The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 9.2

His smile faded as he walked out of Kammerend toward Ebsea. Jantis was right about one thing: he was about to do something incredibly stupid. But sometimes what was stupid was also what was necessary. Fingering Helg's key with one hand, which he'd moved to his waistcoat pocket, Thijis knuckled his chest with the other, trying to ignore the roiling burn building in his throat. He only hoped he hadn't crossed the line from stupid to suicidal.

He hadn't lied to Jantis about having preparations to make, both for himself and others. What he planned on doing with Helg's key was right on that line, and while calculated risks were part of the job, he liked to put a thumb on the scales of risk by being well prepared. Which meant weapons, and gear, and, most importantly, information. Which meant money. He also had no intention of seeing friends and family punished for choices he'd made, which meant Dalia was leaving town, whether she liked it or not. Whether she likes it or not, he thought, presuming you can get her to agree.

Once he was off the hill and nearing downtown, Thijis veered to the right and headed into Ebsea proper, the grand Kammerend streets and boulevards narrowing to more modest lanes and byways lined with tailors and milliners and respectable taverns, with apartments above. Kammerenders had to get their suits made somewhere, after all, and tailors and milliners didn't live or work in Kammerend. Down Eb Way, Thijis was pleased to find that the night was quiet.

Few people were out in the rain, and most of those in carriages or on horseback, bouncing and clopping down the cobblestones. He saw a druggist closing up shop, and an elderly woman dressed in a servant's livery huddled against the wet. Otherwise he was alone on the street. He presumed everyone else was doing something rational, like eating dinner. The pubs he passed were full, their warm yellow glow inviting.

The easy thing to do would be to show the Margravine's letter of credit at the nearest banking house and draw some funds, use them to purchase whatever he needed. Easy, and perhaps the most stupid thing of all. The flow of money Mother had given him was immense, and who knew who kept track of such things? She, or one of her cohorts, or someone else might be informed the very moment he withdrew the first crown, which would be as good as giving himself up to anyone who wanted to find him. At best, no clerk would forget disbursing cash from a note that large, especially not one drawn on any account that might be connected to either the Margravine or her alias.

No, as good as the money was, it wasn't much good. Not at the moment, anyway. Not until the particular players in this part of the game were identified, their respective positions located and marked. He had yet to do that. He was steps behind in a fast-moving game. If his suspicions about the Margravine's situation were correct, than he would be a fool to rely so completely on her wealth or influence to see him clear of any of this.

Flipping up the collar of his dinner jacket, he drew it close against the increasing chill of the night. Autumn was finally on its way at last, after months of oppressive heat. And with the fall came the storms, driven by the violent mixture of currents in the Outer Sea, flowing down the continent of Westalen. Thijis envisioned rogue waves smashing the great, ancient seawalls on the horizon and shivered. Oridos was always but a mile or a month away from a storm of some kind.

The tightly settled mercantile section of Ebsea began to taper off, the spaces between buildings widening from alleys to yards to parks, and soon he was back in his own neighborhood, the familiar height of his apartment building rising above a copse of maples down Wall Road from where he stood. Dim in the medium distance he saw the city walls, and in between the rolling neighborhood of down at the heels merchant's homes that formed the buffer between Ebsea proper and the eastern end of the Warrens.

Thijis took to the trees, then, hurrying from one dark spot to another, his feet not touching cobblestone again until he was within a stones throw from his own place. The parkland to the right of the building was overgrown and rather dismal, the bold copse of maples surrounded by dead or dying grass, scraggly pines, and a variety of parasitic underbrush that concealed all manner of rocks, holes, and divots to break an ankle on. The ruin of an ancient granary formed the centerpiece, like a broken granite eggshell filled with sour-smelling weeds. He slipped inside it, hoping he hadn't disturbed any half-dead sauma fiends, and climbed onto a crumbling stage near the back.

From there it was an easy climb out a crack in the curving granary wall and onto the limb of the closest maple.

The windows of his own top-floor flat were dark: he was out too long every day to leave a lamp burning and he kept no maid. The uninhabited middle floors were the same, but the corner apartment on the ground floor, where the midwife and her daughter lived, was softly lit. He could see no queue outside the side door they used for clients. The evening was a popular time for appointments, some of the services they offered being less than strictly legal. It was rare indeed not to see at least one woman waiting to be seen, just after the dinner hour.

This wasn't terribly surprising, but it was confirmation of what he'd already presumed. There were sheriffs here, somewhere, expecting him, and they were doing a reasonable job of being discreet. Thijis had no intention of disappointing them.

Climbing down from his perch, he squeezed back through the crumbling granary walls and onto the stone shelf, then let himself back down onto the weedy floor of the dome. Stepping carefully, he scanned the ground at his feet, wishing he could risk a light of any kind.

It took five long minutes and several unfortunate encounters with unidentified sticky substances, likely the leavings of the homeless and drug-addicted that often haunted this place, before he found it. Swearing under his breath, he wedged filth-encrusted fingers under the rusted rim of the manhole cover and lifted, straining his back before he managed to get the iron disk flipped over.

The sewer line he crawled through was just large enough to admit him, an emergency escape route he'd made note of years before when he first found the place. Always have an escape route, he reminded himself. Not that he ever thought he'd be using it to get back in to his own home.

It was an old line, not in use, a dusty journey rather than a stinking one, his companions shards of brick and stone and the occasional spider. He was sad to say that he'd been in worse sewers. The line let out into the cellar of his building, a stronghold of granite block. Given that the door leading into said stronghold was made of solid iron, and he was the only with a key, he felt reasonably certain that whichever of Tolvaj's errand boys had been left to watch the place hadn't gotten inside. Assuming they were even thorough enough to try.

It was the cellar that had sold him on the place, and the major reason he thought it had been a chapter house of some kind in centuries past. A wonderful place to keep a small armory, or a mountain of gold, or a gaggle of unwilling virgins. If only he'd gotten around to using it as such.

To be continued next week....