The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  "Morning, Timha," said Giaco, one of the Elements experts, leader of the group who were working on improving the outer shell. "How are things in the heart of the beast?" Giaco and his team were close with one another; several of them had taught together at a university in one of the flag cities. They were working on the project of their lifetimes, with access to only the best supplies and research materials, a limitless budget, and an army of apprentices who would gladly do anything they asked. Moreover, they were doing all this in Mab's own Secret City, one of the most hallowed locations in all of the empire. This was Mab's redoubt. This was where she had come to have her children, where she mourned the loss of her husbands. This was where Beozho wrote his Works. Giaco and his friends were in paradise.

  Timha hated them for it.

  "Things are progressing very well, thanks," said Timha primly. He sat at a table by himself, took tea from an apprentice without looking up, and tried to ignore the dance that twirled in his mind. The cruel irony of his position struck him now as it often did, that he was suffering not because he was a poor worker or because he was intellectually inferior to his fellows, but rather because he was their better. Master Valmin had taken Timha under his wing early on, brought him into the core team, gone over the more esoteric and taboo portions of the Project with him. At the beginning, they had all been excited, and none more so than Timha. It was the position of a lifetime. And while he certainly had reservations about the use of the Black Art, Valmin had assured him that it was for a noble cause, that evil could indeed be harnessed for good.

  For the sake of the empire, Valmin had said, an encouraging smile on his face. Think of the soldiers who gutted their enemies on the battlefield, of the generals who sent their troops into the fray knowing that not all of them would return. All great enterprises, Valmin had told him, have some element of darkness at their heart. Better to name it and know it, to contain it so that it did only the harm it was intended to do.

  What Valmin had not told Timha, or perhaps had not known himself, was that working the Black Art was not something one did lightly. It was powerful but draining, both mentally and emotionally, and the feeling of ... Timha could only describe it as sinfulness never left him, though Timha believed in neither Aba nor the Chthonics, nor anything else for that matter. The Black Art wormed its way into your bones. Its harsh workings yielded impressive results, but each day Timha had felt as though a part of his soul were draining away.

  And that was before all the trouble had begun.

  It started with a realization that Timha himself had made, reviewing an extremely complex passage in the notes of Hy Pezho, the Project's original creator. Timha had read the passage over and over again, trying to deduce its meaning and finding himself unable. He'd brought it to Valmin, who had retired to his own quarters with it for most of a day. When Valmin had emerged, it had been with a dour face. Their task was going to be much more difficult than they had at first believed.

  Valmin had been given the most prestigious portion of the work, and he had shared it with Timha and a few select others because they had proven themselves the best of the best in their respective fields of study. And now they were the ones who would have their throats cut by the Bel Zheret if they failed. The others would be sent home, perhaps with a bit of disgrace, or more likely with no comment at all, and Valmin and Timha and a few others would be gutted like fish and left to rot in the stinking basements of the Secret City where the raw materials for the Black Art were kept.

  Timha shuddered at the thought. The basements were the only things that bothered him more than the sky.

  Nothing was what it was supposed to be.

  Timha lingered over breakfast, but it still ended too quickly. He made his way down a twisting corridor to Master Valmin's chambers. The doors were manned by a pair of armed guards who opened the door for Timha, waving a deglamouring wand over him, relaxing their grips on their weapons only when they determined that Timha was indeed Timha.

  Valmin's office smelled of burnt tea, chalk, and bitter herbs. Valmin was already at his desk when Timha entered. The room was filled with stacks and stacks of books, most of which were unavailable to the general populace. Some were proscribed by Mab, forbidden even to Master Valmin himself, and the fact that these books were currently resting open in front of Valmin was as good a sign as any that the Project was in deep trouble.

  The walls and floor of the spacious chamber were surfaced in smooth slate, installed by journeyer Elementalists who no doubt had been annoyed at the task but had done an excellent job nonetheless. Nearly every free bit of space on the walls was filled with arcane sigils, mathematical equations, apothecarian symbols, and diagrams of the dance at the heart of the Project, drawn in white chalk.

  During the night, Timha noticed, Valmin had erased some of the equations relating to the stored energy bindings. For a moment Timha's heart rose in hope, but then he realized that Valmin had simply replaced yesterday's unworkable mathematics with those from the day before. Every light they shone on some aspect of the Project seemed to cast some other part more deeply into shadow.

  "Good morning, journeyer," said Valmin, not looking up from his text. This was the Red Book, so called from the color of its binding; books on the Black Art were required to be nameless. Valmin had been spending more and more time studying this particular volume. Was he on to something?

  "Anything, master?" said Timha. His voice came out thin and reedy, almost rasping.

  Valmin looked up briefly from his book. "Trust me, Timha, if I have glad tidings in the middle of the night I will drag you out of bed myself."

  Timha suddenly felt like crying. How shameful would it be to burst into tears in front of Master Valmin? The thought of it chilled Timha enough to let the tears subside. But it wasn't fair! It wasn't fair!

  The Project simply ought to have yielded up its secrets to them by now. After all the work they'd put in, the long hours poring over the plans, the detailed instructions, the philosophical notes that Hy Pezho had left. Every separate part of the thing made sense, if an esoteric and abstract sense. But when put together in the way described in the plans, the interaction of alchemy, bindings, and the essence of the raw materials, the totality of it became so complex that no one could hope to understand it all. It was simply impossible for a Fae mind to hold together all at once.

  Valmin and Timha had been forced to admit that Hy Pezho was a genius, perhaps the greatest thaumaturge of his age, if these plans were to be believed. But there was nothing in Hy Pezho's history that indicated where he might have come across such knowledge. The son of the great Black Artist Pezho, he had spent his early years wandering from city to city, squandering his father's small fortune and giving the world no reason to afford him any regard whatsoever. Then he'd disappeared for several years, and the next thing anyone knew he'd become one of Mab's inner circle. And the next thing anyone knew after that, he was gone, the mention of his name forbidden at court. His only legacy, as far as Timha knew, was the Project. The Einswrath. Citykiller. But what a legacy it was. A thing of such elegance and power, such might.

  If only Hy Pezho were here to explain it.

  "What can I do?" said Timha, dreading the answer.

  Valmin looked up wearily. He waved at a stack of books on the table opposite him. "The answer is in there somewhere," he sighed. "Find it."

  Outside, the portal lock shimmered and choked out two tall, gaunt figures in blue robes. The guards at the lock started at their sudden entrance, reached for their swords, then dropped them when they recognized the robes.

  The arch of the lock stood on a lonely rocky promontory connected to the Secret City by a long, narrow bridge of chalky stone. All around was the roiling, slithering sky. Guards for this posting were handpicked for their ability to avoid looking upward.

  One of the men had skin as pale as moonlight. The other was so dark that his eyes seemed to glow from an empty void. The guards looked away. It was not permitted to speak to Bel Zheret
unless spoken to. And neither of them had even the slightest desire to be spoken to.

  The pale-skinned Bel Zheret was named Dog. His partner was Asp. Dog and Asp strode toward the bridge arm in arm. They were in a fine temper. They loved each other.

  At the entrance to the city, the sentries likewise lowered their eyes and their weapons to allow Dog and Asp to pass. The Bel Zheret flowed through the entrance, robes sweeping across the stones in a most aesthetically pleasing manner.

  As soon as they'd turned the corner past the sentry booth, the sergeant took a message sprite from its jar, gave it careful instructions, and then released it. It flew with an urgency typically unknown among sprites.

  Above, at the entrance to the research facility, the head guardsman received the sprite and took its message. His eyes widened. He gave a hand signal to the second-in-command, and she ran.

  Bel Zheret were coming.

  Dog and Asp went slowly up the steps to the converted palace where the researchers worked on their project. They stepped deliberately, artfully. All of life was art, viewed properly. Bel Zheret understood this instinctively. Aesthetics is the highest order of understanding.

  The city was cold and dry. Its narrow, winding streets were deserted, had been for centuries. It was spotless. Dog commented to Asp on it, and Asp agreed that it was a pleasing sight. Satisfying.

  At the top of the steps, the palace stood out against the sky. Dog and Asp did not find the sky particularly pleasing, but then, no one did. Perhaps Mab did? She must have, or she wouldn't have left it that way. The guardsmen on the palace walk were standing at stiff attention, staring straight ahead. They'd been warned that Bel Zheret were coming. This also pleased Dog and Asp. Fear was appropriate.

  Inside the palace, Dog and Asp both stopped briefly. The smell here, of cooking, Fae sweat, traces of garbage and offal. Unpleasant.

  Dog turned to one of the guards. "This palace has an unwholesome odor. See to it." The guard turned and ran as fast as his legs would go.

  They flowed into the common room, where flabby, sweaty, hairy research thaumaturges and their assistants and servants acted as though they hadn't spent the last five minutes in a frenzy of preparation, cleaning, hiding, or destroying those things that Dog and Asp might object to. Again, appropriate. They were happy to go along with the farce. Another instinctive habit. It is a privilege to be feared. Do not abuse that privilege.

  Dog turned to the most cowardly smelling of all the cowards in the room. "Where might I find Master Valmin?" he said, his voice smooth and precise.

  The coward shook, but his voice was admirably strong. "Through there," he said, pointing. "Last door on the right."

  Dog and Asp found Valmin and his journeyer Timha pretending to be hard at work on their assignment.

  "Welcome," said Valmin, offering no other pleasantries. He had dealt with Bel Zheret in the past.

  "Tell us," said Asp. It was economical; Valmin already knew why they were there. Economy was important. Do the most with the least.

  "Yes," said Valmin. He cleared his throat, holding out a prepared document in a leather binding. "Here is the complete report, of course." Asp took the thing without looking at it, and it disappeared inside his robes.

  "Summarize for us, won't you?" asked Dog.

  "We have made significant progress with the casing system, and the containment fields. And we are very close to reaching a hypothesis about the underlying mechanism."

  "Very close?" said Dog, his voice still smooth as silk. "To a hypothesis?"

  Asp chimed in. "In other words, you have built a pretty box. You still do not understand what goes in the box, but nearly have an idea about one of many ways in which it might possibly work."

  Valmin said nothing.

  Dog strode calmly toward Valmin and grabbed him by the wrist. To Valmin this motion had happened nearly instantaneously; Bel Zheret experienced time rather differently than the typical Fae. Dog turned the wrist slowly, pushing Valmin to the ground. From this position he could snap Valmin's elbow backward, break his wrist, reach into the small of his back with extended claws, or any of a hundred other things. But physically harming Valmin was currently forbidden. Injured thaumaturges were not productive thaumaturges.

  "We will return in six months," said Dog. "If by then you have not produced a functioning Einswrath, the two of you will be killed."

  "But ... one cannot rush the process of inquiry! It takes as long as it takes!"

  "We understand," said Asp. "And if this particular inquiry takes longer than six months, then you will die and we shall promote others into your positions. I am simply alerting you to your time frame."

  Dog released Valmin, and the old master fell to the floor, clutching his arm in pain. The elderly were disgusting. Dog resisted the urge to wipe his hands on his robes.

  "Good-bye," said Asp. Without any further ado, Dog and Asp turned and left the room.

  They swept back through the common room and out of the palace. At the palace entrance, Dog sniffed the air. He picked out the guard to whom he'd spoken earlier about the odor.

  "It still smells bad," he said. "Can't you smell it?"

  Dog watched the guard's face carefully. He knew what the man was thinking. Do I admit that I can't smell what the Bel Zheret smells, or do I agree with him to please him?

  Dog didn't wait for an answer. He held up two fingers. "Your nose must require cleaning," he said. He grabbed the guard's neck and plunged the two fingers into his nostrils, digging into the soft membranes there with his fingernails.

  "Perhaps there is some foreign matter encrusted within?" he said, clawing up and down. Blood began to pour from the guard's nose. The guard began to shriek. Musical!

  "Maybe your sense of smell will improve now," said Dog, letting go. "You write and let me know if that's the case, won't you?"

  Dog smiled at the thought of the guard sitting down to compose the letter. He couldn't wait to read it.

  The guard fell to the ground, clutching his face. Blood dripped down his fingers.

  "All right, then," said Dog. "Have a lovely day."

  As they walked toward the lock across the narrow stone bridge, they locked arms again. "That was fun," said Asp.

  Dog could only agree.

  ... after loud complaints from the House of Guilds, I was asked to pen an official statement on the matter. It read, in part,"The so-called Shadow Office does not exist, and never has. The notion of a secret group of spies, strangers to propriety, and invested with powers granted by the Black Art, is repugnant to Her Majesty. It is a fantasy promulgated by seditious elements within the very body who proposes that said office be expunged."

  The statement was, of course, a lie. The Shadows existed then, and exist to this day. One small portion of the statement, however, is factual.The very notion of the Shadows is indeed repugnant to the queen. This, however, has never stopped her from employing them.

  -Cereyn Ethal, Autobiography (unexpurgated)

  tudying with Master Jedron was like a cross between military training and torture, using techniques of both disciplines in equal measure. Jedron's idea of a training exercise was to have Silverdun practice the crossbow for an hour, and then-with no warning whatsoever-release a half dozen hunting dogs for him to fend off. Another "exercise" was to tie Silverdun's wrists and ankles together and then have Than throw him into the ocean from the rocky cliff at the north side of the island. Jedron would then casually toss knives off the cliff until Silverdun caught one and used it to free himself.

  "What's the point of this?" Silverdun blustered, after the second of these, clambering out of the water. He stumbled in turbulent surf that beat against the black stones whose edges had cut Silverdun more than once.

  It was a gray day, about two weeks into the training. Low, gray sky, turgid sea. It was highsun but felt like dusk. Silverdun's clothes clung to him, flapping against his prickling skin in time with the wind. He brushed his hair out of his eyes.

  Jedron and Ilian, w
ho'd walked down from the tower to meet him, looked at each other. Jedron threw Silverdun a towel. "You don't need to know the lesson in order to learn it," he said.

  "Not the test," said Silverdun angrily. "The cruelty. I was under the impression that I was being trained for a job, not being punished for my sins."

  "It's both," said Jedron.

  "Where's the other recruit you mentioned before?" said Silverdun. "Do you treat him as badly as you do me?"

  Jedron thought about it. "No," he said. "He's not quite as stupid as you are."

  "Well, where is he?"

  "He's around," said Jedron. "I don't want him to pick up any of your bad habits."

  Later, after Silverdun was dry, Jedron came to his quarters. "Come with me," he said.

  Outside it had begun to rain, and Silverdun's fresh clothes were soon as sodden as his previous ones had been. Jedron led Silverdun and Ilian down to the quay, where the Splintered Driftwood rested, rolling in the waves. A storm out to sea somewhere was wreaking a mild havoc here. Jedron climbed aboard and beckoned Silverdun to follow.

  On board, the silver-and-brass automatons had been covered with canvas tarpaulins that were tied around the things' ankles. Jedron untied one and pulled the canvas free, gesturing for Silverdun to have a closer look.

  Silverdun leaned in and whistled appreciatively. The structure of the automaton's body matched that of a Fae body perfectly, only with the skin removed. Muscles of silver, tendons of brass. Eyes of glossy, polished marble.

  "This is saturated argentine, isn't it?" said Silverdun. Spellplastic silver, the stuff could be manipulated easily with Elemental hook sequences. Silverdun had never seen so much of it in one place; it was astonishingly expensive.

  Jedron shrugged. "Not my area of expertise," he said. "And not the point."