The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  Everess ignored her. "Then you are aware, Silverdun, that things have changed."

  "Here we go," said Heron, her scowl widening. "Foreign Minister Everess's stock lecture has begun in earnest."

  Now it was Silverdun's turn to ignore her. "What things, exactly, have changed, as you see it?"

  Everess clenched his teeth, looking at Silverdun as though he were a child. "Everything, man. The balance of power, the status of relations between our kingdom and the other nations of the world and other worlds. The very nature of warfare itself."

  It was true, Silverdun knew. The implications of a weapon powerful enough to level an entire city were enormous. No one, however, seemed to agree on what those implications might be. But clearly Everess was about to tell him.

  "Go on," Silverdun said.

  Everess reached for a glass of brandy, took a generous swallow, and launched into what Silverdun assumed was the stock lecture to which Heron had referred. "Certainly you can see that we have reached the end of an era, Silverdun. A cornerstone of propriety has been annihilated before our eyes. Your compulsory army days were long after my own, but you were certainly taught as I was: cavalry, battle mages, infantry in evenly spaced lines politely slaughtering one another on the battlefield. All those pretty tactics and stratagems, all those brilliant battles of old, always applicable. We used them against the Western Valley upstarts the first time they rebelled; we used them against the Gnomics a dozen years ago, and against the Puktu barbarians in Mag Mell a thousand years before I was born. But now all that has come to an end."

  "I understand what you're saying, Everess," said Silverdun. "But what of it?"

  "If Mab had one of those things, then she's certainly got more of them. We can only assume that she hasn't got a flying city full of them, or we wouldn't be having this conversation today. We'd be in an Unseelie work camp fetching water, or we'd be ashes in a hole somewhere."

  "It tells us nothing of the kind," said Heron. "I believe that what it tells us is that she hasn't got any more of them."

  "What this tells us," continued Everess, "is that the kind of war we were trained to fight has become obsolete in a single blaze. This new weapon of Mab's means that an army is no longer necessary at all! All one needs is a trebuchet and a tailwind and he can lay waste to anything he sees fit, from a safe and happy distance."

  "Nothing will stop war," said Heron. "And war with Mab will soon be inevitable, as it has been twice before, and nearly was a year ago.

  "I could not disagree more," said Everess. "We are entering the age of a new kind of war. What matters now is not just where our troops are placed. What matters is information and influence. We need to know what Mab's game is. We need to know what Mab's allies are up to, and where our own allies stand. We need to know how many of these accursed things Mab's got, how many she plans to build, and how long before she decides to fly south and begin incinerating the Seelie Kingdom. And we need to do whatever we can to disrupt that process at all costs."

  He stared at Heron. "With the right tools, we can prevent that war."

  Everess smiled at Silverdun. "And I believe that you are just the man to help in that endeavor."

  "You want me to be a spy?"

  "More than that," said Heron drily. "He wants you to become a Shadow." Heron made a melodramatic spooky face at him.

  "You mean the mythical spies from the Second Unseelie War?" asked Silverdun. "I was under the impression that they didn't actually exist."

  "Oh, but they did," said Everess. "And they shall again."

  "This is a lovely fantasy," said Secretary Heron. "But the way to stop Mab is through diplomacy and, if it comes to it, war. All of your playing at spies won't change that, Everess."

  Glennet had been observing without comment. "I understand your objections, Madam Secretary," he said, leaning in. "But I'm afraid that the Foreign Committee in Corpus is willing to give Lord Everess the benefit of the doubt." He paused, giving Heron a conciliatory look. "For the time being."

  He looked at Silverdun. "And for what it's worth, I agree that Lord Silverdun would be an excellent choice."

  "Fine," said Heron. "Play your games. But understand that I will expect complete reports of all your activities."

  "Done," said Everess. "I'd be a fool not to keep you apprised of our progress."

  "And if I find out you've been keeping vital information from me," she said, "there will be repercussions."

  "If all goes as you believe, Secretary Heron," said Everess, sniffing, "then there will be nothing of value to withhold."

  The conversation moved on to other topics, though the chill between Everess and Heron never thawed. Silverdun, however, barely paid attention.

  "What the hell was that all about?" said Silverdun. They were at a table at a cafe on the Promenade, just outside the Foreign Ministry building, a few blocks from the Evergreen Club. It was night, and the Promenade Green was filled with musicians, jugglers, and solo mestines. It was dark, the Green illuminated only by witchlit lanterns. Nightbirds sang from hidden perches.

  "If there's one thing that ought to be obvious," Silverdun continued, "it's that I have no interest in politics or governance. When I left school and took up my title, I sat in Corpus exactly once, and I was so bored I stopped paying attention after about ten minutes. I voted on six bills, and to this day I have no idea what they were."

  "Oh, stop it," said Everess. "That's not why I asked you here."

  "Then why am I here? You come to the temple with vague presentiments of doom, talk me out of my cozy monastic life, and now suddenly you're offering me a job as a spy?"

  Everess took two glasses of brandy from a passing waitress, a wisp of a girl with conjured wings who fluttered a few inches off the ground. He handed one of the brandies to Silverdun.

  "Calm down, lad. There's someone I'd like you to meet before we begin the sales pitch."

  Everess looked up over Silverdun's shoulder. "Ah. Here he comes now."

  Silverdun turned and looked. At first he saw no one. No one that Everess might be referring to, anyway. A jongleur, a skald, a mestine conjuring dancing bears. "Who might that be?"

  As he said it, he noticed someone approaching, someone vaguely familiar. The recognition of his presence was like that of an optical illusion in which the eye is required to swap the foreground of an image for the background. Two faces or a vase. No one there or someone.

  This no one was nearly upon them before Silverdun recognized him. Odd. Not only did his dress and manner cause him to stand out boldly in the mostly upper-class Promenade, but he also walked with a heavily pronounced limp, dragging his left leg behind him, using a thick wooden cane in its place.

  "Lord Silverdun, I'd like you to meet Chief Pact. Pact, Lord Silverdun."

  "Hello," said Paet simply. His expression was affectless, his eyes slightly squinted though it was night. The winged waitress was passing back by, and Paet took a drink from her tray without her noticing. He sat.

  "I'm no expert on manners," said Silverdun drily, "but I believe you're supposed to bow and tug a forelock when you meet a lord of the realm, Paet."

  Paet looked Silverdun in the eye and shrugged. "Drag me before the Sumptuary Court then."

  Silverdun looked to Everess, who was saying nothing. "Well, this is a kick in the teeth, isn't it? Insolent one, this Paet."

  "That's `Chief' to you, milord," said Paet. His expression hadn't changed at all during this exchange.

  Silverdun frowned. "I believe I'm supposed to kill you for talking to me like that. I'm an iconoclast, however, so I'll wait to hear why Everess here has inflicted you on me before I do."

  Everess laughed out loud. "Ignore him, Paet. He won't really kill you."

  Paet shrugged. "He's welcome to try."

  Everess sighed. "Now, now. This isn't how I wanted this meeting to go at all. Paet, calm yourself. Silverdun, shut your mouth for a moment and listen."

  Paet and Silverdun eyed each other carefully. Silverdun wasn't
as disapproving of Paet as he'd let on. The impropriety was nothing; he'd been treated far worse at Crete Sulace, by prison guards who, due to their low birth, could have been hanged for looking him in the eye. It was important to keep up appearances, however, lest someone mistake him for a tiresome social reformer. Still, there was something disquieting about Paet.

  "Earlier this evening," said Everess, "we discussed the Shadows. The mythical spies,' as you put it."

  Silverdun pointed at Paet. "Are you telling me that this fellow here is a Shadow?"

  "Not a Shadow," said Paet. "The Shadow. There's only one. Now, anyway."

  "This is true?" asked Silverdun.

  "He's quite serious," said Everess, nodding. "When the group was disbanded after the Treaty of Avenus, it was decided to keep one Shadow in service into perpetuity. In case they were needed again."

  "And you believe they are needed."

  "It requires a certain type of person to do the work that must now be done. And I know that you are exactly that sort of person."

  "I?" said Silverdun. "The `rude villein' whose most recent distinction was being the first monk in history ever to be given the sack?"

  Paet smiled at Everess. Under the squint, which appeared to be a permanent feature, the smile looked rueful, whether it was or not. "He makes a fair case against himself, Everess. Perhaps he's not the man you thought."

  "Yes he is," said Everess, who had developed his own squint now. Silverdun had a feeling this wasn't a good thing. "And despite his endless protestations, he knows it. He only needs to realize it."

  "So, what? You want me to become the new Shadow? Take over from Paet here?"

  "No," said Everess. "You're going to lead a small team of Shadows. The group is being re-formed. Chief Paet here runs the day-to-day affairs of the Information Division. You'll be the lead Shadow."

  "You want me to work for him?" said Silverdun, incredulous.

  "You need him," said Everess.

  "More than you can possibly know," said Paet.

  Silverdun scowled. "Are you always this ... ominous?"

  Paet tapped his cane on the ground. "You'll be hearing from me shortly," he said.

  Silverdun and Everess watched him leave. Silverdun blinked, and that same odd trick of the eye occurred, foreground into background, and Paet was gone.

  "Interesting fellow, isn't he?" said Everess, once he'd vanished.

  "I can't say I'm in love."

  Everess chuckled. "Give him time. Paet's a good man. His experience has made him what he is. All for the love of Seelie. The Seelie Heart; isn't that what Mauritane called it?"

  "Mauritane excels at convincing others to fling themselves at death in the service of abstractions." Silverdun sighed. "You're not helping your cause."

  "This is good work," said Everess. "We need you. And let's be frank. You need us."

  A remark leapt to Silverdun's lips, but he suppressed it. Perhaps if he stopped arguing the point, Everess would shut up about it.

  "Tell me this, Everess," said Silverdun, quiet. "Was I chosen for this because of my strengths or because of my ability to get intelligence from the Arcadians?"

  "I never do anything for only one reason," said Everess. "Either way, it's time for you to stop pissing around and get to work."

  Silverdun wanted to disagree, but couldn't.

  "You're mad," said the goat, hopping up and down. "I am indeed," the bear replied."But there is strength in madness."

  from The Goat and the Bear,'' Seelie fable

  he Copperine House sat on an estate nearly a day's ride outside the City Emerald, set back from the Mechesyl Road, just beyond a small ridge dotted with spruce and fir trees. This was the beginning of the Western Valley, where the high mountaintops held snow year-round, and the evergreens were the only trees that grew. Here, though, the conifers mixed in with deciduous life, speckling the landscape with points of darkness in a world of color.

  The house was relatively new, less than three hundred years old. It had been donated by the sixtieth Lady Copperine after the unfortunate incident that claimed both her son's life and the lives of the twelve others in the cafe with him when he'd lost control of his Gift of Elements and turned them all into sand, including himself. The incident was hushed up by the Royal Guard, a fire set, and the heir apparent to the Copperine title was mourned appropriately. Devastated, his mother donated the family estate to the Crown, with the explicit instructions that it be used to prevent other such tragedies. Once her affairs were settled, Lady Copperine drank poison and joined her son in death.

  The house itself was large and rambling, having been added on to and spellturned rather haphazardly in its day. The unfortunate lady's great uncle had been something of an amateur turner and had made a number of ques tionable choices regarding the estate's architectural layout. Now the house was three times as large as it had been when built, though there were rooms in it that had been lost forever. The residents of Copperine House had it that an unlucky niece had been inside one of the lost rooms when it was badly turned, and haunted the building into the present day.

  Sela's favorite place was the tiered terrace that overlooked the small valley behind the house. There was nothing artificial in this view. Only trees, sky, earth, and small animals that could sometimes be cajoled into eating corn from Sela's hand. If she were able, Sela would have waited for a rainy day, then stepped down each stone tier, walked barefoot through the grass as the rain plastered her hair against her face, and disappeared into the forest, never to be seen again.

  This was a fantasy, of course. Beyond the terrace was a fence of pure Motion that would stop her in her tracks, and unpleasantly so, were she to take more than a few steps into the lawn. That the small animals could come and go through it while she could not was some small comfort to Sela. The part of her that was them, at least, was free. This was something she knew intellectually, but could not bring herself to feel. Not in this place. Not with the Accursed Object wrapped around her arm.

  The Accursed Object was a band of cold iron, three inches thick, that encircled her upper arm, resting snugly against her skin. It was coated with the barest plating of silver to keep it from burning, but its presence disrupted her re enough that she could barely think, let alone employ her unique skills.

  Some others in Copperine House attempted to escape from time to time. Horeg the Magnificent, a mestine of some great former renown, once chewed off his own arm at the shoulder, but the attendants discovered him bleeding to death halfway to the road and dragged him back in. All the way he shouted to them that he had a performance at the Principal Theater that could not be missed. Once it was all over, the attendants had whispered in Sela's hearing that the Principal had been closed for over six hundred years, and Horeg the Magnificent wasn't that magnificent. He was only forty-five.

  Panner-La, a military commander, had been able to dig a tunnel forty feet long beneath the house before he was caught. He'd managed the feat by whittling away at his own Accursed Object just enough to use Elements to turn the earth to air, an inch or two a day, over the course of twenty years.

  Many attempts at escape had been made, but Sela didn't know of any that had succeeded.

  The cold iron bands kept most of them in check, but there were some whose Gifts were so strong that they could not be fully stifled. There was Brinoni, the daughter of a courtier in Titania's court, whose Premonitory Gift was so powerful that she lived her entire life in the future, several hours ahead of reality. Her body jerked and dragged as she attempted to move in time with her future actions. Her speech was so much nonsense, always responding to words as yet unsaid, and thus disrupting her own visions. Brinoni lived in a future that no one else would ever experience, the future that would have been had she not been there to see it.

  Some of the patients' Gifts were so extreme and so dangerous that there was nothing for them but to keep them sedated at all times. Prin had once been a Master of the Gates, but had been caught between worlds and lost
his mind. Left fully conscious, Prin was capable of transporting the entire house and a good portion of the countryside to another world entirely, or to one of the dark places, or of spellturning the house into itself. Sela thought his case was unbearably sad, and would have put Prin out of his misery if she'd been able to work out a way to do it without being caught. Because even with the band around her arm, Sela could feel Prin's anguish despite the drugs they gave him. His misery ran so deeply that she'd almost managed to form a thread toward him. But not quite. There hadn't been any threads in quite some time.

  In Sela's case, the band was highly effective. Her talent required concentration, and the Accursed Object kept her just off-kilter enough to render her essentially powerless. Of all the patients at the Copperine House, Sela was the only one who was not mad. Nor was she a danger to herself. What kept Sela at Copperine was the simple fact that nobody knew what else to do with her.

  Sela understood that she could not be allowed free. Or at least, she understood that her keepers believed that to be the case. Sela knew-or remembered knowing, as her mind was one of the many things that the band hampered-that, if free, she could find a way to be of no danger to anyone. But given her history, it would be difficult to convince anyone of that.

  Thinking of her history led her to thoughts of Milla. The thoughts of Milla, on those occasions when they came, overtook her and she broke down. Today was no exception. While the rain pattered down just past the terrace awning, Sela experienced Milla's pain all over again, still fresh no matter how many Accursed Objects they wrapped around her limbs or how much bottled forgetfulness they forced down her throat. Milla was real, and Milla was dead and it was Sela's fault. It was truth; a hideous truth. One that could never be undone.

  Oh, Milla.

  An attendant, seeing Sela weeping on the terrace, rushed to offer a handkerchief, a cool drink, a cucumber sandwich. Anything to calm and please. The conceit was that the patients at Copperine were, in fact, guests at a proper country estate, and the staff all behaved as though this were the case. Many of the patients chose to believe it, and those who didn't, like Sela, saw no reason to spoil the fantasy. It was nice being treated like a lady, even if the lady couldn't leave her estate. It was far better than what she'd grown up with.