The Duchess of the Shallows (2 page)

"The test? Who knows?" Lysander fended off the attentions of a beggar who lacked the ambition to ply his trade in the higher districts. "Hector's just a fence. I've managed to sell him some of the things I've, uh,
acquired
, at parties, but he gave me the
usual rates and said nothing of the Grey. Judging from that shack he calls a shop, I don't think he's very important." He sighed and bit at his thumbnail. "If Hector's to open a door for you, Duchess, it's a cellar door. Maybe he'll ask you to help him fence something stolen by the Grey." He poked her playfully in the ribs. "Or ask you to help clean that shop. From what I saw through the window, it could use a good dusting."

"Or a good burning." Uncomfortable with the speculation, Duchess changed the subject. "So who's the lucky customer tonight?"

Lysander made a face. "No one, unfortunately. Slow week for ganymedes, I'm afraid, so it's the
Merry Widow
for us all. Care to join us before your meeting with His Dustiness?"

She shook her head. "I'd better not. I'll probably try to sleep a bit so I'm alert when I talk to Hector. Besides, I know better than to let ganymedes anywhere near
my
gold. You'll have drunk it up before tenth bell."

Lysander scoffed. "Your florin are safe. I won enough from Minette to take us through the night."

The fog became thicker, muffling both sight and sound, and their banter trickled off into silence. Soon it was as if they were the only real things left in the whole city. The folk who moved about on the streets seemed little more than half-seen shadows and smothered footsteps, the buildings a shoal of gray stone, islands floating on some far-off sea. The Shallows, which at other times bustled with activity, now seemed little more than a distant and half-remembered dream.

Duchess had lived with the ubiquitous Rodaasi fogs for as long as she'd lived in the city, but never easily. They figured unpleasantly in one of her earliest memories, and although she'd been no more than four at the time, she remembered that years-past day with eerie clarity. It had been her first autumn trip into to the city from the country estate, which lay miles and miles from the city proper. At the time it had seemed like some great sojourn, although she later realized they'd only been on the road for a few days, packed into the large carriage along with the chests and boxes and anything else her father thought needful until their return the next spring.

They'd ridden swiftly past farms and noble estates glorious with autumn, the fields filled with wheat and corn, the trees clothed in red and yellow and gold. Her brother and sister had slept most of the time, but she had watched avidly out the window from the seat beside her father, unwilling to miss even one moment of the journey. And so she'd been awake when they'd reached the city.

They approached from the west near sunset. The sun was at their backs, the sea before them, and what lay between seemed somehow larger than either. A great hill rose up and up and up before them, filling the whole world. The high gray walls that encircled it were taller than anything she'd ever seen, and yet even they were dwarfed by the enormity that was the seat of the empire. The mount was uneven, rising sharply from the west to slope more gradually towards the east, as if slumping beneath the weight of the city. Every inch seemed to move, and she soon realized that movement was people and carts and animals, some with early-lit lanterns looking like tiny stars against the unbroken gray of the domes and keeps and towers. She heard the bells chiming the hour from somewhere atop the hill, pealing out and down until even from afar they seemed to fill the air. She thought the City of Rodaas was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen or heard.

And then she saw the fog.

It rose from the water on the eastern side of the city, and what she later would come to know as the Wharves had already been swallowed by that rising gray tide. The mist moved slowly but inexorably upward, wrapping the hill in great arms of shadow, consuming the city layer by layer like some monster emerging from the sea. The great walls vanished, then this keep and that tower, and the tiny stars turned one by one into flickering dreams amidst the swirling mist. Finally only the uppermost tiers of the city were visible above it all, an island upon an ocean of nothingness. She shivered at the sight, and yet found herself unable to look away.

And then she felt gentle hands about her waist, pulling her back into the safety of the carriage. Without realizing she had leaned farther and farther out until she was about to tumble into the road. She turned to see her father, looking strangely uneasy. He'd seated her beside him, whispering "Let us go in; the fog is rising." Then he'd reached across and pulled the curtains, shutting out the sight. Her father had not liked the fogs, either.

Lysander's nudge woke her from the memory. "Fog getting to you again?" he asked gently.

She smiled ruefully. Lysander, Noam, Minette…no one other than her father ever reacted to the fogs as she did. "I guess I'm just tired today." She took his hand and pulled him along, and to her relief he did not press her.

They
turned down a small alley and
up the rickety wooden steps to the attic garret. Lysander had been renting the garret from Minette for as long as she could remember, and depending on the financial status of his current clients and his luck at tiles, he might be anywhere from months ahead to years behind on his payments.

He opened the door and lit candles while Duchess lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling. The garret was old and drafty, hot in summer and cold in winter,
strewn with clothing and empty wine bottles, but it was Lysander's alone. Duchess hadn't had a room to herself since she came to Noam's; she shared the loft room with her "sisters." Or used to. Privacy had been in short supply in the baker's small house.

Soon the room was filled with the scent of cloves (the candles no doubt stolen from one client or another) and Lysander was next to her. They lay in silence for awhile as the light outside the window shifted. Finally, he said, "Hector's right, you know. This is something you have to do on your own." He stroked her shoulder-length hair and sighed. "I'll admit I'm a little jealous that you've got this opportunity, but that's just how it is. It's your chance, not mine."

She lay there with him, watching the candle-flames dance and listening to the murmur of the city: children shouting, dogs barking, the occasional rumbling of wagon wheels over the cobbles. For the first time since she'd received that mysterious letter, she felt at ease, and something went out of her in a rush. Before she knew it, the tears had started. Lysander waited, and after her crying had run its course, he reached out and pulled her near. "I knew that Silk was in there somewhere," he murmured into her hair, and she laughed despite herself. Lysander had once said that she was two people: Steel who stood off pastry thieves with her knife and braved the Shallows at night, and Silk who was afraid of it all. She didn't feel very silky, she thought, swiping at her eyes with a sleeve. She just felt damp.

"I can't go back," she said at last. "To Noam's. The letter...whoever sent it told me that my time at the bakery was over, that I had to leave. So I have no place to-"

"Had to leave? And Noam just threw you out?"

"He didn't...he didn't throw me out, Lysander." There was anger mixed with the tears. "But he never spoke a word to stop me. He didn't even seem sur-surprised." She choked back a sob, and for a moment she tasted smoke in her mouth. She pushed herself away, hands balled into fists. "He never even asked to see the letter, or if this is what I wanted, or where I was going to go or..." She looked at Lysander nakedly. "He just...he just handed me four florin and sent me on my way."
She could still feel Noam's hands, large, coarse and floury, folding her fingers closed around the coins. He hadn't even looked her in the eye, and she'd been unable to look back. "Eight years, Lysander. Eight years I lived in that house and he let me go like I was nothing."

He took her hands in his own, pulled her closed and rocked her. She lay her head on his shoulder and sighed.

"And what happened to the letter?" he asked, finally. Even in this tender moment, Lysander's mind was still working with its typical ingenuity.

"I…I burned it," she replied, unable to look him in the eye. Although it was true she'd fed the rich vellum with its gray wax seal to the flames, she could never tell Lysander why, or the way her breath had caught when she realized the letter was addressed not to Duchess but to Marina Kell, the little girl who'd arrived at Noam's bakery eight years ago in the dead of night.

"I'm so scared, Lysander," she said, remembering that terrible moment. "Every time I think I'm safe something happens. Eight years ago I lost my first home to a fire, and yesterday I lost the second to some letter I don't even understand. It's like I'm a little girl all over again, with people telling me where to go and what to do." She wiped at the wetness on her face, anger replacing fear and sadness. "I won't start over again, Lysander, not if it means depending on someone else who can turn my life upside down in an instant. I need something separate, something
mine.
A victory of my own. I don't have a family or a home or a job or a husband, but I have this" – she held up the brass coin – "and I have this" – she pointed at herself.

He looked at her quietly for a long moment. "And you have this," he said, taking her hand and placing it on his own chest. She wrapped her arms around him and hid her face against his doublet as he stroked her hair for a long time.

Chapter Two:
In the market

It was the same dream she'd had since she was small. The gray shape bore down upon her until she could barely breathe, and when she struggled it opened a rent and gaping hole where its mouth should be and let out a harsh, pealing laugh that rang and rang…

…until she realized it was just the bells high on the hill, ringing the hour. She sat up, running her hands through her hair, banishing the last waking vestiges of the dream. No matter how many months might go by between visits, the figure always returned to pay a call. Once those dreams would send her screaming from her bed, but she'd learned young that there was little sympathy in the baker's house. Although by now she was used to the nightmares, they still left her shaken.

From the light outside the window she could tell it was late afternoon. She slipped quietly out of bed to start a fire in the hearth. Lysander rolled over but did not wake, and she stole the moment to look at him, his sweet face with eyes closed and framed in soft blond hair. Lysander was the first boy to ever win her heart. He'd won a good deal more than that, one night when she was drunk on infatuation and he on wine. Although he claimed it was his first and only time with a woman, he'd risen admirably to the occasion. Not that she was an expert on such things; other than Lysander her own sexual experience was limited to some groping with a locksmith's apprentice in the alley near Noam's bakery. They'd never had a repeat of that evening - for her the infatuation had faded, and for Lysander the novelty - but in the year since they'd somehow gotten closer.

But she'd woolgathered enough. If she were to face Hector alone later that evening, she should be properly prepared. She slipped out of the garret, leaving Lysander asleep behind her and heading towards the market.

The shortest route was through Bell Plaza, the largest courtyard in the Shallows, a square area measuring nearly three hundred feet on a side and containing two of the city's great gates: Beggar's and Market. She headed north through Market Gate towards the shops and stalls of the city's main market. Although the day was passing and some of the sellers would be thinking of packing up their wares, she knew they'd stay open for her. Noam and all his family – natural and otherwise – were well known and well liked in the market.

Duchess had fallen in love with the place from the first - the noise, the crowds, the smells and the bustle - and her
affection had never wavered. Each stall, some old and rickety, others solid and newly painted, was as familiar as the fingers of her own hand. The cobbles were worn nearly smooth by centuries of questing feet, and the air was filled with the smell of a hundred different foods, the sounds of haggling and the splash of the fountain where stone nymphs frolicked amidst the falling water. The most memorable feature of the market was the wall that nearly bisected the area: eight feet high, fifty feet long, and built of the ever-present gray stone. There was no gate in it, nor did it completely divide one side of the market from the other. To get around, one had only to walk around one crumbling edge or the other. The wall had stood since time out of mind and no one remembered who had built it or why, but it had become a sign of status within the market. The stalls of the wealthiest or most prestigious merchants backed up to it, with the others spread out in less desirable locations on either side. Although Noam was neither rich nor well connected his stall stood against the wall, and no one could say just how he had achieved that exalted position. There had been some fine old fights over filling the gaps left when other merchants had moved or abandoned their slots, but Duchess had never heard that the baker had engaged in any such conflict. She'd never thought much about it, but now she wondered if that weren't yet another sign of the Grey's hidden influence.

She knew most of the merchants who trafficked here. She nodded politely to Samual and his ever-present racks of plucked, upside-down-hanging ducks, chickens and pheasants. She waved to Marten and his two sons, who were loading bags of fruit on a wooden cart. She stopped for a word with Midwife Marna, and was regaled with the tale of a particularly difficult and bloody birth. She'd grown up with these people, who were by now more family than the Kells
she only sometimes remembered. The market rumor mill was evidently a bit behind, and although there seemed to be a silent agreement not to ask Duchess why she wasn't pushing the bread cart, the curiosity was evident. Niam the milk merchant was the only one bold enough to ask after Noam, but she put him off, saying, "I'm running an errand for Minette, and if I'm late she'll kick me right down to the harbor." Niam was an unrepentant gossip but went in fear of Minette, for some reason Duchess never knew, and he clamped down on his questions.