The Duchess of the Shallows

by Neil McGarry

  He was her first, and would always be. The day had been as cloudy and foggy as any other spring day, but Lysander had had no clients and Duchess no chores so they'd conducted a long tour of every dice game in the Shallows. Lysander knew them all, and although his luck wasn't always the best, on that day he had been on fire. The table, the rules, the opponents...none of it mattered. The dice seemed a part of his body, and not the canniest sailor or oiliest trickster could withstand him. She had been fascinated by the way his clever fingers had held the dice, the wrinkle of his brow as he considered the odds, and the musical peal of his laughter when luck went his way again and again. He had seemed almost like a young god, matchless and untouchable.

  By fourth bell he had a purse full of pennies, half-pennies and sou, a small fortune by their standards, and so that night had been full of wine and victory. They'd stumbled back to the garret, Lysander half-blind from drink, but Duchess remembered every moment. The silky smoothness of his skin, the aching blue of his eyes, the memory of it now a sweet pain that she knew no other man could inflict upon her.

  How could she have left him to the Brutes?

  If she could only find her way back to him she would never tell him another lie, she vowed to herself in the dark, wiping away tears. And if Malleus and Kakios had hurt him she would go back to House Eusbius, this time not to take a dagger but to deliver one.

  Chapter Fourteen:

  A harsh mistress

  Whatever gods watched over bread girls were with her, because after a time she began to sense more light ahead. She moved more quickly, eager to put the sewers, and the memories, behind her. The tunnel had twisted and turned, but thankfully there had been no further openings along the way. Soon she smelled brackish water, the unmistakable odor of the harbor, and her heart sang. The wharves had never smelled so good, she thought with a smile as she emerged from the tunnel into the moonlit night. She stepped out onto slippery rocks washed by the bay and looked around. The Wharves rose behind her, with lights here and there and the faint sounds of voices and music. She moved away from the tunnel opening towards the water and eased herself into a sitting position on one of the rocks. She had done it. She had fooled a baron, stolen a one-of-a-kind artifact, and escaped like a thief in the stories, and neither the Brutes nor the sewers had been able to stop her. She burst into laughter and paddled her feet in the water like a child, savoring her victory.

  After awhile she became aware of how filthy and cold she was. She could do something about one of them, so she slipped off her soaked and tattered dress and rinsed herself in the bay. She normally wouldn't consider bay water clean, and it was certainly cold, but it was a world better than the cistern. She hoped no one was around to see the dirty naked woman swimming near the sewer outlet, but in truth she was too elated for concern. The docks seemed quiet at this hour, the sailors no doubt off drinking or whoring, and either no one saw her or no one cared.

  After her bath she donned the torn and dirty dress once more, secured the dagger in her bodice as best she could, and clambered carefully over the bay-washed stones to the wooden walks that lined the harbor. Climbing up, she looked carefully about, but for the moment the area was quiet and empty, and she was hopeful that no one had seen her. It was time to make her way back towards the Shallows and safety, but she was uncertain which way to go. It was hardly her first time in this district, but when pushing the bread cart she generally followed Dock Street from the Shallows directly to the wharves and back again. If she followed the harbor far enough she'd eventually run into Dock Street, but she was wary of running into the sailors who often roamed the docks. During the day these men were good customers, but at night...well, she'd heard dreadful stories of the liberties such men took with women alone, and she'd had quite enough adventure for the evening. She decided it was safer to move through the streets, keeping to the shadows and away from the docks. Even if she never found Dock Street, if she climbed the hill long enough she'd eventually reach the Shallows. She was glad the evening fog had receded; she was nervous enough as it was.

  Beyond the docks were warehouses where incoming ships stored their cargo, but they were all closed and dark, awaiting the morning and the arrival of the wool and grain factors, ready for another day of counting the wealth that moved from the bay through Rodaas. Mercenaries armed with clubs and daggers guarded many of these, and since she wasn't sure if they were any more trustworthy than the sailors, she took care not to let them see her. Despite her squelching shoes she managed to slip by unnoticed. She weaved her way through alleys and narrow lanes, always on her guard, and at one point she slid around a corner to find a skinny dog worrying what looked like a cat it had no doubt killed. The dog growled at her and advanced menacingly, but it was not the first time Duchess had faced a canine threat; there were some Shallows dogs large enough to steal her entire bread cart and ferocious enough to dare. She slipped off a shoe and hurled it with a practiced hand, striking the dog square on the nose. The animal yelped and leapt back, and when she put her remaining shoe into throwing position it decided that the dead cat was not worth the trouble and slunk away. She replaced her left shoe, retrieved her right, and went on her way, feeling bolder. Still, the threats she most feared were those that went on two legs, and who would not likely be dissuaded by thrown footwear.

  She rounded a corner and found herself on a wide, cobblestoned street. To her right she could see all the way down the hill to the harbor, and to her left were lights, sounds and people. Her chest loosened a bit; at last she had found Dock Street, the main thoroughfare of the district, which would lead her directly into the Shallows. That would of course mean passing through the heart of the Foreign Quarter, where there were thousands of eyes to note her passage and as many tongues to tell the tale. She would have do her best to remain unnoticed.

  She needn't have worried. The Foreign Quarter was filled with such a wide variety of folk that one drenched girl was barely worth a second look. By day this area was filled with people who hurried along with wary eyes and no time for strangers, but at night the Foreign Quarter came alive. She stepped around crowds of Ahé, olive-skinned with dark, hooded eyes and hair that was either milky white or blue-black. She gave way to a gaggle of Domae girls her own age, who seemed clad in nothing but cleverly wrapped bright silk. Ulari sailors, hairless and ebon-skinned, and almost too drunk to stay on their feet, hailed her in languages she couldn't begin to understand. None of them seemed unfriendly, however, and she found herself intrigued by their baggy silk shirts and strange trousers of many colors. She watched a group of women play a game that involved flipping wooden tokens from their elbows into their palms and back again, and when one of the women sent her pieces flying the entire group burst into raucous laughter. She'd seen the same thing at the baron's party and wondered idly if the game had made its way down the hill from Temple or up the hill from Wharves. She was fascinated by a young Domae man, his slick brown body naked to the waist, who danced languidly while holding two lit torches that he whirled and tossed with amazing agility. He was dark, slender and exquisitely handsome, and Duchess found herself unable to look away. She had never seen a man move so seductively. He was surrounded by a crowd of women, hooting, clapping and occasionally tossing a penny into a nearby kettle. When he caught her eye and smiled mischievously her heart jumped; certainly Lysander had never looked at her that way. Flushed and flustered, but strangely flattered, she hurried on. He probably flirted with all of the women, she told herself, and would never have bothered if he'd known she had nothing to throw into his kettle.

  She passed winesinks where voices sang in strange tongues, and made her way past taverns that exuded the scent of unfamiliar dishes: spicy, sweet, sharp and bitter. In the higher districts there were rumors that the food in the Foreign Quarter was made from children stolen from the Shallows and the Deeps in the dead of night, but Duchess had never believed that. If she'd had the coin she might have stopped to sample, but she had only a wet, stinking dress and one tig
htly wrapped dagger. Besides, the fewer people who took note of her tonight the better. Duchess had heard a great deal about the folk of the Foreign Quarter, and little good, but now that she'd seen for herself she found them exciting. Despite her situation, she thought she would like to come back one night when she had the time – and the coin – to enjoy herself.

  The sights and sounds had relaxed her and exhaustion was taking its toll, so it was little wonder she did not see the crowd of blackarms until she was nearly on top of them. They were gathered outside a small, gray tavern that sagged heavily against its neighbors, nearly at the very top of Dock Street. A brightly-colored sign showing a large-breasted, raven haired woman with a frown like a storm rising proclaimed it as The Harsh Mistress, and through the open doors and windows she could see a throng of sailors, stevedores and other Wharves folk, drinking, laughing, shouting and singing. The crowd was so loud and boisterous that they'd caught the attention of the local watch, who were busy restoring order. The street was crowded, and as Duchess weaved through the press one of the blackarms stepped backward and bumped into her. "Pardons, sir," she muttered, but before she could move on a hand shot out and seized her arm in a grip of iron.

  "Here's your pardon," the man said, and Duchess felt a jolt of recognition. He was sober now, and wearing a black armband as well as a blackened eye and a split lip from the beating the lightboys had given him, but there was no mistaking those small eyes and that beetled brow. Those eyes were dancing with triumph, and he grinned as he painfully tightened his grip. "Where's your blade, knife girl?" He shook her roughly, his face inches from hers. "Maybe it's with my purse, do you think?" She was frozen in terror; the gods of ill fortune, who had stayed their hand all evening, had forborne no longer. The drunken brute she'd robbed that night in the Shallows was here again, this time stone sober and surrounded by a dozen of his companions. If he arrested her for a robber he'd find the dagger, and soon she'd have two counts of thievery to answer. The first would earn her a flogging; the second, a noose.

  She'd left Lysander just like this, helpless in the grip of some cruel stranger, and she'd done nothing and they'd called him rabbit and dragged him down the stairs and away to some awful place and now the gods were punishing her in kind. The man pulled her closer, grabbing her other arm as well. "Where is it, girl?" he hissed, uglier in his anger even than in the stupid drunkenness of that night she'd robbed him. "Where's my coin? Where's my purse?"

  One of his fellows, grabbing at a particularly truculent patron barked out a laugh. "Harrin's got himself another one!" he shouted.

  "What's this, then?" said a sharp voice from behind her. Duchess turned to see a tall, slim man with the blackest hair she'd ever seen, blacker even than the arm band he wore. His skin was too dark for a Rodaasi and his eyes too heavy-lidded; Ahé, she knew. He glanced briefly at Duchess but his attention was mainly on Harrin.

  Harrin wasted no time. "Caught me a thief, Sheriff Galeon," he replied, giving Duchess another shake, and she felt the dagger at her breast slip ever so slightly. "A real purse-snatcher. Cut the thing right off my belt and left me penniless."

  Galeon nodded with mock gravity. "Oh? And what were you doing during this villainy?" His Rodaasi was good, with only just a touch of an accent.

  "Well, I was on my back in the street," Harrin protested, and several of the other blackarms chuckled. Harrin glared at his companions defiantly. "She pushed a barrel of rainwater on me and..." The others burst into outright laughter and he reddened. The grip on her arm tightened until she thought her bones might crack. "And there were others!" he blurted out suddenly. "At least three! Hit me from behind while she distracted me! All of 'em at once! Grabbed my purse before I could get back on my feet!"

  There was more laughter at this. "Only three, Harrin? Not six?" called one of the blackarms over the din. "Maybe they were Imperial Whites, and not thieves at all!" cried another. The laughter grew, now spreading even to the customers of the Mistress.

  "Drenched and penniless in the Shallows, I was," Harrin muttered. There were more guffaws, but through it all, Galeon never cracked a smile. He gave her a longer look this time, and Steel sat up and sniffed the air. Duchess simply could not allow herself to be arrested no matter what the cost. Running away would not serve; in her exhausted state she wouldn't get two steps before they caught her. Attempting to fight twelve men with one stolen dagger would be equally foolish. Lysander could have charmed the purse (and the pants) off the Ahé, but alive or dead he was not here in the Wharves.

  She knew little of the Wharf Rats, the blackarms that patrolled the district, and of Galeon she knew almost nothing. But he was a blackarm, and like any blackarm, Galeon would be wary of starting a scene with a drunken crowd looking on. And in any case a foreign-born officer had at best a tenuous hold on authority. Would he test that authority on the word of a fool like Harrin? Over a Shallows girl? Offering a quick prayer to Mendacue, god of trickery, she struggled out of Harrin's grip and as hard as she could slapped him full across the face. The noise of her hand on his cheek sounded louder than the bells from the city's hilltop, and in an instant every eye was upon her.

  "Purse snatcher, hell!" she cried, trying to sound like the bawdiest wench the Shallows could boast. "You were the one that did the snatching that night! And I was the one on my back...that and then some." She lifted the hem of her wet and dirty dress, the one Malia had given her, to reveal one scraped knee and one bruised. The blackarms guffawed. "And I never got a bit of that sou you promised, you stupid bastard!" She risked another blow, although this one he saw coming and it only glanced across his shoulder.

  By now the other blackarms were bent over with laughter, slapping their thighs and wiping streaming eyes, and more sailors crowded out of the Harsh Mistress into the street, jostling and pushing, to see what the fuss was about. Soon there would be a mob out here. Duchess tried to calm herself as the dagger slipped a bit further. She glanced at Galeon out of the corner of her eye, hoping she wouldn't run out of breast before the officer ran out of patience.

  Galeon fixed her with a searching look, then turned on Harrin. "She has no purse. In fact, all she has is the smell of bay water, which seems like your usual kind of woman."

  "She's got no purse now, sir, but this was two nights past. In the Shallows." He gave both Duchess and the laughers in the crowd an ugly look.

  "You never reported a robbery. Didn't notice it missing until now, is that it?" Galeon shook his head in disgust. "A sad tale even from you, Harrin. Well, I won't have it. Squabble with your whores off duty and out of my sight." He turned to Duchess. "You can be on your way, but in future I'd suggest you find a better class of clientele. You might start by not smelling like the harbor." Duchess ducked her head, weak with relief, but she did not miss the appraising look Galeon gave her. Before she had a chance to wonder the officer had turned to the rest of the blackarms. "Ho, Wharf Rats! Move out!" As one, dragging the sputtering Harrin in their wake, they moved away down the hill, carrying with them a few of the rowdiest patrons of the Harsh Mistress. The rest of the crowd dispersed, mostly heading back into the tavern, and Duchess hurried away, readjusting the dagger in her bodice.

  The Wharf Rats had no reason to suspect her of the night's crime, and unless word moved downhill faster than the water that had carried her, Galeon and his men were most likely unaware of the theft of Eusbius' dagger. Still, the quicker she was away the better; Galeon seemed the kind to remember a face, and if he noticed that the scrapes on her knees were fresh and not two days old she'd be in for it.

  Her shoes were waterlogged and she was bone-tired so the going was slow. As she drew closer to the Shallows the streets were busy with more familiar night folk - craftsmen enjoying a tankard of ale, whores plying their trade, lightboys on the job, and the occasional noble enjoying a scandalous night in the low districts - and she had to move more carefully to avoid being recognized by someone she knew. She doubted anyone would connect her to what had happened at House Eusbius, bu
t she wasn't willing to bet her life on it. As tired as she was, she dared not be careless now.

  She finally limped, footsore and bedraggled, up the stairs to Lysander's garret. For a moment she considered taking herself over to the Vermillion for some hot wine to warm her, but thought better of it. Minette would have too many customers at this time of night, any of whom might carry the story of the wet girl with the curious cloth packet. The baron might even now be alerting the blackarms to the theft, and Duchess had no intention of giving them any assistance in their investigation. Best to keep a low profile until the morning, when the Vermillion was quiet and she could get the news from Minette. Besides, she was anxious to make sure Lysander was unhurt.

  She was disappointed to find the garret empty, but she quickly started a fire and pulled off her wet clothes. Her shoes were ruined from the water, and she kicked them off with regret. The new boots she'd purchased would have to do until she sold the dagger to Hector. For a moment she considered throwing the stinking linen dress out of the window, but she was afraid someone would find it and connect it to her and to House Eusbius. Still, she dared not keep it, so after a moment's debate she cut it up with an eating knife and put it, piece by piece, into the fire, kneeling naked on the hearth and relishing the feel of the warmth on her skin. She washed with the basin, which would be good enough until she could use one of the tubs at the Vermillion. With lots of soap.