Flame's Shadow

by Anna Eluvae

  "Who's watching him?" asked Dravus. He was slowly remembering himself. He wasn't some besotted fool, he was an illustrati now, Nemm's equal. He straightened up. Pretending at being naive and overwhelmed was something he could easily do, but the only way to earn his place was if it was an act.

  "Wealdwood is out cold," said Nemm. She caught his look. "But I also have two of my most trustworthy sailors ready to stab him to death if he wakes up and tries to talk or move, which he probably won't be able to do because he's gagged and bound. I took off all his armor last night, and Gael did some additional work this morning that will prevent him from doing anything more than breathing - and then only slowly - even if he does wake up. Satisfied that I'm not an idiot yet?"

  "It never crossed my mind," said Dravus. He smiled at her, but she didn't smile back. On closer inspection, her makeup was especially thick beneath her eyes. It wasn't too much past dawn, and she had apparently spent the night watching over Wealdwood and writing letters without taking time to sleep.

  "This is backstage," said Nemm, gesturing to the cabin. "Out there, it's a performance. Keep that in mind. Most of these people won't care about you, they only want to be seen with you."

  Nemm walked down the ship's corridor and up into the light of dawn, where she received cheers and applause from the crowd, who were gathered considerably further down the docks than the night before. Dravus followed after her, and got the same treatment - perhaps even more so. He couldn't keep from smiling. Yet when Lexari came up from within the cabin, Dravus could see that this was the reason that hundreds had gathered on the docks so early in the morning just for a send off. Lexari wore the same silver armor that he'd had on the day before, cracked and torn. The spots of rust had been scoured away, and it was now beautiful in its state of decay. Bright light shone where the armor had been damaged, and not a bit of the leathers that Lexari wore beneath his armor could be seen. He'd used the light to fill himself out, and change the shape of his profile. The man Dravus had seen bleeding on his bed was muscular but slender, almost lanky. Lexari had made himself imposing now, with pauldrons of light that gave him the appearance of broad shoulders, and greaves that made his legs seem thicker than they were. Lexari was taller too, even more than his natural height, which must have been the result of his boots having a high lift to them. His bald head gleamed in the sunlight.

  Dravus had trouble looking away. Lexari had been intimidating before, but now he was fearsome, an idealized warrior. When he moved, there were signs that not all was right. He had a slight limp that would be invisible to the crowds, and he kept his right arm unnaturally still. His damaged hand was covered by a gauntlet made of hard white light. The bruises had vanished, no doubt thanks to the work of Gael. Dravus could see a few places on Lexari's face where there were lines of small white stitches, which stuck out against Lexari's coffee-colored skin, but those too would be invisible from a distance. The crowd had begun cheering for him as soon as he stepped onto the deck. He waved at them, though his smile was strained.

  "Let's get this over with," said Wenaru. "Having him move around is firmly against doctor's orders, however masterfully his casts of light have been crafted." Dravus hadn't even seen Wenaru come up on the deck. He was dressed in a clean green apron, and otherwise wearing tan-colored clothing, with little of the accents that Dravus's own clothes had. It was a costume too, in its own way.

  Two dozen people filed onto the ship, and Dravus was introduced to them all. Most of them were senatori, illustrati, or both, and while most of the names were familiar to him, little else about the situation was. They shook his hand, asked him some polite but meaningless questions, and smiled out at the crowd. Dravus had thought that the whole thing would be perfunctory, but it kept going on well after he had grown ready for it to end. Lexari was repeating the story of the fight, with Wenaru looking nervous at his side, while Nemm was looking happier than Dravus had yet seen her, touching arms and laughing at jokes. She didn't seem like she had killed a man eight hours earlier.

  "Lightscour, your father is making a cake for me," said a man who had half his face covered by a white mask. Dravus found himself trapped in a half-circle of men and women in their elaborate costumes. He realized only belatedly that he'd been steered there by Nemm.

  "He is?" asked Dravus. He vaguely remembered his mother saying something about that. He had forgotten the name of the man almost instantly, but it didn't seem to matter. They were all speaking to him like he was an old friend.

  "The cake is for my daughter Margherita's coming-of-age party," said the man. His smile was halfway covered by his mask. "It's two days from now; I do so wish that you had the time to attend. It was my understanding that the Zenith would be in port for another three days, perhaps longer, and we had been looking forward to seeing Lexari and Nemm there." Wenaru's name was conspicuously absent.

  "It's unfortunate, I agree" Dravus nodded. "When I picked up that spear I had no idea I'd be leaving my home so suddenly. But Lexari has his reasons, not least of which is the bad omen that was Zerstor."

  "It must be terrible to leave your family," said a woman with copper wires around her wrists and neck. "I've left Genthric twice, once to travel to Lerabor, and once to Maskoy. The trip to Maskoy was marvelous, seeing the minarets towering over the city and eating the black-spiced food. I met the algalif there, a righteous man almost the equal of Lexari in his convictions, if not his physical prowess."

  "Physical prowess? The Sunhawk was lucky yesterday," said a large man with a braided beard. He had the look of a foreigner. His name hadn't even had the hint of familiarity. "He was losing, and a boy steps out from the crowd to land a solid hit. A shame the fight was decided by that fortune alone, isn't it?" Dravus could feel eyes on him, not just from the half-circle of people around him, but from other nearby clusters of people, who had gone silent to wait for his response. The large man's voice had carried far.

  "It was fate, not luck," said Dravus. "Fate only conspired to bring the fight to me. I was standing right next to the statue of Genthric when Lexari came crashing down, and I was closest to him when he looked half-dead. It might be easy to say that this was simply arbitrary, but I felt the tug of destiny. I picked up the spear and fought as Lexari would have fought, because I believed in the message that he preaches to the world. If their situations had been reversed, if Zerstor had been the one broken and bloodied, no one would have come to his aid. Those two titans reaped the harvests that they'd been sowing for years, and I was only the instrument of that realization. Luck had nothing to do with it." Dravus glanced to the side only briefly, but was gratified to see a small nod from Lexari's direction.

  Conversation continued on for some time, veering back to less important matters. He learned more than he had ever wanted to about the algalif of Maskoy, and promptly forgot all of it. He was told about people he would never meet and estates he would never visit. Some of these people were local legends, but Dravus had never taken much stock in legends. It didn't seem to matter to any of them that he would be gone for a long time, and they asked surprisingly few questions about the fight between Lexari and Zerstor; they were more concerned with speaking than listening. It was an utter relief when Nemm slipping into the circle of conversation and politely informed everyone that the ship would be leaving soon, and they would have to take their leave unless they wanted to travel to Torland. This drew a few laughs and smiles, and after another quarter hour of everyone saying their goodbyes, the ship was finally ready to take its leave.

  Dravus walked to the keel of the ship and looked out on the crowd. He was surprised to see a few familiar faces. Many of the racers were there, with Forus up on Lorenz's shoulders, waving frantically and making a scene. Korata stood with her musclebound sons, though she was speaking with other people instead of looking at the ship, which Dravus was glad for. And there was another girl waving to him that he almost mistook for his sister, until he realized that it was the girl Clarissa that had offered to be his assistant. He fel
t a slight pang of guilt at that.

  Though he looked for them, his family was nowhere to be seen, not even Anna.

  "That's Leon and Marco," said Nemm. She stood by his side, and pointed out two men with thick beards who were speaking loudly to the crowds. "They're the ones that will make you famous, at least in Genthric."

  "I'm already famous," said Dravus. He could hear his name - not "Dravus" but "Lightscour" - being spoken here and there. In part, the crowd was there for him. "Everyone in the city has heard the story by now."

  "No," said Nemm. "News travels fast, but reaching every last person doesn't happen nearly so quickly. Even for something like this, there will be a fair number of people who haven't heard the story. And even among those who have heard the story, some will have forgotten it immediately, because it has no impact on their lives, or because they don't care about the illustrati, and you can't count those. Some will just be confused about what's happened, until they hear a compelling version of the tale from our bards, or someone that our bards have paid, or one of their friends who's heard it from the bards. An event by itself is just a nascent story - it's not until someone has put in the work of adding flourish and context that it can properly reside in a person's mind."

  "So I'm going to get stronger?" asked Dravus. He stretched his fingers out then closed them into a fist. "I'll gladly accept that."

  Nemm covered her mouth for a yawn, then looked around to see how much progress the sailors had made. "Much stronger," she said. "Genthric has perhaps a quarter million people. There's more growth to happen here, people who will start to care about you, to invent stories of their own about the time you did some ridiculous, implausible thing. And given your history, there are people who will come forward claiming that you stole from them. Within a week, women will be claiming that you slept with them, or tried to, and men will claim that you were a long and lasting friend, or a bitter rival. That's one of the wellsprings of fame, and all of it will happen without you having to lift a finger. But this is just Genthric. A large city, but not the largest." She pointed out across the harbor, to a few other ships. "Packet service across the Calypso will carry letters from myself, Marco, and Leon. Maskoy, Lerabor, Rannos, Grantholm, Parance - all the major centers of population, one by one. We employ hundreds of bards. You'll wake up and feel the difference every so often, as the legend spreads to some new node of civilization. The scholars' best estimate is that there are a billion people in the world, and while there will always be people in some backwater that have never heard of you, eventually you'll have your own legend." She turned to look at him with tired eyes. "Assuming that you don't get yourself killed first."

  Dravus would have frowned at that, but he was in good cheer, so he simply ignored her. Nemm had been trying to teach him a lesson about learning his place last night, and he'd stabbed Cerulean Bane all the same. There was little chance that she had missed that fact, but she hadn't yet said anything about it, and he hoped that she wouldn't.

  Dravus looked around at the sailors, and then back to the crowd. He had a small, foolish hope that his family would arrive at the outskirts. They would have better sales if they could be seen with their son the illustrati, but not even that self-interest would compel his father to come. He hoped that his sister Anna had been kept home, but worried that she had simply chosen not to see him go.

  When the ship finally cast off, the masses began to cheer for them anew, and Lexari came out to the keel of the ship to stand firm and tall. There was a spot of glowing light on his back that burst outward into wings so large that they hung over either side of the ship, and the noise from the receding crowd grew louder. Dravus found himself waiting with bated breath to see Lexari fly, but there were only a few flaps of the wings before they folded in behind him, arching several feet above his shoulders and nearly dragging on the ground before folding inward.

  "They love that," said Nemm to Dravus. "It's authentically impressive, and impossible to fake. Nevermind that it takes him an hour every morning to get those wings created, and that he's going straight back to his cabin immediately after this. An hour's work for a dozen seconds of spectacle." She shook her head. "It's not all moonlit assassination attempts and courtyard battles. Most of it is tedium, endless meetings, boring parties, talking to people who are only trying to use you for their own ends. You had the abbreviated version of that this morning. But maybe it's worth it, for those dozen seconds."

  The Zenith had moved into the bay, and though there were other ships around them, and no doubt spyglasses trained on them from the shore, Lexari moved away from the helm and back to the center of the ship. His limp was more pronounced now that he was without his audience, and he cradled his broken arm. Dravus followed.

  "You need rest," said Wenaru. "You're low on blood and your bones need to mend."

  "Do you remember how brilliant you thought the brace of light was?" asked Lexari with a smile.

  "Years ago I thought it would help you to heal faster," said Wenaru with a cluck of his tongue. "Now I see that it's only made you more inclined to push yourself."

  Lexari gave a weak laugh, and turned to Domininc. "Lightscour," he said. He looked Dravus up and down. His face was gentle, and the bulk of his armor had begun to fade as pieces of light vanished from it. "If I had to pick the name over again, I would have chosen differently. In the context of your domain, it's a villain's name - not one who scours with light, but one who scours the light itself. Not a cleaner of rust, but a consuming darkness."

  "I'm honored by it," said Dravus.

  "You'll have a new name in time," said Lexari. "Something more appropriate to you, something we've given due consideration." He smiled, showing pearly white teeth. "I have full faith that you'll earn another name soon." With another small tug at his armor from Wenaru, Lexari turned to go down into the ship. Genthric had disappeared behind them, and there were no other ships within sight. Dravus didn't really consider himself to have a home, but the city he'd grown up in had faded entirely. He was in Lexari's world now.

  "What's the Numifex?" Dravus asked, before Lexari could disappear entirely.

  Lexari turned around slowly and carefully. "She called it that?" asked Lexari with a faint smile. His eyes flickered to Nemm. "I'll have to inquire about what else my travelling companion has been telling you. That term, 'Numifex', dates back decades. Too early for you, and too geographically distant. There was a bard near Grantholm, a story-teller and an illustrati, who was famed for how his stories ended - namely, that they didn't. He would stretch a tale on for hours, and at the very end, he would say something like, 'And there I was, laying in bed with the beautiful lass, and I saw her begin to raise a dagger dripping with poison - but ah, it's getting late, and the rest of it will have to wait until tomorrow.' Then the next night he would repeat the entire process again. It was bunk, all of it, but he was a good storyteller, and sometimes that's enough for some smaller measure of fame. Some pointed out the contradictions in these stories, but he would explain them away. He was always ready with another lie. It didn't seem to matter though; people always wanted to know what was going to happen next, no matter how improbable the story was."

  "Get to the point before you collapse," said Nemm.

  "One of the hallmarks of his stories was a chase for an object," said Lexari. "Not one, but many. These were gained and lost as his tales stretched on, never important save for how and where they propelled this bard, or what machinations they forced his foes towards. The point," he looked toward Nemm, "Is that it wasn't important. The object never mattered to the story, it could have been anything, something crafted by the Harbingers, the crown jewels of some forgotten kingdom, a spear forged by the gods - it didn't have any consequence, ultimately. The Numifex was one of these, the most nondescript of all these objects, and the one that he went after the most often. It was variously described as a golden orb, or a broken sword, or an eldritch tome. This bard wrote down his tales into many books, and he didn't even keep the descriptions
consistent within a single volume. Over the years, it became a derisive term used by storytellers, and thus by the illustrati. The Numifex is what you call something that's meaningless save for its role in the story." He looked to Nemm and smiled.

  "So ... we're going to Torland because we're tracking down a thing that doesn't matter?" asked Dravus.

  "We're going to Torland for many reasons," said Lexari. "Not least of which is the request of the Flower Queen, and the news of civil unrest. But yes, I have long been tracking an object of ancient power, and there is a scholar who my recent investigations have revealed might be able to help me. Nemm, as I'm sure you've gathered by now, believes I'm chasing a phantasm."

  "To bed," said Wenaru. He touched Lexari lightly. "I can practically hear the sound of bone grinding against bone."

  Lexari nodded. "I believe that my physician may have a point. We will speak on these matters later." He hobbled off, moving slowly and stiffly, with his armor of light seeming to do most of the work.

  "Come on," said Nemm. "I need you to keep an eye on our prisoner while I get some sleep. And after that, your training begins. We'll see what we can do with you in nine days time, shall we?"

  * * *

  Dravus followed Nemm down into the ship, and stood next to her outside the door of her cabin, where Wenaru had his hand on their prisoner's chest. He had been stripped of his armor, and wore only white underclothes and a gag.