by Matthew Cook
I step into the house and close the heavy door behind me.
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
I watch the house from across the darkened street. It is a ruin: roof half gone, half-shuttered, glassless windows staring out, dark and empty as a skull's eye sockets. Graffiti mar the dingy gray walls, the sigils of competing gangs unreadable in the dim light.
There are no streetlights here, not even the widely-spaced, often dark lamps I saw on Rath's street. The City's ever-present glow reflects wanly from the scuttling clouds overhead, filling the street with a vague, orange luminance. I look down at the scrap of parchment in my hand, but of course it is too dark to read. I shrug and stuff it back into my boot.
I hear a soft footfall behind me, and a woman's frustrated sigh. I do not turn; I know who it is, and smile to hear it.
Lia shifts again, craning her head to see better, as if this can help her eyes pierce the gloom. She blends into the squalid avenue well, her dark gray cloak, my traveling spare, draped over her trail-worn traveling clothes. I smile wider to see her in them.
As pretty as she is in silk and satin, Lia will always be loveliest to me like this, dressed in the handed-down homespuns the refugees gave her so many months ago. They remind me of simpler times, when it was just her and me against the Mor. Time, it seems, softens the edges of even the most jagged-edged recollections.
"Are you sure this is the address?” Lia says for the third time. As before, I nod, keeping my ears and eyes sharp, scanning up and down the street.
"This does not seem right,” she whispers. “That house is no fit place to birth a child. It does not even have a proper roof."
"I don't understand it either,” I reply. It is obvious she will not relent until I answer her.
She deserves my acknowledgement, gods know. Just two hours ago, I walked into our home, blood on my clothes, and told her everything. Of Napaula, and Rath. Of his sweetlings. Of my failure, and my use of the blood magic out in the street.
She sat at the table as I spoke, elegant in a clinging, low-cut gown I had never seen before, something new she had purchased specially for the occasion. The smells of roast lamb and onion soup were redolent in the quiet air. Rich food, the opening act of what she hoped would be a long, romantic evening.
When I was done, she sat for several long moments, staring into the fire crackling in the hearth. Flickers of lightning played in her azure eyes. I waited, quietly, patiently, resisting the urge to embellish and explain, all too aware that there was no justification for what I had done, not even self-defense. Instead, I sat, silent, awaiting her judgment.
After a time she sighed and lifted her hand, removing the jeweled sticks securing her hair. The chestnut curls came tumbling down, spilling over her freckled shoulders. With a deft twist she pulled it back, gathering it into the horse's-tail she used when she was working. Or traveling.
"If there is even a chance that the old woman you spoke of can deliver her child, then we have no choice but to help her,” she said, rising and draining her wine cup.
"Thank you,” I replied, unable to say more. “I should go. Now. Tonight. Savard's men may come back, and I'd like you well gone by then. Perhaps your father could—"
She held up her hand, silencing me. Her eyes were hard and uncompromising, lit from within by threads of lambent electricity. Fury radiated from her like heat from a stove. “I said we must help her. I am going with you."
The carriage driver raised an eyebrow at the sight of us: high-bred ladies dressed in traveling clothes and scout's leathers, cloaks at our backs and knives worn openly at our hips, but said nothing. Lia did not speak to me once during the trip back to Low Town. We rode in silence. All the way there, I wanted to say something, anything, but the words dried up in my throat. What was there to say, really?
Watching her as we rode—the tight line of her jaw; her flashing, uncompromising eyes; even the way she always moved to keep as much distance as possible between us in the carriage—a bitter sadness welled up in me. I could feel something unique and profound withering, fading like a flower too long cut. I wanted to apologize, or to explain, but the words would not come. I ordered the driver to drop us several blocks from the address Rath had given me, and we walked the remaining distance, alert for any signs of ambush.
Despite her obvious disappointment in the circumstances of coming here, I am grateful to have her at my side. She is of privileged birth, daughter of Argus Cho, and is doubtless known to the Gray Circle. Plus her personal power is formidable, and equally well known. Only a fool would dare raise their hand to an aeromancer of her skill.
Watching the house, a new thought occurs to me. What if Lia's status with the court no longer matters? What if, in joining me, she has forfeited her rights and benefits as a member of the mage class? After all, I am a murderess; I killed a member of the Gray Circle. What might Savard do in retaliation for such a thing?
Suddenly, the tightly-packed houses seem much more ominous. Every shadowed window, every doorway, may hide a black-clad archer. Every chimney may shelter an assassin who, even now, draws an arrow to his cheek. As powerful as Lia is, she is no match for a sniper's arrow sent from a place of concealment.
"Come on,” I say, making my decision. I will not learn anything more by staring at the house's blank brick and plaster walls. Lia nods and follows.
We cross the street and pick our way through the rubbish littering the house's front steps, papers and broken roof tiles and a single, filth-encrusted bottle. The front door was recently secured with a stout chain and a lock. Even in the gloom, I can see the heavy, rusted eye bolts screwed into the planks and the place where the lock has rubbed away the door's peeling paint. Now the door stands unsecured, the chain nowhere to be seen. I push the latch and the door creaks open under my shoulder, the noise echoing from the stained plaster walls.
I feel Lia, just behind me, and turn to see if she is ready. She nods. We slip inside.
The foyer smells of damp and cold and old smoke. The sky glow does not penetrate the inside of the house, and I must stop and light my small lantern. I raise it, gambling that if there are archers, they will not have a clear shot through the splintered shutters.
Plaster peels from the walls, exposing lathing. The floor was lovely once, a mosaic of wooden parquet, now warped and buckled. It looks dangerous, the wood splintered and cracked. One could easily fall through a weak spot.
I set my bow beside the door, then un-sling the quiver of barbed arrows slanting across my back. They will only hinder me in the close confines of the building.
Doorways lead off from the entrance hall. The rooms beyond are invisible in the dark. I hear the skittering of rats, moving across the dusty floors, crawling inside the walls. There is a hole in the ceiling, five feet across, and through it I can barely make out the room above us.
An odor floats above the miasma of smoke and wet plaster, a sweet smell, like bodies rotting on a hangman's gallows. It is faint, but my alert nose detects the scent instantly.
"Kirin, where—” Lia begins. I silence her with an upraised hand. She smells it too; I see the lightning in her eyes grow brighter, flickering faster now as she gathers her power about her.
A new sound intrudes on the house's hushed silence: soft scrapings and footfalls. Floor boards creak as something heavy shifts and moves in the black rooms. I hear the skrtch of an object scraping across the floor, something hard, like claws or spines. The noises are all around us, are above us as well.
I crouch and rest the lantern on the floor, not bothering with my knife; it is useless against them. My eyes move back and forth, alert for any flicker of movement.
I hear Lia, whispering in the language of the air elementals. I pray she does not need to call upon them; I do not think the dilapidated building could withstand even a single stroke of her power. I do not want to die here, buried alive by the house's collapse.
The first sweetling steps into the light, eme
rging from the shadows of a side room. The creature was once one of the attackers from Rath's manor; I recognize the dusky skin and black eyes, empty now, filmed over with a layer of milky opal. Once, he was the man Rath cut with his sword, before the sweetlings spilled his guts over the frozen ground, now reanimated and sent to do its master's bidding.
Only the face is recognizable; the rest is nightmare. The body that carries it is hunched and twisted. The legs are short and powerful, bent back like a bird's, ending in three-toed, clawed talons beneath a swollen chest as big as a barrel. The leathery flesh is missing in several places, exposing the wet red of tendon and the gleaming yellowish white of bone. In place of hands, the thing has a trio of wicked bone spurs, each longer than a carving knife, jagged and cruelly barbed. It flexes them slowly, as if it relishes the thought of bathing them in our blood.
"Steady,” I whisper. “It would have attacked by now if it was going to."
A second sweetling appears at the lip of the hole above, peering down at us with its ruined face. Then a third and a fourth emerge from their hiding places, moving towards us.
"I'm here for your master,” I say, threading the power of command through the words. I do not know if it will do anything; the creatures are not alive. The will that drives them is not their own.
They pause for a moment at the sound of my voice, hesitating. The moment stretches, the creatures frozen in place. I feel Lia shifting behind me.
"What is happening?” she hisses.
"I don't know. But be ready in case they come after us. I'll—"
The sweetlings move, tightening the ring of malice surrounding us. Lia and I go back-to-back, the move instinctual. The sweetling above drops through the hole and lands heavily on the dusty parquet floor, rolling back to its feet with clumsy grace.
"Kirin,” Lia says, begging me to give her the signal to attack. She sounds very young, very scared, and I curse myself silently for allowing her to come.
The creatures on one side of us, the side leading deeper into the house, move aside, opening a space in the ring. Their intention is clear: Walk this way.
"Come on,” I whisper, picking up the lantern. “It seems we're to have an audience after all."
As we walk deeper into the house, the sweetlings move to bracket us, steering us towards the rearmost rooms. Soon we come to an open door. The things stop, at either side. Behind the open door I see stairs, leading down.
I look at Lia and shrug, then begin my descent. They creak ominously, but hold. After several steps, the stairs turn back on themselves, changing from warped wood to worn stone. Out of the wind, the air is warmer, the reek of death more pronounced. I reach back and my groping fingers find Lia's hand. She clasps it, painfully tight. The stairs abruptly end and I stumble.
The lantern's glow does little to illuminate the open expanse of the basement. The smell is overpowering, pressing against my face like fetid cobwebs. The taste is galling in the back of my throat. All around I hear the sounds of dripping water and shuffling bodies. The edges of the room seethe with half-glimpsed movement. How many sweetlings surround us? A dozen? Two? More?
Lia gives a tiny scream as one of our guides nudges her forward, pushing her into my back. “Do not touch me!” she calls out. Her eyes flash like distant heat lightning.
Hand in hand, we make our way across the packed-earth floor. My feet push aside heaps of clumped dirt and other refuse. Sweetlings shamble towards us, every one a fresh horror, then brush past. Every time this happens, I must resist the urge to flinch away.
I spy a new fire, glowing from an opening in the far wall. I hear a man's measured footsteps, boot leather ringing against stone. As I approach, my lantern shows me the ragged edges of a broken-down wall. Its stones are scattered across the floor, lying in untidy piles at either side of the narrow opening.
Rath, torch in hand, emerges from the passage behind the wall. I hear Lia gasp as the additional light reveals the creatures all around us, three dozen at least, a seething, shifting mass of horned limbs and weeping, broken flesh. Several can barely move, their tissues dried and stretched. They are weeks, if not months old, desiccated by time, while others, like the ones who met us above, are still fresh, still spry.
"What happened?” Rath asks.
"The Gray Circle ambushed me outside of my house,” I explain. “I couldn't wait until tomorrow."
"What's she doing here?"
"They would have taken her too. I couldn't ask her to—"
"Where Kirin goes, I go,” Lia interrupts. She gives my hand a final squeeze and drops it, stepping up beside me. Despite the horrible forms all around me, despite the cold and the stink, and the oppressive gloom, I smile.
"I want to see this old woman. Now,” Lia continues, her tone clipped and regal. She holds herself like a queen, haughty and cold, brooking no refusal.
Rath stares at her for a moment, his eyebrows raised, then looks at me. I smile again and shrug. Finally, he nods. “But of course, Lady Cho. Please, forgive my shameful manners. If you'd be so kind as to step this way?” He gestures towards the hole in the wall behind him.
Lia steps forward, outwardly calm and collected, but I can still see the flicker of lightning behind her eyes. I know her well enough to read her fear and fury. I follow, through the ragged hole, and into a low-ceilinged tunnel.
Rath takes the lead, lighting our way. The passage behind the wall is narrow, barely wider than my outstretched arms, lined with irregular stone bricks. The arched ceiling curves just above my head; Rath must crouch slightly, lest he scrape against it. The odor of rotting things is less in the tunnel; I can barely smell it over the scent of ancient dust.
"What is this place?” I ask.
"It's the house's private catacomb. The City's wealthier families used them to bury their dead, before the practice was outlawed,” Rath explains. Even as he does, we emerge into a round chamber, nearly forty feet across. Brick-lined alcoves line the walls, ceiling to floor, each the resting place of a skeletal body. The floor is crowded with a dozen marble sarcophagi, their lids adorned with carved likenesses of, I assume, the person resting within.
"Outlawed?” I ask.
"The priests decided it was ungodly for common people to sleep above the bodies of their dead relatives,” Rath answers. “Instead, they commanded that everyone, rich or poor, beggar or courtier, be interred in the necropolis on the western edge of the city. Very pious, I'm sure, but unnecessary. In reality, what they really wanted was to keep watch over the dead. To oversee and assure their final sleep."
I can see the wisdom of it. In a world where people like Rath and I can commune with the spirits of the dead, and command them to do our bidding, it is only natural that the priests would desire control over such power.
"So what about these bodies? This catacomb?” I ask, following him and Lia through the coffins.
"Bodies already at rest were allowed to continue their eternal sleep. But the passages connecting the various catacombs were gated, or walled up, sealing them from one another. That was over two hundred years ago. Now, many people—upright, law-abiding types anyway—don't even remember these tunnels even exist."
We pass a second broken wall and enter a new passage. Rath reaches a crossing, and turns right. The new tunnel is wider, nearly eight feet across and twice that high. “A main thoroughfare,” Rath explains. “This runs along the path of the street above."
We keep walking, passing stout, rusted iron gates and bricked-over doorways. Some have words scratched beside them in charcoal or with a stone: addresses, or cryptic symbols. Some are arrows, pointing in differing directions, personal way-markers for long-lost explorers.
The passages are not completely abandoned; someone uses them, if only occasionally, but it is impossible to judge how long it has been since anyone was last here.
We pass a broken doorway and I spy movement. I slow, my hand on my knife, and in the chancy torchlight spy a sweetling, crammed into the opening. It stares out of the
hole at me with weeping, opal eyes, its wide, fanged mouth twisted in a permanent snarl.
"Pity the burglar or grave robber who comes this way, eh?” Rath says with a laugh. I nod, and see Lia's face twist in revulsion at Rath's good humor. She knows what the sweetlings are capable of.
Rath passes three more crossings, then turns left at the fourth. The passage narrows once more. After a time, he stops at one of the heavy iron gates. He fishes a neck chain out from beneath his tunic and draws it over his head. A key dangles from the golden links.
The lock, despite its aged appearance, opens with a smooth, oiled click. He removes the chain and pulls wide the gate, inviting us to enter. Lia walks through, eyeing the gate nervously. When we are through, Rath closes and locks it behind us.
Just past the gate is a thick, wooden door. It smells of fresh-cut wood. Rath pushes, and it swings open on smoothly-oiled hinges. Light spills into the passage.
The room beyond is another crypt, even larger than the one we passed before. Candles have been placed on the edges of the niches in the walls, bathing the room in light. The bodies lying in the shelf-like depressions have been reduced to dusty skeletons.
Unlike the other crypt, this one is open, uncluttered by biers or sarcophagi, with a floor of mosaic. Several heavy grates bar dark openings in the walls. The picture on the floor is done in the old style of repeated, entwined shapes, stars and arabesques, their radii coming together in hexagonal junctures. It is a thing of beauty, reminiscent of the decorative rugs which have always been the heirlooms of the wealthiest of families, locked away in the darkness and left to molder, like everything else here.
In the room's center stands a tall, padded table, covered in a spotless white sheet. Unlit candelabra stand beside it. A couch and some chairs have been placed against the walls. Napaula lies on the couch, smiling up at us.
"Welcome to my family's place of rest and memorial,” Rath says, bowing us in as if inviting us into his sitting room.