City of the Dead (24 page)

“Nice!” interjected the cook, who had moved over to the fire to stir a cauldron puffing out a spicy smoke. She pulled her dripping spoon out of the pot and waved it with little regard for the sugary splatters she sprayed across the hearthstone. “He put my old lady in one bitty little room down by the docks. It was horrid and dark and damp. If Lord Adarbrent hadn’t brought her some nice pieces from his own house and a good wool blanket for the winter, she would have been ever so miserable.”

Just about, to leave the table to look for Gustin, Sophraea picked up the peeling knife instead and innocently asked, “Lord Adarbrent?”

“They may call him the Walking Corpse,” said the cook, “but he proved himself a kind friend to my mistress.”

“And to mine,” answered the gray-haired maid.

“He tried to talk my lord out of taking Stunk’s loans,” declared the laundress, shifting her basket to avoid the cook’s wildly waving spoon and stains on her clean tablecloths. “Would that he had listened to him, I wouldn’t be working here.”

“But there’s no denying that Lord Adarbrent has a terrible temper,” added the cook as she stalked back to the table. “Why my old lady told me that he nearly horsewhipped a man to death once. When Lord Adarbrent was young, the nobles of Waterdeep were a different breed. Why just look at a man wrong in those days, and he’d be challenging you quicker than you could blink. I see you, saer, let us duel, saer, that’s what all the young blades would say when they went on the promenade. And people feared Adarbrents in those days. At least that’s what’my old lady said!”

“I thought Lord Adarbrent was all alone and had no family,” said Sophraea.

“Well, they’ve all been gone for a long time,” the cook responded. “But they caused some stir more than fifty years ago, during one of the bad times.”

Sophraea looked up at this.

“Of course, I was just a baby then,” the cook went on. “But so much change was happening inside the city’s walls and outside in the world. The dark arts attracted certain nobles, especially those who had suffered great losses. Oh, most ladies played at stances at their parties, but there were some who took it a bit further than that. Thete were some who raised ghosts. The sort that had secret rooms, at the top of the tower or down in the basement, with vats of this and glass tubes of that, and nasty smells seeping out to drive the housekeeper crazy.”

Outside, the thunder died away, leaving only the heavy splatter of

rain against the high small windows ofthe kitchen. More rain hissed down the chimney and made the fire smoke. The cook snapped an order at the pot girl, who obediently left her bucket and rattled the damper and plied the poker until the smoke settled.

Then the pot girl crept closer to the table. The laundress slid a stool across the floor to her. Perched on top, the child wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered with delight as the older women began to swap tales of hauntings in old Waterdeep. With an absentminded gesture, the cook handed the pot girl a biscuit to nibble while the stories continued.

While their tales of dark deeds in the City of the Dead rarely matched what Sophraea knew to be the truth (one or two exaggerations nearly caused her to giggle), each mentioned more than once the fashion for ghosts that plagued Waterdeep’s finer homes for a brief time long ago.

“So the Adarbrents called forth spirits?” Sophraea finally asked.

“Not the current Lord Adarbrent,” said the cook with stout loyalty to the man who had rescued her old mistress. “But he had a cousin who frightened my old lady when she was girl. A truly nasty witch, if you know what I mean. She died from some ritual gone wrong and the family sealed up her rooms the very day that they buried her.”

Sophraea remembered the sour, cold smell of Lord Adarbrent’s house. Perhaps something was dead behind the old noble’s wainscoting, something more sinister than a mouse, and something that needed a stronger cure than the gift of a kitten.

Suddenly the tales of haunting were interrupted by a very live bumping noise below their feet. A crash, like a stack of lumber knocked over by a man rolling around, could be distinctly heard.

“Old chimney flue,” explained the cook. “Carries sound up from the basement. Sounds like Furkin is having some trouble with those rats.”

“Oh,” said Sophraea, jumping up from the table and starting toward the stairs. “Perhaps I’d better go find my wizard now.”

“Good idea, dearie,” the cook agreed. “Furkin might be in a bit of temper later on.”

“When he gets loose,” giggled the pot girl and was immediately shushed by the other women.

With hurried thanks, Sophraea headed upstairs. As she left, she heard the cook remark, “Well, that’s a nice polite and helpful girl for you. Look at all the vegetables that she’s peeled and chopped. Of course, if anyone asks, we haven’t seen her for ages, have we?”

npstairs in Stunk’s mansion, Gustin made a great show of pacing back and forth, muttering the occasional odd phrase. He knew that true magic was much more than empty gestures, but, from his experience, the servants expected this kind of act.

Stunk’s valet, a portly bald man given to wringing his hands and muttering “please don’t touch that,” met Gustin at the top of the stairs leading to his master’s private apartment. The young man supposed that the valet was watching to see that he wouldn’t steal anything. Two more of Stunk’s bodyguards stood stiffly on either side of the lacquered door leading into their master’s bedchamber.

When one thin male servant turned the corner of the hallway and yelped to see a wizard down on his knees drawing cryptic symbols on the carpet with a piece of charcoal, Gustin gained the general impression that the whole household’s nerves were badly overset.

He continued with his search, carefully lifting up curtains and peering under tables. The upper hallways were just as cluttered with bric-a-brac and expensive ornaments as the lower rooms. The brocade shoe could be almost anywhere and nearly invisible among all the other trophies that Stunk had displayed. Not for the first time, Gustin wished he had a spell that could reveal a desired object. That would be much more useful than many of the odd bits that his old teacher made him memorize!

As he advanced down a hallway toward the door leading to Stunk’s chambers, Gustin noticed a silk cloth covered one enormous picture frame in an alcove just outside Stunk’s rooms.

D-3B

When he started to twitch the coveting aside, the valet moaned and said “Oh do not! I wish the master would just have it destroyed.”

The revealed painting showed the wealthy fat man and his aristocratic lady, expensively dressed in the finest materials and jewels, but the faces above the lace collars were the faces of corpses, rotting away.

“Unusual choice for a portrait,” said Gustin, quickly letting the cloth fall back over the portrait. “I’m surprised the attist dared to paint him that way.”

“It wasn’t always like that,” said the valet.

“Did it start to change when the haunting began?”

“Oh no, it’s been changing for much longer than that, getting worse every day.”

“An early warning, one that wasn’t heeded,” Gustin speculated.

“The master won’t have it removed,” the valet moaned. “He only covered it after my lady objected to seeing it every time she came up the stairs. My master said that he won’t be frightened by such tricks. He was keeping it to feed to whoever was doing this, scrap by canvas scrap until the jokester chokes. At least that was what the master said.”

“After my interview with him, I would say that Rampage Stunk has very little sense of humor,” Gustin remarked.

The valet shuddered slightly and responded, “Please don’t say anything about the master to me.” He gave a quick glance over his shoulder to the two guards stationed nearby.

“No, no, of course not,” Gustin had no wish to get Stunk’s servant into trouble. “I only meant that I was quite impressed by your master’s gravity in the face of adversity.”

The last was pitched loud enough for the guards to hear and the plump valet gave Gustin a grateful smile. “Secondus Marplate,” said

the man, bowing slightly and indicating his round person.

“Philious Fornasta,” said Gustin Bone, who’d always been fond of this particular persona. Philious had had numerous dubious adventures among the war wizards of Cormyr but, Gustin felt, always exchanged the social pleasantries with exceptional panache.

“Have you been with Stunk long?” asked Gustin as he continued to examine the hall. He rather doubted that the shoe would turn up here or even downstairs where Sophraea was searching. If the curse was directed at Stunk, than the object tied to the curse probably had been placed in the man’s personal apartment to draw the dead to him. Which was one of the reasons that he had not objected to Sophraea searching in the basements below. She would be perfectly safe there and unlikely to run into any of Stunk’s more dangerous servants.

“I came here following the master’s marriage to Lady Ruellyn,” explained Marplate as he trailed after Gustin.

“If she’s a lady, wouldn’t he be a lord?” Gustin asked casually as he opened the doors of a small cupboard. Inside it, he found brushes, a small fire’ shovel, and a bucket for carrying out ashes, but no shoe.

“Lady Ruellyn carries her own title by right of birth to a very noble family. They have a mansion in Castle Ward,” Marplate said. “I can say no more.” And then he proceeded to follow Gustin, gossiping as the wizard sniffed around for the missing brocade shoe.

In the valet’s guarded opinion, Stunk was waiting to buy just the right title for himself, one that would increase his influence in Waterdeep. “As close to a mask as he can get,” Marplate explained and then looked as if he’d regretted suggesting his master was angling for a position of power in Waterdeep.

“So, you can become a noble here if you have enough money?” queried Gustin.

“You would be shocked at what you can buy in Waterdeep,” said Marplate quite sincerely.

“Not after living here for a very short time,” replied Gustin cheerfully as he walked up to the guards flanking the door into Stunk’s chambers.

“I have your master’s permission to set my protections throughout the house,” he told the guards, who looked doubtful. “Of course, I can always tell your master that I could not enter his rooms and therefore they are unprotected, a consequence of your actions.”

The two guards stepped quickly aside. Gustin swept through the lacquered door, gesturing to Marplate to accompany him.

In the suite of rooms that Marplate called “the master’s apartment,” Gustin found a dressing chamber filled with racks of luxurious clothing and shelves of shoes, but no dancing slipper. A bathing chamber, a small study, and an even smaller library, filled primarily with ledgers for Stunk’s various enterprises, also lacked any evidence of the haunting except the candles burning in every room, necessary because of the tightly drawn curtains concealing each window that they passed.

“There’re always things looking in at night,” Marplate said as he checked the curtains, making sure the fabric overlapped at the edges, completely shrouding the room from anyone or anything looking in.

A huge bed dominated the center of the last room, swathed in draperies that allowed the occupant to protect himself from the slightest draft. Gigantic feather pillows filled the top of the bed.

Set neatly to one side was a food safe, a neat contraption of wood and perforated tin made to keep certain types of pastries fresh. Gustin had seen such pieces in bakeries and even the larger kitchens of noble houses in Cormyr. But he’d never seen one in a bedroom.

“The master does a great deal of work in this room,” said the valet,

obviously feeling the need to explain. “He often needs sustenance in the middle of the night.”

“You must spend all your time sweeping crumbs out of the sheets,” Gustin said, flipping back the covers to peer under the bed. No shoe. He straightened back up, thinking hard. He was sure that the shoe had to be in the house and, most logically, near Stunk or in a room that Stunk occupied a good deal of the time. Of course, it could be downstairs, perhaps even in the room where Stunk held his audiences. The thought of going back there and searching under the fat man’s cold gaze made Gustin shudder.

“There is a maid to change the linen every day.” Marplate straightened the covers that Gustin had rumpled. “The master is most particular about such things.”

The wizard wandered to the far end of the room where a small table held a number of papers and a few personal items on a tray, like a comb and a bottle of men’s hair pomade. Gustin picked up the latter, pulling out the glass stopper to confirm that it was the thick, inky liquid sold in numerous Waterdeep shops with assurances that it would give even the oldest and grayest of gentlemen the luxurious locks of a young man. With a very slight smile at this evidence of Stunk’s vanity, Gustin replaced the bottle on the silver tray.

Beneath the inlaid table, he spotted a slip of paper crumbled upon the floor, as if somebody had hurled it there in anger. He glanced back at Marplate. The valet was still fussing with the covers of Stunk’s bed, making sure the corners were absolutely straight. Gustin snatched up the note, glanced quickly at the signature, and tucked it in his tunic. He would read it later, someplace where nobody was watching.

“Are you done, saer?” asked Marplate, twitching slightly when he saw Gustin so close to his master’s table.

“Almost, almost,” Gustin said, circling the room once more. He noticed every time he crossed near the heavily draped windows, the

valet flinched. He put one hand upon the crimson velvet curtains to draw them open.

“Oh, there’s nothing out there,” Marplate said with a nervous start.

“Perhaps I should look for myself.” Gustin twitched the curtains open to reveal long glass windows that opened onto a small wrought iron balcony with a planter filled with dead plants. Other than that, there was, as the other man had said, nothing there.

Behind him, Gustin heard the valet give a relieved sigh.

Ah, thought Gustin, this is where the ghosts must appear each night. Throwing his hands into the air and letting his head fall backward until he was staring at the brightly painted ceiling, Gustin cried, “I sense the presence of the dead!”