A Study in Sable

TITLES BY MERCEDES LACKEY
available from DAW Books:

THE NOVELS OF VALDEMAR
:

THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

ARROW'S FLIGHT

ARROW'S FALL

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

MAGIC'S PAWN

MAGIC'S PROMISE

MAGIC'S PRICE

THE MAGE WINDS

WINDS OF FATE

WINDS OF CHANGE

WINDS OF FURY

THE MAGE STORMS

STORM WARNING

STORM RISING

STORM BREAKING

VOWS AND HONOR

THE OATHBOUND

OATHBREAKERS

OATHBLOOD

THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES

FOUNDATION

INTRIGUES

CHANGES

REDOUBT

BASTION

THE HERALD SPY

CLOSER TO HOME

CLOSER TO THE HEART

CLOSER TO THE CHEST*

BY THE SWORD

BRIGHTLY BURNING

TAKE A THIEF

EXILE'S HONOR

EXILE'S VALOR

VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:

SWORD OF ICE

SUN IN GLORY

CROSSROADS

MOVING TARGETS

CHANGING THE WORLD

FINDING THE WAY

UNDER THE VALE

NO TRUE WAY

CRUCIBLE

TEMPEST*

Written with
LARRY DIXON
:

THE MAGE WARS

THE BLACK GRYPHON

THE WHITE GRYPHON

THE SILVER GRYPHON

DARIAN'S TALE

OWLFLIGHT

OWLSIGHT

OWLKNIGHT

OTHER NOVELS:

GWENHWYFAR

THE BLACK SWAN

THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

JOUST

ALTA

SANCTUARY

AERIE

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

THE SERPENT'S SHADOW

THE GATES OF SLEEP

PHOENIX AND ASHES

THE WIZARD OF LONDON

RESERVED FOR THE CAT

UNNATURAL ISSUE

HOME FROM THE SEA

STEADFAST

BLOOD RED

FROM A HIGH TOWER

A STUDY IN SABLE

Anthologies:

ELEMENTAL MAGIC

ELEMENTARY

*Coming soon from DAW Books

And don't miss THE VALDEMAR COMPANION edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

Copyright © 2016 by Mercedes Lackey

All Rights Reserved.

Jacket art by Jody A. Lee.

Jacket designed by G-Force Design.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1725.

Published by DAW Books, Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

eBook ISBN 9780756411640

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

D
EDICATION
:
To the memory of Alan Rickman. Always.

Prologue

A
FELLER
did not survive as a London street Arab for long, let alone prosper, if he couldn't keep his wits about him under any and all circumstances. And he didn't rise to the heady heights of the front ranks of the Irregulars and the good graces of the guv'nor without having nerves of steel wire and a mind like a rattrap, ready to snap on any bit of information that came his way. Wiggins himself trusted Tommy as his right-hand man, and the guv'nor trusted no Irregular more than Wiggins.

With that sort of regard resting on his shoulders, a feller had to be smart, quick, and steady as Windsor Castle. A feller couldn't let himself get the wind up about anything, no matter how spooky it was. There was more than enough peril in the alleys and shadows without letting your imagination make more.

But Tommy Grimes had to admit to himself that the toff he was following through fog-wreathed streets was giving him a lot of goose bumps. That was strange, because there wasn't much that put the hair up on Tommy's head, and he'd poked into more nasty places than most. And it was strange, because so far, the gent had only acted a bit peculiar, and Tommy followed fellers who had acted quite
mad before without getting collywobbles about it. So, he was getting the cauld grue, and it was for no obvious reason that
he
could see.

It wasn't how the blighter looked; he was well dressed, in a long, double-breasted dark coat and matching trousers; without an overcoat, which wasn't unusual tonight, but without a hat, which was. His graying black hair was cut longer than most, wavy, and a bit disheveled, but in a manner a lady would likely say was “artistic.” As gents went, he'd probably be reckoned handsome, by ladies anyway. Except for his hair, everything about him was fastidiously tidy. No one was giving him a second glance as he passed by. But then, this was a nice neighborhood; good thing it was dark and no one could see the tattered state of Tommy's clothes. Not that people like this paid any attention to a lad like him anyway, so long as he didn't get within an arm's length of 'em, on account of if he got close, they'd likely think he was about to stick his hand in their pockets. This toff, though, he fit right in and only occasioned a slight smile from a lady, or a nod from a gent as they passed each other on the street. Simple politeness among the gentry.

Not that there were many of the gentry out at this time of night. Folks what lived around here were all asleep, trusting to their locks, their servants, and the police to keep 'em safe. Mostly they were asleep in their own beds, though sometimes they were in beds where they didn't rightly belong, but that was none of Tommy's business, 'cept when the guv'nor made it his business.

But this toff had caught Tommy's attention on account of Tommy could tell he wasn't just strolling, but paying right close attention to whether or not there was anyone about. Once the street was clear, he stopped dead still, inclined his head as if he was listening to someone—nodded, and then whispered a word or two back—and then continued on his way with the determined step of someone who knew exactly where he was going. Tommy'd thought maybe the old gent was a bit barmy, until he did it a couple more times, and each time he did, it was pretty obvious he was getting directions. But directions from what?

The second time he'd listened to something that weren't there,
Tommy knew his instincts hadn't been playing tricks on him, and there was something even the guv'nor might not be able to explain going on. He thought about breaking off at that point and letting the gent go on his way, but you never knew what scrap of odd knowledge might be worth something to the boss.
Maybe not the boss, though. Maybe the Major. Talkin' to things as ain't there's more his line.
That was all right. The Major paid just as well as the boss did.

And, as they got closer and closer to the Thames, and the respectable types gave way to loungers and drunks and whores, no one but Tommy saw him make tiny little gestures and whisper a few more words, and then go on as completely unmolested as if he was invisible.
That
made Tommy go cold all over and think again about continuing to follow the man. Surely he had enough, even for the Major.

But it didn't seem that the man knew he was being followed, so Tommy gathered his tattered courage about him and put everything the boss had taught him about tailing a gent into immediate use. Because the Major would pay more, a lot more, if he knew what the man had been getting directions
to.

But when it became very clear that the gent was heading for the waterfront and the docks themselves, Tommy grew very unhappy indeed, and for a whole different set of reasons than just unchancy behavior. This wasn't his lay; another set of gangs ruled the waterfront, and they didn't much like the Baker Street boys cutting in. Sure, some of them answered to the boss, but plenty more didn't, and no telling who was in which until there was a knife looking for your liver and you found your luck had run out.

But whatever was making the fancy toff invisible to the gangs seemed to be working for Tommy, too. No one harassed them; the waterfront was uncannily quiet. The man's path took him away from the taverns and alehouses, down silent, darkened byways Tommy would have got lost in on his own, avoiding anything other than the occasional night watchman. On they went, first to and then under the docks. And oh, even to Tommy's nose, inured as he was to smells, this place
stank.
Sewage warred with dead fish, which in turn warred with the smell of rotting things best not guessed at. The tide was
going out; it was the hour of the mudlarks, as the Thames left its odorous leavings on the mud-banks, and anything could be found, from a silver coin from the time of the eighth Henry to a deader, though most of what washed up was rags and bits of wood and rotten stuff. Needless to say, the deaders outnumbered the silver coins by quite a lot. There was the suicides, of course; there was always one or two of those a night. But there was also them as hadn't gone into the water of their own free will. And accidents, though it was hard to tell them from the ones that was pushed.

Tommy didn't dare follow the gent out into the mud (though somehow he wasn't sinking ankle-deep in the stuff like any proper human would), but he skulked in the shadows on the rocks under the docks and watched with all his eyes as the gent went straight to—something—lying asprawl in shallow water in the silvery moonlight.

The gent turned the thing over with a curious air of reverence, and a particularly strong beam of moonlight revealed a white, white face and long golden hair, and a fan of pale dress splayed out on the mud like so much seaweed.

“Perdóname, querida,”
said the gent, and the blade of a very sharp knife flashed for a moment in the moonlight.

Tommy felt horror grip him. It was one thing to cut up a man who meant to cut you up. It was quite another to cut up the dead. The dead should be left alone.

Then clouds covered the moon, and as Tommy found himself caught in a paralysis of terror, the man . . . did something to the corpse. Tommy heard a roaring like the sea in his ears, and everything went dark for a moment, and when he came to himself again, clutching at the wet, barnacle-covered support he'd hidden behind, the gent . . . was gone.

Quite gone, as if he had vanished right into thin air, like a conjurer. Except that Tommy knew quite a lot of conjurer's tricks, thanks to the boss, and no man that
he
knew of had ever been able to vanish from off a mudflat on the banks of the Thames without leaving a trace of his passing.

So, when Tommy managed to gird up his courage and make his way out to where the body lay, he found that, to his relief, the cove had made a decent set of footprints going back besides the set he'd made going out. So at least he hadn't been following some mad spirit or . . . demon. . . .

Even if those prints
were
far shallower than they had any right to be, as if the man had weighed no more than a child.

But then he discovered what the man had been after, and the discovery sent him floundering back to the banks, to the wharves, and racing for his life for the familiar and understandable evils of drunken savages and opium fiends and twelve-year-old prostitutes and murderous thieves.

For what manner of decent, upright man could possibly have wanted the arm bone of a poor drowned girl and her long, muddy, golden hair?

And most of all, in the name of all things sane . . .
why?