The Order of Shadows

by Tess Adair

  “I don’t know about that.” Eliana shook her head dismissively. “Some people only train when they’re required to train. But some of us train every second we can, you know? Makes a difference, after a while.”

  “That can’t leave you with a lot of free time.” Logan kept her eyes glued to Blake’s face, ready to catch the slightest admission, the slightest clue that any of her exterior might be a lie.

  “It doesn’t,” answered Blake with a simple shrug. “But hey, who needs a social life, right?”

  Logan felt the corner of her mouth twitch but quickly beat it down.

  “Sounds like you’ve got it figured out. Well, I’m rooting for you, Blake. Best of luck in the final round.”

  She thrust out her hand toward Blake, who took it with no hesitation.

  “Means a lot coming from you, ma’am,” Blake said, then paused, looking slightly stricken. “Or, uh—sir—I mean—”

  “Logan is fine,” said Logan with a tight smile, her hand still held fast by the younger, sweatier woman.

  “Right, Logan. Uh, thank you, Logan.”

  Logan nodded with a certain finality as she pulled her hand back. Blake echoed her nod, gave a nervous laugh, and waved brightly at Jude before turning away from them and marching back toward the door on the far side of the dais.

  As she went, Logan imagined the Wolf before her, facing her down with sword in hand. She pictured where the mask’s eye line had met hers, and then she pictured meeting Eliana Blake’s eye line, the last time they had stood face-to-face on even ground.

  Was it just her imagination, or were those two heights exactly the same?

  Logan ended up missing Blake’s final match, though it was through no fault of her own. She was sitting in the box with Jude, waiting for the fight to begin, when she sensed a disturbance in the crowd behind them. Turning around, she caught sight of a hooded figure taking the long path down toward them. A growing number of people in the stands began to notice her and whisper: she bore the silver cloak lining of the Twelve Seers.

  Logan stood just as she reached their box. Though she didn’t pull back her hood, she was close enough that Logan could visually identify her. She was a white, middle-aged woman with shoulder-length brown hair, sun-kissed skin, and serious eyes. Logan recognized her from the opening ceremonies.

  “Miss Henrietta Logan,” she said, a faint French accent informing her pronunciation, “might I ask that you come with me, please?”

  Logan took a step forward, but not far enough to cross the threshold of the box.

  “If you’ll tell me where we’re going,” she said, her tone polite, her voice low enough to avoid eavesdropping. “And why.”

  “Of course,” the figured answered, inclining her head. “The High Prophet requests a private meeting with you. Should you accept, I am here to take you to his office.”

  For a fraction of a second, Logan found herself rooted to the spot. She had never spoken to James Atherton in person. It was her understanding that he rarely ever met with non-Order members.

  That meant she might not get another chance like this.

  “Lead the way.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  High and False

  By the time they were out of the arena, Logan was fairly certain she had remembered the French woman’s name, though she didn’t feel inclined to say so. She intended to keep even her most trivial of cards to herself.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” she said carefully, as soon as they were out of earshot of the nearest red-sleeved guard.

  “Marion Clément.”

  She elaborated no further than that.

  Logan did her best to keep her trepidation at bay as she followed behind the serious and silent Seer. As much as she had resigned herself to the necessity of the journey, she still didn’t quite know what to expect when they reached their destination. From Logan’s limited knowledge of the building’s layout, they seemed to be headed toward its very center.

  The hallways they passed through were mostly empty and quiet. Logan guessed that by now, most people had left their other talks and demonstrations in order to catch the last fight of the Gauntlet.

  What a convenient time to have a private meeting, Logan mused. At first, it had struck her as strange that Clément had found her in such a conspicuous way, but now it was starting to make more sense.

  At long last, Clément led her up one final staircase, turned to the right, and stopped abruptly before a perfectly unobtrusive door. If Logan had been looking for Atherton’s office on her own, she never would have stopped here. Clément reached inside her robes and pulled out a plain gold key.

  The door led them to yet another hallway—narrower than all the others and featuring only one other exit. The other door, at the far end of this particularly lonely corridor, had been painted a dull red. Logan no longer questioned whether Clément had brought them to the right place.

  They continued in silence through the final stretch. When they reached the other end, Clément pulled out a second key, turned it in the lock, and pushed open the door.

  If Logan had been prone to gasping, she might have done so. She was certain they had to be as near to dead center of the building as they could be, and yet the enormous office that now greeted her appeared to be filled with natural light, spilling into the room from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far end. The room was nearly as large as the great room back at the estate, and the stone walls were rounded, making it one giant oval. On the far end, a short set of stairs led up to some kind of stage or altar, just beneath the large, ornate windows. A set of plain windows sat in the wall to her right, as well, which appeared to look out onto the rolling lawn behind the castle.

  This was impossible, of course. Logan knew it had to be some kind of cast creating the illusion for her, but she had no idea what letha magic could have possibly done this.

  After a brief moment of wonder, Logan took in the rest of the room. Between the door and the windows on the right stood a fireplace, currently cold. To her left, long rows of shelves lined the walls, so tall that a rolling ladder had been installed to get to the items at the top. The shelves held hundreds of books, as well as curious objects and letha implements, like phials of liquids and powders, and one large ox skull, protruding out of the tier that housed it. In front of the shelves stood a large stuffed feline creature on a stand, looking poised to attack. At first, Logan thought it was a leopard—until she noticed its second tail.

  Just beyond the stuffed beast stood a tall, old-fashioned reading desk, with a book propped open to a page in the middle. She didn’t have time to make out the text, but she saw a symbol that tugged at her memory: a cross with three endings coming to a point, while the fourth one at the top stretched out longer, ended in a circle, and had a curving line bisecting it, almost like a pair of horns.

  Across the room, James Atherton bent over his stone altar beneath the tall windows, his back to them. Between them stood a giant stone desk, oval-shaped like the room but perpendicular to it. Just before he shut the book he was pouring over, Logan caught a glimpse of a circular image, crisscrossed with curving, mazelike lines.

  Logan felt her heart momentarily stop, but she made sure not to register any surprise or interest on her face. Beside her, Marion Clément strode deeper into the room.

  Was he looking at an image of the Choronzon Key?

  “Miss Logan is here to meet with you, High Prophet,” said Clément, with another bow of her head.

  He turned to face them slowly, offering up a wide, self-satisfied smile.

  “Henrietta Logan.” His every syllable dripped with smarm. “The shadow summoner herself—what an honor it is to finally meet you!”

  He wore the same white robes he had donned for the opening ceremonies, and his black hair and matching goatee had been slicked down in the same off-putting style. He appeared to her like a man frozen in time.

  Logan felt her right eyebrow raise of its own accord. Though Atherton had begun t
o climb down his short stairs to head in her direction, she came to a stop only a few feet into the room, her hands hanging loosely in her pockets.

  “Forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe,” she said, letting a partial smile cross over her face. “My understanding of the Order tells me that you don’t have much respect for freelance casters. Until you need us for something, of course.”

  Atherton’s smile failed to reach his eyes. She sensed danger there.

  “I think your father might disagree with that.”

  Logan’s gaze hardened.

  “My father was a fool.”

  At last, Atherton’s expression faltered.

  “Your father was a great man,” he said, his tone still genial, even conciliatory. “The services he rendered to the Order can never truly be repaid. He saved a great many lives in his time.”

  Logan shrugged her shoulders, hands still in her pockets. She turned away from Atherton and began to amble toward his shelves, letting her eyes roam the titles and the odd objects she found there.

  “If you judge men solely by their good deeds, and take care to ignore their sins, then I suppose that’s true.” One hand reached out to trace the spine of the nearest book: Occult Wanderings for the Initiated. “I find it difficult to make such an accounting myself.”

  Atherton turned his smile back on.

  “Well, we need not dwell on the past. I asked you here to discuss the future.” He crossed over to the other side of the room, where the smaller, plainer set of windows were, and gestured toward the pair of stuffed armchairs that sat facing it. “Won’t you take a seat?”

  Logan shrugged again and turned slowly from the shelves, taking her time to head over to him. Clément ushered past her and placed a pitcher of water on the low table between the chairs, then spirited away into the recesses of the room again.

  Atherton took the chair on the left and motioned encouragingly for her to join him. With some reluctance, she did.

  “Miss Logan, despite your perfectly understandable misgivings, I assure you, my aim here is for us to be friends. In fact, I was hoping you might even agree to become one of our partners—and that we might be able to compensate you appropriately for your efforts. I think you’ll find that a partnership with the Order will be quite beneficial to you. After all, we share a common enemy, do we not?”

  Logan smiled. He’d reached his point, at last.

  “You mean the Wolf.”

  Atherton smiled, too.

  “Yes. I’m glad we can speak plainly with each other.” He nodded toward Clément, who picked up a small stone tablet from the large, imposing desk she stood behind. With a wave of her hand, the row of windows before them darkened, turning into a smooth screen instead.

  She waved her hand a second time, and the screen changed. Now it displayed an image of what appeared to be a street in a small town that looked strangely empty. After a moment, Logan realized it was actually full of people—only they were all dead.

  “What is this?” She hadn’t exactly been expecting a slideshow of horror in the High Prophet’s office, though she couldn’t say she was surprised, either.

  “This is the carnage the Wolf leaves behind.”

  Clément changed slides. The new image seemed to be a closeup of the previous one, showcasing three bodies laying near a storefront. One of their hands still clutched the door handle, as if they had been killed trying to get inside.

  Their chests had all been torn open.

  “We are aware that you faced down a rekal over the summer,” said Atherton, while Clément pulled up the next slide. “And we are grateful for your service. What you’re looking at now…is what would have happened if you had not intervened.”

  Logan stared into the empty eyes of a small child, staring out from the hood of her ruined overcoat. She’d known, intellectually, what rekals were capable of, but she’d never actually seen it.

  “Someone summoned a rekal here?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Atherton. The slide changed again. “We found the summoner among the dead, so he was unable to provide us with a full explanation of what happened.”

  On the window that was now a screen, one dead hand stretched outward, toward a carved flute laying uselessly a few feet away.

  “You didn’t know this was happening?”

  This time, it was Clément who spoke.

  “Contrary to popular belief, we are not omniscient,” she said, her tone stern. “Nor are we all-powerful. We have ways of monitoring known casters, but we cannot monitor every person on the planet.”

  “And, as we believe you already know, it would seem the Wolf prefers manipulating others into action, rather than acting on his own behalf. It makes it quite difficult to predict his movements. Nevertheless, we did come close to catching him, scarcely a week ago. Marion?”

  Behind them, Clément waved her hand again. This time, the slide gave way to a video.

  Another town Logan didn’t recognize shifted into focus. After a beat of empty skyline, the camera began to shake, accompanied by a rumbling noise. Someone walked in and out of view, and a moment later, the sky seemed to split down the middle. A giant column of light erupted out of the ground, bisecting the frame. Screams could be heard, coming from somewhere offscreen.

  The footage jump-cut to a new image: the Wolf, standing twenty feet away, looking down at what appeared to be a corpse. Ever so slowly, the masked face lifted, turning to look right at the camera. It began to advance.

  Another jump-cut interrupted the action, leaving the world suddenly tilted on its axis, as if the camera had been thrown sideways. Logan narrowed her eyes and turned her head to be sure of what she was seeing: in the left corner of the frame, an Order Adept lay slumped over, one hand reaching for something it would never grasp…

  Far behind that, a misshapen beast sloped into frame. Spikes covered its hunched, hulking shoulders, and its legs and arms ended in talons. With a roar, it advanced upon the remaining townspeople, all fleeing in terror. The monster moved offscreen as it went after them, though their screams could still be heard.

  After a beat, the camera shifted with a jarring lurch, picked up by an unseen force. When it came to a stop, a Wolf mask gazed into it, unblinking. Its permanent painted smile turned into a leer as it stared down the lens.

  Then the footage cut out. Logan stifled an eyeroll. She’d known Atherton would try to manipulate her; she just hadn’t realized he’d be so blunt about it.

  “You seem to have dropped a few frames here and there,” she said, her tone neutral.

  “Edited for clarity, as well as good taste,” answered Atherton, a touch too easily.

  “So, what actually happened there?”

  “We sent a team to intercept the Wolf not two weeks ago.” He sounded as if he were reading off a script. “They were highly trained professionals, all. We were sure we’d gotten the drop on him at last; we got a tip from a trusted source that he would be there, and we had reason to believe that he wouldn’t anticipate our plan of attack. As you can see, we were wrong.”

  “Did any of your team make it out?”

  “Only the video survived.” Behind them, Clément waved her hand again and the screen dimmed. The low lighting on the walls came up, illuminating the room.

  As Atherton spoke again, he took the opportunity to pour them each a glass of water. “So far, we have chosen to keep this information private, in the hope of preventing mass panic.”

  Logan raised her right eyebrow as she took the glass from Atherton.

  “Yes, god forbid people panic in the face of an unstoppable killer.”

  “Panic would solve nothing,” said Atherton, waving his hand like it was nothing. Logan got the impression that he’d had this argument before. “We’re more interested in protecting people than we are in fear mongering.”

  Fear mongering by telling the truth? Logan thought but didn’t say. There didn’t seem much point in saying it.

  “How many people know a
bout this?”

  “The Twelve Seers are aware of the mission and its failure,” he said, his voice as smooth as water—almost as if he weren’t talking about death. “Outside of that…none but you.”

  Logan nodded, keeping her face blank. She didn’t quite believe Atherton, nor did she believe he was telling her everything. He might claim the footage had only been edited for clarity and decency, but she was quite sure it had actually been edited to paint a very specific, and curated, picture.

  There was a question she needed to ask, and she was certain that Atherton desperately wanted her to ask it. Nevertheless, it had to be done.

  “Why me?”

  At that, a cold smile unfurled on Atherton’s face. She didn’t like the look of it.

  “It would seem the Wolf has a particular interest in you.”

  Behind him, Clément opened up one of his desk drawers and pulled out something that looked like an evidence bag. She walked around the desk and handed it over to Logan, who put her glass back down on the table without having taken a single drink.

  “We found this at an abandoned summoning site, during a case we suspected he was involved in.”

  It was a piece of yellowing paper with a single sentence written on it. As Logan read, she felt a stone plummet through her body.

  Tell me, False Prophet, have you given her my presents yet?

  Logan’s gut reaction was to deny that the note was about her, but she quelled it. She knew it was about her. She knew the Wolf had his eye on her, whatever that meant. She’d known since the summer, when Kurt Redmond had all but told her.

  There was no denying it.

  “What presents?” she asked calmly. “Do you have them here?”

  Atherton fixed her with a curious stare, like he was studying her. Eventually, he let out a long, slow breath.

  “I believe so. We’ve uncovered various objects at illicit casting sites that would seem to be intended for you. The first one pinned down another note. Marion?”

  Clément came back over from the desk, carrying two more clear plastic bags, which she passed to Logan. The first one held a note that read: Give the shadow summoner my love, won’t you?