City of the Dead (25 page)

Marplate let out a startled shriek at Gustin’s antics and then clapped both his hands to his mouth.

Gustin slowly rolled his head forward until he was staring at his boots. “Each night, they come here, testing the fortifications of this house. Here they gather, looking in, attempting to reach the master of this place.”

The valet let out a strangled whimper.

“They rattle the windows, they shake the handle.” Gustin lowered his arms bit by bit and then tested the latch of the windows, rattling it slightly.

Marplate moaned behind him, “Every night, it gets worse. And he won’t move out of this room. He always has me open the curtains so he can state at them. He glowers at the dead and then mutters about how he’s going to kill whoever is doing this. And he makes me stay in the room so they all know what I look like too!”

Gustin turned until he faced the man, raising one arm gradually to point at him. The valet quivered. Gustin tried not to smile. The deliberate gesture, the deepening of the voice, it worked every time,

he thought. Everyone always thought that the worst magic came on the end of a grand gesture.

He drew in a deep breath and stated, “You are also cursed.” Then added in a lighter tone, “But if you give me the key for this window’s lock, I may be able to save you.”

With trembling hands, Marplate withdrew a ring of keys from his tunic. He handed them quickly to Gustin.

“It’s the littlest key,” the valet said. “He makes me go out there every morning and see if they have left anything behind.”

“Do they?” Gustin thrust the key into the lock and turned it. With a distinct click, the window swung open. Gustin walked out on the balcony. It was completely bare as he had seen through the glass, except for the one pottery planter and the dead plants on their withered brown stalks.

“The plants are always dead,” answered Marplate, staying well inside the bedroom. “I had the gardener replace them each morning. But today, the master said to just leave it.”

“Nothing else?” Gustin asked.

“Well, the first day”—the plump man squirmed a litde and pulled out a handkerchief to dab at his bald head—”I found a shoe.”

Gustin whirled around to look at him. “A gold dancing slipper, brocade and fashioned in antique style?”

Marplate nodded. “It looked exactly as you described, saer.”

“Fantastic! What did you do with it?”

The startled valet pointed at the oblong planter sitting on the balcony. “I had the gardener bury it there. I did not think it would be lucky to bring it into the house.”

Gustin rushed back to the planter, grabbing the plants by their woody stems and pulling them up. Dirt and dead leaves went flying as he flipped the plants out of his way.

“Did Stunk know you buried a shoe here?” Gustin plunged his hands into the wet earth. He dug like a frantic dog into the dirt.

“No,” Marplate’s voice sunk to a frightened whisper. “He would have wanted it displayed, like the painting in the hall. He keeps saying that he is not afraid of this curse. But I know a fetish when I see one.”

“Really?” Under his questing fingers, Gustin finally felt the rough texture of the brocade slipper. He pulled it out from the planter. Sained with dirt, the little shoe looked ghastly, a proper grave good. “How did you know that there was a curse tied to this?”

Marplate straightened himself with a sniff of superiority. “I was born in Waterdeep. Such things are not unknown here.”

“Yes, I’m beginning to see that.” Gustin stuffed the shoe into his belt. “Interesting city, interesting citizens, I must say. But why didn’t you have one of the other wizards marching through here earlier remove it?”

The valet blinked in surprise. “None of them ever came upstairs. None of them ever spoke to me. They just stayed downstairs and cast spells of protection around the doors and gates.”

“Which must have helped,” Gustin said, as much to himself as to Marplate, “as the dead never got this past the threshold. Or maybe it needed someone living to carry it into the house.”

The valet gave a worried glance at the shoe now dangling from the wizard’s belt.

“Not to worry,” Gustin said with an airy toss of Marplate’s keys back to the man. “I’m taking this to where it belongs and that should end this curse.”

“I certainly hope so,” said the valet, carefully stepping onto the balcony to replace the dead plants in the pottery planter.

Gustin hurried out of the room and headed down the main staircase to find Sophraea. A crackle of paper around the middle of his chest reminded him that he still had the note lodged in his tunic. A turn of the stair revealed a niche with an antique statue. At least Gustin hoped it was antique and Stunk did not prefer his

statues of naked women to be missing an arm and a head. Ducking behind the headless woman put Gustin out of sight of the guards at the top of the staircase.

He withdrew the note from his tunic and read: “Saer: If you had any honor, which I have good leave to doubt, you would meet me as a man should, in an appointed hour and place. But send your bully boys against me one more time or threaten my home by any word or gesture, and I will horsewhip you as a.cur should be chastised.”

As he had noticed in Stunk’s bedchamber, the note bore the seal and the slashing signature of Lord Dorgar Adarbrent.

Hurrying down the stairs, Gustin met Sophraea as she was hurrying up. As usual, she looked intent, as if the worries of Waterdeep settled on her slim shoulders. In Gustin’s opinion, she worried far too much these days. Things had a way of working out. After all, they’d gotten into Stunk’s house, the illusion spell was still holding (a bit to his surprise but he didn’t intend to tell her that), and they may very well be able to settle the dead by sunset.

“I (bund the shoe,” Gustin told Sophraea as soon as she’d reached the landing halfway up the main staircase. “And I know who set the dead after Stunk.”

“It’s Lord Adarbrent,” Sophraea said as Gustin pronounced the same conclusion at the same time.

“How do you know that?” Gustin asked even as he handed the note over to Sophraea to examine.

“Servants’ gossip downstairs,” she said, barely glancing at the note before handing it back to him. “Adarbrent has been championing the nobles after Stunk’s cheated them out of their possessions. I’m certain that Stunk’s plans to tear down parts of the City of the Dead made him even madder. So he used his cousin’s spellbooks to unleash the dead against Stunk.”

“Oh,” said Gustin, a little disappointed that she hadn’t been more interested in the note and scarcely looked at the shoe when he

indicated it dangling from his belt. It’s that being born in Waterdeep, he thought, it just makes them all so hard to impress. Especially a girl like Sophraea.

She tugged at his sleeve. “We need to leave now,” she said, starting back down the stairs. “Hurry up.”

“So now Adarbrent is slinging around spells,” Gustin complained as they went toward the front hall. Sophraea set an even quicker pace than usual and he had to stretch his long legs to keep level with her. “And Stunk’s valet knows a fetish when he sees one. Here I thought magic was a rare and unusual talent. An ordinary wizard doesn’t measure up to much in Waterdeep.”

“Maybe Adarbrent hired a real wizard to read the spells out for him,” Sophraea soothed even as she sped across the hall. “However he did it, it worked. But really, we need to leave now. I had a little trouble downstairs.”

Ignoring her last statement, Gustin pulled the brocade shoe from his belt. “I foUnd it.” Maybe she hadn’t noticed it before. He was expecting just a bit more congratulations from her.

“Wonderful,” said Sophraea, urging him across the hall with many nervous glances at the guards still stationed at the top of the stairs and near the doors.

“But can we lock the dead back into the graveyard if we return the shoe?” Gustin mused and then answered his own question. “I’m sure this anchored the whole curse to Stunk’s house. If the valet had done what was expected, and carried the thing into the mansion, the dead would have been inside the walls days ago.”

Two sets of guards were advancing upon them, one pair from the rear of the hall, the other pair from their posts at the great door leading into the courtyard. Sophraea glanced at them and hissed at Gustin, “Whatever the magical reasoning, we should talk about this later!”

Outside thunder rumbled and the sky looked even darker. Gustin

began to catch Sophraea’s panicky mood. Perhaps it was time for a rapid departure. But when the guards reached them, he said calmly enough, “We have set the protections that Lady Ruellyn requested. We will return tomorrow to collect our fee.”

The men stared at him. Behind him, Gustin heard Sophraea gulp, as if she were about to say something and then swallowed it.

Stunk’s guards marched to the great door leading to the outer courtyard. One pulled it open as two more arranged themselves in front ofthe wizard and his companion.

“They will escort you to the gate,” said the most senior bodyguard. “Return in the morning for your payment.”

Gustin nodded and followed the men out the door. “Keep your eyes on their backs,” he whispered to Sophraea. “Don’t glance around. That just makes you look nervous or afraid.”

“I wouldn’t want to look nervous,” Sophraea agreed very softly, flipping up the hood of her cloak so it concealed most of her face. “Especially after I left Stunk’s doorjack tied up in the basement.”

“What?” Gustin almost tripped to a halt.

“Keep moving.” Sophraea prodded him. “I don’t want to explain here.”

The guards swung open the gilded iron gates. Gustin and Sophraea slipped through them. Rain began to pour down, but the pair hurried away from Stunk’s mansion, never glancing back until they reached the corner of the street.

Then Gustin risked one look over his shoulder. Oblivious to the rain. Rampage Stunk had joined the cluster of guards at his gate. The fat man just stood there, watching them leave. Another guard came running up to the group, obviously bursting with news.

Gustin pulled Sophraea around the corner of the street, shielding both of them from the stony blank stare of Rampage Stunk.

With some urgency, Gustin asked her, “What is the fastest way back to Dead End House?”

fl utting through the City of the Dead was probably the quickest U route to Dead End House, Sophraea reasoned, as she led Gustin back to the Mhalsyymber gate.

She briefly considered going west to the High Road and taking that as far as Andamaar, but that meant twisting back through the little streets to Dead End House. Somehow, she didn’t feel as safe on the open streets. That strange emptiness in the North Ward, the eerie silence that felt more like midnight than the late afternoon, still persisted.

For the first time in her life, Sophraea missed the usual clamorous crowds, the hustle and bustle of normal life in Waterdeep. She’d never complain again about Waterdeep’s crowded streets, she decided, or about having to slow her steps because of some group dawdling in front of her or having to sidestep some knot of gallants posturing to their peers.

Right now, she had an itch between her shoulder blades; like something was tracking them. Only, whenever she risked a peek around the edge of her hood, she saw nothing but wet pavement and the black shadows that marked the entrances to the littler alleys. And she’d almost missed a turn already, nearly taking the Golden Serpent instead of Mhalsyymber’s Way.

With some relief, she pulled Gustin through the public gate into the City of the Dead, acknowledging with a brief nod the Watch standing there. The two older men barely glanced at her. They were huddled together, whispering and staring into the graveyard.

“They are locking all the gates early tonight,” one of the guards said.

“We will exit at Coffinmarch,” she said. The Watch still did not know about the Dead End gate.

“Hurry,” said young man. “The Watchful Order will be here soon.”

“New wards?” guessed Gustin, speaking for the first time.

The young man shook his head. “They never tell us anything. Just lock up and lock up tight. But they are expecting trouble, everyone is expecting trouble with the dead tonight.”

Sophraea nodded, “We will hurry.”

Then they were past the Watch and down the paths that she knew so well.

Inside the City of the Dead’s walls, she didn’t have to think about which turn or what direction. She just knew the right route.

But it was quiet in the graveyard too, that waiting stillness that she’d felt so strongly earlier that morning.

“Are you sure it is safe?” Gustin asked as if the wizard could read her nervous thoughts.

“Of course, it’s still daylight,” she answered with far more conviction than she felt. The rain had stopped but the heavy clouds overhead made it as dim as twilight. Every silent tomb that they passed, she looked at twice to make sure that the doors were shut and nothing stirred in the darkness within.

“It’s just that you are glowing again,” Gustin said.

“What?”

“Not a lot, just a little,” he assured. He put one hand on her shoulder, making her stop, and tipped up her head so he could stare into her eyes. Sophraea blinked at seeing his own bright green eyes so close.

“No, it’s gone now. It’s like the tiniest of blue flames, right in

the center of your eyes,” he said. “Are you sure that you don’t have a blue mark anywhere on you?”

Sophraea remembered her birthmark; everyone in the family had one, at least in her generation and her father’s generation according to Myemaw. She started to tell Gustin and then thought better of it, given where her mark was located. It wasn’t as if she could show him!

“Come on,” she said. “We need to get home.”

The pebbles in the path were slick under her feet and she slowed her pace slightly. Something rustled in the bushes to their left. Sophraea looked hopefully for the twitch of a topiary dragon’s tail, but there was no sign of the bushy beast or the friendly Briarsting.

To distract herself, Sophraea began to question Gustin on what to do next to quiet the noble dead ofWaterdeep.

“Replace the shoe where we found it in the underground tunnels,” said Gustin. “I’m certain that it anchors whatever ritual curse was used.”