Rosemary Jones: City of the Dead

"So are you ready for us to start the foundation?" Astute Carver asked Stunk, the merchant's drawings still rolled up in his fist and ignored.

The fat man rocked back and forth a couple of times before ponderously nodding. "Your work on the urns appeared satisfactory," he said with an odd note in his voice, as if he wished he could find some further fault.

"Then in which part of the Merchants' Rest shall we be building?" asked Astute, using the more polite name for Coinscoffin.

Stunk had no such refinement. "Coinscoffin! As if I would be buried there with all the paltry shopkeepers, miles away from Waterdeep proper."

"But that's the only place with enough room for a plot of this size!"

Astute unrolled the scroll to show two smaller buildings that flanked the semicircle of columns surrounding the main tomb where Stunk's sarcophagus would eventually lie.

"My tomb will be there," said Stunk, pointing across the wall to the City of the Dead to the astonishment of the entire Carver family. "As befits a great man of Waterdeep."

"There's no land left within the cemetery's walls. Every scrap of ground is already claimed." Astute only voiced what the rest of the Carvers had known from childhood on.

"You will build my tomb inside the City of the Dead," said Stunk, gesturing at his manservant. The lanky individual slid forward with another scroll and a sneer. "Tear down the structures as marked and begin building my tomb."

"Tear down?" Astute took this new scroll and unrolled it. His brothers clustered close, each peering over Astute's shoulder, muttering at what they saw. "There are two tombs in the City at this spot. My family has maintained them for generations."

"And now you will take care of something far finer."

"But what about the bodies?" Perspicacity asked, nudging his brother Astute.

Stunk shrugged his shoulders. "Everything is quite legal. And any removals will be handled with the utmost respect by my men."

Astute stared at his brothers and they stared back at him. All five big men looked at Stunk with less than cordial expressions. Sophraea's cousins and brothers began to cluster closer to their fathers. One of Stunk's redheaded bullies unhooked his cudgel from his belt.

"Well?" asked Stunk, no more expression on his face than on a piece of blank granite.

"I need to see the deeds," said Astute finally. "We cannot start such work without the proper papers."

"You shall have them," said Stunk. "And I will have my monument exactly where I have said."

The fat man turned and walked with his rolling gait out of the yard, not bothering with even the slightest gesture toward a courteous farewell.

"What do you make of that?" Leaplow asked his sister. The pair wandered away from the muttering conversations of their older brothers, uncles, and father, toward the little gate in the wall that opened into the City of the Dead.

Sophraea peered through the — gate at the tangle of bushes and trees overshadowing the path leading to the northern tombs. Was it the breeze that trembled the branches or was it something else?

"I think it is trouble," she finally said. "How are they going to react if we start tearing things down?"

"We're Carvers," said Leaplow with his usual brash confidence. "They don't bother us." Then, obviously remembering his trouble last spring, he added, "Well, not usually. And never Father or the uncles."

"Because we maintain the tombs, not destroy them." As soon as she voiced that thought, Sophraea knew exactly the same idea would have occurred to every member of the family. No wonder her uncles were still in a huddle, tugging at their beards and rumbling their doubts at each other.

Still, the City of the Dead did look quiet. At least the bit that she could see from where she stood. She put her hand on the latch, the old prohibition against wandering through the graveyard alone, even at twilight, certainly no longer applied to her. Even her mother Reye had accepted that the shortcut through the City of the Dead was the fastest route for her daughter to use to certain shops in northern Waterdeep. Sophraea had walked the graveyard paths all summer long with no incident at all.

"That's odd." Leaplow startled his sister by bending around her to peer at the gate, almost bumping his forehead on the twisted iron bars. "Must be rust."

"What?"

"That." Leaplow tapped red marks that showed clearly on curlicues of iron.

Sophraea looked closely at the strange streaks marring the usually dull dark gray metal. Ten slender streaks curled around the bars, five on the left side, five on the right.

Slowly Sophraea put out her own slender hands and twisted her fingers around the bars. When she pulled them away, the marks of her hands remained for a brief moment before fading away. The marks were exactly the same as the red streaks, except reversed.

"Handprints," Sophraea barely breathed, looking at the marks so plainly visible and so clearly the color of dried blood, the marks of hands that had reached through the gate from the graveyard side.

Leaplow shook his head in a fierce gesture of denial. "Can't be. They leave us alone. They have always left us alone. The dead don't bother Carvers."

"Whatever it was," said Sophraea, tracing the pattern on the gate with one slender finger and ignoring Leaplow's protests, "it came from the City of the Dead."

The rattle of branches scraping together startled both brother and sister. The pair leaped back from the gate. A splatter of rain followed the gust of wind.

As usual, a shift in the wind distracted her volatile brother. He shook the rain off his head and his worries out of his brain.

"I'm for supper," said the always hungry Leaplow, heading back to Dead End House with a quick stride.

But Sophraea lingered behind. She put her hand on the gate's latch again, remembering the odd light of the night before. Perhaps she could see something more on the other side. But the shadows shifted in the graveyard and another cold blast of wind hit her face like a warning.

With careful backward steps, Sophraea retreated. Behind her, the bushes swayed, as if someone invisible brushed by them, returning to the center of the City of the Dead.

Everyone told tales of the great duels and the unfortunate spells that had once filled the City of the Dead and spilled into the streets of Waterdeep. And everyone, most especially her ancient relative Volponia, said to Sophraea that those days were gone. The Blackstaff had tamed the wizards, the City Watch kept the thieves from stealing too much, the guards prevented riffraff adventurers from creating unusual trouble for ordinary citizens, and even the young lords and ladies were said to be a much more staid and responsible nobility than generations past. Although the broadsheets were always full of some tale of wicked mischief among the aristocracy and very entertaining to read too!

"Scandals," Volponia had sniffed one morning, crumpling up an old copy of The Blue Unicorn that Sophraea had brought her, "not worth the ink on the paper. Some dressmaker going bankrupt. Some young lords teasing the Watch into chasing them. Huh! In my day, the misdeeds of Waterdeep's famous and infamous rocked the heavens, toppled rulers, and changed the very boundaries of kingdoms."

"Being so much older than the rest of us, dear Aunt Volponia," said Sophraea's grandmother Myemaw with the usual touch of acid in the honey of her voice, "you would remember such things."

"I remember you sashaying through that courtyard below with a berry pie in one hand and a loveknot of ribbons in the other hand, girl," shot back Volponia, with a snap of her elegantly manicured fingers at Sophraea's grandmother. "Back before you married my handsome nephew, back when you were the scandal of the neighborhood."