Broken Shadow

by Jaine Fenn

  She played a few airs, ones Etyan didn’t like so much. The thin notes disappeared into the wide, star-spangled night.

  Once in the mountains she relied on a combination of memory and the constant sense of the direction of north. This land was wetter, with streams and pools to drink from, and more vines and fruits and crawling creatures to eat.

  She felt the red valley before she saw it. Her first time here, with the clanless, she’d thought she imagined the odd pull of the land, but when she returned later with Etyan and his sister she’d been sure. Etyan said the valley’s rocks were full of iron, which must interfere with her pathfinding abilities.

  She was arriving from the south, as she had when she led the duke’s rescue party to save Etyan and Rhia. The route had become a well-worn path now, wide enough for a small cart.

  She spent the night in a huddle of rocks just off the path, and timed her arrival for the middle of the next day, when the shadowkin would be resting in the shade.

  As she approached she slowed, then stopped, shocked at the changes since her last visit. Over a quarter of the bowl-shaped valley had been ravaged. Great swathes of reddish rocks were gathered into piles. In some places, scrapes and trenches had been dug. The activity centred on the row of caves set into the valley side. This made sense – the caves were ready-made shelters for the delicate shadowkin – but it also made Dej’s heart sink. In one of those caves she’d had her first, inconsequential conversation with Etyan, while his sister lay sick and delirious. It had been an uncertain, fearful time but also a glorious one, full of possibility. She’d come here to recapture that first flush of wonder at finally finding the person who filled the emptiness inside. Once she’d gone back to Etyan in her mind and heart, she’d be ready to go back for real.

  But the place had changed beyond recognition.

  Now the cave mouths were hidden behind a dozen or so large tents. Beyond the tents, directly in front of the caves, Dej glimpsed two great brickwork cones, one with wisps of smoke rising from it.

  She crept closer.

  Some of the tents were fully enclosed; others had shaded gaps for ventilation. The nearest vented one contained half a dozen donkeys sitting down or dozing on their feet. The next tent along was closed. One of these sealed tents would hold stores of food for the men working here. Etyan might not like her stealing farmers’ crops but he could hardly object to taking a few supplies from the richest man in Shen. Plus, the duke owed her: she’d told him where to find his missing kinsfolk, then later led his men back here so they could take advantage of the iron.

  Once she’d taken whatever supplies she could carry, what was to stop her carrying on deeper into the skyland? One of the reasons Etyan gave for them not venturing far from Shen was her occasional need for shadowkin food, another legacy of her incomplete bonding. With shadowkin supplies she – maybe they – could go far.

  She could just take what she wanted while the shadowkin slept the day away. But she was curious about those odd brick cones, the shape of elongated beehives, higher than a man. Each had a small opening at the front and what looked like a giant set of bellows set into the side. The bellows were attached via wooden frames to a more familiar-looking structure between the two cones: a pair of wooden wheels on their sides that looked like the pump over the main well back at the crèche. She could even see donkey harnesses on them. But there was no well here.

  She looked around. No movement. No sound except the breeze snapping the canvas and a duet of snores coming from one of the vented tents. As far as her other senses could tell, everyone was asleep. She edged out from cover. The area directly in front of the beehives was covered by a huge awning, with all sorts of objects strewn around: piles of red rocks and a large mound of something black near the beehives; boxes, barrels and some odd rectangular clay lumps, squared off roughly and held in ironwood frames. She darted over to the awning. Unlit lamps hung from its underside and in the centre a large flat stone was set into the ground; it looked chipped and scorched in places. Nearby, something shiny caught her eye. There, propped up against a tentpole, was a huge hammer, the dark ironwood haft set with a head of pure iron.

  The crèche kept a handful of precious iron implements for tasks that neither ironwood, flint nor diamond were good for. The only one Dej had ever handled was an iron-tipped awl for piercing tough leather hides. The iron awl was one of the few items of worth she’d never considered stealing, because it was so valuable that she risked more than a cane across the palm or a day in the hole if she got caught. Yet here was a lump of iron as big as two clenched fists. Mesmerised, she slinked over to the hammer and crouched next to it. The head wasn’t perfectly smooth: one end looked battered; it was pitted along the side and sported rough reddish-brown patches. She touched it, expecting the iron to be cold, but the hammer-head was warm. Odd.

  The lumpy clay thing next to it looked like a torso-sized mudbrick that came apart into two halves, currently held together by the wooden frame. A row of four small holes ran along the top, like someone had poked a finger into the clay.

  She looked beyond the giant brick in its frame. Lying on the ground behind was another brick, or rather half a brick, as this one had been split open and laid on its side. Nestling in hollows in the upper surface were slivers of iron longer than her hand, shaped like elongated leaves. Dej reached out. This iron was even warmer, almost uncomfortably so. Despite this, she lifted a leaf from its hollow, smiling at the idea of holding so much iron in her hands. Even before she straightened she knew she’d be taking this with her.

  “Hey you!”

  Dej looked up to see a man standing in the cave mouth, holding something up to his chest. She began to turn, ready to run.

  Movement too fast to follow out of the corner of her eye.

  Something punched into her side, just below her upraised arm.

  The iron leaf went flying. The blow whirled her around, drove the breath out of her. She caught herself, tried to carry on running.

  But the strength had gone from her legs and what felt like a great hot stone had lodged in the side of her chest. She stumbled, batting an inept hand at the pain in her flank. Her fingers caught on a spike, sticking out of her. Touching it set off a web of agony across her ribs.

  She gasped, and fell forward, head just missing one of the bricks. She couldn’t draw breath. All the air had gone and been replaced by hurt.

  Beyond where she lay shouts started up, shouts and movement, but it took all her concentration to not suffocate against the hot weight filling her chest.

  She thought how stupid it was, to die like this.

  She thought that she would give anything to hold Etyan, once more before the end.

  Then she stopped thinking at all.

  CHAPTER 10

  The boy was late. Rhia looked out the parlour window, past shutters thrown wide to catch the minimal breeze. The view showed a slice of the townhouse across the street, the side of the next house down the hill, then a falling vista of hazy walls and tiled roofs. Beyond the city, the heat-washed fields of beige and tawny brown would have merged with the pale sky were it not for the thin bright line marking the edge of the skyland. Although the Harbinger was gone from the skies, they remained cloud-free, with no sign of the rains.

  Yesterday, still stunned from the Church’s letter, she had dressed in haste and gone to find Francin. He needed to know what the cardinals had said, and she needed his reassurance that he was doing all he could for her. But the Duke of Shen was nowhere to be found. She did see his two younger children, trotting down the corridor with a guard in tow, probably on the way to visit their mother.

  Unwilling to be fobbed off by servants and courtiers she had eventually intercepted the aged but hale Lord Crethen, one of the duke’s most trusted advisors. He apologised, with passable sincerity, for the duke’s absence. But the only explanation he offered was that “His Grace was unavoidably called away.”

  “How long for?” she insisted.

  “N
o more than a couple of days.”

  The duke only left Shen city to visit his estate, a formal event attended by pomp and spectacle. Where would he sneak off to by himself for “a couple of days”? It was not as though he needed to leave the palace to enjoy whichever mistress currently engaged his lower regions.

  “Then I will write him a note,” she snapped, her dismay heating to irritation. “Which I hope he will receive promptly.” But her temper had cooled again by the time pen, paper and sealing wax arrived; being rude achieved nothing save causing offence.

  When she returned to the townhouse she called for Nerilyn. “The next time you see your under-footman friend please ask him what he knows about the duke taking a secret trip from the palace for several days.”

  Now, waiting for Markave’s son, the irritation she had felt at Francin’s absence stirred again, born of frustration and fear. The duke’s agenda was so often hidden from her: witness the actions of Captain Sorne, who had led the expedition to Zekt to retrieve Etyan, then unexpectedly stayed there “on the duke’s orders”.

  Some of her ill temper came from her current pastime: she was trying to read the Book of Separation. But even when she managed to penetrate the pretentious style and unhelpful interjections – what did “Give Glory to the First in All Things” even mean? – the actual content was often unclear, illogical, or downright contradictory. How could the First turn people into stars, as He had supposedly done with the Strays? And taken at face value “put nothing made by the hand of man into the body the First gave you” would make it heresy to eat biscuits, or any prepared food. So far, she had not found anything to contradict her theory of the universe. However, hundreds of subsidiary commentaries, interpretations and addendums had accreted down the millennia and she could spend every waking hour between now and the new year reading and still not get through them all.

  Someone rapped on the front door. She heard Nerilyn answer it, and a few moments later the maid showed Kerne in.

  The boy who entered was a stranger to her; she had not seen him since he went to his aunt’s. She did recognise Markave’s blade-like nose and wide forehead. He stopped twisting his cap in his hands long enough to give an unnecessarily deep bow. “I’m so sorry I’m late, m’lady.” From the sound of it, his voice had only recently broken.

  “No matter. You’re here now. Sit down.”

  Kerne eyed the plush seat Rhia had indicated as though expecting it to bite.

  “Sit. Please. Did your father explain the situation?”

  Kerne sat abruptly. “You wish to take me on as an apprentice.” He sounded incredulous.

  “You are currently apprenticed to the horticulturists, I believe. Tell me what you do there.”

  “Uh, these days the guild is mainly working on new food-crops that can survive with as little water as possible.”

  “I imagine they are. This would be in their fields just outside the city, yes?”

  “Yes.” He gulped.

  “And is that where you work, in the fields?” She could not see any dirt under the nails of the hands currently strangling his cap.

  “Sometimes. Mainly I record the results, taking measurements and counting yields.”

  Observational skills: good. “And what are you working on now?”

  “We have a new type of barley that, if watered well when it first sprouts, requires little or no water to mature.”

  And he sounded excited about his work: excellent. “If you work with me, it would not be with plants but with other observations of the natural world. Have you any such experience?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, m’lady.”

  “Have you ever, say, recorded the comings and goings of bees in a hive over a day, to note their direction of flight?” That had been one of her earliest observation projects, out at the villa on the family estate. She was not sure how old she had been, but Mother had still been alive and in reasonable health, so it was before Etyan’s birth.

  “I… I have not had cause to watch a hive for that long, m’lady.”

  Rhia realised her mistake. Her early life had been filled with days of leisure when, encouraged by Father, she indulged her curiosity at length. Most people had work or other obligations to fill their time. “I see. Of course.” He had stopped mangling his hat and she noticed now that his nails were bitten, just as hers had been when she was a girl, before Father had given her a bitter salve to stop such behaviour. Her frustration – at the boy and at herself – eased a little. Lack of opportunity did not mean lack of capacity. “The work I do is of a different nature anyway. Let me show you.”

  She ushered him up the great staircase running through the centre of the townhouse, their progress made more complicated by his unease at going ahead of her instead of walking behind as their respective statuses required.

  When she opened the study door she watched his reaction. His face went from confusion (it was a little untidy in here) to surprise – he had probably never seen so many papers – to, she was relieved to see, genuine interest.

  “Well?” she prompted.

  “I am sorry m’lady, this place is…”

  “It would be where you would work, with me. Does that appeal?”

  “I.. it is… amazing.” His eyes darted across the shelves and desks. His expression held wonderment but also what looked like suppressed panic. His gaze fell on her celestial model.

  “Aha,” Rhia tried to sound reassuring. “Now that is a model of the universe.”

  The boy looked at her. Definitely panic. But Rhia would not give up on him yet. “Come and see.”

  He followed her past the overflowing desks and workbenches, clutching his hat. “I understand your confusion,” she conceded, “so allow me to explain.” She pointed to the perforated pottery sphere in the centre of the contraption; she had lit the lamp within in anticipation of this conversation. “This represents the Sun, giving its light.” She leaned over to not-quite-touch a slightly smaller sphere standing proud on its thin pole. “And this is the world.” She pointed to the other three, yet smaller, spheres, one positioned between the world and Sun and two outside the world’s run. “These are the Strays: the Maiden, Matriarch and Crone.” Dare she try turning the mechanism? Best not. “You see how each sphere on its stick sits in a hoop of ironwood with cogs set into it.”

  “Cogs?”

  “These toothed plates, here. See how they interlock? By turning a series of handles it should be possible to make each heavenly body move in its track.”

  “That is most interesting, m’lady.”

  “From your tone, I see this is not entirely clear to you. Which is fine! You must say what you think Kerne. Always say what you think.”

  “I think, begging m’lady’s pardon, that this is beyond my wit to comprehend. I am sorry, m’lady.”

  “Where does your confusion lie? There is no shame in not understanding, only in not trying to understand.” She went on to explain the essence of her theory, being careful to define new-tohim terms like “orbit” and “gravity”. He nodded a lot, and asked questions, though these mainly revealed how little he understood as yet. And then, finally, he frowned and said, “I am unsure why the First would make the universe so complicated.”

  Her heart sank. But rather than challenge his beliefs she settled for saying, “I do not know. But I believe it is our duty to try and understand it. Would you be willing to join me in that quest?”

  “As m’lady pleases.” He did not sound certain.

  “Do you want to do this, Kerne? I am ripping you from what you know and no matter how noble the cause, that will be a disruption.”

  His head dropped. “May I speak frankly?”

  “Always.”

  “I’m not sure. I do not know if I am up to this great work. Also…” he added in a rush, “I’ve got friends at the guild, and work I enjoy there.”

  She had considered this. “Then I suggest a compromise. You may split your time equally between your work for the horticultu
rists and your work for me. Would that suit?”

  His head stayed down, looking at his cap. He gave it a last squeeze and looked up. “Yes m’lady.”

  “Then I will speak to your guildmaster.”

  After the boy had gone Rhia’s spirits lifted. She had taken a positive step.

  But the next day a letter arrived, addressed with Empiricist of Marn’s elegant handwriting. The note inside was brief: I am afraid that I cannot provide any assistance in your current dealings with the Church of Shen.

  Given the timing of the caravan to Marn, he could not even have given her request a full day’s consideration before refusing it.

  CHAPTER 11

  Now who will we meet this time?

  Sadakh suppressed a smile at his ghost’s question. He invariably “just happened” to run into one or other faction whenever he visited the Eternal Isle.

  As well as a pair of palace guards, he had the single permitted servitor who, as usual, was a disguised bodyguard. One day he expected to need their services.

  But not today. The lone figure ambling along the widewindowed corridor was all smiles. Sadakh searched his memory for a name as the eunuch halted before him. Each of the forty “immortal advisors” had a complicated, if largely ceremonial, job title, as indicated by their clothes and accoutrements. If he got the title he’d get the name. Short tunic, narrow pectoral with tabletwoven design of a stand of reeds in rich shades of green… ah yes: First Scribe of the shallows, servant of the knowledge of numbers. A senior administrator. Traditionalist by allegiance and cautious by nature.

  As the eunuch straightened after giving a fulsome obeisance Sadakh returned his smile and said, “Advisor Eneph, how are you? Your joints are troubling you in this weather, perhaps.”

  “Ah yes, how this rain gets into my old bones! Will it never end?” Eneph gestured a knobble-knuckled hand at the nearest unshuttered window where, far below, the lesser islets of Mirror-ofthe-Sky were visible only as vague, pale, mist-shrouded patches in the dark lake. At least the cloudy skies had hidden the Harbinger from sight; weak minds tended to treat such celestial phenomena as evil omens.