City of the Dead (14 page)

Blinking a little at this sensible speech from the irrepressible Gustin, Sophraea hung her apron on a peg by the door. She

removed the golden shoe from its pocket and dropped it into her wicker basket.

“Where are you going?” asked Gustin.

“To see Lord Adarbrent,” she replied, taking her rain cape off another hook and swinging it around her shoulders. “I want to ask him about this shoe.”

“You know,” said Gustin, casually borrowing another rain cape from the hall pegs. “I don’t think I have ever seen the inside of a Waterdhavian nobleman’s house.”’ The cape was Bentnor’s and fell in great dark blue folds around the wizard. “I’ll be happy to escort you.”

“I don’t recall asking for an escort.”

“Well, I could go watch your father at his carving. But I might start chatting to him about where I was last night, out in the tunnels, under the City of the Dead.”

“That might be more painful for you than me,” pointed out Sophraea, trying to keep her expression calm. No one in the family would ever harm her, and all would fly to her defense against any outsider, but the discussion of her behavior would go on for days! And her mother would look disappointed, and her father would sigh, and she would want to sink into the floorboards.

What was worse, they’d all think that she’d done it to flirt with this wizard and nobody would listen when she’d try to explain about the dead wandering inside the graveyard or in the tunnels below.

“Still, you have to admire my fearless honesty in the face of great personal danger,” Gustin continued to tease. “Especially considering the stories that those Watchmen wanted to tell me about your brothers.”

“Oh, come along then!” She exclaimed and walked into the yard, only to halt at the sight of Rampage Stunk’s hairy doorjack standing there. The man sniffed at her and licked his tongue across his large yellow teeth.

“Ugh,” said Sophraea, waiting for the man to move out of her way.

“I’ve orders from the master for your father,” the servant said to her.

“He’s in his workshop,” she said, suddenly glad of the tall form of Gustin Bone behind her.

The servant’s eyes flicked over the wizard. His nose wrinkled and his upper lip pulled back from his teeth as he snarled, “Magic-user.”

“Oh, whenever I can,” Gustin replied with a wave of his hand. The silver wand popped out of his sleeve and sent sparks flying into the air. “I could probably provide you with a nice little charm to keep the hair off your back and the fleas away if you’d like.”

The man growled, “I am a servant of Rampage Stunk, the greatest man in all of Waterdeep.”

“Well, that’s a bit of a stretch,” whispered Sophraea to Gustin. “He’s rich but he’s not that well known.” Ś

The servant twitched his head to look straight at her. “He will be, little miss, he will be. And your family should be very grateful for his patronage. And grateful to his servants too! After all, my master and my master’s friends are planning many new tombs in the fancy graveyard there. And if the Carvers don’t want the work, somebody else will,” he gloated.

“There isn’t room inside the City of the Dead for that many new tombs,” protested Sophraea, thinking if the noble dead were disturbed already by the changes in the Markarl and Vesham tombs, more changes were sure to bring disaster.

“There will be room,” boasted the servant. “My master will make sure of that.”

The fact that a nobleman of Lord Adarbrent’s stature lived on a street called Manycats Alley caused Gustin to snicker. “It’s a very grand neighborhood,” explained Sophraea. “Only the finest families of Waterdeep have mansions here.” The mansions along Manycats had been remodeled in the newest style, with the old gatehouses and courtyards now completely enclosed, so anyone entering from the front would not be plagued by Waterdeep’s perpetual rain. Stairs with beautifully wrought iron rails ran up from the street’s pavement to a gleaming polished door that had replaced the old and more open gate of a century ago.

Sophraea climbed the eight steps leading to Lord Adarbrent’s great door.

“You’d think they’d give this street a better name,” snorted Gustin as Sophraea swung the bronze knocker shaped like a ship’s anchor. • “Like what?” she countered.

“Rich Dogs Avenue, Highbred Cats Boulevard,” suggested Gustin.

She giggled and then glared at him. “Don’t. This is serious.”

The creaking door of Lord Adarbrent’s mansion opened. A pale old servant in the livery of Waterdeep’s past listened politely to Sophraea’s request.

“Follow me,” he said finally.

The servant led them, very slowly, through the enclosed courtyard past a long dry fountain. Another two steps led into the mansion’s

great hall, with its cold marble floors and long bare benches where petitioners would have once waited for the lord of the house. A broad staircase disappeared into the gloom of the upper rooms. No candles burned despite the lack of light from the narrow windows facing the courtyard. The fireplace grates, one at each end of the hall, were swept clean and bare.

A few faded maritime flags hung limply on the walls. The formerly bright colors muted by time into pale reminders of the family’s once great shipping interests.

“I think it was warmer in the tunnels,” muttered Gustin.

“Shh,” said Sophraea.

The servant opened a small black door near the back of the hall, motioning them forward. The little waiting chamber was just as cold and gloomy as the great hall, but it at least had a few ancient chairs rather than bare benches. This was obviously where the better class of petitioners would have waited for the former Lord Adarbrents.

After wrestling with the stubborn silk draperies covering the long windows of the room, the servant pulled back the curtains to allow a narrow view of the damp winter garden outside. No fire burned in this grate either, only a trace of cold ash lay scattered across the hearthstones.

Once the servant left to inform Lord Adarbrent of their presence, Gustin sprang up from the rickety chair where he had been seated by the servant. He took a quick turn around the room, examining the smoky dark portraits of former Adarbrents decorating the walls. One portrait bore a mottled brass plaque engraved with the family’s founding patriarch “Royus.” The grim fellow in the painting looked as if he’d just swallowed something extremely bitter.

“I don’t think Time just stopped here. I think Time curled up behind the wainscoting and died,” Gustin said, staring up at that particular long-dead member of the Adarbrent family.

“Hush,” said Sophraea, still sitting very straight on her

uncomfonable chair because she didn’t know what else to do. “Someone will hear you.”

However, she had to acknowledge that there was a peculiar smell permeating the mansion, a sharp tang just under the usual old house smells of damp, cold, and dust. Perhaps Lord Adarbrent needed a cat, a good mouser like the ones who lived in the Carver workshops. She could always bring him a kitten.

The thought of the Walking Corpse of Waterdeep wjth a kitten caused Sophraea to giggle. Gustin turned away from rearranging the scashells lined up on the mantelpiece and asked, “Care to share the joke?”

Sophraea shook her head, hiccupping a little as she tried to regain control, and then relented, saying, “I was just thinking that I could give Lord Adarbrent a kitten.”

“One of that fluffy black-and-white set living under your father’s workbench?”

“Yes, can you just imagine a kitten here?”

“Not very well,” admitted Gustin with chuckle. “Those drapes would be in shreds on the floor by morning.”

“But it does seem appropriate,” said Sophraea, giving away to laughter, “for a nobleman who lives …”

“On Manycats Alley,” Gustin guffawed.

The stately clatter of boot heels across the bare marble floor of the hallway outside interrupted their laughter. Lord Adarbrent appeared, dressed very much as he always did for walking the streets of Waterdeep, the long rusty black coat with its oversized pockets hanging past his knees. Only his broad-brimmed hat and slender black cane were missing.

The old nobleman blinked a few times at their presence in his waiting room.

Blushing and hoping very much that he had not heard their joking, Sophraea rose from her chair and curtsied.

“Dear child,” Lord Adarbrent addressed her as he usually did in her father’s yard. He bowed deeply. Upon spotting Gustin standing by the mantelpiece, he bowed again. Gustin hastily replaced the seashell that he had been fiddling with and bowed in return.

“Visitors. How… unus… ah… how pleasant,” Lord Adarbrent faltered, rubbing his chin in a gesture of puzzled contemplation.

Sophraea wondered when the old gentleman had last entertained guests in his house. Given the condition of the room and his own state of surprise, she guessed it may have been a few years. Actually, given the state of the debilitated curtains, a few decades might be an even better guess, she thought.

“Lord Adarbrent,” she said, speaking quickly to fill up the awkward silence, “this is the wizard Gustin Bone. He very kindly escorted me here today as I wanted to ask you—” She stopped, uncertain how to say “we found a shoe, we think it came off a corpse, do you think the deceased nobility are roaming in the City of the Dead?”

Luckily, Lord Adarbrent seemed to have overlooked her incomplete sentence and was bowing again to Gustin. “So nice,” he said in his careful style, “to meet a young man with the manners to know that a young woman should not go unescorted and unprotected through the streets of Waterdeep.”

Sophraea was about to point out that a great many ladies and women of other classes walked abroad alone and were perfectly capable of protecting themselves. Except she realized that Lord Adarbrent meant it as a compliment to the wizard and there was no point in distressing the old gentleman.

“My lord,” she said instead. “We recently noticed some disturbances in the City of the Dead.”

“And underneath it,” added Gustin.

“And, knowing of your great interest in the history of the place, were wondering if you could make some suggestion about this?” she

asked, withdrawing the little golden shoe from her wicker basket. “We found it near the Markarl tomb.”

“Almost directly under it,” added Gustin again, despite Sophraea’s frown at him. She really didn’t want to start explaining how they had been in the tunnels the previous evening. Especially as she was sure that Lord Adarbrent, who didn’t believe ladies should go unescorted through the public streets, would not approve of her traipsing underground in the sewers.

Lord Adarbrent was very gentle in his handling of the shoe, turning it over with a sigh. “Such a pretty thing,” he said, “I remember when I was young, all the ladies wore such finery to the great balls.”

Since neither Sophraea nor Gustin could imagine Lord Adarbrent as a young man, they made no comment.

“My lord, I’m very worried about the disturbances in the City,” said Sophraea. “Rampage Stunk has ordered two tombs removed for the building of his own monument. And I think … well, I think that the dead are upset. It is possible that the dead are walking. I would go to the Watch or to the Watchful Order, only I really don’t know who to speak to.” And, she added silently, I really don’t want to explain that my family built an unprotected gate into the City of the Dead several generations ago that everyone has overlooked and that may pose a great danger to Waterdeep.

“There is no reason to involve the City Watch or the Order,” said Lord Adarbrent. “Rampage Stunk’s activities”—he paused and smacked his lips as if trying to clear a bad taste out of his mouth— “Stunk’s plans are known and approved, by the highest authorities, as I have been repeatedly told.”

Looking at the deep and angry lines on the aged nobleman’s face, Sophraea fancied whoever had told Lord Adarbrent had had an unpleasant task.

“Stunk holds the deeds to those tombs, sold quite legally to

him by the last foolish remnants of two once great and very noble families,” Lord Adarbrent concluded with a scowl. “If he chooses to make other arrangements with that property, it is well within his rights as a citizen of Waterdeep. Or so it was explained to me.” The last sentence ended on a note perilously close to a snarl.

The old man patted Sophraea’s hand where it rested upon the handle of her wicker basket. “It was very good of you to come to me, dear child, but your father and his brothers already made the same inquiries once they realized where Stunk meant to build his tomb.”

“Oh,” said Sophraea, quite dismayed by this revelation. “I didn’t know.”

“But, do the dead of Waterdeep respect the same laws, my lord?” asked Gustin. “We certainly saw some signs of magic around those tombs the other day.”

Turning to the wizard. Lord Adarbrent said, “I think you are somewhat new to our city?”

“I arrived a short time ago.”

“Ah, well, you will learn. Waterdeep is a very old city, with magic sunk into its foundation stones. I doubt there is anywhere that you could walk in this city and not see some mark of a past spell or incantation.”

Lord Adarbrent handed the little tarnished shoe back to Sophraea and she tucked it back into the basket without a thought.

“Thank you for the visit,” he said, showing them out of the room. The servant waited at the already open door leading to the courtyard, making it clear that the visit was at an end.

Sophraea curtsied, Gustin bowed, and Lord Adarbrent waved off these gestures of respect with a murmured, “No need. Such nice manners, always a pleasure.”

As a further courtesy, the old nobleman escorted them across the courtyard, tutting under his breath at the state of his fountain

and muttering something about meaning to have the dwarves take a look at it.

Outside the great door, standing on the stairs leading to the pavement, they saw a group of men clearing the furniture out of a fine but rather dilapidated house a little farther down the street.

“Rampage Stunk,” Lord Adarbrent growled in much stronger tones than he had used inside. “The dowager isn’t dead more than five days and he’s already bought the house from her heirs. He will sell it for a fine profit to one of his fancy friends and I’ll have more jackanapes pretending to be noblemen living on my street. No manners, no breeding, no sense of tradition …”