The House of the ShadowHawk stood in the heart of Sailcloth Fiveways in Delphinad’s southern Shipwrights’ District. That did not mean five streets met immediately before it, leaving the house isolated like a cornered badger. More precisely, it faced the square at the center of the junction. The square was large enough to hang five lines of laundry in front of the house and play hide-and-seek among them. It was commonly called Hawk Square, but that was not an official name. It was too small to be given one of any consequence.
People who lived more than a hundred paces from Sailcloth Fiveways thought it was a den of thieves and avoided Hawk Square. But those who lived within a hundred paces were inclined to think that any splash in the artificial canal running north to south through the Shipwrights’ District was merely some wretched fool’s head, and not worry much about it.
Despite the name Sailcloth Fiveways, no one who made sails lived nearby. This part of Delphinad had become part of the city about two hundred years earlier, when ships had been built in Delphinad itself. Now, however, the shipyards had moved to a new town at the river’s mouth. Only names such as Sailcloth Fiveways and Mast Street remained. Children often went about singing old sailors’ songs with altered lyrics, though they knew nothing of their origins.
The House of the ShadowHawk was the strangest building in the neighborhood. To begin with, it looked as though someone had cut two pointed towers off a fortress on a northern mountaintop and set them side by side. Yet its surroundings were flat, low-lying even, and there was no record of anyone having used it as a fortress. Rising conspicuously among the low houses built in the ordinary Delphinad style, it was said to have once been the temple of some god. But after the worshippers fled and the priests left one by one, the nameless god apparently had no particular desire to prolong his stay either.
The temple was sold to the shipwrights’ guild, which sold it on to a moderately wealthy shipowner. When the shipowner went bankrupt, the house passed to one of his creditors, a rich innkeeper, for a bargain. He converted it into an inn. The work was exceedingly crude. From the hall, the passages looked like wasps’ nests, with doors plastered all along them. Still, it was one of the few stone buildings in the neighborhood and was cool in summer, so it briefly became popular. When the inn burned, however, its owner abandoned the renovations. Then one of the ShadowHawk gangs, the Hand of Ilmoram, reached out.
Officially, the house was now the lodging of a patrol run by the Hand of Ilmoram. There were dozens of such organizations in Delphinad. They claimed territories, ran patrols, and collected protection money from local merchants. Usually they provided enough assistance to make the expense worthwhile, so merchants actually welcomed protection from a capable organization. When gangs fought over territory, the rule was to keep local residents out of it. If the people of a district grew dissatisfied, another organization would inevitably intervene and take it from them.
With a kind of fair competition taking place, even the governor’s office in Delphinad had become accustomed to tolerating these criminal organizations and using them like private guards. There were rumors that the governor’s office itself did some manipulation behind the scenes to keep the arrangement going. The office represented the bright and clean side of Delphinad. It preferred to deal with dirty business without dirtying its own hands. Successive governors had all been masters of blowing their noses without touching them.
Patrols were the core of these organizations. The more patrolmen an organization secured, the greater its power. Competition to draw energetic young men into their patrols had become so fierce that they offered all sorts of benefits, the foremost being lodging. For a poor young person to cover a month’s rent and meals in Delphinad, even working seven hours a day at “dredging the mud from the Nemi River’s mouth,” a job specially provided for people with nothing but their bodies, was not enough. No other offer was as attractive as room and board. Even on construction projects run by the governor’s office, no one person was given work for more than three months in succession.
Near dawn, two torches still burned at the front entrance to the House of the ShadowHawk, commonly called the House of the Hawk. Two sentries sat sideways on the steps beneath the torches fixed to the doorposts. Their shadows stretched to the bottom of the stairs. They yawned, but there was no sign their vigilance had slackened.
Only a few rats passed silently through the front yard, Hawk Square. A noise from within broke the quiet. After a brief creaking, something scraped across the floor, and the door opened. The sentries looked back.
“Ugh, this door. There’s no way to sneak out.”
It was Ashabel, the youngest member of the House of the Hawk. At only sixteen, he was too young to join the patrol. But he had come up from Gene’s hometown and had nowhere else to go, so he stayed here.
“Brothers, still wide awake? I thought your eyes would be half shut by now.”
“Where are you going? Don’t you know you can’t go out at night without an assignment?”
“Off to throw dice in some back-alley gambling den, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m not.”
Grinning, Ashabel took a packet of paper from his pocket and handed it to the guards. Unwrapped, it revealed dried fish coated in molasses. One sentry quickly put a piece in his mouth and chewed.
“When the captain comes, you’ll get another thump on the back of your head.”
“Your head never gets a moment’s peace, does it?”
Ashabel rubbed the back of his head and laughed.
“The d-deputy captain never hits hard, so don’t you worry.”
“How long are you going to keep calling yourself deputy captain?”
“Aw, you always do this when you’re not properly awake.”
Pretending to slap his own mouth, Ashabel bounded down the steps. One of the guards called, “Be back by breakfast.”
“Of course. I need a bowl of Harat’s rotten soup to keep playing the zombie. Well then, brothers, keep up the good work.”
Ashabel imitated a stagger and disappeared down Mast Street to the northeast. The fog soon erased him. Swallowing the molasses-coated fish, a sentry spoke.
“He’d be a good lad if it weren’t for the dice.”
“He wins too often. Once he loses badly, he’ll come to his senses.”
“Hey, shouldn’t winning be normal here? This is the House of the ShadowHawk.”
“Then why do you do nothing but lose?”
“I told you last time. My dead wife cursed me.”
As they chatted, new shadows appeared in Mast Street to the east. Two people. A little closer, and they could see a woman and a girl. Since this was hardly a place for women to walk alone near dawn, the sentries’ eyes widened. What was more, the two were approaching the House of the Hawk.
“They’re women.”
“Who said they weren’t?”
Presently, the two stopped below the steps. One of the sentries stood and called loudly, “Who are you?”
The woman asked, “Is this the House of the ShadowHawk?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“I’ve come to prepare a meal.”
The sentries looked at each other and frowned. The other stood too.
“What kind of trick is this? Do you know what sort of place this is?”
The woman looked at the hawk above the main entrance, at the two towers, then back at the sentries.
“A man named Gene lives here, doesn’t he?”
The sentries’ eyes nearly popped from their heads. One shouted, “Is this woman mad?”
Without flinching, Rosa looked up at him.
“Why react like that? If he didn’t live here, you could just say so. But I came because I knew he did. You’re Hal, and you’re Neups, aren’t you?”
Confusion crossed the faces of the sentries, Hal and Neups. Hal spoke.
“How do you know our names?”
“Gene told me.”
“You keep daring to call the captain…”
Hal suddenly swallowed the rest of his words. Turning, he pulled a torch free and held it up to Rosa. Though young, she was dressed like a man and did not look attractive at all. In other words, it did not seem that Gene had found himself a lover and sent her here to live with him. Then Hal happened to glance at the girl beside her. This one was pretty enough to make his eyes widen. Looking Nana over with doubtful eyes, he turned back to Rosa.
“You know Captain Gene?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you say you came to do?”
“Prepare a meal.”
Beside him, Neups cut in with a snicker.
“Prepare a meal? Does that mean we have a cook now? No more Harat’s horse-piss soup? Ah, I’m glad I didn’t kill myself over dinner last night.”
Rosa looked at Neups.
“I’m sorry, but I’m only making one meal. That’s the agreement. But I promise it’ll be a good one.”
Hal began to grin too.
“Oh, really? Then shall I show you our kitchen?”
“We have a kitchen?”
“Where else does Harat boil his horse piss?”
Neups banged on the door. A patrolman preparing for the change of watch came running. At first, his expression was doubtful as he listened to Hal’s explanation. But when he heard that Rosa was going to make them a splendid breakfast, he welcomed her with open arms. They seemed to think Gene must have won some strange wager somewhere and sent someone to make breakfast for his men.
The house, once a temple, had a wide central hall, with three rooms on each side that might once have been prayer rooms or repositories for relics. Of those on the left, the first was the guardroom, the second the armory, and the third the kitchen. The right side had been divided off along its length and used as stables. Walking across the hall, Rosa smelled horse dung strongly. She could understand why the men said their food tasted of horse urine.
Opposite stood a slightly raised platform that looked as though it had once been an altar. Now, disrespectfully, feed troughs were lined up across it. Beside them was a laundry tub. Against the back wall stood about ten great water jars, each big enough for a child Nana’s size to sit inside and still have room left over.
“Here it is.”
Neups had changed watch first and accompanied her. Struggling to keep from laughing, he pointed to the kitchen. It did not even have a door. Rosa approached the entrance and stopped abruptly. A strange, hard-to-describe smell hung in the air. For a moment she sniffed it as though considering something, then walked in without concern.
The kitchen was larger than she had expected. About half of it, however, was occupied by things with nothing to do with cooking: a table with a broken leg, a cracked water-jar lid, an old carpet they were still deciding whether to throw away. The area around the oven looked as though no one had scrubbed away its soot and grease for ten years, and even a cat would hesitate to sit there. Rat tracks crisscrossed the black dust on shelves that seemed never to have been touched by a rag.
At least the dishes had been rinsed with water. The cooking utensils hung beside them were all bizarre objects, burnt or caked with something. Unwashed dishes from yesterday were piled on one side of the kitchen, their contents dried hard without a drop of moisture left. The great cauldron over the oven had been so neglected that rust showed in places. Lifting its lid, she found a little soup that looked as though it had boiled for three days straight.
And it really did stink of horse urine.
At the very back was a door. She opened it and found the dining room, a narrow, long addition built along the house’s left wall. As a result, it blocked every window of the rooms on the left, including the kitchen. Its only opening was a door at the far end, and that was shut. Several tables had been pushed together in the middle. At least there were signs that someone had wiped them with a rag. Looking over the assortment of chairs, Rosa raised her head and surveyed the room. The ceiling was quite high, with several little windows near the top. But none could be opened. It was easy to see why the smell would not escape.
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