The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  "The trail of her killer may be a bit cold after five years," said Silverdun.

  "I know who killed her," said Paet, a bit more severely than seemed necessary, even for him. "I want you to find out about Prae Benesile. I want to know why she was investigating him and why it got her killed by the Bel Zheret."

  Silverdun and Ironfoot glanced briefly at each other. Ironfoot's face was stony, but Silverdun could almost see the words "Bel Zheret" hanging on his lips.

  "And what do we do if we encounter Bel Zheret ourselves?" asked Silverdun.

  Paet laughed, a short bark that echoed in the room. He stood slowly, leaning on his cane. He turned around, facing the wall, and lifted up his shirt. A long, purple scar made an artful swirl across his back.

  He let the shirttail fall and looked at the two of them. "You?" he asked, sighing. "You die."

  He paused. "That reminds me of something," he said.

  Silverdun wasn't quite sure he wanted to hear whatever it was the thought of his death reminded Paet of.

  "When you go on this mission, it's likely that you'll find yourself in a stressful situation before too long," Paet said.

  "That's kind of the point, isn't it?"

  Paet smiled his thin smile. "I suppose so. Regardless, when that happens, you may find yourself experiencing ... certain reactions that you have not felt before."

  "What does that mean?" asked Silverdun.

  "I can't say," said Paet. "You must be ready for anything. Just be aware that if you find yourself suddenly more capable than before, that this is to be both expected and encouraged. There's no way of telling exactly when or how this will occur."

  "How can you be so sure that whatever this is, is going to happen?"

  "It always happens to newly minted Shadows. It's the way of things."

  "Jedron never mentioned anything about it," said Ironfoot.

  "I imagine that half of what Jedron told you was outright lies, and the other half was misleading."

  Silverdun couldn't argue with that.

  "Be warned," said Paet. "That's all."

  "Paet," said Ironfoot. "When we were on that island, something very strange happened. There was a pit, and it was black-"

  "I know what you're going to say," said Paet. "And I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss it. What happened on that island is not for you to know. For the time being."

  "And when will that time cease to be?" asked Ironfoot.

  "When it becomes necessary for it to be otherwise."

  Paet stood and shooed them out of his office.

  "Now go into the den and wait. I'll be down in a few minutes with the mission specialists, and we'll go over in detail exactly what I expect you to do."

  Mag Mell is a place of circles and mirrors. The world is a spiral archipelago of round volcanic atolls, with calm waters within and raging seas without. The waters within the island grottoes are preternaturally, magically still, and because the sand beneath them is black, they provide a perfect reflection of the sky above. In Mag Me II, mirrors are holy; to break one is to break the symmetry of life itself.

  It is a segregated world. The men live aboveground on the islands in houses of wood, and the women live beneath the water in villages of rock and woven seaweed. They come together in the shallows to court and to mate, but the majority of their lives are spent separately.

  Children in Mag Mell are born androgynous and amphibious, capable of living either above or below the water, but when they reach puberty they must decide on a gender.When that time is reached, a special ceremony is held during which the child declares itself either male or female. If the child chooses to be male, then it remains on land and after several months it loses its gills and takes on masculine attributes. If it chooses to become female, it goes to live beneath the waves and loses its lungs instead. It is said that when a native man peers into the coastal waters of Mag Mell, he sees the woman he might have been. He can ask her questions and she will answer with the wisdom of the woman he is not.

  Stil-Eret,"Mag Mell:World of Mirrors;' from Travels at Home and Abroad

  ilverdun had visited the world of Mag Mell once as a very young man. He'd traveled here with his father on holiday. Now that it occurred to him, he was fairly certain he owned the house on Isle Dureicth where they'd stayed. Or at least he should.

  Silverdun remembered Mag Mell as being warm and bright, but when they stepped through the Port-Herion Chancery Lock, they were greeted with dim light and a stiff chill. The arch on the Mag Mell side of the gate was located underground, Silverdun remembered. When the warping mists of the lock left his eyes, he saw a long stone ramp leading upward toward a stout metal gate, and more dim light beyond. Powerful witchlight chandeliers hung from the ceiling, but they weren't quite capable of dispelling the sepulchral feel of the place.

  Or perhaps that was only Silverdun's imagination. The delegation of jewelry guildsmen that stepped through the gate just behind them were jolly enough. They had laughed and spoken loudly all the way through the customs check on the Faerie side of the gate, which seemed to have lasted for hours, and their temper hadn't changed now. One of them, in fact, was still speaking to Silverdun about his guild's mission to negotiate mineral rights with a mining consortium on one of the southern islands. Silverdun and Ironfoot were both dressed as minor government officials, and Silverdun supposed that this was the sort of thing that such people were forced to endure on a daily basis.

  As they proceeded up the ramp toward the gate, Ironfoot looked around brightly, taking it all in. They could have done much worse in their selection. He barely knew Ironfoot and already he felt as though they'd been working together all their lives. The binding ring? Perhaps, but if so, it was a wonderful spell, because Silverdun found that he genuinely liked the man.

  Had Silverdun ever had a friend of his own social rank? Maybe he wasn't cut out to be a lord after all.

  At the top of the ramp, they were subjected to Mag Mell customs agents who were, sadly, quite a lot more efficient and friendly than their Seelie counterparts. They looked more or less like Fae, although they were darker of skin, and had rounded ears like the Nymaens, like Silverdun's old traveling companion Brian Satterly. The agents inspected Silverdun's and Ironfoot's Foreign Ministry identification closely, but waved them through without question.

  Past the metal gate at the top of the ramp, they rounded a corner and stepped outside into a light rain that dotted the sea like ground pepper all around the tiny island that housed the gate. A ferry waited to take them to Isle Cureid, the capital.

  "Lord Silverdun!" came a voice behind them.

  Baron Glennet, Silverdun's dinner partner from a few months before, had just emerged from the gate and was hurrying toward them, followed by a small retinue of aides and attendants.

  "Baron," said Silverdun. He was aware of Everess's approval of the man, but he couldn't decide whether that made him trust Glennet more, or less.

  "I saw you on my way through the lock, but I just missed being in your group. I'm glad I was able to catch up with you."

  He turned to Ironfoot. "You must be Master Falores from Queensbridge. I've heard a lot about you."

  "A pleasure," said Ironfoot.

  Glennet leaned in and whispered, "I wanted to wish you luck on your errand in Annwn."

  Silverdun smiled. "We'll do our best," he said. "What brings you to Mag Mell?"

  "Work, as always," he said. "Trying to negotiate a better price for silver ore on behalf of the Smiths' Guild."

  "Your works sounds like all sorts of fun," said Silverdun.

  "Less dangerous than yours, anyway," said Glennet with a knowing smile.

  They were all met at the ferry by a matronly woman named Glienn, who was the Seelie ambassador's second-in-command. The jewelry guildsmen had met their contact on the island, and they were already happily getting drunk on the other side of the ferryboat.

  Glienn was welcoming, but a bit circumspect, and exchanged only pleasantries while they were at s
ea. When they reached the docks on Isle Cureid, there was a hansom cab waiting for Glienn, Silverdun, and Ironfoot. Glennet had arranged his own transportation, and they parted with the requisite pleasantries.

  Silverdun, Ironfoot, and Glienn piled into the cab, thankful for the shelter and warmth, and the cab moved quickly away. Isle Cureid was a pleasant enough place despite the rain: The homes and buildings were all of brightly painted wood, the streets of volcanic rock, silver in the rain. Everything looked new and clean. It was certainly odd to look out onto a busy street and see not a single woman; Silverdun was glad they weren't staying long.

  The Seelie Embassy was located on a quiet side street. It was built of imported Faerie marble, and seemed dour and out of place in the gayness of Mag Mell. The rain, however, seemed appropriate to it. As they piled out of the hansom, Silverdun smelled calendula and capelbells, Faerie flowers from the garden fronting the embassy, mixing with the odor of earthworms and horse dung.

  The Seelie ambassador was a Fae gentleman named Aranquet, who dressed in the colorful linens of Mag Mell, with his Seelie Army medals pinned directly to the pink blouse. He welcomed them to the embassy, smiling. Glienn passed out powerfully strong drinks that smelled of mint and were served in cups made of tightly woven reeds.

  "Welcome to Mag Mell, gentlemen!" Aranquet sang, shaking their hands briskly. "Come, come!"

  He led them to his office, which was airy and spacious, filled with furniture also woven from reeds of some kind, and satin pillows in the color of peaches and limes. A riotously colored bird sat on a perch in a corner, its beak tucked beneath its wing. Glienn left them, shutting the door behind her.

  Once the door was closed, Aranquet's demeanor hardened. He drained his drink and set the cup aside, his eyes on the two men in front of him.

  "So," he said. "You're Paet's replacements, eh?"

  "You know him?" said Silverdun. "Has he always been so charming as he is now?"

  Aranquet laughed out loud. "Ah! I can see we're going to get along famously." He reached for his drink cup, found it empty, and scowled. "No, Paet has never been renowned for his wit or charm. Then again, he's done things for the Seelie that ... well, he's accomplished some astonishing things in his time and received no credit for it. Not publicly, anyway. And never asked for any."

  Aranquet tapped the cup on his desk. "Still and all, though, a bit of a bastard."

  "We were told you'd have some documents for us," said Ironfoot.

  The ambassador looked sideways at Ironfoot. "You're the diplomatic one, I take it?"

  "No," said Ironfoot. "I'm just more scared of Paet than he is."

  Aranquet took two sets of papers from a drawer and handed them across the desk to Silverdun and Ironfoot. Passports and travel documents.

  Silverdun looked at the passport, which was a perfect forgery as far as he could tell. The glamour imprinted on the page looked exactly like him, but gave his name as Hy Wezel, with an address in Blood of Arawn.

  "The two of you could hardly pass as Maggos or Annwni," said Aranquet, indicating the passport, "so we wrote you up as Unseelie Fae instead. A bit more dangerous, perhaps, but these are quality documents. They'll hold up to close scrutiny. If you get detained with them, however, they'll probably cut your heads off."

  Silverdun glanced at the travel documents and laughed. "Eel merchants?" he said.

  "Lot of eel going back and forth between-worlds. The Annwni can't get enough of them. The Maggo variety, I mean. Decent Fae eel they turn up their noses at."

  "I was an eel merchant once before," said Silverdun. He thought of his trip across Faerie with Mauritane, who had tried with a total lack of success to pass them off as eel merchants to a traveling mestine named Nafaeel and his troupe, the Bittersweet Wayward Mestina. And the star of that show had been Nafaeel's daughter. Faella.

  Now was no time to be thinking about Faella. She'd been bad for him. She'd ruined his face. There'd been something strange about her, as well: She'd manifested a Gift that Queen Titania had referred to as the Magic of Change, the Thirteenth Gift. Silverdun liked to think of himself as a worldly fellow, but he'd never heard of such a thing, and hadn't really felt like asking his sovereign to elaborate on the subject. But his thoughts kept coming back to Faella at the oddest moments. Seeing her face in his mind, he felt a subtle pang, a queer sense of loss.

  Aranquet sniffed. "I don't suppose it's any good asking you two the nature of your errand in Annwn? If you were to give me some clue, I might be able to ... assist somehow?" He looked significantly at Silverdun.

  "Her Majesty's business, I'm afraid," said Ironfoot. Silverdun only shrugged. Information was as precious a commodity in Mag Mell as it was back home.

  "Well, then," said Aranquet. "If there's nothing else, I'll need to be getting along. I've a dinner with Baron Glennet tonight, and the wife expects me to help her browbeat the cooks."

  If Annwn had ever been a pleasant place, that time had been prior to Mab's rule. Beyond the city center of Kollws Kapytlyn, the streets of Blood of Arawn were filthy, strewn with rotting garbage and horse dung. Beggars lined the streets. Some played tiny harps and sang, in a distinctively nasal, plaintive wail. Others simply sat on street corners rattling cups. Most nonofficial buildings were desperately in need of repair.

  "I've been in some foul-smelling places," Silverdun told Ironfoot as they stepped warily down the main road in the district of Kollws Vymynal. "But there's something truly awful about the stench here. It's like despair mixed with ... rotting fish."

  "Villages on the Gnomic borders smell worse," Ironfoot said. "Like feet. Nobody knows why."

  "Never been," said Silverdun. "Never seen a Gnomic. Though I was told by a young lady at university that they're really quite noble and deeply misunderstood."

  "Put her alone in a room with one for ten minutes and she'll be telling a different story."

  The street they were on climbed steadily upward toward the summit of the hill upon which the district was built. As they climbed, a slight breeze blew, taking some of the smell with it, and the sun peeked out from behind a cloud. Silverdun looked back; from here he could see most of the city. The Unseelie flag flew limply here and there; outside the walls was a tent city blown by the dust of the plains.

  They found the address they were looking for at the end of a cul-de-sac, a claptrap four-story building that had seen much, much better days. They looked around, saw nothing suspicious, and went inside. As they climbed the stairs, Silverdun took a small leather notebook from his jacket pocket.

  The door of the third-floor apartment was opened by a tiny woman in a faded linen dress who didn't look them in the eye. "What is it?" she asked in a small voice.

  "We'd like to talk to Prae Benesile, please," said Silverdun, mimicking an Unseelie accent and trying to sound as pompous and official as possible. He and Ironfoot had agreed to pose as bureaucrats from the Unseelie Revenue Office. It wouldn't endear them to anyone, but the Annwni would be afraid not to speak to them.

  "Prae Benesile? He's been dead for years," said the woman.

  "Ah," said Silverdun. "Well, there's a tax matter we need to discuss with his next-of-kin then. Do you happen to know where we can find them?"

  A man came to the door. He was small but muscular, wearing only breeches. His beard was clipped short but ragged. "What's this about?" he asked.

  "They're here for your father," said the woman. "Something about the taxes."

  "Dead men can't pay taxes," spat the man. "Or do you Unseelie bastards intend to dig him up and go through his pockets?"

  "Tye!" hissed the woman, her eyes wide. "Please."

  Tye Benesile examined Ironfoot and Silverdun. "Come in then," he said. He waved them in. As Silverdun passed him he could smell the brandywine on the man's breath.

  The apartment was small, the air stifling. Tye Benesile's wife stood looking at them, suspicion worn into her features. Benesile himself sat on a pasteboard chair and indicated a stained sofa for Ironfoot and Silverdun
. "If it's revenue you've come for," he said, "you came to the wrong place. I'm out of work. You should have that written in your book." He pointed at Silverdun's notebook.

  "It's information we're here for, not money," said Silverdun. He took a fountain pen from his pocket and unscrewed the top. "We'd like to know what your father was doing when he died."

  "My father?" said Tye. "My father was a scholar. He studied at a famous university. You should have that written in your book as well."

  Silverdun and Ironfoot shared a brief glance. Silverdun tried again. "Do you happen to know if your father was working on anything of note at the time of his death?"

  Tye Benesile's eyes widened. "They said that he was killed in the riots on the night you lot showed up, by the looters. But I always knew it was a murder. I told them when they came; I said there was nothing here anyone would want to loot. This was his place then, you know. All he had was his books, and they aren't worth a copper slug."

  "Do you have any idea why someone would have wanted to murder your father?" asked Ironfoot.

  "I'm going out," said Tye's wife. She had a basket over her shoulder. "They said there might be eggs at the market today."

  "Go then," said Tye, resenting the intrusion. She stamped her foot and slammed the door behind her.

  Tye Benesile pointed at his chest. "My father always said I should go to university. He said if I worked hard I could do it, but I never wanted to. I was young; I didn't want to do anything for my own good. Too late now, though, right? He said the brandywine would rot my brain, and I took it as a personal challenge."

  Silverdun sighed, rolling his eyes. This was going nowhere. But Ironfoot held up his hand. "Go on," he said to Tye. Ironfoot seemed to grow taller and stronger when he said it. Ah. The Gift of Leadership. Interesting fellow, this Ironfoot.

  Tye responded to Ironfoot instantly, seeming to forget that Silverdun existed. "Like I said, all he had left was those books, and I know they weren't worth much because I tried to sell some of them after he died, and I couldn't get anyone to even look at them. Some of them are in different languages, even. He could read Thule Fae as well. Can you imagine that? There's but ten or eleven in all the Known who can read the Thule Fae these days. But he could. He was retired; you know that. He spent all of his last days up here reading and writing."