by Tanya Huff
Terizan rubbed at her arms, feeling the pebbling of her skin. It had just turned noon. Ghosts, like thieves and traitors, worked under cover of darkness. Of course, she was here now, at noon, so…
Would you just look!
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to only the faint spill of sunlight past her head, but, eventually, she managed to make out the vague outlines of cloth-wrapped bodies. There was a faint smell of rot, a stronger smell of incense, and nothing at all to suggest either a secret entrance into the catacombs or a restless spirit. Relieved, she kept moving.
By mid-afternoon, her legs ached from the constant climb. With about a third of the Necropolis examined, she'd seen nothing out of the ordinary. Trying to ignore how hungry she was, she crossed to a particularly ornate tomb and peered through the opening in the big double gates.
Years of practice kept her from shrieking. She leapt back, the heel of her sandal came down hard on something soft and yielding, and she leapt forward again as it moaned.
Too close to the tomb for comfort, she whirled to see one of Ayzarua's acolytes hopping in place, rake forgotten, both hands wrapped around his bare foot. Well, she knew what she'd stepped on. That was a start.
Heart pounding, she managed a fairly coherent, "Sorry, I didn't see you."
"I know!"
"Are you hurt?"
"Pain is transcendental," he gasped.
Terizan figured that was a yes. She watched as he put the injured foot down and shifted his weight.
"But I'll live," he concluded after a moment. He studied her in turn. "What frightened you?"
"I wasn't," she began, saw his eyebrows rise, and surrendered bravado. "There's something in there," she told him, nodding toward the tomb. "It grabbed for me."
"Did it now?" He limped past her and peered through the gate. "Ah, I thought so. Pardon her ignorance, Gracious Lady. It is my Lady," he explained turning toward Terizan with a smile. "Her likeness at least. She reaches out to help the recently dead through the gate."
Dared by his smile, Terizan leaned forward, eyes narrowed. Even knowing it was a statue, her heart still jumped at the sudden sight of a hand nearly at her nose. The Goddess herself, back in the dim depths of the tomb, was barely visible. Terizan thought she could see friendly eyes and a gentle, welcoming smile within the depths of a stone hood then suddenly…
"Okay." She jumped back again. "Skull."
"The best images of my Lady recognize she stands between life and death," the acolyte explained. "This particular image, commissioned by the Harl family and sculpted by Navareen Clos, has a spell attached. If you look long enough into the darkness beyond the Goddess, you'll see the Gateway open. There are only two other tombs like it in the entire Necropolis and both are up on the crown of the hill in the crypts of two of the oldest families in Oreen – the Aldaniz and the Pertayn. Unfortunately the Aldaniz didn't specify…"
Terizan let his voice wash over her, paying only enough attention to nod where it seemed appropriate. The sort of person who'd spend the day methodically climbing the Necropolis peering into tombs was the sort of person who'd actually listen to this kind of lecture and it had obviously been a long time since this particular acolyte had found an audience. He seemed determined to make the most of it. Fortunately, he wasn't trying to convert her, he was just talking.
And talking.
Terizan kept nodding and amused herself by watching the shadows move across a particularly ornate carving on the next tomb over. She frowned slightly as the shadows caressed the edge of the highest bolt holding the gate to the tomb. That bolt had been removed and, from the raw look of the surrounding stone, both recently and frequently. Why bother to unlock the gate when it could be lifted, locked, away from the stone. Not the oldest trick on the scroll – she seemed to remember it was actually number eleven or twelve – but useful.
"And what brings you to my Lady's city?"
"Me?" Jerked from her reverie, Terizan searched for an answer that didn't involve conspiracy or the Thieves' Guild. "It's uh, peaceful." Disturbingly peaceful. Uncomfortably peaceful.
The acolyte nodded. "There are few places more peaceful than the grave."
Hard to argue with that, Terizan acknowledged. She needed to find out if he'd seen anything. But just in case he was in on it, she needed to do it subtly. "So, do many people come here at night?"
His brows rose. Poli was right. She really sucked at subtle.
"The gates are locked at sunset."
Everyone knew that. "And your lot makes sure other people stay out?"
"There's no need. The Necropolis is haunted."
Conscious of the Ayzaruite's attention, she went out the gate just before sunset and back over the wall shortly after. Moving quickly from shadow to shadow on a path that took her well around the weaver's crypt, she finally climbed into a hiding place on top of the tomb with the loosened bolts. Everyone knew that conspirators met in the dark of night when cloaked figures scuttling about empty streets were likely to be noticed and they'd have no plausible excuse if they got caught. If she were running a conspiracy, she'd have them meet in the late evening and have them head home with the crowds when the cantinas closed, hiding them in plain sight. Of course, she wasn't running this conspiracy and that became obvious as time passed and she saw no one but a few translucent figures wafting by, moaning.
She determinedly ignored them and they ignored her.
Finally, after the bells of Old Oreen rang midnight, the sound strangely muffled in the City of the Dead, Terizan saw two cloaked figures approaching. They opened the tomb, exactly the way she'd know they would–the bolts whispering out of the stone–and slipped inside, replacing the gate behind them. She'd have never noticed the faint spill of lantern light a moment later if she hadn't been waiting for it.
Hanging upside down over the gate, she could just make them out as they crouched by the rear wall and together slid the shrouded body from the lowest shelf. Setting it carefully to one side, conspirator number one lay down in its place and crawled into darkness. Conspirator number two passed the lantern through and followed.
Terizan waited a moment for her eyes to readjust to full dark, checked that there were no more cloaked conspirators approaching, and flipped down to the ground. The gate was heavy for one person to manoeuvre, but she didn't need to open it very far. She slipped through, closed it, and, keeping her fingertips on the centre crypt, made her way to the back wall. By the time she reached it, she was in darkness so complete it hid the hand she held in front of her face.
Fortunately, it was impossible to get lost inside a tomb. When the silence suggested the two she followed had moved on, she climbed onto the lowest shelf and slid through the narrow opening.
There was just barely room enough to stand on the other side of the corpse shelf. Her fingertips danced over rough stone; a crack in the rock, a natural fissure. She counted twelve paces, felt the air currents change, and stopped. Barely an arm's length from her face, the fissure opened up into a much wider passageway.
When she held her breath she could hear a quiet hum of sound. When she crept silently forward and peered out of the crack, she could see a faint greying of the dark off to her right.
***
The conspirators were meeting in one of the catacombs' square tomb-within-a-tomb areas and enough light spilled out the entrance that Terizan could just make out the Carters' crest carved over the arch. As she came closer, the sound fractured into a number of voices all making the kind of anticipatory small talk that suggested the meeting had yet to start. Since there were more people present than the two she'd followed, there were clearly other routes in.
She could lie down and peer around the corner into the tomb well below where most people would even think of looking for intruders, but there was no way of knowing how many more conspirators were still to arrive. Assuming this was the meeting of conspirators the Council had hired the Thieves' Guild to find and not merely a social club for necrophiliacs, she ha
d to find a less exposed vantage point.
Pressed up against the stone niches that lined the passageway, she glimpsed a line of grey at the edge of her vision. Peering over the shrouded body laid out in the shoulder-level niche, she could see a crack in the rock as wide as her thumb. Moving quickly, she scooped up the corpse – breathing through her teeth at the intensified smell of rot – and stuffed it in with the body in the niche below, any small sounds she'd made covered by the sudden rhythmic rise and fall of a single voice inside the tomb. It sounded like…
Poetry?
No surprise that, given the venue, images of death were prevalent.
The niches were narrow and not easy for the living to get into, but Terizan had been in more difficult places and she managed to line her right eye up with the crack. There were seven cloaked figures in the tomb. Not a large conspiracy, but she supposed seven motivated people could do some damage. After all, she'd managed to destabilize the throne of Kalazmir all by herself.
As she watched, the poet finished, slid the scroll into a pocket, and blew his nose, clearly overcome. She could see three faces clearly and didn't recognize any of them. Then a fourth raised both arms, the cloak sliding back as he gestured for silence and, with some surprise, Terizan recognized the heavy gold links he wore around one wrist. She'd had her eye on that bracelet for a while. It seemed as though Ajoe the Candle-maker was involved and, not only involved, in a position of some authority. Maybe grief at the death of his wife and infant son had addled his brains and turned him from law-abiding artisan to…
Poet?
"We ask justice for the dead," Ajoe declared, his voice rough with grief.
Terizan hoped the next couple of lines would rhyme. She liked Ajoe and didn't want him involved in anything that would result in his head on a spike in the Crescent.
"Overcrowded streets slow the arrival of what few healers there are. The high taxes paid by the apothecaries keep medicines too expensive. The rulings of the Council kill those we love. Those who lead have failed us and must be removed."
Not poet.
"Who will lead us to justice?"
The other six mirrored his position, arms up. "Who will lead us?" they repeated.
Terizan had assumed the question was rhetorical, the sort of thing secret organizations chanted to get in the mood for conspiracy, but, as she watched, a translucent figure floated down from the ceiling in the far corner of the room. Pride kept her from bolting this time. Pride and, well, it seemed there was some truth in familiarity breeding contempt.
It took her a while to recognize the ghost, but, in her own defence, the last time she'd seen Councilor Saladaz his head had been on a spike in the Crescent after he'd been executed for betraying caravans to the bandit chief Hyrantaz for a percentage of the stolen goods.
He seemed to have gotten his head back.
His voice a distant whisper, he began to speak of how the Council had been responsible for countless deaths in Oreen. Men, women, and children all lost to life and love because of the actions or inaction of the Council. "We all know the Council is corrupt. We all know the Council must be stopped before more loved lives are lost." Thought about rationally, nothing Saladaz said made much sense, but it was obvious the seven people listening weren't thinking rationally. Like Ajoe, these men and women were lost in grief and that grief was being expertly manipulated by the dead councilor. He'd always been able to work a crowd into near hysteria and while death had lowered his volume it had focused his skill.
In a weird way, Terizan admired Saladaz's ability to hold a grudge beyond the grave. The Council had him executed and now he used what he had – grief stricken visitors to the Necropolis – to exact his revenge. It was probably a good thing he didn't know she'd been the one who'd exposed his dealings with Hyrantaz.
"The Council must be removed," Saladaz whispered, moving about the tomb and touching each of the conspirators in turn.
They shuddered and chanted, "The Council must be removed."
Terizan shuddered with them, remembering the weaver's touch. It was a small step from grief to despair.
"The dead must have justice."
"The dead must have justice!"
Terizan would have bet serious coin that when Saladaz spoke of the dead, he meant only himself.
"We must take action to avenge our dead."
"We must take action to avenge our dead!"
"When the time of mourning is done, we will take action," Ajoe the Candle-maker added in a tone as definite as the dead councilor's had been suggestive.
Saladaz's face twisted as the other six repeated, "When the time of mourning is done." Throwing off their cloaks, they began to wail and beat at their chests. His mouth moved but it was impossible to hear his rough whisper over the grieving and finally he surrendered to the inevitable and wafted back up through the tomb's ceiling.
Leaving seemed like a good idea to Terizan. Besides Ajoe, she'd recognized another of the seven by the silver and lapis clasp that bound her thick grey hair. She didn't yet know the woman's name, but she knew she worked on Draper's Row and that was enough. Sliding silently out of the niche, she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust and then, fingertips stroking the stone, moved into the dark of the catacombs, counting her footsteps back to the crack in the tomb wall.
***
The name of the woman who owned the silver hair clasp was Seriell Vanyaz, her eldest son had recently died in a construction accident in the new city, crushed under a load of stone. It took her a long time to sleep when she finally returned home and she called out his name as she tossed and turned.
The next morning, after too little sleep of her own, Terizan settled the clasp in her pocket and crossed the bridge into the Necropolis. All she had to do now was ask an acolyte for the names of those who'd been interred over the last few months and match the faces of the mourners to the faces of the conspirators.
She could hand the names to the Tribunal a day early. The Tribunal would hand them to the Council and then, probably before Terizan had even counted her share of the payment, the Council would add another seven bodies to the City of the Dead.
She'd thought about telling the Tribunal that Councilor Saladaz was the only actual conspirator.
"A dead councilor? Not only dead but beheaded? You saw him then? Conspiring? Alone?"
Council might believe that Saladaz wanted revenge, they'd known him in life after all, but they'd never believe a dead man was working alone. Ajoe and the others might be grief-addled puppets but they were conspiring.
Of course, now she wanted an acolyte there were none around.
She stood for a long moment outside the tomb that hid the entrance to the catacombs and, frowning slightly, traced on the surface the path of the underground passage, climbing up and over the rising terraces. When she was fairly certain she was as close to the meeting room as she could get, she began to read the names carved into the stone.
Councilor Saladaz's family name was Tyree. Terizan knew it because she'd robbed his townhouse once. Well, twice actually, but it hadn't been his townhouse the second time because he was already dead.
The rear wall of the Tyree family tomb rested directly over the part of the catacombs where the meeting had been held.
"The carving of the colonnade is thought to be exceptionally fine."
Terizan had often been accused of walking silently, but the Ayzaruites could give her lessons. Heart pounding, she turned to find the same older man who'd spoken to her the day before. At least she assumed it was the same man; one acolyte looked pretty much like another, and besides, she was better with jewelry. "The what?"
"The decorative columns." He gestured helpfully.
"I was wondering…"
"About the mason?"
"No!" She didn't think she could cope with another lecture on stone carving. "I was wondering about the recently…" She paused and stared into the Tyree crypt. Saladaz had been dead for nearly a year. "I was wondering why the ghosts of the N
ecropolis don't move out into the city."
"They are tethered to their bodies by my Lady's will. They are not alive and she will not give them the freedom of life."
"She won't?" That was interesting. "She seems a little annoyed about it."
The acolyte shrugged. "My Lady is the Gateway and she would prefer the dead accept her assistance."
"But if the body was moved out of the Necropolis…"
"If a body with an active spirit was removed from her influence then it could go where it would." His tolerant smile suggested he didn't know why he was bothering to explain what everyone knew. "Except back into the Necropolis of course."
That answered the one question that had really been bothering her. None of the seven conspirators were violent people. Violent in their grief, maybe, but not the sort to start whacking Councilors even with the encouragement of a dead politician. She couldn't believe it of Ajoe the Candle-maker and she doubted the others were much different. So what was Saladaz actually working them up to?
He wanted them to remove his body from the Necropolis.
Once he got them to commit, they probably wouldn't bother being subtle; they'd crowbar the gate off the tomb, bundle him up, and bury him secretly in the city somewhere. After that, he could haunt whoever he wanted to.
Terizan rubbed her arm. If forced to choose, she'd take Ajoe and company over the Council in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, unless they were going to move Saladaz tonight she didn't have that option. The Council would have either the names of the conspirators or proof there was no conspiracy by tomorrow or they'd begin to implement their extreme new security measures. As a thief, Terizan wasn't fond of the idea of extreme new security measures.
Nor, as it happened, did she particularly care for the idea of someone like Saladaz wafting about Oreen.
If she gave the names to the Council, they'd deal with both the living and the dead and things in Oreen would continue on the way they had been. No extreme security. No dead councilors being a bad influence on the grieving. No Ajoe the Candle-maker. No Seriell Vanyaz. She reached into her pocket and stroked the silver and lapis hair clasp.