The Barrow (23 page)

Somewhere in the dark, a woman whispered.

He moved across the attic by the dim light of his covered candle lantern, finding his way as much by memory as by vision, until he reached the proper spot, kneeling and as quietly as possible shuttering the lantern so that its small light was covered and the room plunged into black. He lay down flat on his stomach and felt for the small iron eye-ring in the floor, found it, and then pulled up on it slowly, opening the peephole cover. He pressed his face to the floor, his eyes blinking and squinting to focus on the woman in the room beneath him.

Annwyn was dressed in a simple but finely made robe, seated upon a plain hard bench in her private chambers. The room was austere, even cold, virtually bereft of any memento of sentiment or personality, any hint of softness. Two large armoires held her clothes, though long ago she had given away anything other than the habitual black ensembles that constituted her mourning armor. As the Lady of a proper Aurian noble family, she naturally had such ensembles in a variety of seasonal styles, though someone unversed in the minutiae of city fashion would undoubtedly have simply thought her armoires full of the same set of black clothes over and over again. But Annwyn's sense of style was so formidable that even when she wasn't thinking about it (which she had not, for over a decade), she instinctively chose well when it came to tailoring and stitching.

The candles in Annwyn's rooms burned brightly. She had a small leather-bound book in her hands, and she read slowly, whispering to herself as she constructed the words in her head. Where once she had found pleasure in so many things in life—in dances and revels, in hosting company at her father's castle, in long rides into the countryside, in singing and bards and poets, in the formalities and intricacies of the Court, in her friends and rivals in the great social order of the Middle Kingdoms and its capital—now the only thing that she looked forward to each day was a small bit of escape, when she could read words written or printed on paper and let her mind wander to other places, other times, other people, and forget who she was, and what she had done.

“My Lady,” came Malia's voice from the doorway.

But even this simple pleasure must come to an end
, Annwyn thought. She looked up, and smiled softly at the appearance of her most loyal handmaiden. Malia forever wore a slight frown and look of consternation, as though worried that she had forgotten something very important. Which, Annwyn supposed, she probably had. Malia was so very good at forgetting. “Malia,” said Annwyn. “Does it grow so late?”

“Yes, my Lady, the hour grows very late,” said Malia. “The rest of the household is mostly asleep, but I had Henriette and Frallas fill a hot bath for you. If you will forgive the presumption, I thought you might want it after such a . . . long day.”

“It has been a long day,” Annwyn said, and closed her book. She ran her fingers over the cover, tracing the gold debossed letters in its surface. The cover read
The Romance of the Dragon King
, the name of a popular version of the
Adüra Draconum Fini
, the epic song cycle
Last of the Dragon Kings
by the bard Üsker that many considered the last great epic in the old Danian language, being printed and sold in the city from one of its new printing presses; popular, yes, but also a much simplified and glamorized version of the song cycle, taking considerable liberties with the history of Erlwulf, last of the Dragon Kings, and seemingly adding in a romantic lost love unmentioned in any other record of the period. Still, it sufficed for her purposes.

Annwyn stood up from the wood bench and stepped to one of her armoires. She opened the doors and then a small interior drawer, in which several other small leather books were placed, most with the word “romance” in their titles. She sighed, and then followed Malia through a curtained door in the rear of the chamber. As she stepped through it, her robe began to slip from her shoulders, and then she was gone from sight.

He cursed softly, nervous and excited. He carefully replaced the peephole cover, and sat up before cautiously feeling for the covered lantern. He opened up the shutters, allowing more light to spill through, and then stood. He forced himself to move quietly and slowly, knowing that the floors did occasionally squeak, but so, so eager not to miss anything.

Erim loved the city at night. She had never been to Palatia Archaia, or the city of Hemapoli in the League, or to the Imperial capital at Avellos, all of them reportedly cities where the markets never closed and even in the dead of night the streets were ablaze with light; but Therapoli had to come pretty close, she reckoned. Some of the food shops and eateries along the Grand Promenade were still going strong, and she knew the outer arcades of the Forum would still be filled with groups of men singing and drinking; she could hear them in the distance all the way from where she walked. She smelled lamps burning and pies baking, pigs roasting and the sweet, putrid mix of piss and vomit, and felt light with joy at the simple pleasures of a night filled with revelers.

She turned up Wall Street and headed up into the Old Quarter, nodding to the men from the City Watch that walked past her, the hilts of their broadswords and heads of their long-spiked billhooks glistening in the lamplight. Had she been dressed according to her gender, they might not have been so easy to walk past; a woman alone in most parts of the city at night would either immediately be offered an escort for protection, should she be deemed a lady or woman of repute, or questioned as to her intentions, should she be dressed too provocatively. And depending on her answers, that could lead to her arrest, or if she fell afoul of the wrong group of Watchmen, a more vigorous and far less desirable form of questioning. But as she was dressed as a man, they saw her as a man and paid her no mind.

Of course, turning up toward the Old Quarter might well have been a signal to them of a man's poor intentions, as the Old Quarter was where most of the city's brothels and streetwalkers could be found. But the Princes of the Guild who ran the Old Quarter had long ago made it worthwhile for the Watch to spend its energies elsewhere, and so soon she found herself walking past dancing halls and taverns, with drunken men and scantily clad dancers visible through the doors and windows, if not spilling out into the streets. Heavily inebriated men singing loudly walked past her, stumbling past couples discreetly heading to apartment doorways. A bit further up and painted women were actively trolling the street, greeting her with smiles that ranged from the genuine to the desperate, while street urchins begged for coin and eyed her purse, or offered themselves for sale. But she merely shook her head politely at each invitation and kept going.

She finally turned into a wide cobble-stoned alley off Wall Street and nodded her head nonchalantly to the two bravos leaning against the wall and warming their hands over a fire in a large metal bucket as she passed them. They gave her a quick once-over and she wasn't sure if they recognized her, but at least they didn't read her as a threat. She walked down to the unmarked metal gates built into a large arch in the north wall, and knocked on it twice. A spy hole in the gate slid open, and a pair of dull, heavy-lidded eyes stared down at her for a long moment. The plate slid shut, and then the gate creaked open. She nodded at the big burly men standing behind the gate, and let the growling Highland pit bulls that they had on leashes sniff the back of her hand, then walked through the short cobble-stoned entry passage and out into a large courtyard. Horses and even a couple of coaches were lined up to one side, either tied to hitching posts or held by squires or menservants. On the other side of the courtyard she passed into a covered arcade, and followed it until she reached the top of a dark, broad stairwell with a single silent sentinel. She nodded to him then followed the stairs down. At the landing she turned in through a doorway under the building. There were no lights here, so she had to feel her way along the passage, taking two turns, until she felt heavy brocade curtains in front of her. She pushed her way through, and blinked in the dim candlelight. She nodded at the two big burly men in the small chamber, and they nodded back. She could hear music and voices from beyond the next curtains, and she crossed the chamber in a few short steps and pushed her way through the velvet brocade curtains into the Sleight of Hand.

Gilgwyr is, if nothing else, a showman
, she thought as she paused at the entrance to the long vaulted brothel hall decorated in imitation of a sumptuous harem. The hall was more brightly lit with candles and low braziers, but still managed to seem dark and dangerous. Drummers and musicians were putting out a sinuous, rhythmic music; raucous laughter and cries of passion punctuated the smoky air, while barely-clad dancers shimmied and shook on tabletops. A rough-trade crowd of wealthy johns and dandies from every part of the city, rival pimps and prostitutes, Marked Men and their crews with black teardrops drawn by the corners of their eyes in mourning, and other denizens of the night and the city's underworld filled the room almost to bursting, all of them come to lose themselves in the intoxicating bit of theater created by their host. There were far more of them than she could count. She could even see what she guessed were perhaps as many as thirty masked lords and ladies, slumming it amongst the other common customers and brave enough to rub elbows with men who would gladly rob them elsewhere: men like Petterwin Grim, still handsome despite his scars, and a half dozen of his Grimsmen, and old Potter Aelias and his crew, taking a night off from preying on foreign sailors on the docks. She spotted Jon Dhee, master of the Market Quarter, his long stringy hair coming down in front of his mean, scrunched up face, and then she spotted the unmistakable profile of Long Nose Ludwyn, a notoriously cruel rapist. All four were Marked Men of the Guild, but still the blacklisted Red Rob Asprin was nonchalantly sitting a few tables over with several of his men, sipping a glass of wine while a pretty blonde Aurian dancer slobbered all over his erect cock; two masked Aurian noblewomen stood nearby, watching the casual show with excited eyes and parted lips. Mina the Dagger, called by some the most vicious and terrifying woman in the city, was over by a long wood bar with a tall thin pretty boy on each arm; Erim knew that despite their painted, bored faces and frilled doublets that her boy toys were expert duelists, with over a dozen kills apiece. Mina had several women from her stable with her and they looked like they were happy for the night off. A wild-eyed Helgi Ketildram drunkenly stumbled past her, shirtless, his massive muscles and the barbaric designs on his inked skin enough to part the startled crowd of johns and dandies. He was trailed by several of his girls, and they didn't look happy in the least.