The Duchess of the Shallows

by Neil McGarry

  After she was as clean as she was going to get she put on her old clothes and unwrapped the dagger. The cheesecloth she burned, but she saved the bit of tapestry. Besides the knife, the ragged piece of cloth was her only keepsake from House Eusbius…not counting, of course, the gold medallion she'd filched from the baron's study. She grinned as she laid it on the hearth next to the dagger, gold glinting alongside silver. She'd sell both to Hector and live like an empress for a week, or a baroness at least. She'd lost Lysander's lockpicks, either in the cistern or the wild ride through the tunnels, but she'd buy him a new set. Ten new sets.

  Once this work was done she sat by the fire, her mind filling with fears that until now had been crowded aside by other worries. How much would the baron put together, and how quickly? Had Malia already reported Rina's disappearance? Would any of the guests report Lysander's interaction with the missing kitchen girl? Had Anassa been found, and had she talked? Where was Lysander? Duchess was batting these questions around in her mind when she heard shouts outside, from the direction of Beggar's Gate. Uneasy, she cracked open the door and peered out into the street. A group of blackarms was passing, led by Malleus and Kakios, and she felt a gust of terror so sharp and cold she nearly fainted. They had known, somehow, and now they were coming for her. She could slam and lock the door, but they'd only kick it in. She could run, but they'd catch her. Hide and they'd find her. Beg and they'd laugh at her.

  There was no need. The blackarms, shouting orders and commands to each other, spread out, one group headed towards the Market, another towards the Deeps, the third down the hill towards the Wharves. They never so much as glanced up at the garret where Duchess stood frozen in fear.

  She went back inside and closed the door.

  She glanced at the silver dagger on the hearth. She had to be rid of it, and soon. She didn't know if the baron was influential enough to order a house-to-house search of the Shallows, but she didn't intend to find out. She dared not seek Hector now, not with the blackarms thick as flies in the streets, but come the morning she'd find him and collect her coin and her admission into the Grey. She wouldn't even wait until evening, as he had specified. He'd be angry, but after having braved the party and the Brutes and the sewers, Hector seemed a much less formidable foe. She did not fear him.

  She hid the dagger, the medallion and the piece of tapestry in the nook under the floorboards, then curled up under the blankets. Sick with worry for Lysander, she was sure she'd never sleep. She lay there, shivering though not cold, listening for the sound of blackarms at the door.

  Chapter Fifteen:

  Hector changes his mind

  She was in a strange house, a mix of her father's half-remembered country estate, Noam's bakery, and the Vermillion. Minette was in the kitchen, wearing a facet's mask and serving a soup of tiles and sou. Lysander sat on a golden throne in the courtyard, wearing fox ears and lording over the ganymedes who worked in the garden. She knew that someone was waiting to meet her at the carriage house and so she ignored Lani's pleas to help her with a special delivery.

  At the carriage house was a strangely familiar dark-haired man, clean-shaven with an easy smile. He was leading a horse by the bridle. He gestured for her to ride, helping her up, and she suddenly realized she was very small. She looked down at him from her precarious perch as he led her out through the gates and towards the cold house that sat beside the river.

  "Your brother is waiting for you," the man said. "The plums run straight down to the harbor and Hector'll never buy them in that state."

  She nodded, understanding perfectly. "You've been my father's master of horse for as long as I can remember," she said. "And I don't even know your name."

  He turned to her just as he sent the horse plummeting down the stairs with her along for the ride. He now sported a full mustache and beard and she saw now that he was Ahmed. Of course. He'd always been Ahmed. She just hadn't seen him for so long. And then it was dark and all she could hear was the horrible clattering of the horse's hooves on the stone as they fell down and down and down.

  And then she was awake and that horrible clattering was nothing more than a key in the lock and the door was opening and there was Lysander.

  His costume was stained with wine and rumpled from use, but she was relieved to see him otherwise unharmed. All the worry, all the fear she'd been carrying in her gut since that horrible moment on the stairs fell away. He looked nearly as exhausted as she, but he smiled brightly, the relief at seeing her written plainly on his face. "Ventaris' mercy, but you caused a stir tonight," he quipped, closing the door behind him and dropping his silver half-mask indifferently to the floor. The black robe followed shortly.

  "Stephan won't be happy about that," she pointed out, indicating the costume. Her smile at the joke suddenly faded as she looked at him more closely in the dying light of the hearth's fire. Behind the mask, Lysander's left eye was swelling and across his neck a nasty purple bruise had formed. In her mind, Silk whispered that those bruises were her doing, and she had to swallow hard to keep from bursting into tears.

  Lysander took no notice, joining her on the bed, down to his underclothes now. "He won't complain, not after the time I just gave him. He wanted me to make it up to him for getting thrown out of the party." He stretched gracefully, then turned to her with a tired smile. "Lucky for us we did, or else they might think we had something to do with the baron's missing dagger."

  "Tell me," she whispered, her fingers moving towards his bruises. Lysander stopped her, taking her hands gently in his own and said nothing for a moment.

  "Malleus and Kakios...for a while there I thought they were going to kill me, or worse. The things they said..." The bravado had suddenly gone out of him, and he looked at Duchess for a long moment, his eyes unreadable. Then he burst into tears.

  Duchess sat for a moment, frozen with utter shock. She'd known Lysander for six years and had never seen him cry. In his time he'd braved Deeps thugs, faced down rival ganymedes, and endured beatings at the hands of clients, but through it all she'd never seen him shed a tear. He could laugh off any danger, bounce back from any injury, as if he'd had invisible armor, a breastplate of bitter experience that protected him from the worst the city had to offer. Until tonight. With heart-squeezing clarity she realized that this wound came from inside his armor...from her. When she'd left him on those stairs, to the dubious mercy of the Brutes, she'd landed a blow more crippling than any he'd been dealt in those lightboy battles over territory.

  She thought back to the day of catching cats, when Lysander had seemed a golden wonder who knew everything about Rodaas: the rumors, the betrayals and the endless intrigues. There was a time when she'd thought him the perfect Rodaasi: tough and strong and wise in the twisting ways of the city. He'd taught her many things, but that night, she'd proven herself a better student than either of them had suspected. He hadn't taught her the price for joining the Grey, but in sacrificing him to the Brutes, she'd learned it anyway. It was poor sort of wisdom, but it made no sense to question the cost. She was no longer the little girl in the alley who needed a guide through the snares of the city. And surely Lysander now knew that as well.

  There was nothing to say, and when he wrapped his arms around her she squeezed him tight. She released a shuddering sigh, feeling a sorrow too deep for weeping. Silk wanted to say I should never have left you, but Steel knew better, so she held her silence and her tears. "It doesn't matter," he murmured into her hair. "It's all over now." She knew he was not talking about the danger. There would be more gossiping over wine and giggling over strawberries by the hearth, but it would not be the same, for neither of them was the same.

  And worse, she watched as all her words and worry from her time in the sewers came to nothing. The promise that she would tell Lysander everything, that things would be different between them should she find him safe and sound turned here, in the light of the fire beside him, into more lies. She knew Lysander better than anyone, far more than her half-re
membered siblings and even her father. And yet here, with him clasped in her arms, she could not open that final door and let him in. And those warring voices inside her head (Silk sad, Steel certain) knew that she would most likely never do so.

  They stayed that way a long time, but finally he drew away and pulled his legs up. The Lysander she knew was back, at least for the moment, and he grinned over his knees as he told her what had happened. "They were dragging me along the hallway when they were stopped by none other than the baron-to-be himself," he said, the fear gone from his voice as he warmed to the tale. "He had the fox spirit mask pulled up and Daphne's right; he is simply gorgeous, but I wasn't thinking that at the time. He asked the Brutes what they were about, and when they couldn't give him a good answer he told them to throw me out and get back to their posts. Then Dorian stood on that balcony and watched as they dragged me downstairs, right through the ballroom and out the door. I'm glad he did, because otherwise I might have gotten the same treatment as Brenn."

  He flashed a wicked grin. "I yelled and struggled and put up an ungodly racket to keep them distracted as long as I could, and because by then it was fun. Eusbius was nearly spitting blood, I'll tell you, but half the room was laughing and the other half was crowding around to see. Stephan was following like a little puppy, acting scandalized, but in truth being thrown out of that party was more prestigious than attending. They dragged me across the courtyard and threw me out the gate into the street, and that's when Stephan's robe tore, so of course I blamed it on the Brutes. So while you were stealing the baron's pride and joy, I was picking myself up off the cobblestones. I believe they call that the perfect alibi." He swept golden curls away from his eyes. "I was still brushing the mud off my clothes when we heard this terrible scream, something you can't imagine coming from a human throat." She raised an eyebrow. "I mean it," he insisted. "It was indescribable. Then the house just exploded: guards and servants everywhere, the baron screaming for the doors to be closed, the guests searched. Stephan decided we'd seen enough, and for once he was right. You know the rest." He looked her over. "You seem well, except that I smell harbor on you. I guess you were right about those water tunnels?"

  She smiled ruefully. "The harbor was nothing compared to the sewers. I've always wanted to hold a dead rat, though, so I guess I can't complain." She filled him in on the whole story: tickling the lock to the gallery, confronting Anassa, creeping along the ledge, the wild ride through the water. She left out the part about the fog; she didn't want to think about that. He listened soberly, interrupting only to confirm that no one at the party seemed to know the identity of the woman under the feathered mask.

  After a moment he got up and scouted for wine. "I should have stolen more from Lady Vorloi," he grumbled, finding a bottle of common stuff. "The streets are busy. Have you seen the patrols?" He took a swig and handed her the bottle.

  She drank; the wine was common, but after the night's adventures, welcome. "I saw them from the door. Ophion's men, I guess."

  "You guess right. They're all over the place, and I had to be careful to avoid them. True, slipping the Brutes isn't too hard, but it makes slow going." He sat beside her again and took the bottle. "At first I thought they were after me, but after awhile...well, it feels as if they're playacting, as if they don't really know what they're looking for. Or whom." He glanced at her significantly.

  "That's good news for me." She stretched, working out the kinks in her back. "Probably just Ophion making noise so he can at least report back to Eusbius that he tried."

  Lysander looked troubled. "Maybe. Or maybe there's something else going on here." He gulped more wine. "So, let's see this precious knife before I get drunk and pass out." She went to the loose floorboard and retrieved the dagger and medallion, placing both on the hearth. The piece of tapestry she withheld; for some reason, she wanted to keep this treasure to herself, although she couldn't say why. "Pretty," he said, picking up the dagger and turning it gently in his hands. Duchess held her breath, wondering if he'd feel the same strangeness she had, back in the baron's gallery or in the tunnels, but he seemed unaffected. Then his eyes narrowed. "What's this?" he said, tilting the blade toward her. She leaned in to look, squinting at the dagger in the dim light of the fire. There, where he pointed, on the blade just above the hilt, nearly worn away by time but still recognizable, she saw that the lines that encircled the hilt ended in a small shape: a snake, devouring its own tail.

  He rubbed his thumb across the engraving, its eyes so worn and faded as to be almost invisible. "This looks familiar, almost like I've..." He turned to her, his eyes bright with realization. "It's the same symbol, isn't it? The one on P's mark."

  Duchess felt weightless, as if she were floating in deep water, and the hand she ran a across her face trembled slightly. She remembered once more the Domae woman from the Godswalk and her makeshift altar with its strange symbols, and the cold and the mist in the sewer tunnels below the city. "He Who Devours," she muttered, through numb lips.

  "What's that?" Lysander asked.

  She almost wished that lying to him were more difficult, but Steel told her to forget such foolishness, as Silk warned her that sharing the old woman's dire predictions would make them real. Would make them true.

  "Just something I heard one of the Domae say," she said at last. His time draws closer, child, and soon this city will shake. "I guess this snake symbol is more common than we knew." She smiled weakly, hoping she looked more convincing than she felt.

  Lysander shrugged, putting the dagger back on the hearth. "Can't recall seeing it before." Then his eyes shifted to the medallion. "I see you picked up something else on your way out. I've taught you well." He regarded her for a moment, the fire shining in his eyes. "So that's it. You win."

  "We win," she replied emphatically. "I could never have done it without you, so half of what I get from Hector is yours." Clearly touched, Lysander briefly cupped her cheek with one hand, but in his eyes she could still see the ghost of his tears. "Speaking of Hector," Duchess went on, "I'm not waiting until tomorrow night to see him. I don't want to wander around the Shallows all day with this" – she indicated the dagger –"and I certainly don't want to be found with it. After what we went through tonight, Hector can damn well get up early to pay me."

  "Not too early, I hope," Lysander replied, setting aside the bottle and stretching out on the bed. "I plan to sleep well past dawn, my dear, and I hate a cold bed. So get in here, Madame Thief!" Bruises or no, there was no refusing that boyish grin, so she rolled her eyes and slipped in beside him.

  * * *

  Unsurprisingly, Duchess awoke before Lysander, to the ring of tenth bell. Although part of her wanted nothing more than to loll away the day in bed, she had work to do, which included washing the harbor out of her hair. First to the Vermillion, she decided, and then to the market for breakfast. Or lunch, judging by the height of the sun, which looked as if it might actually peek out from behind the clouds. Her smashed knee felt better, too, which would make the walk more pleasant.

  Lorelei was bursting with gossip. Had Duchess heard about the party? The scandal? Apparently, Baron Eusbius was the laughingstock of the upper districts and the Brutes had been roughing up people all across the lower, although no one could say exactly why. Lorelei herself was of the opinion that one of the party guests had gotten to know Lady Eusbius better than was proper, and that the baron had sent out the Brutes to find him. Duchess feigned gossipy interest, but in truth her heart just wasn't in it. She had seen quite enough of the party, and from a far more intimate position. "Is Minette in?" The shrewd madam would have the real news on last night's events, assuming of course she cared to share it.

  "Well, yes, but she told me there was no one she wanted to see. And she had that look, so she means no one." Duchess hesitated; it was odd that Minette should closet herself in her office without taking visitors, particularly when she knew of one visitor with a tale to beat the ball. Perhaps it had been an unusually late night
, Duchess thought. Even Minette needed a break from secrets, she supposed, but she still felt vaguely disquieted.

  "Duchess, what have you been doing?" Lorelei exclaimed, snapping her out of her thoughts. "I hope you're here for a bath; you smell like a drowned rat." Not far wrong, Duchess reflected, as she let Lorelei hustle her to the bathing chamber, which at this hour was empty. After last night's adventures hot water and scented soap were pure luxury, and after washing Duchess remained in the tub a long time, soaking sore muscles and reflecting. Between the dagger and the medallion, Duchess would be in sou for weeks, with enough to perhaps rent her own garret. And once she was initiated into the Grey she could look for other ways to earn a living. Opportunities were certain to present themselves once she was on the Highway; as a thief, a spy, or even a broker of secrets like Minette, feared and respected throughout the Shallows. And one of those secrets would be the true story of what had happened to House Kell.

  The thought brightened her, and she was humming as she rose from the bath, dressed, and prepared to head for the market. She could feel the night and the tension and the fear of it all slough off her as she did so. Eusbius, the Brutes, the tunnels, the memories, the worries for Lysander...all of them felt so distant under the gray light of morning.

  They'd done it. She savored that realization as she waved to Lorelei and gave a sleepy-headed Daphne a hug on her way out. She toyed with it as she left the Vermillion and entered Bell Plaza, trying victory on her shoulders as Lysander would a new cape, turning this way and that to see how it looked.

  She joined the ranks of Shallows folk passing through Market Gate but paid little attention to their chatter. Her eyes wandered over towards Beggars' Gate and she caught sight of the young girls looking for work. Had it been only yesterday morning she'd stood there herself? Had it been only yesterday that the mad plan she'd concocted had been a fearful future and not a successful reality?