The sun reaches its zenith, but the canvas drape still
conceals the central scaffold. The delay can mean only
the Palace wishes to view the proceeding, and I say a little
prayer of thanks to Desna—silently, of course. Waiting
for the Royal Carriage to arrive is a boon to the vendors,
and it gives the working class a little more time away from
their labors. The benefit to me is that the royal interest
reverses the usual order of events. Paralictor Ivo Elliendo
likes to build suspense, so the most spectacular event is
usually reserved for last.
On the scaffold, a knobby-kneed herald emerges
from behind the canvas. He looks to either side,
shuddering with exaggerated fear when the guards eye
him up and down. The groundlings laugh, recognizing
him as one of the Fools of Thrune, a jester from House
Sarini sent out to amuse them while they wait. I lose
interest the moment he raises a trumpet to his lips and
blows out a length of crimson silk and a pair of sagging
pillows meant to suggest he’s blown his lungs out
through the horn.
I see plenty of familiar mugs among the
groundlings: stevedores, stable hands, street sweepers,
barmaids, a seamstress I once gave a memorable night
on the Bunyip Dock. A pickpocket I know tips me
a wink as he pats a mark on the shoulder while his
adolescent accomplice dips his hand in on the other
side. A few others touch their chins or smile when they
see me. I nod back.
No one from the stands throws me a greeting, but
more than a few know me better than they’d admit. I
know several of them better than I’d like their husbands
to know, but to most I am only the silent bodyguard of
Count Varian Jeggare. The only one among them bold
enough to return my gaze is Ivo Elliendo.
The Paralictor glides out of the stands where he has
been receiving the compliments of the ladies. His tall
figure stands out like a plow cutting through a garden.
The sharp red scourges on the ribs of his black leather
jack give him a gaunt silhouette.
He squints when he spots me, and I can feel his scorn
hot on my face. What else can I do but shoot him my
toothiest smile? All around him, ladies who had followed
his gaze snap up their fans to shield themselves from
the sight of a mouth that I’m told looks like a drawer full
of knives. The commotion distracts Elliendo, and when
he sees he is surrounded by a halo of fluttering fans, his
lined face darkens.
Elliendo stalks away from the stands and mounts the
stairs, followed as usual by two hulking Hellknights. I
begin to frame a prayer for rotting steps before deciding
that’s too much to ask, even on Judgment Day. On the
scaffold, Elliendo peers north at the approach of the
golden Royal Carriage down the Imperial Promenade.
He snaps his fingers, and the clown retreats behind the
canvas to a clatter of applause. Once the carriage halts and
the window shades rise just enough for the occupant—no
doubt some minor Palace official, rather than the Queen
herself—to peer out, the canvas on the scaffold falls away
to reveal the Instruments of Judgment.
In the center is a blazing furnace in the shape of a
three-faced devil. From each of its gaping jaws juts a
bramble of iron implements: knives, spears, chains, rods,
brands, and most conspicuous of all the Tines of Thay.
Each is a two-pronged fork sized for a stone giant, and
today there are two of them.
Arrayed between the furnaces are racks of torture
devices retrieved from every civilized nation on Faerun,
and several not so civilized. The spiked cages of Geb are
a crowd favorite, and two of them already hold prisoners.
One is a fat man who begins screaming the moment he
is revealed, while the other is pock-faced Gellius Bonner,
the Butcher of Merrow Lane.
I fell into the Bonner case when the boss sent me
to nose around the tannery across the river. I was
supposed to catch a stable master selling the carcasses
of his lady’s mysteriously sickened horses. That went
nowhere, but I spied the tanner sneaking out of his
own home well past midnight. Curious, I followed him
into town, expecting to discover nothing more than a
mistress in some Cheapside flat. Instead, he led me to
Bonner’s shop, where he joined six men wearing crude
robes. Bonner greeted them with some fiendish phrase,
though I could understand only a few words before he
led them downstairs. I let myself in for a peek. When
I saw the yak-headed thing Bonner conjured and what
they intended to offer it, I ran to Greensteeples and beat
on the boss’s door until his sleepy halfling butler woke
him. With a few questions, Jeggare confirmed that the
cult was demonic, not diabolic, so he sent a message
directly to the Temple of Asmodeus, who in turn asked
the Hellknights to capture the cultists, minus a few who
resisted arrest. They even recovered two boys who had
not yet been devoured.
The discovery broke the cases of more than a dozen
missing children, disappearances that Elliendo had
publicly sworn to solve. As he was not on duty that night,
he was surprised to hear the criers’ announcement of
another mystery solved by the celebrated Varian Jeggare.
If it were for the murders alone, Bonner might have
met his Judgment at the edge of an axe or, if it were only
one or two killings, in hard labor for a decade. The devil-worshiping
lords of Telflamm, however, do not suffer the
denizens of the Abyss in the city. For consorting with
demons, Bonner earned his special voyage to Hell.
While not an admirer of the spectacle, I make a point
of witnessing the Judgment of anyone convicted on one
of our cases. This time, the boss insisted that I bring
something to confirm it was Bonner and not some magic-masked
substitute who did the dance of the Tines. He
sent me to the Plaza of Flowers with a couple of sakava
leaves plucked fresh from a plant in his greenhouse.
Once the Instruments are unveiled, four proper
heralds stand on the corners of the scaffold and announce
the list of Judgments. Behind them, brawny shirtless men
in red hoods prepare the braces for the Tines.
When a couple of the big men unlock Bonner’s cage, I
slip the sakava leaves from a sleeve pocket. The size of my
thumbs, they are thick green ovals with tiny white hairs
glistening with oil. Just before I crush them, someone
calls my name.
She is taller than me, which is not too uncommon, but
most of that height comes from a pair of legs snugged in
black calfskin trousers with tiny stars and suns cut out
along the outer seam to reveal bare skin. Her blouse hangs
loose except in just the right places to make a celibate
throw himself off the roof. Her big hazel eyes are too far
apart with heavy eyebrows, but they look fine above a long
nose pierced above one nostril with a tiny ruby. The stone
sets off a hint of late-summer red in her brown hair.
I’m staring at her over the little
green leaves.
“Are you Radovan?” she asks again.
I could listen to her say my name all
day, but then she ruins it by adding,
“Count Jeggare’s servant?”
“His bodyguard.” Immediately I think of three
or four suave answers.
“My messages to Greensteeples have gone
unanswered, and I require the count’s
assistance,” she says. “And naturally his
utmost discretion.”
“Naturally,” I say, but before I can
give her the pitch, I feel a sharp
poke just below my shoulder blade.
“Say goodbye to the girly,
copper-tongue,” reeks a voice
inches beneath my ear. I know who
it is from the stench of garlic and
boiled eggs.
“Not now, Ursio.” I try to sound
casual, but the scratch he gave me starts
to itch. Out of the corners of my eyes I
see a couple of shapes that must be his
backup. “I’ll stay in this very public
place while you and your playmates go
climb your thumbs.”
“These bolts are tipped with black
lotus venom,” says Ursio, and I know
it’s his treasured hand crossbow
with its steel “fangs” jammed into
my back. “You’ll be dead before
your body hits the street.”
It seems unlikely that Ursio
has acquired the deadly and
expensive poison, but on the
scaffold I see the hooded men dragging
Bonner to a table, where a third man
awaits with a pair of curved knives held high for the
crowd’s acclaim.
I crush the leaves and wipe their oily surfaces over
my eyes. It stings at first, and then my vision blurs
and snaps back to vivid clarity, better than my usual vision
but with an unreal heightening of every hue. Bonner looks
the same, although his fervid muttering breaks into a
panicked gobble. I’m not sure the sakava leaves have done
their magic, but then I notice a fiery halo around one of the
hooded men. Behind him, huge leathery wings twitch as
his fellows hold Bonner screaming to the table.
“Now,” says Ursio. He shoves hard enough to make me
drop the leaves.
“Zandros said to bring him back in one—” One of the
figures behind me has a boy’s voice with a country drawl,
cut off by a smart crack to the head.
“Quiet,” says a third voice just
behind my elbow. He snuffles back
a load of phlegm, and I know it is
Rennie the Quick, a halfling notorious
for the instant conjuration of
makeshift blades.
“My apologies,” I say to the woman. “My schedule is
busier than I thought.”
“Wait,” she says. “Where will I meet you?”
“You won’t,” says Ursio. He pulls my arm
and shoves his weapon into my back.
Rennie grabs the other arm, and they
guide me away from the crowd. Behind
us, Bonner screams like a damned soul,
which soon won’t be a simile. I know
what the torturers are doing to him,
but I’m glad I don’t have to watch as
they slice open his skin to sew in
packets of writhing scarabs imported
from the dank crypts of Mulhorand.
Ursio and his henchmen guide
me into the narrow alley just north
of Mercy Street. We thread our way
through a platoon of cooks grilling
skewered meat over coals. Whenever
one notices the crossbow pressed
against my back, Ursio growls a threat
that stifles all curiosity.
Eventually we turn off the main
alley into a cul-de-sac containing a
sewer grate. While I know Ursio has
gotten his hands wet for Zandros
more than once, I remember what
the boy said. No one knows the
sewers better than Rennie, so he
is the one usually sent to deliver
messages or escort those summoned to
the Goat Pen unseen.
“What’s it to be, boys?” I take a couple of big steps
forward and turn around with my hands in clear
sight. I get a good look at them.
The boy is pale as harvest straw, and he weighs about
as much as two handfuls of the stuff. The way he keeps
glancing at Rennie and Ursio for direction, he must be a
raw recruit. He holds a broken chair leg close to his hip,
afraid someone will spot him with the weapon.
Ursio looks the same as when I first met him, as if
someone had taken a proper dwarf and dragged him
through a garbage dump. The beads and fetishes tied
in his tangled beard look more like the detritus of last
week’s suppers, and he has more brown teeth than yellow.
The last two fingers of his right hand once fed a shark, or
a crocodile, or a bunyip, depending on which story you
hear. I like to think he lost them in a bet.
Rennie, on the other hand, looks nothing like I
remember. The halfling’s always been known as “the
Quick” among the Goatherds, a gang so mean and ugly
that I had to leave on account of my good looks. Now I
see that “Ratface” would suit him better, because in the
weirdly sharp vision of the sakava leaves, I see his usually
pocked face smoothed over with brown-black fur, his
prominent nose elongated into the pointed snout of a
halfling-sized rodent.
I gape at Rennie, maybe a little too obviously, but
the boy buys it and takes a step back. Ursio ignores my
mugging, but he spares Rennie a glance before fixing his
tiny black eyes on me. “Zandros wants a word.”
Obviously they see a halfling, not a wererat.
“They have no idea, do they, Rennie?”
The halfling scowls, confused but with a dawning
realization hardening his jaw.
The boy takes another step back. Ursio jabs his
crossbow at me. “None of your tricks, Hell-spawn.”
“The trick is on you,” I say. “Or have you always known
why Rennie knows the sewers so well?”
“I’ll cut you,” hisses Rennie. A blade fashioned out of
a blacksmith’s rule appears in his furry grip. Even as I
tense for an attack, the sakava vision wavers, and I see
Rennie as the others do. The rat was cuter.
“Those leaves I rubbed on my eyes show me things the
way they are,” I say. “You’re still ass-ugly, and the kid is
a kid, but Rennie here is one of those wererats Zandros
thought we wiped out last—”
I leap back just in time to avoid a slash across the
belly, but Rennie nicks my favorite jacket. My back hits
the alley wall, and I kick Rennie in the chest, forcing
him back.
“Stop it!” shouts Ursio. The point of his crossbow drifts
away from me, but I’m not close enough to make it work.
I stagger a few steps closer to him, pretending to move
away from Rennie.
“He’s tricking you,” cries Rennie. He turns toward
Ursio, losing his halfling appearance along with his
temper. “You halfwit!”
Ursio’s face twists up as he retreats. Rennie should
know better than to insult the sensitive dwarf.
“Don’t you talk to me that way, you sniveling slip!” He
points his bow directly at Rennie, whose mutton-chop
whiskers have spread over half his elongating face.
Rennie hisses, and the boy falls over himself trying to
get away. He knocks his head against a box of coals and
lies stunned on the street. The diversion is enough for me
to reach Ursio.
I grab the crossbow just as he starts to turn it toward
me. He pulls the trigger, but the string snaps over my
hand, flipping the bolt harmlessly against the alley wall.
I kick him behind the knees and he falls, still gripping
his weapon. I bring my elbow down on his arm and hear a
satisfying crack as my spur splits the bone.
Ursio screams as I spin away. Rennie is no fool. Seeing
Ursio crippled, he leaps toward me.
His whole body transforms, claws tearing through
his soft leather shoes to let his black nails clatter on the
cobblestones. He is even bigger than before, swelled with
blood as he scrabbles toward me. I carry no weapon potent
enough to slay a lycanthrope, and Rennie knows it.
Just then, a thunderous roar fills the alley. Rennie freezes,
his ruff standing out from his neck, whiskers twitching. The
roar becomes a rumbling growl moving closer to our sewer
niche. It is unmistakably the sound of a great cat.
Rennie squeals and leaps past me, wrenching the
sewer grate away and vanishing into the stinking hole. I
consider following him, but then a shadow falls upon me.
The woman from the plaza peers around the corner
cautiously, a thin scroll dangling from her hand. The
glittering mist from the expended magic trails off the
parchment. She glances at the sewer entrance, then down
the alley where I see Ursio staggering away, cradling his
broken arm. Not far away, the boy moans and clutches his
head. I offer him my hand.
“You all right, kid?”
He hesitates, eyes wide.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “What’s your name?”
He takes my hand and I pull him to his feet. “Gruck,”
he says.
“What about you?” The woman touches my arm. “Are
you all right?”
“Never better,” I tell her. “Thanks to your little trick.”
“Oh, that was nothing,” she says. “Just a little exercise
I’d been copying.”
She sees me looking past her shoulder and turns to see
Ivo Elliendo flanked by his Hellknights. Beside me, the
kid gulps, and I lay a heavy hand on his shoulder to keep
him calm and still.
“What is this commotion?” demands Elliendo. His eyes
have already lit upon Ursio’s dropped crossbow, and he
idly smacks his folded gloves against his left palm.
“My friend Gruck here was just delivering a piece of
evidence,” I say. “This crossbow might have been used in
some Cheapside robberies last year. Gruck found it in a
pawn shop and thought of me.”
Elliendo steps closer, and his Hellknights step behind
us to cut off escape. They bring a whiff of brimstone into
the alley.
“I heard a loud noise,” says Elliendo. He slaps my
hand away from Gruck’s shoulder with his gloves and
chucks the boy under the chin to get a good look at
his face. The scrapes are obvious. “Has this half-breed
assaulted you, boy?”
The kid doesn’t even flick his eyes toward me as he
says, “No, I fell.”
“Ah,” says Elliendo. “How did you fall, boy? What
precisely caused your fall?”
“It was—I saw a rat run out at me. A big rat.”
“Indeed,” says Elliendo. “That does not explain the sound.”
“Biggest alley cat you ever saw,” I say, holding my hands
about three feet apart.
“I asked the boy, tiefling. When I desire your—”
“It’s true, Paralictor,” says the woman.
Elliendo peers down at her. “And who might you be,
Miss…?”
“Henderthane,” she says. “Pavanna Henderthane.”
Elliendo’s stern countenance melts into a gentler
expression. “My condolences. Einmarch Henderthane
was a loyal servant of the crown.” He seems ready to say
something more, but he glances at me and the kid before
deciding against it. “I trust whatever business you have
with this person is nothing to do with—”
“It is a personal matter, Paralictor,” she says. “I know
you understand.”
His curt frown says he may understand, but he doesn’t
like it. “Very well,” he says. “I see no reason to delay you
further. Good day, Miss Henderthane.” Ignoring Gruck and
me, he clicks his heels and nods a bow toward her before
pivoting on his heel and striding away with his Hellknights
in tow. I like the way his half-cloak swirls when he does that.
He must spend hours in front of the mirror practicing.
“Nice job, kid.” I turn toward Gruck, but he is already
trotting down the alley. I shrug and collect Ursio’s
crossbow and the misfired bolt. Sniffing it, I am relieved
to detect the stench of sewer moss, not a proper poison.
My scratch will itch for a while, but I won’t need to spend
my savings on a magical cure. I look at Pavanna and say,
“I owe you one.”
“Then get me an interview with Count Jeggare.” She
smiles, as pleased by the game as by her success at it.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I tell her. Before she can
protest, I add, “But I’ll see what I can do. Let’s discuss it
over a couple of ales.”
“You’re buying,” she says. That’s all right by me.
Three hours later I hop over the wall behind the boss’s
gardens, wave to the groundskeeper, and let myself in
through the kitchen door. Inside, I bump into Malla, a
plump human almost as short as her lone slip assistant.
The place smells of fresh rye, and I make a show of
craning my neck to spot a loaf to filch while snaking a
hand in to pinch her bottom. She shakes a rolling pin at
me. Our daily pantomime.
“How is the weather upstairs?” I ask.
“Gloomy,” she says. “His lordship was asking after you.”
I wind my way through the labyrinth of the servants’
area and up the stairs to the foyer, where I glance up. The
enormous portrait of Pontia Jeggare stares down with an
expression of stern benevolence. I never met the boss’s
mother, of course, but even eighty years after her funeral,
she remains the lady of the house. I tip her a wink,
because I think she’d have liked me.
The butler intercepts me at the top of the steps. His
arms are full of parcels and letters, an overwhelming load
for a halfling.
“Make yourself useful,” he says, thrusting his burden
toward me. He nods in the direction of the library.
The boss still calls it the library even though the
two floors of ceiling-high bookshelves are hidden by
a calamity of bric-a-brac. On three long tables filling
half the lower floor is an array of stuffed and mounted
creatures. Among the dead menagerie are jars of dried
plants, bones, rocks, muddy fluids, and a few nasty-looking
creatures preserved in dark liquids. There
are weapons and parts of weapons, costumes from far
countries, paintings and carvings, shards of pottery,
animal skins, nautical devices, dwarven measuring
tools, brushes, clamps, magnifying glasses, and
terrariums. The place looks like a warehouse full of
all the confiscated belongings of a legion of crackpots
and packrats.
The other half of the room contains several globes of
the world, and models of the nearby worlds in a gnome-built
contraption the boss calls an orrery. More than
anything else, on easels and tables and podiums, the boss
has maps. A few are the grand inked and illustrated maps
agreed upon by sages and ministers of states, but most are
hand-drawn, some of them so recently or so long ago that
charcoal dust rises from the parchment at a touch.
The boss slumps in a stuffed leather chair by the fire,
one knee hooked over the arm. A fine crystal glass full of
a concoction he calls Faerie Fire dangles from his long
fingers. That’s a bad sign, because the potent liquor puts
him in a darker mood when he’s been brooding, as he has
ever since the Bonner case.
“I know what will cheer you up,” I say, setting
the parcels down on another chair. “We have a new
challenge.” The boss doesn’t like “cases,” “jobs,”
or “missions.” He likes “problems,” “puzzles,” and
“conundrums.”
He sighs and runs a hand through his black hair, thick
and long as a horse’s tail. His dark violet eyes are half-lidded,
and I would almost swear his tapered, half-elven
ears are drooping just before he leaps out of the chair.
“They’re here!” He tears open one of the parcels and
sets aside a stack of journals. The second is a small crate
that he fumbles over for a moment before letting me pry
off the lid. He reaches in and from the packing straw
withdraws a mask of painted mahogany. It is the face of a
Chult spirit. This I know because of some of the boss’s
previous acquisitions, all of them sent by the so-called
Pathfinders who report their excursions to him.
Realizing I’ve lost his attention until he has revealed
each of the new treasures and the accompanying
reports, I take a seat. When he isn’t looking, I
pour the remaining Faerie Fire into a potted
Calimshan olive tree. As he reads the letters from
his Pathfinders, I light one of those pungent
Untheri cigars he detests. At first he is
oblivious to the distraction, but then
one of my smoke rings passes between
his face and the vellum he is reading.
He carefully refolds the letter and
turns toward me, waving the fumes
away until I stub out the cigar on the
back of my hand and tuck the butt into
a sleeve pocket.
“Out with it.”
I tell him Pavanna’s story.
“She believes her father was murdered
despite the ruling of natural death.”
“Which it couldn’t have been,” I say,
“because the cleric she hired to contact her
father’s spirit can’t reach it.”
“That does not prove murder,” says Jeggare,
“but it is an anomaly.”
“The real puzzle is why her brother
would inherit the entire estate, after her father
announced publicly that his will included a
generous legacy for her.”
“It is not unusual for disinherited nobles to
make such claims,” he says. “And the executor of
Henderthane’s estate is reputable.”
“But there was no bad blood between father and daughter,
or even between brother and sister,” I say. “It’s a mystery.”
“No,” says Jeggare. He spots his empty glass and shoots
me a suspicious glance. “It is a tedious family squabble.”
“What about the mother?” I say. “In the event of
his death, she was to have received an annuity. It is
common knowledge.”
“Yes,” says Jeggare, “it is common, tawdry, and
completely devoid of gravity.”
He is in a particularly foul mood, and I don’t want to
make it worse, but more than that I don’t want to tell
Pavanna that I can’t return her favor.
“I suppose you’re right, boss,” I say. “Elliendo said you’d
never take up this one.”
Sometimes that ploy works, but not this time.
With a bored sigh, Jeggare turns back to pluck at his
Pathfinder reports.
“‘What could interest Jeggare about a
disinherited opera singer?’ he said.” I think I
capture Elliendo’s sneering tone, even if perfect
mimicry is not foremost among my talents. While
he hasn’t been to the opera for months, it is one
of Jeggare’s cyclical passions. “‘To him, the
disgrace of Drulia Henderthane is far too
sentimental an affair for him to risk his—’”
“Drulia Henderthane?” says the boss.
“You neglected to mention that name.”
“She’s the mother.”
“I was there the night she
performed.” His voice takes on a
wistful tone, and for a moment I
think I’m in for a story. Instead, he
stares across the library, forgetting
about the Pathfinder reports as his
mind drifts back in time. I know
better than to interrupt his reverie. It
means he is reaching a decision. I
thrust my thumbs between my middle fingers
for luck.
“Very well,” he says, striding to the wall where
he pulls the cord to summon his butler. “I shall
send a message to House Henderthane. While
we await a reply, wash yourself. You smell of
sulfur and the sewers, and also of an expensive
Cormyrean perfume.”
“It was strictly business, boss.”
“Once you are clean, fetch your livery.”
When I wear that ridiculous footman’s costume,
I feel I should be grinding one of those dwarven
music boxes and capering for coppers in the street.
“But boss—”
“No arguments,” he says, and I know this is
only the beginning of his revenge.
The boss bows a little lower than before. “The honor
was entirely mine, Lord Henderthane.” More bows and
courtesies, and soon Niccolo has us back out beside the
carriage. The edge of the sun has fallen beneath the
silhouettes of the western buildings as we drive past the
gates. Once we’re out of sight of the guards, the boss has
the driver stop and beckons me inside.
“What did you learn?” he says. I tell him about Korva
and Rusilla, the rumor about Einmarch’s doxy, and
Pavanna’s visits to the Palace of Jubilations.
“Excellent,” he says. “Unfortunately, I spent most of
our interview deflecting questions about the identity of
our employer.”
“Pavanna looks a lot better out of all that foofaraw.”
Jeggare looks at me.
“I meant in different clothes.”
“I found her quite fetching as she was,” he says. “Did
you note the family resemblance to Morvus?”
“I was in there for only a couple of minutes.” Most of
that time, I confess to myself, I was looking at Pavanna,
but since they have different mothers, it’s no surprise she
looks nothing like her brother.
The boss raps on the roof. When the driver opens his
little window, Jeggare says, “To Ruby Street.”
It isn’t the worst place in Cheapside, but no one boasts
of going to the Palace. I’ve been there a few times to talk
to afternoon drunks as they gaze mournfully up the
singers’ skirts.
The driver parks near the Ruby Street entrance, over
which a sign advertises the name of the establishment in
garish colors: The Palace of Jubilations. Above that is a
long faded line of dancing girls kicking up their skirts.
Paint flecks snow down on us as I push through the
saloon doors.
We pause a moment to let our eyes adjust to the gloom.
Red and green shades cover the lamps, casting carnival
colors over the crowd. A couple dozen men slouch over
their drinks, a few of them slurring the sad clichés of
their lives to each other but most staring at the one bright
point in the room.
On a little stage in the corner stands a woman in what
might have been an opera gown before someone cut the
front of the skirt up to her thighs. Green-white light
shines up from the little wells surrounding the stage, and
motes of lime drift around her feet. The merciless light
emphasizes the failure of her heavy makeup to mask the
years of disappointment on her face.
The sultry love song makes few demands on her voice,
but I can tell she has a little talent. I can also tell it’s only
a little. Anyone who can really sing ends up in the opera
chorus or in a legitimate playhouse.
“Drulia Henderthane,” says the boss.
He filled me in on the way over. Einmarch
Henderthane’s second wife was a chorus girl in the Royal
Opera. After the death of the first Lady Henderthane,
Einmarch took a fancy to the ingénue,
who was quick to believe his promises
of making her the toast of Eltabbar.
In thanks for the birth of his second
child, Morvus, Einmarch used his
political influence and no small weight
of his fortune to persuade the masters
of the Opera to elevate Drulia to
principal soprano.
The rest of the story
everyone in Telflamm
society knows. Woefully
short of talent, Drulia
gave a single
performance before the mortified nobility. The peers
were all very polite, but alehouses across the city
crackled with mockery within moments of the closing
curtain. All that remained was full retreat, and when the
opera reopened two weeks later, it was without Drulia
Henderthane. The marriage lasted slightly longer.
A barmaid finds us before we find a table. I flash
the little smile and hand her one of the boss’s coins,
whispering “Pandarus” in her ear. She points us to a table
just big enough for two goblets of wine before disappearing
through a drape behind the bar. Moments later, a rotund
little man with tiny brush strokes for mustaches bustles
out from the curtain. He snaps his fingers at the bartender
and points to our table before joining us.
“Pandarus the Pleaser, my lords.” He makes an
obsequious bow before pulling up a third chair with a
flourish. “How may I be of service?”
“The singer,” says the boss. “We’d like to meet her.”
Pandarus smiles, and I see two gold teeth in his mouth.
From that point, it’s just a question of haggling before he
takes us backstage.
The girls at the Palace share a common dressing
room, and they aren’t girls, strictly speaking. Most
are older than me, a few old enough to be my mother.
When Drulia’s set is finished, she returns to sit before
a dressing table cluttered with jars of cosmetics and
a carafe of wine with a single pewter goblet. Another
woman leaves to take her place on stage while two others
sit around staring at us. I put a couple of Jeggare’s coins
in their hands, and they get lost. I have to put twice as
many into Pandarus’s fat fingers before he stops hovering.
As he departs, Drulia plucks a slim brown cigar from his
breast pocket and holds it just above her shoulder. I take
the hint and fetch a candle from her dressing table. She
cups the flame and draws a light.
The boss skips the courtesies he displayed at the
manor, which I figure is a good call. Drulia wasn’t born
a Henderthane.
“I am looking into your late husband’s death,” he says.
“Pavanna hired you.” It’s not a question.
The boss never gives up his clients. When Drulia looks
at me, I shrug.
“No one loved him more than she did,” she says. “I
suppose no one else loved him at all.”
“You do not seem surprised that we are
investigating his death,” says Jeggare.
Drulia takes a long drag off the cigar.
“Nothing surprises me anymore.”
“How did you hear of it?”
“Pavanna told me,” she says. “It was the last time I saw
her, just before the funeral.”
“You did not attend?”
She sets the cigar on the edge of her dressing table and
wets a cloth in a basin. “What do you think?” she says. She
begins wiping the caked powder from her face.
“But what of your son?” asks Jeggare. “Didn’t he need you?”
Drulia sets aside the washcloth to look at him. The
kohl is smeared in a half-spiral around her eyes, but
I see her son’s features clearly in the proud tilt of her
head. “Morvus never needed anything his father didn’t
give him.”
“His Uncle Orxines was there to support him during
this difficult time.”
“Uncle?” She emits an anemic laugh and picks up
her cigar. “‘Uncle’ Orxines is headmaster of the Scions
Academy. No doubt he wants to make sure Morvus doesn’t
withdraw his tuition during ‘this difficult time.’ Morvus
must decide how to spend his portion of the inheritance.”
Jeggare considers her words and says, “Morvus is sole
heir to the Henderthane estate.”
Drulia almost drops her smoke. “There must be some
mistake. Einmarch showed me his new will when he
reduced my inheritance. Pavanna was to have a third of
his holdings outside the city.”
“But you also have heard nothing from his executor
since Einmarch’s death?”
“No,” she says. “But that’s no surprise. Einmarch kept
sending me money after we separated, even though I told
him I didn’t want it. I supposed he figured I’d already had
my share and wrote me out entirely.”
“But not Pavanna.”
“He doted on that girl. We all did. She was the one
bright spot in the family, even after the embarrassment of
my one-night stage career.”
“What about Morvus, your own child?”
Drulia takes a long drink of wine. Then she smokes her
cigar and stares at the dirty wall. I’m beginning to think
she’s done talking when she says, “It’s the strangest thing,
but I have never loved that boy, not from the moment I
first held him. I know how that makes me sound. But to
me he was always the thing Einmarch wanted, the thing
he wanted me for. A son. Now his sole heir.”
It’s one of those turns in conversations that makes me
tense for the kill, as Jeggare pounces at moments of weakness,
striking with the question no one expects. It can be thrilling,
if you have the stomach for it. He moves his chair to sit closer
to Drulia, placing himself in her vacant eye-line. She looks up
at him, and I see her lips tremble for an instant.
“I was present during the night of your performance at
the opera,” he says. I cringe in anticipation. “The role was
entirely wrong for you, madame. You are no soprano.”
Drulia straightens her back as if bracing for a mortal
insult.
Jeggare places a hand on hers. “But as I left the opera that
night, there was no doubt in my mind that you belonged
on that stage, in another part, not one that had been forced
upon you. I hope to see you upon it again one day.”
As we leave the Palace, the boss steps into the red carriage
and closes the door before leaning out of the window
to hand me a pouch of coins. “Perhaps you can learn
something of this Tall Tail rumor tonight.”
I don’t relish the thought of walking through
Cheapside in the Jeggare livery, but before I can
complain, the driver pulls away. I look around to see
whether anyone I know has spied me in this costume,
and across the street I see Old Maccabus leaning against
the sidewalk rails in front of a pawnshop. Glancing up
and down Ruby Street, I spot a couple of the big young
scrappers Zandros sends out from his headquarters in
the Goat Pen for the rough stuff. They whistle a signal to
their unseen companions. They’ve thrown a net around
the Palace, and around me.
Mac crooks his finger, and I weigh the advantage of a
head start against that of knowing what he wants to say.
With his halo of white hair and a perpetual squint, he
looks more like a bookkeeper than an enforcer, but he’s
the one Zandros sends out for the quiet work. Sometimes
that means a soft word in your ear. Other times it means
something other than a word. I go lean against the railing
beside him.
“I’d bet on you if you ran,” he says. “Today and
tomorrow, maybe all week. But not for long.”
“What’s got him so worked up?”
Mac puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I’m not
even supposed to be here, but I finished my rounds early and
saw the boys headed this way. Figured they could use some
adult supervision. Make sure no one got his arm broke.”
I imagine the wounded Ursio screaming for my head,
not that Zandros would usually do more than laugh at
the dwarf ‘s misfortune. Still, it’s probably better that it’s
Mac who arrived to ride herd on the young toughs. Ursio
would as soon have them kill me as bring me in.
“Figured you go in, show some respect, find out what
the old goat wants.” Mac looks me in the eye like an uncle
giving advice. “No harm in listening.”
He’s made his point. I won’t have a peaceful hour until
I face Zandros, and I can’t keep looking over my shoulder
while investigating the death of Pavanna’s father.
“All right?” says Mac. He pushes off from the rail with
his hands still stuffed in his pockets.
It’s pretty damned far from all right, but I grunt a
reluctant affirmative. Together we walk west toward the
waterfront, a wake of gangsters forming behind us.
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