Shadow Hand

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

He put a hand to his shirt where the tears of the Everblooming had dampened it. And he shuddered suddenly at the closeness of everything, the nearness of the strange and fantastical pressing in upon his life.

  When he looked up, he found Daylily watching him.

  “Dragon’s teeth!” he exclaimed, dropping the scroll in his surprise. “You’re awake! She said . . . she told me you would sleep for an hour or more.”

  “I never sleep long, no matter the drugs.”

  Her voice was dark and low, quite unlike the bright, crisp voice Foxbrush had only ever heard her use before. He wondered if this was her real voice and the other was fake, another mask.

  Daylily tried to turn and groaned, her brow wrinkling at the pain in her shoulder. But she ground her teeth and drew a long breath, then made her face go smooth.

  “Shall I get help?” Foxbrush asked, half rising.

  “No,” she said quickly. “No one. I—” She compressed her pale lips. Then she whispered, “I must go.”

  “You can’t. You were . . . well, you were mauled by a lion.”

  Her eyes flicked up to meet his again, and her eyebrows lowered, then rose. “What are you doing here, Foxbrush? What are you doing in this place?” Her hands gripped the animal skins beneath her, and she glanced about at the small, dark room lit by a tiny fire in the corner, smoky and dank and smelling of mold and animal droppings. It was the most unlikely setting in which to find the fastidious crown prince. And he the most unlikely figure of all! He wore skins like a native, and his skinny arms were bare and darker than she remembered. His hair, which she’d only ever seen flattened down with oil, stood up in wild, wooly tufts and sported more than a few leaves and sticks.

  Most altered was his face. A growth of scraggly beard outlined his jaw and chin, making him look older than he was. Lines deepened around his eyes and mouth in the firelight, lines of worry and of fear, but also lines of—what was it? She could not say and did not like to guess.

  “You are,” said Daylily, pushing her hair back from her face, “possibly the last person I expected to meet in this place.”

  “I followed you.”

  It was like an admission of guilt. He bowed his head and could not look her in the eye. A long silence stretched between, each considering the words that hung still in the air.

  Then Daylily said, “That was foolish. I did not wish to be followed.”

  She sat up then, wincing at the pain, and tried to move her left arm. Her shoulder protested, but she could feel for herself that the wound was not deep. She slipped the shoulder of the old, brown-woven shirt into place, and it scratched the wound and stuck to the dressing. “Now,” she said, “I will be going.” She looked down at the Bronze, still fast in her fist. “I . . . I must . . .”

  We must find him.

  “What was that?” Foxbrush asked, looking around, startled. He could have sworn he’d heard a whisper of many voices shivering about the room, darting round the walls and vanishing into the fire.

  “I heard nothing,” said Daylily. She started to rise, but Foxbrush reached out and caught her wrist. She frowned but did not struggle. There was no need. One glance and he would wither and back down.

  But this time he didn’t. He met her gaze, and though sweat beaded his forehead, he did not break it. “Daylily,” he said, “I came to . . . to tell you something. I had to follow because you must hear this. I . . . I won’t marry you.”

  She blinked slowly and said nothing.

  “Yes,” Foxbrush continued, still holding her arm. She felt his thumb moving nervously up and down over her skin. “Yes, I thought perhaps . . . They found my letter to you, you see, and I thought—”

  “Oh,” said Daylily, shaking her head and nearly laughing. “Is that all? Did you think it was you who drove me to the Wilderlands?”

  Foxbrush opened his mouth but settled for a swift nod.

  Daylily laughed again, and it was very like the cold, bright laughs he’d known back when she was the darling of the Eldest’s court. Foxbrush, flushing so hot he thought his face would melt, hurried on.

  “I won’t marry you, Daylily. I’ve made up my mind, and nothing can change it.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Not even your father. I don’t want you for my wife. So, you see, you’re free now. You can come home and . . . and . . .” He almost could not speak the words but forced them out. “And Lionheart has returned. If you want to, you can marry him instead, and I’ll see that it’s all right. I’ll still be Eldest, I suppose, and I’ll have some power.” The look on her face frightened him, so he rushed on at full speed. “And I’ve found a way to save Southlands! They grow elder figs here, and they showed me how to pollinate them, and there’s no other market in the Continent that can offer them. Our trade will reestablish, and everything will return to the way it was. We’ve . . . we’ve only got to find our way back to our own time.”

  Daylily, smiling softly, listened to this speech, saying nothing but shaking her head so that her hair fell over her pale face. Only when his words finally trailed into nothing did she pat his hand and firmly remove it from her arm. Then she drew herself up.

  “I do not wish to return to Southlands. And I’ll not marry anyone.”

  Foxbrush felt his stomach drop. He saw the truth in her face.

  “You go home, if you can find the way,” she said. “You go home, and you save Southlands, and you do what you like with your kingdom. But I have a place here now. You see, I too intend to save Southlands.”

  She rose, clutching the Bronze to her stomach with both hands, and stood over Foxbrush, looking down on him. “I have no use for the poisoned country of our time. But this Southlands, this Land is rich, and thriving, and full of life. It’s—”

  Mine!

  “—where I’m meant to be. I came here to escape, but I know now that it was for a much greater purpose. Powers beyond our knowledge drive us, Foxbrush. They always have. First the Wolf Lord, then the Dragon, and now, here, beyond the Wilderlands, greater powers still! We cannot always fight them. We must join them and be—”

  Mine!

  “—made whole.”

  With that, she lifted her hand and, to Foxbrush’s unending surprise, caressed his cheek. “I wish you well, crown prince, and I hope you’ll find your way home. But this is my home now, and I’ll not return with you to poison.”

  He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. When he spoke, his voice came in a sad crackle. But the words themselves surprised him as much, perhaps more, than they surprised Daylily. “What do you know of the missing firstborn?” he asked. “Of the missing children?”

  Her hand still resting on his cheek went suddenly cold. Behind her eyes something moved, something desperate and struggling. But her face was an unyielding prison.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

  Even as she spoke, a shudder passed through her body. Her face, already pale, whitened as a new wave of pain washed over her. Foxbrush scrambled to his feet in time to catch her before she fell, and he eased her back down onto the skins, clumsy but careful of her shoulder. She did not resist but drew many shallow breaths, closing her eyes as a sheen of sweat dampened her body.

  “We’ll discuss this later,” Foxbrush said, gently touching the back of her head as though it might catch his hand on fire. “You’re sick now, and you must rest. I’ll . . . I’ll get help.”

  He stood up and left the room in a hurried, shuffling gait. He thought he heard something whispering behind him:

  We must find him. We must go. . . .

  He shook off the chill that reached after him with those words and made his way through the dark passages of the Eldest’s House. He could still hear the murmur of voices in the great stone room of the Eldest’s council, and again shivered at the thought of what those people might do if they knew one of those they so feared even now dwelt under the same roof.

  He found Lark in the children’s room, sitting upright on her
pallet though her siblings were all fast asleep. She saw him and got up without a word, leading the way back to his room. When they neared the door, she whispered, “I did not think she’d wake so soon. I thought I’d given her stronger medicine.”

  Foxbrush shook his head and held back the curtain for Lark to pass through. The girl stopped in her tracks in the doorway. Slowly she turned to Foxbrush, her dark eyes wide and stricken.

  “I was right,” she said. “Da’s going to kill me.”

  Foxbrush bent his head to look through the low doorway. “Dragons eat it all!” he cursed.

  There was a gaping hole in the mud-and-wattle wall, and not a sign of Daylily, save for a few strands of her red-gold hair.

  3

  I TOLD YOU, I FELL,” Prince Felix explained for what felt like the hundredth time. “I was trying to get a better look at the commotion, and I tripped.”

  “Over a chest-high railing?” The apothecary binding Felix’s wrist in tough bandages with herbs to keep the swelling down gave the prince what could only be described as “a look.” It wasn’t a questioning look or even a disbelieving look. It was more of a “I’ve bandaged up too many idiot young men to be surprised at anything by now” sort of look.

  “Well, maybe I didn’t trip so much as slip,” Felix muttered, avoiding the apothecary’s eye.

  Following his mad pounce upon the guardsman below, Felix had lain for what felt like hours upon the floor, his hands over his head, as guardsmen trooped over the top of him and hurled themselves against the tower door. He’d not managed to get to his feet by the time the dignitaries of Parumvir reached him. But they’d quickly swept him up and hustled him back to his chambers in the midst of the uproar in the Eldest’s Great Hall, fearing more kidnappers might burst from the wings to snatch other future kings for hostage or ransom. No such kidnappers emerged, however, and still Felix was stuffed away in his chambers, guards mounted at the doors, separate from all that was interesting and happening in the outer world.

  In the heat of coursing adrenaline, Felix had not immediately noticed the damage he’d done to his wrist. It had taken him even longer to admit that his injury might need medical attention, longer still to convince one of his guards to fetch the apothecary. By the time the apothecary arrived, his wrist was swollen to a good three times its normal size and very painful to the touch.

  Felix drank a disgusting brew that was supposed to relieve swelling, all the while grimacing and muttering curses that the apothecary ignored. Then, wiping his mouth, Felix asked eagerly, “Have you heard any news?”

  “I try not to,” said the apothecary, packing his various supplies into a neat little black bag.

  “Are they still holed up in the tower?” Felix persisted. “Has anyone gotten through to the baron? Will they hang Prince Lionheart?”

  The apothecary shook his head. “My concern is more with the binding of wounds than the making of them, Your Highness,” he said, which struck Felix as rather stuffy. “Don’t use that arm any more than you must, no heavy lifting, and—”

  “Yes, I know, I know,” Felix said impatiently. “I’ve sprained and broken my share of limbs.” And I’ve killed a dragon, so put that on your plate and eat it! “Surely you’ve heard something. It’s been hours now, and no one has bothered to tell me a thing.”

  “I fear I have been too busy to attend to rumor or gossip,” said the apothecary with something of a disparaging lift to his left nostril. “The baroness was taken with the fits in the wake of her husband’s abduction and required my utmost attention and skill to bring her delicate mind to a state of equilibrium. . . .”

  Felix heard no more. He remained unusually quiet as the apothecary gave a few more instructions and took his leave. His eyes were a little unfocused as he studied his bandage.

  The baroness had winked.

  He might have imagined it. But he didn’t think so. After all, a wink on the face of that plump and powdered woman was not an image Felix’s mind was ready to conjure. No, she had winked directly at her page boy.

  “She was in on it,” Felix whispered.

  Of course, none of this was his business. He was here as his father’s representative, a courteous gesture from Parumvir acknowledging the shifting power of Southlands and extending goodwill in this time of upheaval. A symbol; that’s what he was and nothing more.

  But . . .

  “Lionheart isn’t a murderer.”

  He was a liar. He was a cheat. He was a scoundrel who’d brought down destruction and danger on Parumvir. He’d betrayed Felix’s own sister and caused her pain. Felix’s good hand clenched into a fist and he grimaced. Let the blackguard suffer! He certainly deserved it after everything he’d done.

  But . . .

  “Lionheart isn’t a murderer.”

  The sun was setting, and night looked down upon the stricken capital of Southlands. But somewhere beyond the Eldest’s House, in the gardens extending to the distant gorge, a bird, which should have long since gone to roost, sang. The song brought to mind the strange image Felix had glimpsed in the Great Hall, the image of Prince Aethelbald of Farthestshore standing before him (right in midair!) and pointing at the guard below.

  Felix scratched the back of his neck and paced to the window, looking out upon the deepening evening. He listened but heard no more of the birdsong, couldn’t even be certain now if he’d heard anything to begin with.

  Then he crossed to his bedroom door and flung it open, stepping out under the watchful gaze of his guards.

  “Your Highness, Sir Palinurus gave us orders not to—”

  “See here, am I your prince, or is Palinurus?” Felix snapped. “Last I checked, I outrank all of you, Palinurus included! If you want to take issue, send a note to my father, why don’t you?”

  “Please, Your Highness, it’s for your own safety,” the poor guard pleaded.

  “Well, come along if you feel the need to protect me,” Felix said with a shrug. With that, he marched down the hall, trailing guardsmen behind him. He didn’t know where he was going, so he grabbed the first footman he came across and, speaking loudly (because Southlanders always had trouble understanding his accent and he figured louder meant clearer), demanded to know where Middlecrescent’s wife was roosting these days. The poor footman, believing he had somehow offended this foreign prince, hastily bowed after Southlander fashion and pointed the way.

  “Thanks, my good fellow!” Felix shouted and the poor man cringed and ducked as the prince and his entourage of guards trooped on.

  The hall leading to the baroness’s chambers was crowded with an assortment of guards and ladies-in-waiting, and Felix would have been hard-pressed to say which he found more intimidating. Indeed, he very nearly gave up hope of seeing the baroness and turned back right there, save that one of the ladies caught his eye and instantly hurried over to him.

  “You came!” she said, catching Felix’s good hand and squeezing it. She was a lovely young woman with paper flowers in her hair, and Felix blushed, surprised.

  “Um, yes . . .”

  “The baroness said you’d come,” the lady continued. “She said to send you in to her when you did. I was beginning to fear you wouldn’t show!”

  “Wait.” Felix frowned then, his blushes forgotten. “The baroness is expecting me?”

  But the lady-in-waiting merely took Felix more firmly by the hand and dragged him back through the crush of people in the hall. His own guards put up feeble protests, but they were obstructed by petticoats and lances and were unable to keep up, while the lady leading Felix dodged all with graceful ease and, at last, hastened Felix through a doorway.

  Felix found himself standing alone in a dim chamber dominated by an enormous writing desk. It was to other writing desks what a stone fortress is to a sandcastle. From a desk such as this, a monarch might rule an empire. It was covered in perfume bottles and smelling salts.

  “Hullo?” Felix called a little tentatively. The pretty lady-in-waiting had shut the door behind h
im, but he could still hear the bustle of people in the hall without, the sounds of his guardsmen begging (and being refused) entrance. In this room, however, all was quiet. “I . . . I was told you were expecting me?”

  A door opened on the far side of the room. The baroness emerged from some inner chamber, a finger to her lips. “Shhh!” she said. “He’s got a headache, the poor lamb.”

  With this enigmatic statement, she drew the door behind her gently shut and crossed the room, smiling sweetly at Felix as she came. She was a plump and rosy woman when her skin wasn’t powdered to look porcelain frail. She had changed from the sumptuous coronation garb into a frilly dressing gown buttoned to the throat, and her hair, unadorned by hairpieces and fake swatches, was thick, graying, and a little frizzy.

  She was the sort of person from whom one would expect to receive warm cookies, not plots.

  “He got quite a nasty knock on the head yesterday, and I’ve had to keep him trussed up in my wardrobe for fear he might let something slip,” the baroness said, just as though Felix understood a word of what she was saying. She sat down at the mighty desk and selected a perfume, which she proceeded to dab behind her ears. She did not look like a woman recently recovered from hysterics, no matter what the apothecary said.

  “Excuse me,” Felix said, bowing. “The lady outside said you were waiting for me?”

  “Why, yes,” said the baroness with another sweet, motherly smile. “I wanted to thank you for jumping on that guard before he could rescue my husband. I thought for a moment all was lost, but your quick thinking quite saved the day!”

  Felix stared into that open, round, comfortable sort of face. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew you were in on it!”

  “In on it?” said the baroness innocently. Then she laughed. “Oh, you mean the abduction! Why, of course. It was really mostly my doing, actually, since Prince Lionheart is rather uninformed these days; but I couldn’t very well kidnap the dear baron myself, so I’m just as happy Lionheart showed up when he did. He’s a good boy at heart. As are you, I’m sure. Oh!” She put a hand to her mouth, her eyes rounding with concern. Then she reached out and gently touched Felix’s bandaged wrist. “Did you hurt yourself, my dear? What a brave little duck you are!”