The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  Silverdun clapped Ironfoot on the back. "Feels nice, doesn't it?"

  Ironfoot grimaced. "The really painful part will come when he admits that the bloody thing doesn't actually do anything."

  "My turn," said Sela. Paet looked at her and hesitated. Then he offered her the ring. After seeing what her two comrades had just suffered, the anticipation was growing unbearable, and she simply wanted to get it over with.

  She held out her finger, and Paet dropped the ring on it.

  It hurt. Very much. She did what was required, and hurled the ring as far from her as possible.

  "Are you all right?" asked Silverdun. She wanted to tell him that no, everything was not all right, and would he please put his arms around her?

  "I'll be just fine," she said.

  Paet put the ring back in the box, and the box back in the drawer. He regarded them with satisfaction.

  "Forget what Everess said. Now you are Shadows. Now we are brothers and sisters. We share a bond unlike any other.

  "Now the work can truly begin."

  "What about you?" said Silverdun. "Aren't you going to put it on?"

  "I put it on a long time ago," said Paet.

  Sela had hoped she'd get a chance to speak with Silverdun after the meeting, but he seemed preoccupied, and Sela was so torn by her own confusion that by the time she got up the courage to speak with him, she discovered that he'd already gone home.

  As promised, Paet hired her a cab and she went home alone, confused, elated, worried. All of these emotions clung to her like one of the formal dresses that Everess liked for her to wear: awkward, ill fitting, oppressive.

  Everess was in his study when she arrived at Boulevard Laurwelana.

  "Quite an evening, eh?" he said, looking up from his work.

  "It was, at that," she answered.

  "Well, go on up to bed," he said. "It's late, and I'm sure Paet has all sorts of things to hurl at you tomorrow. Both literally and figuratively, if I know him."

  "Of course, Lord Everess."

  After a moment Everess looked up and found her still there. "Yes," he said, annoyed, "what is it?"

  "You didn't tell us the whole truth," she said.

  Everess leaned back in his chair. "You're right," he said. "I didn't. I'm sorry."

  "Apology accepted," said Sela.

  She went upstairs to her room and lay on the bed, fully clothed. Ecara came to undress her, but Sela sent her away. She tossed and turned but couldn't sleep.

  About an hour later, there was a loud knock on the door downstairs. A few seconds passed, and then another. Sela heard footsteps, the opening door. She heard muffled voices. Quiet at first and then louder.

  Sela crept out of her room and down the hallway. She stood on the landing and peered over the banister that overlooked Everess's parlor. Paet was here, pacing, while Everess sat in a wingback chair with a large goblet of wine, watching him.

  "Angry?" said Paet. "I'm furious!"

  "Calm down, man," said Everess. "Have a seat. I'd offer you a drink, but you've clearly had some on your own."

  "You asked me for recommendations," said Paet. "I gave you a list. Twenty-five names. Excellent candidates, chosen from within the Ministry, the army, the Royal Guard. Any of those would have been perfect. But do I get any of those?"

  "Now look here-"

  "Of course not!" Paet interrupted. "Instead you give me, what, a university professor! And a sarcastic monk! And that thing you've got locked upstairs!

  "You expect me to do what I do, to work miracles, and yet it seems that in every instance, you do everything in your power to hinder me!"

  "If I may speak for a moment," said Everess coldly.

  Paet ignored him. "And then, as if that weren't bad enough, you lie to them, tell them that this will be something that it isn't. It's the first day, and I'm fairly certain that these brilliant new Shadows you've selected for me all want to quit."

  He paused. He took the decanter on the sideboard and poured himself a glass of whiskey.

  "And I wish I could let them!"

  He sat down in a chair opposite Everess and took a long drink from his glass.

  Everess cleared his throat. "Where to begin?"

  He leaned forward. "First, and most importantly, did Silverdun and Ironfoot return from Whitemount successfully? Or did they not?"

  "They did."

  "Good. At least you're willing to admit it. Second, that university professor was a war hero in the Gnomics. He fought with valor and distinction and was awarded the Laurel four times over for excellence in combat. He's no mere scholar and we both know it.

  "Now Silverdun. You know that Silverdun was with Mauritane on whatever bloody secret mission that Titania sent him on. He fought at the battle of Sylvan. He's a very clever fellow, and no slouch with the Gifts, either.

  "And as for that thing, as you have so gallantly put it, I have expressed to you on more than one occasion not just how valuable she is, but how much more valuable she may become with the proper training, which I expect you to provide."

  Sela realized they were talking about her. She was that "thing." She had known for a long time, ever since she'd been taken from Lord Tanen and brought to Copperine House, that she was different somehow. Perhaps even special. She even understood why she was "valuable." She had skills: She could read others; she could kill. All of the things that Tanen had brought out in her; those things that she'd tried hard at Copperine House to forget. Now these things determined her worth.

  Tonight she did not want to be different. She wanted to be like anyone else. A pretty blonde-haired girl that Silverdun might see and fall in love with.

  Not a thing.

  "But there is one more piece of information that you do not have, and which I have reserved in anticipation of this very moment."

  "And what is that?" asked Paet, seething with anger. Sela did not need to read a thread to know what Paet was thinking. This was Everess's favorite game: to withhold a vital piece of information, hide it behind his back like a club, and then beat you over the head with it.

  "That I did not choose Silverdun, or Ironfoot, or Sela."

  "No? And who did? Was it Aba's guiding hand? Regina Titania herself?"

  Everess smiled. "The latter, actually."

  Paet's eyes widened. "You expect me to believe that the Seelie queen reviewed your request for personnel and personally selected these three to be Shadows? During her rest period while hearing petitions, perhaps? Or in between drinks at a ball?"

  "I can only tell you what she told me. I went to her to discuss the matter of reopening the Office of Shadow. We spoke briefly, perhaps five minutes. At the end of the meeting, she wrote three names down on a slip of paper and handed it to me."

  "And you are only just now telling me this?" said Paet. "Why?"

  "As you are so fond of telling others, Paet, it was not necessary for you to know."

  Paet seethed.

  "One last point," said Everess, pouring himself another drink. "You accused me of lying to our recruits. Did you not just this evening admit to doing the same thing? I fail to see why you have singled me out for opprobrium on that count."

  "What I did," said Paet, "and will always do is conceal that information which has been deemed classified. That is not quite the same as lying, unless you'd like to spend the rest of the evening arguing the semantics of it. What you have done is deliberately mislead them.

  "Of course you fail to see the distinction. You're so comfortable with falsehood that you can't tell the difference."

  Everess's face had slowly reddened throughout Paet's brief speech. "There is a line I suggest you do not cross, Chief Pact. I allow you to speak to me freely, and not as the commoner you are to the nobleman that I am. But I will only take so much abuse from you."

  "Then I'll add only one more thing, nzy lord," said Paet. "If you ever keep me in the dark about something so critical as the selection of my officers again, there will be hell to pay."

 
"I'll take it under advisement," said Everess. "Now, are we quite finished?"

  Paet stood. "For now. Until the next time you find a way to be a thorn in my side. And before you take any more umbrage, be advised that I will speak to you any way I damn well please."

  He strode away and out of Sela's vision. Her heart was racing. She tiptoed back to her room and lay down, willing herself to be calm.

  She had known that Paet and Everess weren't on the best of terms, but now it seemed as though they detested one another. She had never trusted Everess. Did that mean she ought to trust Paet? He was difficult to read, almost closed to her.

  That reminded her of Silverdun's trick during the meeting earlier. How had he managed to shut her out so easily? No one had ever done that to her before. And what had he been thinking when he'd done it?

  There were so many questions, so many puzzles. Just when she thought herself an expert on Fae nature, she realized that she really knew nothing at all.

  Sleep was a long time coming.

  Silverdun's body wanted sleep, but his mind wouldn't allow it. He lay in bed, tossing and turning, the details of the meeting replaying themselves in his head.

  What had he gotten himself into? Could Everess and Paet have been serious? Would they truly toss him back into Crete Sulace if he tried to back out now? When Mauritane was recruiting allies to take with him on his mad mission across Faerie at the queen's behest, he'd told Silverdun more or less the same thing: Go with me or I will kill you. How many of Silverdun's great life choices had been made at knifepoint?

  And Sela. She was beautiful, to be sure. And alluring. There was something almost mystical about her, something mysterious and primal. But there was also something very wrong about her, a hardness, something dark that suggested she'd seen things that no one should see. The look in her eyes, at the same time keen and confused, as if she were from another world entirely.

  She had gotten inside his head somehow, using the Gift of Empathy. Silverdun had experienced Empathy; the counselors at Nyelcu all had a bit of it. But this was something different altogether. She hadn't just read his mind; she'd somehow become one with it. When she reached into him, something of her was there with it; they mingled somehow. And what he'd felt of her had been deep and dark, the Inland Sea at night, an endless abyss. The water of her was pure and clear, but what swam beneath its surface chilled him.

  One of the things that Mauritane had taught him during the long weeks of their trek across the kingdom was how to guard himself from Empathy. What a typically Mauritane skill, Silverdun realized.

  Still, Sela was beautiful. He was pulled to her. He wanted her.

  He began to drift off to sleep, dreaming of kissing her, but as his mind wandered toward dreaming, her face became Faella's in his mind, and it was Faella's name he whispered just before he lost consciousness.

  The difficulty of the fool's errand is that it is typically the fool who undertakes it.

  -Master jedron

  he first day of the month of Hawk dawned sunny and bright, but despite the weather, Blackstone House was still as oppressive and imposing as it had been on their first visit. The inside of the house was, perhaps, bleaker than it had been then; the early-morning light that eked its way past the heavy shutters cast a pall on the empty rooms. Silverdun climbed the stairs and stepped into the closet in the back bedroom. He paused with his key in the lock, hesitating the way one would before jumping into a cold pond. The disorientation was of the kind that one never got used to.

  The instant Silverdun stepped into the turn, the house came alive with sound. Copyists and amanuenses hurried through the office carrying scrolls and bound documents, and a pair of message sprites were brawling in one of the corners, fighting over a scrap of pink silk fabric. In the main office, every desk was occupied, the intelligence officers preparing briefings or translating intercepted documents or whatever it was that they did. A few heads turned when Silverdun entered, then went back to whatever they'd been doing. Silverdun went downstairs feeling oddly light and at ease.

  Ironfoot and Paet were waiting in Paet's office, sipping tea in awkward silence. Paet glanced with practiced accusatory subtlety at the clock on his desk, showing ten minutes past the hour. Silverdun ignored him.

  "No Sela this morning?" Silverdun asked, as innocently as possible.

  "She's on another assignment," said Paet, expressionless.

  "Of no concern to me, I take it?" asked Silverdun.

  "Not at this time."

  Silverdun sighed and sat. This was going to be the way of things. Well. Information had a way of getting around. At court, as in politics, as in most everything else, information was always the most precious commodity.

  "I'm sending the two of you to Annwn," said Paet, handing each of them a leather binder holding unpleasantly thick sheaves of documents. Ironfoot reached out eagerly for his, but Silverdun wavered, experiencing again the strange, embarrassing shame at taking orders from his social inferior. This had, of course, become a pattern with him since his days as a prisoner at Crete Sulace, but he'd never quite gotten used to it. If there were a medal for least respected nobleman in all of Faerie, he'd have won it hands down. Maybe it was a good thing. "Humility is the soul's sustenance," Estiane had told him once. Smug bastard.

  Silverdun took the binder and opened it. It contained dossiers on a number of government officials, a briefing on the political situation, the names and addresses of friendly contacts among the populace, and a brief mission document, written in Paet's tidy scrawl, a bit blurred by a copyist who was either harried or incompetent.

  "Obviously you can't travel directly, so we'll be sending you via Mag Mell. The ambassador in Isle Cureid will provide you with the documentation you'll need to cross into Annwn." The Port-Auvris Lock, the gateway connecting the Seelie Kingdom directly to Annwn, had been closed five years earlier, during the Unseelie invasion.

  "Your primary mission," said Paet, "is to make contact with several of the local authorities in Blood of Arawn who we believe may be particularly resistant to the current political situation. Since Mab conquered Annwn five years ago, the populace has become more and more restless. There have been four separate rebellions quashed by the Unseelie contingent there. All of them minor, but there does seem to be a trend."

  "What are we after?" asked Silverdun. "Annwn is a bit of a backwater, isn't it?"

  "Yes," said Paet, "but it's a backwater that provides a massive amount of tribute in the form of gold and a fair-sized army that can be mobilized against the Seelie Kingdom should Mab see fit to do so."

  "Do we have intelligence that leads us to believe she might?"

  Paet nodded. "We have evidence that proves she already has. One of our spotters along the border near Wamarnest spied two companies of Annwni cavalry training alongside their Unseelie counterparts."

  Ironfoot frowned. "Why train so near the border? Wouldn't it make sense to hide that kind of force?"

  Paet made a noncommittal gesture. "It may be that they wanted us to see it, to frighten us."

  "It's also the only place they've got to drill cavalry," said Silverdun. "Any farther north and the ground is too unstable to risk horses. They build those cities in the sky for a reason."

  "Regardless," said Paet, "if we can find some way to undermine the Unseelie in Annwn then we're that much closer to surviving a war."

  "You'd like the two of us to whip up an armed insurrection? That shouldn't be too difficult. We'll hand out a few sharpened sticks and some pamphlets and that'll be the thing done."

  Paet sighed. It was childish to needle him, but it was also gratifying.

  "There are other methods that may prove more effective," said Paet, ignoring him. "As you may know, the political system in Annwn is rather unlike ours. Overall, they're ruled by the Unseelie, but Mab typically doesn't dismantle the existing structure unless it suits her to do so, and in the case of Annwn, it did not."

  "So what's the existing structure?" asked Ironfoot.
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  "The city of Blood of Arawn, and thus the world at large, is run by a number of elected magistrates, who themselves elect seven of their number to act as a high council."

  "Who elects them?" asked Silverdun. "The people?"

  "Yes," said Paet. "Property holders, anyway."

  "Very progressive," said Silverdun.

  "Anyhow, this system of elections is rife with corruption, and any given election can be bought fairly easily. A few bags of gold distributed to the right people-"

  "And we can help place in power those favorable to our cause," finished Silverdun.

  "Precisely," said Paet. "As Everess has told you both, our battles aren't fought on the field. Our offensives are a bit more judicious."

  "I imagine it would be fairly expensive to buy out the entire body politic," said Silverdun. "Or do your pockets run deeper than I suspect?"

  "Any trouble we can cause," he said, "even enough to disrupt troop movements between worlds for a while, could give us a useful advantage. And if we can help arrange a rebellion with the vague promise of Seelie assistance ..." Paet let the words linger in the air.

  "But there wouldn't be any real Seelie assistance, would there?" said Ironfoot.

  "Not unless we wanted to start the war on our own, no. But allowing a few rebels to believe it is a different matter altogether."

  Silverdun smiled. "I see that Everess's way of thinking has rubbed off on you," he said. "Anything for victory."

  "Yes," said Paet. "For this victory, yes." He leaned forward. "For this victory I will lie and cheat and steal and kill if I must. If the choice is between a single life and a way of life, then there is no contest."

  He glared at Silverdun. "Spend some time in Annwn under Unseelie rule and then tell me what you think about it."

  Paet had a fine way of making even the most ruthless actions seem reasonable. No wonder Everess had him in charge.

  Paet waited for what seemed a calculated moment and then added as if in afterthought, "There's something else I'd like you to check into while you're in Annwn."

  "What's that?" asked Ironfoot.

  "When I was there five years ago, I was working with your most recent predecessor, a woman named Jenien. She was killed at the home of a man named Prae Benesile on the night of Mab's invasion."