Rosemary Jones: City of the Dead

Stunk strode into the yard as he had many times before, as if he expected everyone to move out of his way, swinging his arms with his hands curled into meaty fists. With no regard for courtesy, he bulled his way past her waiting uncles and Sophraea's other relatives.

As usual, a retinue of servants trailed after the fat man from the North Ward. Besides being one of the most cutthroat of negotiators, it was said that Stunk also was quicker to take offense than most men, often seeing an insult in the most innocent "remark and not at all reluctant to retaliate with force. Certainly, wherever he went, he took a host of unpleasant types with him, all of whom were always ready for a fight.

Stunk stopped in front of Astute Carver, shifting a little from side to side as was his habit. He thrust forward a scroll, the greasy marks of his hands clear on the parchment.

"The pediment was too plain," he said. "I made some changes. It is much better now."

Astute Carver took the scroll from his client with a stifled sigh. Some months before, Stunk had commissioned a large memorial for the remains of his long-dead mother and, as needed, his other family members.

Eventually, Stunk planned to occupy the center sarcophagus, a creation of his own design. Every month or so, he visited the Carvers, adding details to the work. Currently he favored a barrel-design tomb set to one side to hold the bones of "lesser family members" as he called them; two pedestals to hold the urns for the ashes of his mother and, eventually, his still living wife; a colonnade of ornamented pillars surrounding his own resting place; and a number of other stone ornaments scattered about to memorialize his self-claimed attributes and achievements.

It was, in the words of Sophraea's uncle Perspicacity, "quite the most florid and horrid design ever to be visited upon us." Her other uncles Judicious, Vigilant, and Sagacious had all rumbled their agreement.

However, Stunk was willing to pay for his folly, as Astute reminded his brothers, and the family never turned down a good commission.

Work progressed slowly. So far, only certain ornamental pieces such as funerary urns had been completed as Stunk tinkered with his design, but those two pieces alone were large enough to fill one whole room in the basement of Dead End House. Stunk's mother still rested in her original plot in Coinscoifin, the merchants' graveyard, and Stunk seemed more concerned about getting his eventual monument carved to his satisfaction than moving the old lady.

Sophraea suspected Stunk's only motivation for his plans to bury his family near him was to be assured of a crowd of sycophants to surround him in death as they did in life.

Fidgeting on the edge of the crowd of younger Carvers waiting for the business to conclude, Sophraea noticed that Stunk's current retinue contained the glowering brute who was said to be his bodyguard, the pale and sneering manservant with the six knives clearly sheathed around his person, the two young red-haired louts with the scarred hands and the flattened noses of dockyard bullies, and the hairy man in the livery of a doorjack who always hung at the back of the group.

The last man had a bestial cast to his face, a mid-day scruff of dark beard and greasy lank curls doing little to hide his generally unpleasant visage. As always, the hairy one turned toward Sophraea and sniffed the air in her direction. His pink tongue darted out and licked his chapped lips. Then he smiled at her.

Sophraea shuddered. There was a man that she would be happy to have her brothers walk through the City of the'Dead and drop into the nearest open grave. Maybe even throw a little dirt on top of him.

"They get uglier every tenday, don't they?" whispered Leaplow to his sister. "Where does Stunk find his servants? Wonder if we could beat them in a fair fight?"

Although slightly older than herself, Leaplow often seemed far younger, at least in Sophraea's opinion. Like the rest of her brothers, he had inherited their father's dark curly hair and pleasant grin, but not half of Astute's clever patience. As nearly everyone in the district knew, Leaplow was a notorious scrapper, fond of picking fights for the fun of it. Sometimes Sophraea felt more like Leaplow's keeper than his younger sister, attempting to teach him some good sense.

"Hush," Sophraea said, knowing how her brother always was tempted to do something foolish. Her cousins Bentnor and Cadriffle (who were exactly the same age as Leaplow) also were constantly in scuffles and liked earning extra coin by wrestling and boxing whenever they could find a match (although they had run out of men in the neighborhood willing to challenge them). But the twins could at least keep a cool head in a fight and knew when to run. Not that they'd needed to run after they'd grown to their full size. Leaplow, however, never backed down from any fight. He enjoyed the excitement too much and would keep swinging until someone was unconscious. Then he was just as likely to pick up his opponent, clap him over the shoulders, and buy him a drink.

"I'm sure I could take that hairy one," Leaplow muttered to his sister.

"Shush," she said, firmly treading on his foot closest to her. "You still haven't paid Father for all the damage you did last spring."

That fight, which Leaplow called a "wonderful way to spend a day" and the family called "a disgrace to our good name," had nearly wrecked some of the most important southern monuments in the City of the Dead.

Leaplow chuckled in happy remembrance. "That dusty fellow gave me some exercise. You're right, just one hairy doorjack would not be nearly as much fun. How about I take on those red-haired brothers?"

"The City Watch would not like it," answered Bentnor, leaning over Leaplow's shoulder to size up Stunk's retinue. "They're still a bit cranky about that last mess you started and we had to clean up."

"You'd think they'd be happy we did their work for them, knocking out those thieves," Leaplow answered back. "Still, I felt sorry for the one that ended up with that broken nose. Guess nobody ever told him not to pick a Carver's pocket."

In their neighborhood, the bully boys and other miscreants left the Carvers alone. After all, it was a well-known fact in neighborhoods north of the Coffinmarch gate that anyone foolish enough to punch one Carver had to deal with a dozen extraordinarily stalwart lads punching back. Or, and there were certain members of the thieves' guild who said this was even worse, all the Carver wives laying about with their brooms and pots and pans. The Carver men tended to marry strapping big women, the sort who could drop a man with one kick of a boot or one full swing of a fist.

Only Myemaw Carver, Sophraea's grandmother, and Sophraea were tiny women and at least looked harmless. Except, as Binn the one-eyed butcher's boy often said, "the little ones are even tougher than the big ones in that family!'' Binn had never really forgiven Sophraea for clouting him when he tried to sneak a kiss.

But there was something different about Stunk's men and Sophraea was glad that Bentnor had distracted her hotheaded brother. Like Stunk, his men tended to push their way into the center of the crowd. They all had an angry air, as if they liked a fight too, but in a bloodier and more deadly way than Leaplow's constant sparring. Sophraea doubted that Stunk's men would just use fists or feet like her brothers or her cousins. The retinue clustered around the fat man all wore blades or, in the case of one redhead, stout cudgels.

Astute Carver had warned her and her brothers more than once to be careful around Stunk's servants: there had been tales in the streets of the people who crossed Stunk or his retinue being ambushed by "unknown" assailants.

So, "hush and don't cause trouble," Sophraea reminded Leaplow again, reaching up to tug his ear down to her level despite his yelp of protest.