The Shadow at the Gate

Copyright 2010 by Christopher Bunn. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any mechanical or electronic means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval stystems, without the express written permission of the author. For more information, visit the author at www.christopherbunn.com.

Books by Christopher Bunn

The Tormay Trilogy

The Hawk and His Boy

The Shadow at the Gate

The Wicked Day

The Model Universe and Other Stories

The Mike Murphy Files and Other Stories

For David and Michael

THE SHADOW AT THE GATE

CHAPTER ONE

A SUDDEN DEMOTION

The Knife drowsed in a chair behind the Stone Crow Inn after a breakfast of fried mushrooms, sausages, and eggs. He tilted the chair back against the wall. The view was not the best, but it was quiet. Several horses gazed at him solemnly from over the stable fence. He could smell hay and manure and the thick, warm scent that was horse. The morning sunshine was the color of honey. He shut his eyes. A memory floated through his mind, of his mother likening him to a lazy cat always seeking sunlight to sleep in. A reluctant smile crossed his face. He hadn’t thought of his mother in a long time.

Ronan would have fallen asleep had not someone cleared their throat nearby. It was a polite, apologetic sort of sound. Just out of boot’s reach, he reflected to himself. Pity. He opened one eye. Smede took a step back.

Ronan sighed. “Can’t it wait until next month?”

“The sun will be here another day,” said Smede.

“But I may not. Go away. You bother my digestion. If I were regent, there’d be less Smedes in this city.”

“One Smede will suffice,” said Smede. “However, as much as we’re both fascinated by myself, there’s no time for pleasantries. The Silentman requests the honor of your presence. As soon as is convenient for you, which is—”

“At once, no doubt?” said Ronan.

“Of course,” said Smede. The accountant followed him from the courtyard, smiling and rubbing his hands together. The horses gazed after them with placid eyes.

Ronan had guessed it was that. Smede hardly ever emerged into the sunlight unless it was for a serious matter. Because he kept the books for the Guild, he was one of the few Guild members who knew, so it was said, the real identity of the Silentman. The Silentman often used him as a messenger when he had something important brewing.

“I know where I’m going, Smede,” said Ronan, quickening his pace. “Why don’t you trot back to your numbers? Being seen with you won’t do my reputation any good. You aren’t a fit companion for the dreaded Knife.”

“No, no. I don’t mind a nice, brisk walk,” said Smede, whose own habits rarely required him to do more than lifting his pen to the inkbottle. “Exercise is purported to promote health and long life, so I’ve read. I myself find that rigorous work cleanses the liver and sharpens the mental faculties so much so that, happily enough, the arithmetic of accounting seems to solve its own puzzles before my eyes. Truly, a blissful state. Though, the application of leeches produces the same effect in me. Do you find this for yourself as well?”

Hearne thronged with people that morning. The city was crowded enough any day of the year, for Hearne was the center, the heart of Tormay, the lodestone that drew travelers and traders from all other lands. It was here that the old seat of power had been, when kings still governed Tormay as one united land. Even though rule had dispersed to the duchies long ago, people still journeyed to Hearne to gawk at the castles and mansions, the spired terraces and manors that wound up the heights of Highneck Rise, the sprawling stone wharves, and the mysterious, ruined grandeur of the once-mighty university that now stood silent, warded and chained shut. And, of course, people came to Hearne for trade. The marketplaces of Hearne bought and sold everything there was to be had in all the duchies of Tormay. If money could purchase the thing, then it could be found in Hearne.

But this morning the streets were even more crowded than usual. For in a month’s time, the annual Autumn Fair would begin, when the lords and ladies from all the duchies of Tormay came to Hearne to enjoy the hospitality of its regent, Nimman Botrell. The Fair was when every trader in Tormay came to buy and sell and barter. Magical oddities unearthed from the past, rare weavings and wines, gems and silks, dancing badgers and surly sandcats from southern Harth that could be enspelled into wards and, as such, provided one of the more vicious and effective protections for buildings that gold could buy. In short, the Autumn Fair was a time of celebration of the rare, the beautiful, the valuable, the finest things of Tormay trotted out to impress and astound, to enspell and ensnare. It was a time to make and lose fortunes.

And the Autumn Fair was a gold mine for the Thieves Guild.

The traders had been arriving all that week, carting in their goods by camel, mule, ship, and horseback. They would settle into rented quarters and begin preparations for the upcoming month. Ripe for the picking.

Ronan’s fingers twitched in anticipation. A nice job or two with fat pickings, and with what he had coming from the chimney job the other night, he’d have enough to leave the city. He’d go to Flessoray and find himself an island. Fishing and cold sunlight. The sea.

Beside him, Smede plucked at his sleeve.

“What?” he said, palming an apple off a passing cart. He bit into it.

“Let’s use the widow Grusan’s place,” said Smede. “It’s the nearest entrance, just down the next alley, and the Silentman doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Various entrances and exits to the Silentman’s headquarters were maintained by the Guild throughout the city. Several were in more public places, such as the Goose and Gold tavern, while others were located in private residences like the widow Grusan’s house, and, as such, their existence was not as widely known among the lower rank and file of the Guild.

“Oh, all right,” said Ronan, not willing to admit that he was ignorant of that particular entrance. The apple, half-eaten, sailed into the gutter. They turned down the alley.

They stopped at a wooden door tucked away in a corner. The door was so small and unobtrusive that the usual passerby would never have noticed it. The accountant knocked, and after a moment the door creaked open. An old woman peered out at them. The place was dank and dark, full of the odor of sour porridge and crowded with rickety furniture that seemed to consist mostly of broken arms and legs. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling and festooned the furniture and walls with their dirty gray draperies.

“Splendid to see you, Widow Grusan,” said Smede. “You look the perfect rose of health. What is it that you do? Exercise, hot tea, regular doses of sunlight, liver soup strained through cheesecloth to remove all the nasty bits of grit? Come, I must know your secret. Tell me all.”

“Ale, and plenty of it,” she said. The widow Grusan was a collection of bones and wrinkled skin. Wisps of hair straggled out from underneath a knit mobcap. “With two teeth, t’ain’t much else I take. Now tell me, little man, where’s my silver for the month? The Guild ain’t paid me and I’m sitting here, chewing my own gums.”

This was, perhaps, the only sort of thing that could send Smede running. He jumped like a startled rabbit at her words.

“Oh my, Ronan, we’re late, and we—”

“We’re not that late,” said the Knife. “How much does the Guild owe you, madame?”

“—certainly don’t want to keep, er,
him
, waiting, do we?”

“Five silver pieces,” said the old woman. “Little enough to have the rabble tramping through my house all hours of the night, tracking dirt onto my clean floors and putting my pets into panic. It’s not asking much to have the silver on time, is it now?”

“Of course not,” said Ronan. “You should expect nothing less. The Guild prides itself on its efficient business practices, including the payment of debts. Isn’t that right, Smede?”

“Well, yes,” said Smede reluctantly.

“Believe it or not, madame,” continued the Knife, “my friend Smede here happens to be the chief moneybags for the Guild and, as such, can easily pay you your silver.”

“Fancy that,” said the old woman. “Don’t look much, does he, all pale and nervous-like. Twitchy.”

At that point, Smede had no option. He haughtily drew himself up as best as he could and paid over the silver, dribbled from a greasy wallet he pulled from deep within his coat.

The widow Grusan led them to a room, where a large tapestry hung on one wall. The weaving was covered with blue whorls and meandering black lines that wove in and out of each other in a bewildering manner that made no sense to the eye. Probably of Harthian origin, the Knife thought to himself. And it was a ward. He could hear the faint warning buzz, trembling on the edge of his perception. Definitely a ward, but of a strange sort.

The old woman hobbled up to the tapestry and muttered a few inaudible words. The whorls and lines came alive, and, like a tangle of snakes roused from sleep, writhed away from the center of the tapestry until there was only plain, black wool in the middle of the hanging. Smede stepped forward, plunged right through the tapestry, and disappeared.

There was something unsettling about the tapestry, the way those lines had convulsed into life, squirming their way through the woven wool. The darkness of the room weighed on Ronan. He felt old and tired. What he was doing in the cramped, stone-lined life of Hearne? He needed wide open spaces and escape from forever wondering whether the next day would bring his death, with all the ghosts of his past an attentive audience.

“It won’t stay open forever.”

“What?” he said.

“The door—t’won’t last,” she said. Her voice was paper-thin, worn down by age. “Forward or back, lovie, that’s our lot—we were never intended to stand still on the spot like a dumb ox, for death’ll find us quick-like then.”

He scowled at her and stepped forward through a soft, clinging sensation. Tendrils trailed over him, and then he was standing in a narrow passage. A torch guttered with cold, blue fire on the wall, only giving off enough light to reveal hints of dusty stonework and Smede’s scowling face. Ronan turned, but there was nothing behind him except a blank stone wall.

“Come on, then,” said the accountant. “We don’t have all day.”

It took them almost half an hour of walking through the gloomy passageway to reach the court of the Silentman. They walked in silence, for Smede was grumpy and Ronan didn’t like talking with the accountant, even on the best of days. The passage twisted and turned in a fashion that defied logic. At various places, they came to cramped intersections at which other passages plunged away into the shadows. But at such spots, where it would be easy to lose the way, a white hand, painted high up on the wall, always pointed in the direction of the Silentman’s court.