Flame's Shadow

by Anna Eluvae

  "— because we can't simply kill them," Nemm was saying. Dravus quickly tried to figure out where the conversation had been, but he hadn't been paying the slightest attention to what was said.

  "I'm sorry," said Dravus. "What?"

  Nemm scowled at him. "I was saying that this is a problem, because we can't simply kill them," she said.

  "I believe Lightscour has been gathering wool," said Lexari. He smiled slightly. "Nemm was saying that we can't kill the illustrati in question, because that would weaken the nation far too much in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities, and if we're to assume that the Iron King is looking for a continuation of the Peddler's War, this would strip away much of Torland's deterrent."

  "That assumes that the Iron King isn't behind the incipient rebellion in the first place," said one of the advisers, a pinched-faced man with thinning hair.

  "Even if he is, this is likely a way to damage Torland in preparation," said Nemm. "It's not his way to weaken someone and then ally with them."

  "The Iron King is nearing ninety years old," said Lexari. "He was slowing down, even at the end of the Peddler's War. The news has been sporadic from within the Iron Kingdom of late; he hasn't made a public appearance in nearly a year."

  "How does the Blood Bard fit in with all this?" asked Dravus. He desperately hoped that this wasn't something that had been covered while he was staring blankly at the finely made table.

  "Unknown," said Nemm. She raised an eyebrow and looked at Dravus. "The Peddler's War is a point of discontent. Wenaru's war crimes will be brought up, which reflects poorly on the Flower Queen given that she pardoned him. They'll paint it like she cared nothing for the men and women that died in his labs, which is a part of the larger narrative of a woman disconnected from the people she nominally rules. Amare's Theater holds eighty thousand people. Kendrick will be speaking to them, ready to drive the point home. Our options are all terrible. Intervention from the Flower Queen exacerbates matters; it would be like offering a pardon all over again, maybe worse. Pulling out of the duel now, having already accepted it, would make us cowards and let them say that the illustrati don't have to answer to the common people."

  "But you said that the rebellion was illustrati," said Dravus.

  "No, if you'd been listening, I said that there are illustrati at the forefront," said Nemm. "Almost by definition a leader needs fame, save for the masked statesmen of Kenning. It's a common enough ploy; you pretend to care about the common people, gain their trust and respect, and use it to propel yourself to the top. That was what happened in Geswein. The merchants said that they were making a democracy, which became a representative democracy, and all the representatives happened to be within the same small group of merchants. The same thing will happen here, unless we can stop it, except the punchline will be invasion by the Iron King. That's without considering all the traitors within these walls."

  "Lightscour will win the duel," said Lexari. "He was only recently a commoner, the son of a baker, risen up from poverty. How can they criticize someone who is at heart one of them? He's from a different country, and a different culture, but he's out of place within the nobility, and an outsider to these affairs in the way that you or I are not."

  Nemm sighed, and looked at the advisers, who were shuffling their papers around and trying not to be seen listening in. They hadn't contributed in quite some time. "We need this win then. Dammit all." She looked to Dravus. "Three days to find a way for that to happen."

  Dravus felt slightly sick as the conversation wound its way to other topics. The duel was seeming less and less like a good idea the more the prospect of it had been discussed. When he'd stepped forward, he'd thought that it would be a simple thing, almost like the sparring matches he'd had with Nemm, or the rooftop races. He knew how to fight now, that wasn't at issue, but there was an enormity to this that was making him uneasy. Eighty thousand people would be watching if the theater was full, and it would decide — at least in part — the fate of this country, and possibly the entire shape of the world. He'd thought that the duel would be a sideshow of their time in Torland, but now it seemed like it would be the main event. Kendrick Eversong had no doubt given it a span of three days in order to drum up excitement and get the largest possible audience. Dravus was beginning to feel that it would also give him too much time to think.

  * * *

  Amare's Theater was an enormous open-air structure with tiered seating that seemed to climb to the sky. It was a perfect half-circle with a large stage. People began filing in well before sunset in order to see the show that Lexari was about to perform. It was one of the largest buildings in all of Meriwall, visible from most the city, and Dravus was nearly dizzy just looking at it, let alone being inside it. The murmur of the crowds was diluted by the empty space, but the sheer volume of people was almost oppressive.

  "We're disrupting the performance of a play," said Nemm. They sat behind the stage, and she was pacing back and forth. "Securing this place on such short notice was costly, as was hiring the choir."

  "We have money," said Lexari. He was laying down, unmoving. Dravus didn't have all the details, but he knew that Lexari would need all of his strength. The bones hadn't had enough time to mend themselves. "This performance sets the narratives we need in place. It's unconnected with the current state of politics in Torland, and helps to cement Lightscour as disruptive."

  "I was only mentioning it," said Nemm. "Wenaru should have been here by now."

  "Is he in any danger out there?" asked Dravus. "If they truly hate him, will they try something?"

  "He'll be fine so long as he defends himself," said Nemm.

  "Will he?" asked Dravus. "He seems to think that perhaps … I don't mean to say that I believe he's so terrible, but the way he's been trying to atone makes me think that he might imagine that taking a beating is his penance."

  "No matter," said Nemm. "That's him now."

  Wenaru was dragging his feet, and had a defeated look. He smiled weakly when he saw them, but the smile quickly fell.

  "Eight people," he said. "That was all that came to visit me, for all the hours I was there."

  Dravus had expected hundreds. He had thought that there would be a line around the hospital of people wanting to be cured of what ills he could erase with a touch, even given the stigma against the bodily domains. Wenaru had offered the same aid in Genthric, and while Dravus hadn't gone to see it himself, he knew that the work was mostly met with approval, in part because Wenaru was a physician above and beyond what his domain granted him. To have your flesh changed and warped was taboo, but having a doctor heal you was not, so it was easy to pretend that one was the other when it suited you.

  He was going to ask Wenaru about it when the choir began to sing. Lexari stood up and walked onto the stage. The sun had fallen, and the lanterns that lit the theater had been snuffed. Save for the stars above and the voices of the choir, the theater was dark and quiet.

  An enormous white man made of light appeared on the stage beside Lexari. He stood fifteen feet tall, and though Dravus was looking at it from behind, he could tell that the form was Lexari's own. The man had a spear in hand, and twirled it around effortlessly, practicing his forms and thrusts with it. Dravus was entranced by it.

  "You never went to the shows in Genthric?" asked Nemm. She was standing beside Dravus, watching his face. Her voice was low, though with the size of the theater it was doubtful that anyone would have been able to hear her.

  "No," said Dravus. He shrugged. "You charged money for it." Now he wished that he had gone.

  "Limited seating in Genthric," said Nemm. "We have to filter people out somehow. We're nearly filling Amare's now; it's likely that we could have gotten away with a small charge to defray the costs." She wasn't watching the show at all, even when a second man of light showed up, this one larger, bulkier, and covered in a cloak. When the man pulled back his hood, Dravus recognized it as Zerstor, though the features weren't fully in place.
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br />   "They're insubstantial?" asked Dravus. He had a hard time imagining that they weren't.

  "Insubstantial and difficult to control," said Nemm. "What you're seeing is the result of decades of practice, and this current production was part of why I wish we'd had more time at sea. The choreography isn't perfect." She was right; if you looked closely, you could see that it was a mock battle, like the sort two inexperienced actors would make. "Kendrick used to work for us."

  "What?" asked Dravus. He'd been too focused on watching the show, and had been caught off guard by the change in subject. He glanced to Wenaru, who was sitting apart from them and too far away to hear.

  "He was a natural philosopher of a different kind," said Nemm. "His area of study was music. He came to Lexari a dozen years ago, before I was around. You've seen the way that we dress, the way we make a statement with our appearance and impress ourselves upon the world. I've talked about why. It's not uncommon for us to have sigils and brands to identify us, flags we can fly and symbols to mark our most devoted followers. Lexari's is a white spear laid diagonally across a rounded shield. Kendrick's idea was to have something similar for music."

  "I don't understand what that means," said Dravus. He watched the enormous white figures fighting each other. Now that Nemm had mentioned it, he couldn't help but see the flaws in how the fighters moved.

  "He thought that every illustrati should be associated with a sound, or at least the most famous of us," said Nemm. "We all have songs, too many to count, and stories beyond that, but what Kendrick sought was a unified audible identity. He carefully selected five notes, and began weaving them into Lexari's songs. Those five notes would be at the beginning, and worked in throughout. When Lexari was announced at a formal event, the trumpets would play those five notes." Nemm hummed them, and Dravus realized that he'd heard it many times before without even being aware of it. It was part of the song the choir was singing. "When he went into battle, the common men would hear those five notes and be inspired by them, knowing that he was out there, fighting on their side. It was a clever enough idea, and Lexari hired him on as his bard in Meriwall. He wanted to come onto the ship, and asked about the possibility several times, but Lexari always refused him. Every time that the ship came into port, Kendrick would ask to leave on it. I was there a few of those times; it was tragic, in a way."

  "So what happened?" asked Dravus.

  "Wenaru happened," said Nemm. "There was already some tension given how the war ended, but after Lexari fell in with Wenaru, that was the end of it. Kendrick was a coward about it. He kept drawing money from our account while he spread his own legend. When we found out, Lexari was furious. That accounts for much of the bad blood between us and him."

  "Why are you telling me this?" asked Dravus.

  "Kendrick's going to tell you his own version," said Nemm. "You're going to be on this very same stage with him, and he's going to tell lies, and they'll be mixed with the truth so well that you might not be able to know which is which."

  On the stage, the battle had moved on; the form that represented Lexari was limping now, and fighting off enormous sword strokes with his spear, barely blocking each time. A second spear appeared, and now they began fighting again. It wasn't exactly how Dravus remembered it, but it was close.

  "I'm not sure I know the truth," asked Dravus. He was trying to see a way that the fight with Zerstor could have been faked. Every time that he thought of a way that it must have been a real thing, he imagined some way that it could have been part of the performance. The only part that didn't seem to make sense if it was fake was — there, Lexari's hand being cut off, represented in the show as spray of light.

  "Better for you not to know where the unmarked graves are," said Nemm. "All I mean to say is that Kendrick has his reasons for hating us. I don't want you to learn later on that he's not the bastard you thought and falter when you need your strength. He has his reasons. Some of them are surely cynical, but … his father really did die in Wenaru's hospital. It was what's called a living autopsy."

  When everything looked dire, and the choir was singing their most mournful tune, a third figure appeared, holding the spear of light. It was Dravus, dressed in street clothes, or as close as you could get to the effect in shades of white. It wasn't like how it had really been though; the figures of light faced each other down, and there was even a brief battle between the two before the killing blow came.

  When one form of light pulled the other to his feet, the crowd cheered, in a way that should have raised Dravus's spirits.

  * * *

  Dravus had trouble sleeping. He'd been given a large bed in one of the seemingly endless bedrooms of Grayhull. His thoughts were scattered, and kept touching on different subjects, never staying on one for very long. Tomorrow they would begin training him for the duel, which meant that the day had been an almost total waste on that front. Nemm's words were floating uncomfortably in his head; he had tried to be friendly with Wenaru afterward, and didn't think he had been able to pull it off.

  Lexari crept into the room, bringing a glow of light with him. "Lightscour," he hissed. "Are you awake?"

  "Yes," replied Dravus.

  The room flooded with light, and Lexari came to the side of the bed, smiling. In his hands was a small wooden box. He handed it over with a grin. "Open it."

  Dravus sat up and frowned. He opened the box slowly and looked at the grey shape inside. It was a Harbinger artifact. Dravus stared at it, and wondered how he knew that. He picked it up slowly and turned it around in his hands. It was a thick, matte, gray rectangle with no discerning features, yet he knew that it was a Harbinger artifact all the same. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. Again, it was immediately obvious that this was a Harbinger artifact. The thought kept coming into his mind. It wasn't a conclusion that he had drawn based on its appearance, it was only something that he knew, in the same way that he could look down at his hand and know it without any particular chain of inference.

  "Quite the effect, isn't it?" asked Lexari. "Knowing, without knowing how you know. That seems to be all it does, so far as I can tell, but it's the first real piece."

  Dravus frowned and handed the box back.

  "Wealdwood was telling the truth, about the weight on his mind," said Dravus.

  "Oh, not necessarily," said Lexari. "It could be that he had heard second-hand from someone else and knew enough to match the description. But I do believe that it was true, and that someone else might be traveling down the path I've been on for years." He closed the wooden box. "The Harbingers are real, and I have proof of what they knew."

  "And … what is it that they knew?" asked Dravus.

  "The answers to the Five Questions," said Lexari. "'What is fame?' We have working definitions, certainly, enough that we can attempt to manipulate it and find some success. Yet if you ask the scholars, there are a hundred variations on how they would formulate it, and they simply cannot agree. Yet the Harbingers knew. Of the other questions, these central inquiries of our age, the answers are even less clear. Yet the Harbingers knew. They had to, in order to build something like this." He patted the wooden box. "Haven't you ever wondered why the Zenith has no special powers? I often have. It's a well-known ship, talked about in much the same way I am, and people cheer when they see it come or go. Yet it has no domain, none of the special resilience of an illustrati, and its speed is due solely to the construction."

  "I suppose I never thought about that," said Dravus. "A sword is just a sword, no matter how many people know about it?"

  "But why?" asked Lexari. "We have no idea, for all that it's been thought on. Why are none of my sailors illustrati? We've tried to keep them anonymous, there were too many that tried to elevate themselves, but why are they not imbued as a collective? The Harbingers had the answer to that, and more. They could freely transfer fame from one person to another. They could create new domains from nothing. I've been chasing this story for years, Lightscour. Years. And this s
mall grey object is the first thing I've come across that shows the truth." His smile was fierce. "The Flower Queen might think that all of this is about her kingdom, and Nemm might think we're trying to stop war between all the countries of the Calypso, but this," said Lexari, tapping the wooden box, "This is the real prize."