The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  "Stay behind me!" he hissed. She looked over his shoulder and gasped. Easily a dozen of the City Guard were arrayed across the large balcony, all of them with crossbows. Elspet was kneeling on the ground with a crossbow at her neck, her head bowed.

  The man in front had a different insignia on his uniform than the others; Sela racked her brain to remember the ranks of Unseelie guardsmen. This one was a sergeant, she believed, and the others were deputies.

  "Drop the knives and come down the stairs slowly," said the sergeant. "You are under arrest."

  "What do we do?" Sela asked breathlessly.

  Ironfoot and Timha were directly behind her. "Surrender!" said Timha. "They'll kill you if you don't!"

  "Avert your eyes," said Silverdun. "I'm going to dazzle them with a bit of witchlight."

  "That's not going to give us enough time to get to the yacht," said Ironfoot.

  "Do you have any better ideas?" asked Silverdun. "My old friend Mauritane can snatch crossbow bolts out of the air, but I, alas, cannot."

  "Let's pray, then, that we can grow back internal organs as well as hands," said Ironfoot.

  "Come down now," said the sergeant, "or we will fire."

  "Now," said Silverdun. He raised his hand as if to surrender, but then flicked his wrist. Sela looked away.

  The air around her exploded with light. She shut her eyes, but even so the light shone through her eyelids, splashing smears of blue and red across her vision.

  Men below started screaming. Sela couldn't help herself; she looked.

  The entire balcony shone as if Silverdun were a sun. The guards were stumbling, clutching at their faces. They cast perfect black shadows on the wall of the house behind them. The sergeant was feeling out in front of him; his face was bright red.

  "What did you do?" asked Ironfoot. He was also staring now, as the light began to die away.

  "That was a bit of witchlight?" said Timha. "I've never seen anything like it!"

  Silverdun looked down at the scene below him. "Ah," he said.

  "We need to go now," said Ironfoot. "Before anyone else shows up."

  Below, the guards were still scrambling, looking for shelter, terrified.

  "You've blinded them," said Sela.

  "He did more than blind them," said Ironfoot. "Look at their faces."

  Sela looked and saw the face of one of the guards close up. His skin looked as though it had been pushed into a fire.

  "Fall back!" shouted the sergeant. The men attempted to flee.

  Silverdun led the way down the stairs. He picked up one of the guards' crossbows and hurried toward the yacht, with Ironfoot close behind. Timha followed, his head down.

  Sela ran to Elspet and helped her up. With her head hung, she'd escaped the worst of it and still had her sight, though it was clear she wasn't seeing particularly well.

  "Come with us," whispered Sela.

  "I can't," said Elspet. "I'll tell them you broke in. My husband is a powerful man. They'll believe me, and I have important work here."

  She grabbed Sela's arm. "Get him out of here or all this will have been for nothing."

  Sela turned and ran to catch up with Ironfoot, Silverdun, and Timha, who were already climbing on the yacht.

  "Come on!" shouted Ironfoot.

  One of the guards fired his crossbow at the sound of Ironfoot's voice, and the quarrel lodged in the mast next to him. Silverdun held up his stolen bow and fired back, dropping the guard where he stood.

  Sela fled toward the dock. She'd almost made it when she felt a hand on her wrist and she sprawled down onto the wooden floor, the wind knocked out of her. The sergeant had grabbed her, even blind.

  "You're not going anywhere!" he shouted.

  "Help!" she shouted at Silverdun.

  On the yacht, Ironfoot flicked his wrist. Something flashed in the air, and the sergeant made a choking noise. The hand around her ankle went limp.

  She turned to see Ironfoot's dagger lodged in the sergeant's throat. She picked herself up and stumbled toward the yacht. Silverdun yanked her on board, Ironfoot cut the mooring line with another knife, and the yacht lurched into the air, sending Sela sprawling onto the deck.

  Ironfoot did something to the yacht's mainsail and the yacht turned. Suddenly there was wind where there had been no wind before, and the city seemed to jump away from them. The yacht veered sharply in the city's wake, nearly toppling.

  Ironfoot took the wheel and turned it sharply. There was a grinding sound below, and the ship righted itself. The city began to recede quickly now.

  "I can't believe we got away!" said Timha. He was laughing nervously. "I don't know how you did it but ... that was amazing!"

  "I wouldn't start celebrating just yet, friend," said Silverdun, pointing.

  A trio of fliers was headed in their direction.

  "I think somebody noticed Silverdun's light show," said Ironfoot.

  "Can't you go any faster?" asked Sela.

  "Not unless you know how to make the wind blow harder," said Ironfoot.

  Timha grabbed a crank and used it to tighten one of the ropes that held the sail in place. The yacht accelerated, but not by much.

  "They've got the wind behind them," said Timha. "And by the time we turn to run, they'll have us. We should surrender!"

  "Shut up!" shouted Silverdun. Ironfoot turned the wheel hard, and the yacht dipped to the left.

  "Come about and put your craft in irons!" came a spell-amplified voice from one of the approaching guard fliers.

  "Irons?" said Sela, confused.

  "It means to turn the bow into the wind," said Ironfoot. "He wants us to stop."

  Silverdun took a bolt from the small quiver attached to the front of his crossbow and put it in place, cranking the crannequin as he spoke. "No more bright lights?" asked Ironfoot.

  "I haven't got a drop of re in me. You?"

  "If they all came on board and sat patiently with us, I could probably throw some Leadership at them."

  "Fine," said Silverdun. "Then we run and take our chances."

  It was soon clear, however, that running wasn't going to work. The guard ships were faster; they had engines of Motion that added to the speed of their sails, whereas the yacht's power only allowed it to stay in the air.

  "Stop and prepare to be boarded!" came the amplified voice again.

  "What do we do?" shouted Sela. Silverdun gripped the crossbow tightly, his knuckles white.

  The guard fliers were gaining, nearly alongside now.

  "Stop now or we will fire upon your craft!"

  "Damn!" shouted Ironfoot. He turned the wheel hard to the right, veering the yacht directly toward one of the guard fliers.

  "What are you doing?" shouted Timha.

  "Let's see how sturdy this yacht is!" shouted Ironfoot.

  The guard flier dipped in the air to avoid them, but it was too late. The yacht's prow collided with the flier's mainmast. There was a horrible scraping sound, and the cracking of wood. Crossbow shots came from below-the guards in the flier were firing on them.

  Silverdun leaned over the prow of the yacht with his own crossbow and fired. There was a loud crack, and the flier came loose beneath them, drifting off astern.

  Sela heard a loud snap and turned to see something bright arcing toward the yacht from one of the fliers. It was like a miniature sun. It went high and wide, just missing the smaller sail in the front of the craft. Sela could feel the heat of it as it passed.

  Another snap, and another sun flew toward them. This one ripped through the mainsail and smashed into the deck just in front of Ironfoot, who let go of the wheel and jumped backward, tripping over Timha.

  The deck erupted in flame. Timha crawled out from beneath Ironfoot and drew a sigil in the air with his hands. The tiny ball of flame rose straight up, then turned at a right angle and struck the stern of the flier that had fired it. The guards aboard the flier hurried to put out the flames.

  Sela looked back and realized that Timha had been
too late. The fire was spreading across their deck; the wheel was aflame. Ironfoot and Timha were backed into a corner. Timha continued to make his sigils, but whatever he was attempting didn't appear to be working. Silverdun was struggling to reload his crossbow, but the crazy movement of the vessel made it nearly impossible.

  The yacht stalled, then lurched. A gust of wind caught the loose mainsail, and the world began to spin around Sela. Flames licked the sail, and it caught fire as well, smoke spiraling up from the top of the mast.

  Then came a percussive sound that made Sela's bones shake. The deck dipped and swayed. Seta lost her balance and fell onto the deck, and then somehow the deck was above her, and she was spinning, spinning, falling.

  She turned over in the wind, and now she could see below her. Wind ruffled endless wheat fields like waves in the ocean, growing gray in the moonlight. In the center of the wheat, however, was a great, irregular oval of blackness, a space of utter darkness. Strangely, it did not look as if she was falling. Had Silverdun or Ironfoot done something to arrest their descent? All around her was smoke and flame. She couldn't see anything other than the ground below her.

  Wind blew up at her, forcing her skirts up and her hair back from her head. Her skirts and sleeves were whipped by the air, flapping frantically against her skin.

  Now she saw that she was falling, but from such a great height that it hadn't seemed like it at first. The black oval was like a mouth; it reached out toward her. The farther she fell, the larger it grew, and she realized that she was falling directly into the center of the umbra, the shadow of Preyia. Where it was bad luck to stand.

  Now the ground was rushing toward her, the blackness expanding around her on all sides. The umbra was pure, velvety blackness; no moonlight illuminated its depths.

  She fell and fell, her breath caught in her throat. The blackness grew and grew until it was everywhere and there was nothing but the black below and the smoke and the fire above and they came together and Sela gasped and the flame met the blackness with Sela in the middle. Dark and light. A loud rush and a silence.

  The only Fae surface dwellers in the Unseelie are the Arami, that strange breed who maintain the ways of the wild Fae clans from before the time of Uvenchaud.They scrupulously avoid their airborne counterparts, or anyone else, for that matter. Thus, very little is known about them.

  It is speculated that the odd, guttural language that has so confounded linguists (on the rare occasions the Arami have consented to be interviewed) is actually a variation of the original Elvish tongue. If they are to be believed, they are the last remaining vestige of the aboriginal Fae.

  The Unseelie take no heed of the Arami. The Unseelie only leave their flying cities to take water from the wells that dot the landscape during periods of little rain, which are common in that northern clime. The Arami scrupulously avoid them when they come to ground.

  -Stil-Fret, ''The Arami: the Unknown Fae of the North;' from Travels at Home and Abroad

  atterns. Ironfoot was lost in patterns. Two of them, one superimposed on the other. They were similar, but not the same. Almost identical, in fact. But at the heart of them was a discrepancy, an error, like an elegant equation that hid an undefined term somewhere within it. Everything looked right on the surface; it was only by traversing the threads of the patterns that the impossibility was visible.

  But where was this error? What caused it? He traced the pattern in his mind, but it was so large and elusive that he couldn't hold it. As he envisioned one portion of it, the others slid away from him; it was impossible to connect it all. He needed paper, and his map.

  He reached for paper, but his arm wouldn't move. He tried to sit up, but something heavy was on top of him. He began to panic. He opened his eyes. It was dark, black within black. His throat made a strangling noise, halfway between a whimper and a scream. Where was he?

  "Over here!" came a voice. "I heard something!"

  Ironfoot reached into his body and tried to calm it, as Paet had tried to teach him during one of their regular trainings a few weeks earlier. He'd never quite understood what Paet had meant; but his mind was attuned to patterns at the moment, and suddenly he could read the patterns within his own body, the energies that coursed through him and the objects that the energies connected. There was his heart, thudding. He willed it to slow and it slowed. There was another tiny thing, spitting out panic into his blood. He willed it to stop, and it stopped.

  He willed strength into his arms and pushed. He and Silverdun had lately developed what they referred to as Shadow strength, far beyond what they'd once been used to. The thing above him moved, but not by much. But here was a bit of useful information; there was only so much Shadow strength in this body of his. He'd pushed too hard, and now his arms fell weakly to his sides in the enclosed space.

  It wasn't good enough. But then again, it never was.

  When Ironfoot was a child, his father had always goaded him. "Don't end up like me, boy," he'd said as the two of them sheared sheep. The price of wool had dropped for three years straight, and his father had already sold off three of his best ewes. "You're smart," he'd said. "You have to make something of yourself."

  So when Ironfoot enlisted in the army, it was with the determination to do everything he could to get ahead. He knew he was smart, and that he had several of the Gifts, but there was no place for a shepherd's son at a school like Queensbridge. Most of the students at such schools were the sons and daughters of lords or wealthy guildsmen, and they'd all been sent to expensive academies as children. Ironfoot, on the other hand, had gone to the village school until the age of ten and then had gone to work for his father. He'd stayed up late, long after his father had gone to bed, reading, studying basic thaumatics, teaching himself to make the witchlight that he read by.

  He'd moved up quickly in the ranks as an enlisted man, but as a commoner, there was a point beyond which there was no advancement.

  Then came the Gnomic War. He'd been a sergeant in the Third Battalion of the Dragon Regiment, responsible for Ram Company. In the army, Ironfoot had made a reputation as a perfectionist. He demanded nothing but the best from himself and from his soldiers. Some hated him for it, most complained, but they all respected him. And it soon became clear as the Gnomic campaign progressed, and Ironfoot's company led in kills without losing a single soldier, that he was a fine commander as well.

  His own commander, however, Colonel Samel-La, was far less fine. Put simply, Samel-La was a fool, and was totally unsuited for combat. He had no knowledge of tactics, believing that the solution to every problem was to throw battle mages and soldiers at it until it went away. As a commander, he was lax and allowed his junior officers to curry favor with him, listening to those who agreed with him and ignoring those who did not. Even after Ironfoot earned four Laurels serving beneath him, Samel-La refused to take his advice. It didn't take long for Samel-La and Ironfoot to find a way to butt heads.

  When they entered the Gnokka River Valley, just south of Cmir, everything went wrong all at once. The Gnomics were waiting for them, having taken up positions along the slope on either side. Ironfoot saw the trap immediately, and warned Samel-La to retreat, but Samel-La claimed that Seelie never retreated, especially against savages like the Gnomics. Ironfoot attempted to explain that retreat was one of the fundamental tactics of war, but Samel-La refused to listen.

  The battle very quickly turned ugly. Casualties began mounting by the dozens. More and more Gnomics appeared over the rim of the valley, and still Samel-La refused to retreat.

  It was not until they'd been flanked in the rear, when retreat was no longer possible, that Samel-La decided he'd had enough. He took a single company and bolted to the rear, his intent apparently to break through the Gnomic line and flee, stranding his own battalion. He and his entire company were slaughtered moments after they left the main Seelie force.

  Confusion reigned for a few desperate minutes, in which none of the Seelie soldiers knew what to do and the lines wer
e folding in. It appeared as though they were doomed to a slaughter.

  But Ironfoot stood up in his saddle and shouted orders to his company, taking command of the battalion. He drew in and stitched up the lines, reunited the soldiers into a unified force. Together they not only repelled the Gnomic attack, but took the valley, forcing the Gnomics into a retreat.

  When it was over, the regiment commander, General Jeric, explained to Ironfoot that it was not possible to award him a fifth Laurel for his valor in this particular battle. Samel-La had been the son of an influential lord who had his fingers on the army's purse strings. And thus Samel-La would be said to have died of wounds sustained leading the Third Battalion to victory in the battle of Gnokka Valley.

  General Jeric, however, understood what Ironfoot had done, and what was taken from him. He asked Ironfoot whether there was anything he could do to cushion the blow.

  "I want to go to Queensbridge," he'd said, without a moment's pause.

  Three days later, Ironfoot was honorably discharged from the Seelie Army, just hours after being commissioned a lieutenant. As an officer in the Seelie Army, he was eligible to attend Queensbridge, and with the warm personal recommendation of the Third Battalion's commander, he was happily accepted.

  At Queensbridge he'd become more of a perfectionist than ever. He wasn't satisfied unless he got not just top marks, but the top marks. At any task of thaumatics, he demanded success from himself. He never quit. He worked harder and did more and he succeeded.

  And he hadn't ever been able to stop.

  Here he sat now with the greatest challenge of his life in front of him. It wasn't just that success was important. It was everything. Nothing less than perfection mattered.

  Nothing.

  There was a crunching noise above him. "Right here," came the voice again. Silverdun. "Well, don't just stand there. Help me!"

  The object above him moved a little; then it began to rise slowly. There came the sound of voices grunting in labor. The object lifted a bit more, and then was shoved sideways.

  A silhouette looked down at him, surrounded by witchlight. "Still alive, I take it?"