The Duchess of the Shallows

by Neil McGarry

  THE DUCHESS OF THE SHALLOWS

  by Neil McGarry & Daniel Ravipinto

  The Duchess of the Shallows

  A Peccable Productions book

  Learn more at

  www.peccable.com

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places and people are products of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  ©2012 Neil McGarry and Daniel Ravipinto

  Cover illustration and map illustration © 2012 Amy Houser

  www.amyhouser.com

  To Star and Jack, who saw the lights of the city long before we ever arrived.

  Thanks to our test readers: Daniel J. Linehan ("He Who Must Be Obeyed"), Mark Fabrizi, Sean McGarry, Rosemary Auge, Rob Wetzel, Amy McClenahan, and the many others who very graciously agreed to enter the Grey City and get to know the people who live there.

  Chapter One: The color of her coin

  Chapter Two: In the market

  Chapter Three: Over a barrel

  Chapter Four: What the fire forged

  Chapter Five: A beggar at the gate

  Chapter Six: Chasing the Grey

  Chapter Seven: Houses high and low

  Chapter Eight: Laying out the tiles

  Chapter Nine: Letters and lightboys

  Chapter Ten: The job before the job

  Chapter Eleven: A fox and a rabbit

  Chapter Twelve: Something sharp and pretty

  Chapter Thirteen: Duchess takes a fall

  Chapter Fourteen: A harsh mistress

  Chapter Fifteen: Hector changes his mind

  Chapter Sixteen: Minette locks a door

  Chapter Seventeen: What the Uncle wants

  Chapter Eighteen: Duchess makes her mark

  The time had come to leap before she looked.

  Duchess crouched on the edge of the channel, her hands gripping cold, rough stone. She took a deep breath to steady herself, tasting metal. She shivered. Even though spring ruled above, down here winter held dominion. The water that flowed through the channel two feet below her would be cold, passing from darkness into darkness, and she swallowed hard. She was terrified now that she had come to it, and part of her wondered if there were some other way. She could very easily drown in the long, wet dark, or become trapped just past the arch only to be fished out by the baron's men…or by the Brutes, which would be even worse. But the estate walls were smooth and tall and she was no acrobat. No one would open a gate for her even if she had the coin for a bribe. There was no other way.

  There were shouts from the courtyard above, and she could imagine the baron's men fanning out, double-guarding the exits, beating the bushes and searching every shadow. They would be hindered by crowds of ghosts and gods, but in the end they would find her. She was out of time. It was either a blind jump or the baron’s justice.

  She jumped.

  Chapter One:

  The color of her coin

  The instant she showed the old man the coin, Duchess knew something was wrong.

  Her sixteen summers had given her little experience in dealing with men like Hector, but as she held up the mark she could tell from the look in his eyes and the set of his shoulders that he was now more anxious than she. She turned the small, worn piece of brass in her hand, the wan light trickling through the windows catching on the edges of the raised markings on either side: a large letter P encircled by a snake devouring its own tail. She watched him and tried to look as if she did this sort of thing every day.

  He squinted to see the coin more clearly, tilted his head and sneered. The expression did little to improve his appearance. He'd been standing at the far corner of the dimly lit room when she'd first entered the pawn shop, hunched over a splintered broom that was nearly as skinny as he. His tunic was threadbare, his breeches even more so, and both were dulled by the same dust that tickled her nose. He looked like someone's dotty uncle, except his eyes were bright with suspicion.

  Still, the coin had caught Hector's attention, bringing him in for a closer examination. And now she found herself so taken aback by his doubt and fear that she found she had nothing to say. A mark was a mark, wasn't it? Surely he'd seen others in his day. Any moment he would smile, reveal that she'd done precisely the right thing by showing it to him, and then they'd proceed with their business. She hoped.

  As if coming to some decision, Hector stepped away more swiftly than she would have expected and went back to his broom. He swept vaguely, head bowed, although through the dishwater mop of his hair he kept one eye firmly upon her. As far as she could tell his sweeping served only to shift the dust around the piles of junk that crammed the room from wall to wall. She made out cast-offs of every description: rusted weapons leaning near furniture in various stages of disrepair, boxes of paste jewelry lying on rolls of cloth and piles of clothes that ranged from fine to filthy.

  He worked quietly for a long moment. She debated simply taking the mark and leaving when Hector suddenly broke the silence. "Where did you get something like that?"

  "I found it in a pie," she said casually, trying to seem more confident than she felt. "I was told to show it to you. You've been shown."

  "And what am I supposed to do?" he replied, scowling as if to cover his uncertainty. "Hold your hand? Kiss your arse?"

  She hesitated. That bit of brass represented an incredible opportunity, one she'd long coveted but certainly never expected, but of course it would never do to say so. "I was told you would know how to open a door," she settled on. In any case that was all she really knew.

  Hector rolled his eyes, but Duchess sensed that his impatience was more than a little feigned; perhaps he found it safer to be angry than scared. "As if I have nothing better to do with my time." She looked at the broom in his hands, raised an eyebrow, said nothing. He flushed angrily. "What do you know of the Grey?"

  Again, she found herself taken aback. No one spoke openly of the Grey, not even Minette, who was as formidable as anyone Duchess had ever known. That Hector would do so on such short acquaintance made a part of her sit up and take notice. "I know most people don't speak of it to strangers," she said. She turned the coin over, and over again, passing it from hand to hand, feeling more certain of herself. She suddenly wondered that the Grey allowed someone like Hector into their ranks. He was no Minette.

  Hector flapped a hand in dismissal, but Duchess could tell she'd struck home. "You can flash that pretty coin of yours all you like, but it doesn't mean anything on its own."

  "It meant enough to put you on the jump," she replied as coolly as she dared. "You just about broke your legs scrambling over to get a look at it."

  He grunted. "Well, hand it over," he said, and Duchess was suddenly reminded of one of the fishwives who often bought biscuits in the morning. She was large, loud and friendly, but she always tried to get more than she'd paid for by pretending to misunderstand the deal she'd just reached. Hector was older, skinnier and creakier, but his manner was the same.

  Duchess shook her head, closing her fingers tight about the coin. "I was told to show you this mark; no one said anything about handing it over." He made as if to protest but she rode over him. "Now can you help me or not? Or shall I take this elsewhere?" She wasn't sure just where she'd take it, but Hector didn't need to know that.

  For a moment she thought she'd overplayed her hand, that Hector would simply ignore her and go back to his sweeping, and she sensed that a part of him wanted to do precisely that. Clearly a mark was not always a mark, she thought, glancing at the coin in her hand. The origin and purpose of that piece of brass might be unclear, but the letter that had accom
panied it was not: Hector was to be her guide into the Grey. His eyes measured her for a long moment, then he sighed. "All right, all right," he grumbled, setting aside his broom, and his tone and manner changed, as if he were reading from a script long since memorized. "It is within my rights to demand a test before I open this door of yours." He gave her a yellow smile, but it was a forced and brittle thing. "Though I imagine someone as worldly as you already knew that." She hadn't, of course, but she'd be damned if she'd admit it. "With a little luck," he continued, "you'll not survive the test and I can have done with you." She said nothing, refusing to let him frighten her. Instead, she simply tapped the coin against the edge of the table. His eyes flicked to the mark and then back to her. Again he sneered. "Come back tonight. Last bell. Knock thrice on the back door."

  She was done here. She slid the mark back into her pocket and turned to leave.

  "One more thing," Hector added as she reached for the knob, "When you come back, don't bring that young man who's been skulking on my doorstep. Come alone."

  * * *

  "So it's a test," said Lysander as they left the edge of the Deeps, heading north towards the Shallows and the garret. The sheepish smile with which he'd greeted her when she left Hector's shop made clear his embarrassment at being caught eavesdropping. She filled him in on what had happened with Hector, but he'd heard most of it from the doorstep anyway. "Makes sense, I suppose. The Grey must have some way of initiating members, of weeding out the high from the hopeless. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about."

  "And if I pass the test? Do I get to join the Grey?" The streets were busy at this time of day and in Rodaas ears were everywhere, so they stayed close together to keep the conversation private. The morning fog was already rolling in off the bay, slowly climbing the hill from the Wharves and snaking into the Shallows. The early spring sun, masked by the usual gray cloud cover, gave little light and less warmth, and Duchess found herself shivering at the damp chill in the air. The warped and rotten wood shacks of the Deeps had given way to the slate-gray stone buildings of the Shallows. "Gray above, gray below and wet in between," her father had once said of Rodaas. As in many things, he'd been right.

  "Probably, and maybe you'll earn yourself a mark." Against that gray background his tumbling blond curls and light blue doublet were vivid; Lysander was never one to blend into his surroundings. Duchess, on the other hand, was all brown: brown hair, brown eyes, and light brown tunic and leggings. She touched the mark in her pocket, and as usual Lysander read her mind. "You didn't earn that one. It was given to you."

  "And I don't trust it, Lysander. Hector's reaction…wasn't what I expected. Not that I'm complaining about an invitation to the Grey, but to have something so strange dropped into my lap like this..."

  "Are you sure you don't know who P is?" Lysander asked. "I wonder, did Noam take you in as a favor to the Grey? Do you think it's connected to your parents?"

  This turn of conversation made Duchess uneasy. As far as Lysander knew, Duchess was the daughter of a cobbler and his wife, whose home had burned one summer evening. "That's as true as it needs to be," Noam had said when he concocted the tale eight years ago, "and as much as folk need to know. If anyone gets curious, just pull a sad face and start the tears. Nothing like a crying child to shut off nosy questions." Duchess had taken this advice to heart although at first those tears hadn't been false. "Maybe that's it," she said evasively, ashamed at how easily the lie came. "So what do you think it'll be?"

  "The test? Who knows?" Lysander fended off the attentions of a beggar who lacked the ambition to ply his trade in the higher districts. "Hector's just a fence. I've managed to sell him some of the things I've, uh, acquired, at parties, but he gave me the usual rates and said nothing of the Grey. Judging from that shack he calls a shop, I don't think he's very important." He sighed and bit at his thumbnail. "If Hector's to open a door for you, Duchess, it's a cellar door. Maybe he'll ask you to help him fence something stolen by the Grey." He poked her playfully in the ribs. "Or ask you to help clean that shop. From what I saw through the window, it could use a good dusting."

  "Or a good burning." Uncomfortable with the speculation, Duchess changed the subject. "So who's the lucky customer tonight?"

  Lysander made a face. "No one, unfortunately. Slow week for ganymedes, I'm afraid, so it's the Merry Widow for us all. Care to join us before your meeting with His Dustiness?"

  She shook her head. "I'd better not. I'll probably try to sleep a bit so I'm alert when I talk to Hector. Besides, I know better than to let ganymedes anywhere near my gold. You'll have drunk it up before tenth bell."

  Lysander scoffed. "Your florin are safe. I won enough from Minette to take us through the night."

  The fog became thicker, muffling both sight and sound, and their banter trickled off into silence. Soon it was as if they were the only real things left in the whole city. The folk who moved about on the streets seemed little more than half-seen shadows and smothered footsteps, the buildings a shoal of gray stone, islands floating on some far-off sea. The Shallows, which at other times bustled with activity, now seemed little more than a distant and half-remembered dream.

  Duchess had lived with the ubiquitous Rodaasi fogs for as long as she'd lived in the city, but never easily. They figured unpleasantly in one of her earliest memories, and although she'd been no more than four at the time, she remembered that years-past day with eerie clarity. It had been her first autumn trip into to the city from the country estate, which lay miles and miles from the city proper. At the time it had seemed like some great sojourn, although she later realized they'd only been on the road for a few days, packed into the large carriage along with the chests and boxes and anything else her father thought needful until their return the next spring.

  They'd ridden swiftly past farms and noble estates glorious with autumn, the fields filled with wheat and corn, the trees clothed in red and yellow and gold. Her brother and sister had slept most of the time, but she had watched avidly out the window from the seat beside her father, unwilling to miss even one moment of the journey. And so she'd been awake when they'd reached the city.

  They approached from the west near sunset. The sun was at their backs, the sea before them, and what lay between seemed somehow larger than either. A great hill rose up and up and up before them, filling the whole world. The high gray walls that encircled it were taller than anything she'd ever seen, and yet even they were dwarfed by the enormity that was the seat of the empire. The mount was uneven, rising sharply from the west to slope more gradually towards the east, as if slumping beneath the weight of the city. Every inch seemed to move, and she soon realized that movement was people and carts and animals, some with early-lit lanterns looking like tiny stars against the unbroken gray of the domes and keeps and towers. She heard the bells chiming the hour from somewhere atop the hill, pealing out and down until even from afar they seemed to fill the air. She thought the City of Rodaas was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen or heard.

  And then she saw the fog.

  It rose from the water on the eastern side of the city, and what she later would come to know as the Wharves had already been swallowed by that rising gray tide. The mist moved slowly but inexorably upward, wrapping the hill in great arms of shadow, consuming the city layer by layer like some monster emerging from the sea. The great walls vanished, then this keep and that tower, and the tiny stars turned one by one into flickering dreams amidst the swirling mist. Finally only the uppermost tiers of the city were visible above it all, an island upon an ocean of nothingness. She shivered at the sight, and yet found herself unable to look away.

  And then she felt gentle hands about her waist, pulling her back into the safety of the carriage. Without realizing she had leaned farther and farther out until she was about to tumble into the road. She turned to see her father, looking strangely uneasy. He'd seated her beside him, whispering "Let us go in; the fog is rising." Then he'd reached across and pulled th
e curtains, shutting out the sight. Her father had not liked the fogs, either.

  Lysander's nudge woke her from the memory. "Fog getting to you again?" he asked gently.

  She smiled ruefully. Lysander, Noam, Minette…no one other than her father ever reacted to the fogs as she did. "I guess I'm just tired today." She took his hand and pulled him along, and to her relief he did not press her.

  They turned down a small alley and up the rickety wooden steps to the attic garret. Lysander had been renting the garret from Minette for as long as she could remember, and depending on the financial status of his current clients and his luck at tiles, he might be anywhere from months ahead to years behind on his payments.

  He opened the door and lit candles while Duchess lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling. The garret was old and drafty, hot in summer and cold in winter, strewn with clothing and empty wine bottles, but it was Lysander's alone. Duchess hadn't had a room to herself since she came to Noam's; she shared the loft room with her "sisters." Or used to. Privacy had been in short supply in the baker's small house.

  Soon the room was filled with the scent of cloves (the candles no doubt stolen from one client or another) and Lysander was next to her. They lay in silence for awhile as the light outside the window shifted. Finally, he said, "Hector's right, you know. This is something you have to do on your own." He stroked her shoulder-length hair and sighed. "I'll admit I'm a little jealous that you've got this opportunity, but that's just how it is. It's your chance, not mine."

  She lay there with him, watching the candle-flames dance and listening to the murmur of the city: children shouting, dogs barking, the occasional rumbling of wagon wheels over the cobbles. For the first time since she'd received that mysterious letter, she felt at ease, and something went out of her in a rush. Before she knew it, the tears had started. Lysander waited, and after her crying had run its course, he reached out and pulled her near. "I knew that Silk was in there somewhere," he murmured into her hair, and she laughed despite herself. Lysander had once said that she was two people: Steel who stood off pastry thieves with her knife and braved the Shallows at night, and Silk who was afraid of it all. She didn't feel very silky, she thought, swiping at her eyes with a sleeve. She just felt damp.