little more difficult, particularly the goblin-made one. It hugs my foot in odd places. The one that Timmy made for me, though, is black and soft. It fits perfectly, matching the silent stretch of my favorite pants.

  There is no hesitation, no need to calculate my next move. The tax collector who brought me the ransom note said it came from Number 7, Redemption Alley. That’s the first place to look. He said a red-haired woman was living in the house, and the description didn’t match my wife.

  It’s the young Nightshade who once stood outside the clink-house and taunted me. It’s the one who always watched and ran away. I call her Red, and she’s the one who betrayed Carmen.

  My knives weigh heavily against my wet shirt and ribs, but I put my faith in them. Today, somebody is going to die.

  TEN

  I slip and slide across the rooftops of Lower Ector, cursing under my breath the whole way. The snow has already turned to slush. It globs over the edge to the cobbles, sucking at my mismatched boots, whose soles are different enough to throw off my balance. The dim light of morning is also just bright enough to ruin my night vision without piercing the weakest shadow. My fingers and toes are stiff from the cold.

  The slushy, slake-shingled rooftops of Lower Ector are still less treacherous than sleety roof-tiles in Fortrus. And Carmen is waiting.

  Soon sunlight and exertion begin to thaw things out. Back comes the dull headache. It worsens the closer I get to Redemption Alley, and the headache brings with it a slight ringing in my ears. The cold-weather sewer swim, the sleepless nights, the weeks of exertion . . . it’s all taking a toll on me. If I don’t find Carmen soon, I’ll be in no shape to carry on.

  With the sun at my back I peek over the rooftop blocking my view. The first floor and back entrance to my house are still bathed in shadow, but the sun catches the upper story and turns it golden.

  It’s my first glimpse of the house in several months. There’s an emptiness to it, a sadness that says the house has changed. The windows to the cobbler shop are still boarded up, but the back door, the one that
opens on a narrow staircase to the second-floor apartment, has been replaced. Or rebuilt. They’ve reused parts of the old door, but not many, since the Nightshade’s magii really did a number on it the day I ran for Fortrus.

  Lying in the slush of Madame Marconey’s rooftop, I can see through my own kitchen window. The red-haired Nightshade is there, sitting at my own table, soaking up the morning sun contentedly, sipping a mug of something steamy. She is older than I remember. Twenty-four? Twenty-six? And not the image of a journeyman assassin. Her posture at the table is too human, too personal.

  Carmen’s oiled-leather trade-satchel is lying on the table, belly open. The woman—Red?—has pulled a handful of drawings from it and is studying them intently.

  It’s odd to see a Nightshade engrossed in such a trivial thing as reviewing dress designs. Is this how she passes her time? Rifling through Carmen’s stuff? Her behavior seems incongruent and out of place. Red stares at the sketches and patterns for long moments. Pale fingertips caress the parchment, careful as she turns from one design to the next. Her posture has a practiced feel, the kind I saw in Sara as she worked on boots, or in Carmen as she stitched fabric by the fire and gave advice to Lucinda. This woman, this assassin, is comfortable here. She smiles as if she’s reviewed these drawings a hundred times and knows each individually.

  It makes me angry. It’s the skin of humanity she puts on to get townsfolk to lower their guard.

  Pale Tom did that. He was just human enough to be confusing.

  But it’s not going to work with me. I’ve seen her in the market, seen her flitting across the rooftops, seen her movement fitting into some larger plan, the plan that lured me back here, hoping to rescue my wife. She must be dangerous, must be waiting for me, but she doesn’t know I’m in the city yet. None of the Nightshades do. They won’t be positioned to spring this trap.

  My body prickles like the striking of a thousand tiny bolts of lightning. The ringing in my ears ratchets up a notch. I feel a fever coming, a sickness that will not pass quickly. This is my chance.