The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  Never anything astonishing. Never more than what she needed at a given moment.

  The red and gold strands circled each other, then dove toward one another, twirling around and around. They dipped and dodged and wove in and out. Twining about in a perfect braid and then-

  The two strands became tangled; they hitched in the air above her, in a snarl. She let them go and they fell limply to the floor in a disappointing knot, then faded away.

  Certainly the others should have started appearing by now. Mestines weren't known for punctuality, but they were seldom this late.

  "Miss Faella!"

  Faella looked up and saw Bend, one of the stagehands, running into the auditorium.

  "Bend?" she said crossly. "Where is everyone?"

  "Apologies, miss. I looked for you at your home but you'd already left."

  "Why? What's going on?"

  "It's Rieger," said Bend. "He's hurt bad, stabbed."

  "Oh, hell," said Faella. She and Bend ran from the theater together. Rieger was Faella's on-again-off-again lover, but more to the point he was one of her best mestines.

  Estacana was an unusual city, having been built for giants; its roads were too wide, its windows too large, its steps too tall. Faella liked it. She liked things that were larger than life. But today the city didn't hold her interest as it usually did. She followed Bend through the streets to the fourth-floor garret where Rieger lived.

  The room was crowded with players and hands from the Bittersweet Wayward, all standing around looking worried. Leave it to mestines to become melodramatic and useless in a crisis.

  "Everyone out," she barked. "Go to the theater where you can be useful." She began shooing them out.

  Once the room was cleared she found her way to Rieger's bedside and looked down at him. A physician, an elderly woman in a starched-neck black dress, was tending a wound in Rieger's abdomen with herbs and smoke, blowing the white healing vapor into the cut. Rieger's sister Ada sat next to him on the bed, holding his hand.

  The physician looked up at her. "Who are you?" she said.

  "I'm Faella," she said. "I'm his employer."

  "Will you pay for my services?" asked the physician.

  "Yes. Use whatever cures you have at your disposal."

  The physician nodded, reached for her bag, and rummaged through it.

  Faella knelt next to Rieger and ran her fingers through his hair. He was unconscious, breathing rapidly.

  "What happened?" she whispered to Ada.

  "You know him," Ada said. "Out drinking and carrying on until day break. He and another fellow at the tavern got into a drinking competition, and somehow a fight started. Rieger went into it with his fists, but the other fellow had a knife."

  "Do they know who it was?"

  "Oh, sure," said Ada. "Malik Em. But he's with the Wolves, so they won't touch him."

  The Wolves were a band of thieves who were clever enough to invest a portion of their earnings with the City Guard. Untouchable.

  "I see," said Faella. She looked at Rieger, and a sudden wash of pity ran through her. She didn't love him, and he certainly didn't love her. But she did care for him. He was tender and talented and he made her laugh.

  She looked down at him. The physician had cleaned away the dried blood, leaving the ragged knife wound fully exposed on his belly.

  She took the physician aside. "What do you think?" she said.

  The physician looked at Rieger, thinking. "I have a few preparations I can try, but I won't lie to you. It doesn't look good. I'd say he'll likely die as not, no matter what I do. The cut's too deep and has done too much damage."

  "I see," said Faella.

  She knelt again by Rieger, looking again at the wound. She couldn't take her eyes off of it. One tiny little cut, no longer than a finger. That's all it took to kill a man.

  It seemed absurd. Laughable. How could something so small accomplish so much?

  She wanted to touch it; she didn't know why. Ada was on the other side of the room with the physician, who was showing her how to apply a new poultice. Feeling guilty, Faella reached out and ran her fingers along the jagged red opening.

  Things that were cut could be sewn. Faella's mother had been able to mend a dress so that you could never tell that it had been ripped. It was just a matter of concentration, she'd always said.

  Faella concentrated on Rieger, and her mind shifted into a kind of daydream, imagining what sorts of things lay beneath a man's skin. Blood and bone, flesh, meat. She'd never seen those things, but she assumed that he must look rather like a side of beef inside.

  Strange about healing. The body knit itself from the inside, like a torn hem taking a needle and stitching itself up. It was mysterious and wonderful. A kind of magic unlike the Gifts. The deeper magic of nature, which always desired to make itself whole. And couldn't such a thing be nudged in just the right direction? Faella had no idea how a body mended itself, but she understood desire.

  "Remove your hand from the injury, miss!" came the physician's voice. Faella opened her eyes; the physician was standing over her, scowling. Faella looked down and saw her palm pressed against Rieger's belly, massaging it.

  "You're killing him!" shouted Ada. She grabbed Faella's hand away.

  The wound was gone, as Faella had known it would be.

  The physician bent over and stared at Rieger, then at Faella. Rieger's breathing was already beginning to slow.

  "I don't know what kind of trickery you mestines have gotten up to, but I don't appreciate being fooled!" the physician snapped. "Play your glamour pranks on someone else!" She stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

  When, an hour later, Rieger regained consciousness, he asked Faella what had happened. Neither she nor Ada had an answer.

  A week later, Faella was shopping in the bazaar when she saw Malik Em out roaming the aisles with his friends in the Wolves. He laughed and winked at the stallkeepers, taking a piece of fruit here and a silver ring there, paying for nothing but thanking the vendors profusely in a mockery of propriety.

  The body desired to heal itself, she had discovered. But what if it didn't? If that desire could be increased, could it be decreased as well? Removed altogether?

  Faella watched Malik Em go, lost in this thought. When she learned a few days later that Malik Em had died of a simple ague, she shrugged. Albeit with a grim satisfaction.

  Probably just a coincidence.

  No, probably not.

  Faella knew desire, and no matter how much she tried to enjoy her life as the proprietor of the Bittersweet Wayward Mestina, she knew that she never could.

  More was waiting out there. More would come to her, whether she wanted it or not.

  Someday Silverdun would return to her, she began to think. And she wondered, if it did someday happen, would it be because she herself had caused it?

  It was something to ponder, but in the meantime there was always work to do.

  In matters of war, as in love, things rarely go as expected.

  -Lord Gray, Recollections

  net was waiting at the dock when the Splintered Driftwood nuzzled into its slip, guided flawlessly by Jedron, now back in his role as Captain Ilian. Paet had a satchel slung over one shoulder and held it close to his body. Silverdun looked over at Ironfoot. Neither of them had spoken much during the brief trip back to the mainland. Silverdun had been lost in his thoughts, and apparently so had Ironfoot. "Captain Ilian" hadn't spoken to either of them at all, seeming to understand that they needed the space.

  The boat touched the dock with a light thump, and one of the automata tossed a line to Paet, who tied it. Jedron leapt from the boat onto the dock; he and Paet regarded each other, but neither spoke.

  "Come on, then," said Jedron, waving to Silverdun and Ironfoot. "We don't have all day."

  Silverdun rose and took a step forward, and stumbled. Since the night that he'd been tossed into the pit of blackness, a night that he did not care to remember, he'd felt uncomforta
ble in his own skin. Oddly, though, at the same time he'd never felt better. Whatever they'd dunked him in appeared to have done him some good, but still ... it was impossible to describe. Jedron had told him that the feeling of strangeness would pass. It was all "part of it," but he refused to say what "it" was, and Ironfoot claimed not to know either.

  Silverdun followed Ironfoot onto the dock and stood blinking. The sounds of the seaside assailed him all at once: the shouts of the fishermen, the shushing of the wind through a hundred sails, the calls of gulls overhead. Farther up the pier, a legless man played the ocarina for passersby.

  "All went well, I assume?" Paet asked Jedron.

  "As well as can be expected," Jedron said. "This one," he added, jostling Silverdun's arm, "gave me a bit of a turn, though. Someone forgot to tell me that he'd studied potions at Nyelcu."

  Paet's expression didn't change. "He didn't."

  "I dropped out after a week," said Silverdun. "It wasn't for me."

  Jedron glared at Paet, who shrugged. "Were they successful or weren't they?"

  "They were," said Jedron. His look said don't test me.

  "Then we're finished here. Her Majesty thanks you for your service."

  There was a moment of deep tension between the two. Then Jedron laughed. "You little shit." He untied the line and then leapt with an astonishing nimbleness back on board the Splintered Driftwood.

  For a while Paet stood and watched as Jedron and his crew of mechanical sailors eased out of the marina and into open water. Silverdun and Ironfoot watched with him. No one spoke.

  Once the boat had vanished in the waves, Paet turned and looked at Silverdun. "You think you hate him now?" he said. "Wait until you've known him as long as I have."

  "Now what?" said Silverdun.

  "Now you go home and get settled," said Paet. "Both of you. If your training was anything like mine, you're exhausted beyond belief."

  "True," said Ironfoot. "I can't remember ever having been so tired."

  Paet opened his satchel and handed them each a sheaf of documents. "Each of you has a new valet at home," he said.

  Silverdun looked at the documents. On top was a Copyist Guild-certified likeness of a man named Olou, whose title was given as "Special Services Officer" of the Foreign Ministry.

  "Olou's a good man," said Paet, pointing at the likeness.

  "What is he for?" asked Silverdun.

  "He'll do all the things that an ordinary gentleman's man would do, and a few things he wouldn't. He'll help you select the proper attire for a given assignment, clean and maintain your weapons, that sort of thing. He'll also supervise the maid and cook. His job is to look out for you when you're at home."

  "A nice perk," said Ironfoot.

  "When you get to your home, give him the sign `The master has returned.' He will offer the countersign, `And there could not be a lovelier day for it."'

  "Seems a bit paranoid," said Silverdun. "Do you really expect a faux valet might strangle me in my sleep?"

  "Stranger things have happened," said Paet. "You've become a serious investment of the Ministry. We like to look after our investments."

  "I see."

  "Oh," added Paet. "Olou told me your rooms are a shambles, and that he expects you to take better care of your things while he's in your employ."

  "It's not my fault," said Silverdun. "I had a girl, but she resigned in a dispute over wages."

  "Really?" asked Paet. "Olou gave me the distinct impression that you'd bedded her and that her husband found out about it."

  "That is true," said Silverdun wistfully. "But that's not why she quit."

  "I don't really need a valet," said Ironfoot. "I've been a bachelor for many years now."

  "I didn't ask if you needed one," said Paet. "But if you insist on dressing yourself, that's your business."

  Paet pulled another sheet from the sheaf in Silverdun's hand. There was an address written on it: Blackstone House. One Several Lane.

  "Be at that address tomorrow at sundown," he said. "That's where you'll be working. Don't be late."

  With that, Paet turned and walked off up the dock, leaving Silverdun and Ironfoot to find their own ways home.

  Blackstone House rose out of a walled garden overgrown with nettles, wild roses, and moss-covered willow trees. Several Lane was just inside the north wall of the city, in a neighborhood peopled mostly by those who valued their privacy and could afford to maintain it. Thus its secretive appearance was less out of place than it might have been elsewhere. A bronze gate was set in the wall just to the right of the house, its bars offering a view only of a chaotic line of shrubbery that might once have been an orderly hedgerow.

  The second story jutted out above the garden, a bleak promontory, its dark bricks worn and vine-covered, its windows shuttered.

  When Silverdun's hired cab dropped him off, just before sunset, he was certain there was some kind of mistake. He double-checked the address with the driver, who shrugged and whipped his horses on without a word.

  This couldn't possibly be right. The headquarters of the all-powerful Shadows was in an abandoned ghasthouse? Surely Paet was having a joke at his expense.

  It was chilly out, but Silverdun's new cloak, provided by his equally new valet Olou, was just the thing to keep out the cold. Olou had turned out to be a young man, probably fresh out of the army, who'd drawn a short lot somewhere along the way. Regardless of how he'd ended up there, he tended to his duties with panache. And Silverdun had never looked better.

  Silverdun approached the gate, but before he could peer in, another carriage turned onto the road. It too stopped in front of Blackstone House, and Ironfoot emerged from it. He examined the house with the same reservation that Silverdun felt.

  "Strange place for a government office," he said.

  "Ministry of Ghosts, perhaps?" offered Silverdun.

  Ironfoot smiled. "So what happens? We go in, get accosted by a few vengeful spirits, and then Paet shows up and laughs at us while we're wetting our breeches?"

  "I was thinking roughly the same thing."

  "When I was in the army, they tied new recruits in burlap sacks and rolled them down the hills in the Gnomics," said Ironfoot. "Big, tall things, these hills. They'd have races with them."

  "And how did you fare?" asked Silverdun.

  "I won four out of five," said Ironfoot. "It's all in how you arch your back."

  "Universal, I suppose. In my first session of Corpus, the senior hall minister handed me a four-hundred-page stack of bills and told me I'd be voting on them the next day, so I'd better read them all."

  "How far did you get?"

  "I never even glanced at them," said Silverdun. Seeing the look on Ironfoot's face, he added, "I wasn't much of a legislator."

  "Do you find yourself wondering if we've made a terrible mistake?" asked Ironfoot.

  "Every day. But then, I've made a career of joining the wrong team," said Silverdun. "One gets used to it after a while."

  "That's encouraging," said Ironfoot glumly.

  "Right on time, I see," came Paet's voice behind them.

  Silverdun turned. Paet was standing in the street, leaning on his cane. There was no carriage anywhere nearby.

  "Where did you come from?" said Silverdun.

  "I'm a Shadow, Silverdun," said Paet. "It's part of the job. Shall we go in?"

  Paet approached the gate and placed his palm on one of the bronze bars. He said a word of unbinding, and the gate swung open.

  Paet led them up the walk. It was darker here than outside, the mosshung willow branches filtering out what remained of the daylight. It smelled of roses and loam.

  The front door of the house was black; the paint on the door and the trim was chipped and peeling in places.

  "The servants have clearly been on holiday for some time," said Silverdun.

  "You can grab a paintbrush and take care of it if you like," said Paet. He took a ring of keys from his pocket and placed one in the front door.

>   The door opened into a totally empty room. Dust lined the windowsills and blanketed the wooden floors. A soot-blackened fireplace hulked on one wall. Very little light found its way through the drawn shutters. Paet produced a tiny witchlight torch from his pocket and lit their way toward the stairs.

  "Come on," he said. As they walked, Silverdun noticed that while their steps kicked up dust from the floor, they left no footprints.

  They climbed the stairs to the second story, which was as dusty and empty as the first. Their steps made hollow echoes. Paet led the way to a back bedroom, where an empty bed frame lurked in a corner.

  "Through here," said Paet, indicating a closet door. He opened the door and stepped in, beckoning for Silverdun and Ironfoot to follow. Silverdun stood in the closet, crowded against Paet and Ironfoot, feeling foolish. Paet smelled like pipe smoke. He closed the door and they stood in the cramped space for a moment while Paet found another key on his ring in the torchlight. He placed it in the closet door lock and turned. The closet seemed to turn upside down, and Silverdun's stomach heaved. Ironfoot gulped.

  Silverdun looked down, and now he could see light coming from under the closet door. Paet opened it and they stepped out of the closet into a small reception room. A pretty young Fae woman stood when they entered.

  "Good evening, Chief Paet," she said.

  Silverdun looked around, disoriented at first, until he realized what was going on. The entire house had been quite expertly spellturned. They had simply stepped into a turned version of the bedroom they'd just left.

  "Good evening, Brei," said Paet. He removed his cloak and handed it to her. "I'd like you to meet Ironfoot and Silverdun, our newest Shadows."

  "A pleasure, gentlemen," said Brei, reaching for Silverdun's and Ironfoot's cloaks as well. She smiled at Silverdun. "I've got keys for the two of you, and there's tea or coffee if you'd like some."

  Silverdun and Ironfoot looked at each other. Perhaps this wasn't going to be so bad after all. "Tea, if you please," said Silverdun.