The Duchess of the Shallows Read Online Free PDF Page A

lockpick, true, but that was where the comparison ended. And even if she managed the unlikely and got away with the dagger, would she then make an enemy of Baron Eusbius? Joining the Grey was well and good, but buying the enmity of a noble, no matter how minor, could prove fatal. By every god of the Walk, it was far safer to simply find a job at another bakery and throw the damned mark in the harbor.
    Or was it? She might secure a job with some other craftsman only to find herself thrown out on the street by another letter with another brass coin. Was she willing to spend the rest of her life running from place to place, always at the mercy of whatever soul had taken her in this time? Was she prepared to simply turn her back on the mystery of what had happened to her family that night of the fire? Or was this an instance in which safe was not always best? Eight years ago Duchess had been dragged from her home without a word of why, and two days ago she'd been ejected from the bakery just as mysteriously. The reason Noam had taken her in and the reason he'd let her go so easily were one and the same, she was certain. Behind it all was P and the Grey.
    Still, it was one thing to play at rumor-mongering and lock-picking with Lysander; quite another to risk her life on some fool's quest prompted by a bit of brass and a letter that was now ash.
    The thought of returning to the empty garret was depressing; by now Lysander was half-blind with drink, wandering from winesink to winesink with the rest of the ganymedes. She thought fleetingly of heading to the Vermillion, but that was no better an idea. The brothel was full of pricked ears and prying eyes, and Duchess shuddered to think what Minette might do should she learn that Duchess had been asked to steal Eusbius' dagger.
    Alone, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but worry and wander the city's wet, gray streets, she suddenly felt sick and tired of the Shallows, the fog, and the endless gray stone. "Grey above and gray below and wet in between," she muttered. "You were right, father."
    She suddenly felt very keenly the hole Marcus Kell's disappearance had left in her life, and how much she missed the long hours they'd spent talking about history, or geography, or politics, or whatever else she'd found in some book or crumbling scroll. By eight years of age, Duchess had read half her father's library, and one of their favorite topics of discussion had been the history of the great hill and the city that had stood there centuries before Rodaas had been founded. History painted Domani as a wonder and a paradise, possessed of libraries filled with long-forgotten knowledge and gardens of surpassing beauty. Most of the city's present-day miracles of architecture – the Avenue of Trees, the Godswalk, the sewer system, the foundations of the imperial palace – had been constructed during those ancient days. Stories even spoke of a vast underground city of the dead, a grand necropolis, deep beneath the hill of lost Domani. All of these were built from the ubiquitous gray stone that still graced the hill and could be found nowhere else. The people of the city, the Domae, had according to the tales been so wise and skilled that no other nation dared trouble their eternal gray walls. Domani was as peaceful inside as out, the story went; the Domae themselves so law-abiding they needed no blackarms to keep the peace. A paradise upon earth, rivaling any of Ventaris' heavens.
    "Our people – we call ourselves Rodaasi now, though at the time we were little more than warring mountain clans – found this city more than eight hundred years ago. And I mean they literally found it, fully intact." She had frowned at intact , and her father smiled. " Intact meaning complete, without damage. There were houses, palaces, gardens, streets and alleys, as solid as the day they were built...and empty."
    "Where did the Domae go?" Marina had asked, intrigued. They were in Marcus Kell's study, sitting in