Under Cover of Darkness (12 page)

She determinedly ignored them and they ignored her.

Finally, after the bells of Old Oreen rang midnight, the sound strangely muffled in the City of the Dead, Terizan saw two cloaked figures approaching. They opened the tomb, exactly the way she'd known they would—the bolts whispering out of the stone—and slipped inside, replacing the gate behind them. She would never have noticed the faint spill of lantern light a moment later if she hadn't been waiting for it.

Hanging upside down over the gate, she could just make them out as they crouched by the rear wall and together slid the shrouded body from the lowest shelf. Setting it carefully to one side, Conspirator Number One lay down in its place and crawled into darkness. Conspirator Number Two passed the lantern through and followed.

Terizan waited a moment for her eyes to readjust to full dark, checked that there were no more cloaked conspirators approaching, and flipped down to the ground. The gate was heavy for one person, but she didn't need to open it very far. She slipped through, closed it, and, keeping her fingertips on the center crypt, made her way to the back wall. By the time she reached it, she was in total darkness. She knew she was holding her hand in front of her face but she couldn't see it.

Fortunately, it was impossible to get lost.

There was room to stand on the other side of the corpse shelf but just barely. Her fingertips danced over rough stone; a crack in the rock, a natural fissure. She counted twelve paces, felt the air currents change, and stopped. Barely an arm's length from her face, the fissure opened up into a much wider passageway.

When she held her breath, she could hear a quiet hum of sound. When she crept silently forward and peered out of the crack, she could see a faint graying of the dark off to her right.

 

The conspirators were meeting in one of the catacombs' square tomb-within-a-tomb areas and enough light spilled out the entrance that Terizan could just make out the carters' crest carved over the arch. As she came closer, the sound fractured into a number of voices all making the kind of anticipatory small talk that suggested the meeting had yet to start. Since there were more people present than the two she'd followed, there were clearly other routes in.

She could lie down and peer around the corner into the tomb well below where most people would even think of looking for intruders, but there was no way of telling how many more conspirators were still to arrive and that would leave her exposed—provided this was the meeting of conspirators the Council had hired the Thieves Guild to find. For all Terizan knew, she'd stumbled on a social club for necrophiliacs.

Pressed up against the stone niches that lined the passageway, she glimpsed a line of gray at the edge of her vision. Peering over the shrouded body on the shoulder-level niche, she could see a crack in the rock as wide as her thumb. Moving quickly, she scooped up the corpse—breathing through her teeth at the intensified smell of rot—and stuffed it in with the body occupying the niche below. Any small sounds she made were covered by the sudden rhythmic rise and fall of a single voice inside the tomb. It sounded like . . .

Poetry?

Not surprising, given the venue, images of death were prevalent.

The niches were narrow and not easy to get into, but Terizan had been in more difficult places and, with a minimum of bruising, she managed to get her right eye lined up with the crack. There were seven cloaked figures in the tomb. Not a large conspiracy, but she supposed seven motivated people could do some damage. After all, she'd managed to destabilize the throne of Kalazamir all by herself.

As she watched, the poet finished, slid the scroll into a pocket, and blew his nose, clearly overcome. She could see three faces clearly and didn't recognize any of them. Then a fourth raised both arms, the cloak sliding back as he gestured for silence and with some surprise Terizan recognized the heavy gold links he wore around one wrist. She'd had her eye on that bracelet for a while. It seemed as though Ajoe the Candle-maker
was
involved and not only involved, but in a position of some authority. Maybe grief at the death of his wife and infant son had addled his brains and turned him from law-abiding artisan to . . .

Poet?

“We ask justice for the dead,” Ajoe declared, his voice rough with grief.

Terizan hoped the next couple of lines would rhyme. She liked Ajoe and didn't want him involved in anything that would result in his head on a spike in the Crescent.

“Overcrowded streets slow the arrival of what few healers there are. The high taxes paid by the apothecaries keep medicines too expensive. The rulings of the Council kill those we love. Those who lead have failed us and must be removed.”

Not poet.

“Who will lead us to justice?”

The other six mirrored his position, arms up. “Who will lead us?” they repeated.

Terizan had assumed the question was rhetorical, the sort of thing secret organizations chanted to get in the mood for conspiracy, but as she watched a translucent figure floated down from the ceiling in the far corner of the room. Pride kept her from bolting this time. Pride and—well—it seemed there was some truth in familiarity breeding contempt.

It took her a while to recognize the ghost but, in her own defense, the last time she'd seen Councillor Saladaz, his head had been on a spike in the Crescent after he'd been executed for betraying caravans to the bandit chief Hyrantaz for a percentage of the stolen goods.

He seemed to have gotten his head back.

His voice a distant whisper, he began to speak of how the Council had been responsible for countless deaths in Oreen. Men, women, and children all lost to life and love because of the actions or inactions of the Council. “We all know the Council is corrupt. We all know the Council must be stopped before more loved lives are lost.” Thought about rationally, nothing Saladaz said made much sense, but it was obvious to Terizan watching the seven people listening that they weren't thinking rationally. Like Ajoe, these men and women were lost in grief, and that grief was being expertly manipulated by the dead councillor. He'd always been able to work a crowd into near hysteria; while death had lowered his volume, it had focused his skill.

In a weird way, she admired Saladaz' ability to hold a grudge beyond the grave. The Council had him executed, and now he was using what he had—grief-stricken visitors to the Necropolis—to exact his revenge. It was probably a good thing he didn't know she'd been the one who'd exposed his dealings with Hyrantaz.

“The Council must be removed,” Saladaz whispered, moving about the tomb and touching each of the conspirators in turn.

They shuddered and chanted, “The Council must be removed.”

Terizan shuddered with them, remembering the weaver's touch. It was a small step from grief to despair.

“The dead must have justice.”

“The dead must have justice!”

Terizan would have bet serious coin that when Saladaz spoke of the dead, he meant only himself.

“We must take action to avenge our dead.”

“We must take action to avenge our dead!”

“When the time of mourning is done, we will take action,” Ajoe the Candle-maker added in a tone as definite as the dead councillor's had been suggestive.

Saladaz' face twisted as the other six repeated, “When the time of mourning is done.” Throwing off their cloaks, they began to wail and beat at their chests. His mouth moved, but it was impossible to hear his rough whisper over the grieving, and finally he surrendered to the inevitable and wafted back up through the tomb's ceiling.

Leaving seemed like a good idea to Terizan. Besides Ajoe, she'd recognized another of the seven by the silver-and-lapis clasp that bound her thick gray hair. She didn't yet know the woman's name, but she knew she worked on Draper's Row—and that was enough. Sliding silently out of the niche, she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust and then, fingertips stroking the stone, moved into the dark of the catacombs, counting her footsteps back to the crack in the tomb wall.

 

The name of the woman who'd owned the silver hair clasp was Seriell Vanyaz; her eldest son had recently died in a construction accident in the new city, crushed under a load of stone. Terizan settled the clasp in her pocket and crossed the bridge into the Necropolis. It would be easy enough now to find the other names. All she had to do was ask an acolyte for the names of those who'd been interred over the last few months and match the faces of the mourners to the faces of the conspirators.

She could hand the names to the Tribunal a day early. The Tribunal would hand them to the Council and then, probably before Terizan had even counted her share of the payment, the Council would add another seven bodies to the City of the Dead.

She'd thought about telling the Tribunal that Councillor Saladaz was the only actual conspirator.

Council might believe that Saladaz wanted revenge; they'd known him in life after all, but they'd never believe a dead man was working alone. Ajoe and the others might be grief-addled puppets, but they
were
conspiring.

Of course, now she wanted an acolyte there were none around.

She stood for a long moment outside the tomb that held the entrance to the catacombs and, frowning slightly, traced on the surface the path of the underground passage, climbing up and over terraces and tombs. When she was fairly certain she was as close to the meeting room as she could get, she began to read the names carved into the stone.

Councillor Saladaz's family name was Tyree. Terizan knew it because she'd robbed his town house once. Well, twice actually, but it hadn't been his town house the second time because he was already dead.

The rear wall of the Tyree family tomb was directly over the part of the catacombs where the meeting had been held.

“The carving of the colonnade is thought to be exceptionally fine.”

Terizan had often been accused of walking silently, but the Ayzaruites could give her lessons. Heart pounding, she turned to find the same older man who'd spoken to her the day before. At least she assumed it was the same man; one acolyte looked pretty much like another and, besides, she was better with jewelry. “The what?”

“The decorative columns.” He gestured helpfully.

“I was wondering . . .”

“About the mason?”

“No!” She didn't think she could cope with another lecture on stone carving. “I was wondering about the recently . . .” She paused and stared into the Tyree crypt. Saladaz had been dead for nearly a year. “I was wondering why the ghosts of the Necropolis don't move out into the city.”

“They are tethered to their bodies by my Lady's will. They are not alive, and she will not give them the freedom of life.”

“She won't?” That was interesting. “She seems a little annoyed about it.”

The acolyte shrugged. “My Lady is the Gateway and she would prefer the dead accept her assistance.”

“But if the body was moved out of the Necropolis . . .”

“If a body with an active spirit was removed from her influence, then it could go where it would.” His tolerant smile suggested he didn't know why he was bothering to explain what everyone knew. “Except back into the Necropolis, of course.”

That answered the one question that had really been bothering her. None of the seven conspirators were violent people. Violent in their grief, maybe, but not the sort to start whacking councillors even with the encouragement of a dead politician. She couldn't believe it of Ajoe the Candle-maker, and she doubted the others were much different. So what was Saladaz actually working them up to?

He wanted them to remove his body from the Necropolis.

Once he got them to commit, they probably wouldn't bother being subtle; they'd crowbar the gate off the tomb, bundle him up, and bury him secretly in the city somewhere. After that, he could haunt anyone he wanted to.

Terizan rubbed her arm. If forced to choose, she'd take Ajoe and company over the Council in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, unless they were going to move Saladaz tonight, she didn't have that option. The Council would have either the names of the conspirators or proof there was no conspiracy by tomorrow or they'd begin to implement their extreme new security measures. As a thief, Terizan wasn't fond of the idea of extreme new security measures.

Nor, as it happened, did she particularly care for the idea of someone like Saladaz wafting about Oreen.

If she gave the names to the Council, they'd deal with both the living and the dead, and things in Oreen would continue on the way they had been. No extreme security. No dead Councillors being a bad influence on the grieving. No Ajoe the Candle-maker. No Seriell Vanyaz. She reached into her pocket and stroked the silver-and-lapis hair clasp.

Good thing the Council had given her another option.

The acolyte cleared his throat, breaking into her reverie. “It is, of course, a crime to steal a body from the Necropolis,” he declared.

“How do you prevent it?”

He stared at her as though she was out of her mind. “We are a presence in the day and no one comes into the Necropolis at night. The Necropolis is haunted.”

Terizan sighed. “Trust me, that's not the deterrent you think it is.”

 

“He'll let her use my loom!”

Terizan backed away from the crypt. Hanra Seend followed.

“He'll let her use my loom!”

And a little farther away.

“She won't take care of it. I know she won't.”