In Shade and Shadow

by Barb Hendee

  His light brown eyes were bloodshot, and his breath reeked of brandy.

  “Why have you been away from work for two days?” Rodian asked.

  “Why have I . . . ?” His eyes cleared slightly. “You went to my shop?”

  Rodian gestured at the polished maple desk resting on an indigo Suman carpet. “Hardly a fitting place of business for someone who lives here.”

  Midton backed around his desk and settled in his damask chair.

  “I’ve been preparing documents for my court appearance. What a shame that our legal system puts so much effort into persecuting me. All I do is provide much-needed service to people the banks won’t even speak to.”

  “Service?” Rodian repeated.

  “Who else, if not me, gives them enough coin to improve their lives?”

  Rodian took a breath through his teeth. The only shame would be if this hypocrite were found innocent tomorrow, and that wasn’t likely. There was no charter on record allowing the Plum Parchment to engage in moneylending. But regarding Rodian’s visit, there was also no clear proof that Selwyn Midton had a hand in the death of two young sages.

  Rodian realized he wanted Midton to be guilty of that crime as well.

  It was possible that, to keep Jeremy silent, Midton had killed the young sage and his companion, and then taken the folio to make it look like a theft. Perhaps the break-in at Master Shilwise’s scriptorium was unrelated. Stranger coincidences had happened. At the moment it even seemed more likely than Wynn’s mention of a minor noble’s son making threats.

  Rodian wanted to solve these murders today, and sending this parasite to the gallows would be so much the better. But he checked himself. Such a course went against duty, let alone reason, and hence his faith.

  “When you say ‘preparing documents,’” he began, “have you been waiting for a young sage named Jeremy Elänqui?”

  Midton’s mouth went slack. “I beg your pardon?”

  “He was helping you alter your ledgers.”

  “If that boy’s been telling lies, I’ll raise charges on the guild!”

  Rodian focused intently on Midton’s face in this crucial moment. “Jeremy can’t tell lies. He was murdered two nights ago.”

  Midton dropped the brandy snifter.

  It hit the carpet and rolled under the desk, likely spreading brandy all over that expensive carpet. But Rodian sank—no, fell—into sudden disappointment.

  Midton’s bloodshot eyes widened in complete shock; then shock faded, replaced by fear.

  “Dead? But that’s not . . .” Midton began. “You cannot think . . . I had nothing to do with it!”

  “Where were you the night before last?”

  Midton breathed in harshly. He couldn’t seem to get out a word until he jumped to his feet.

  “I was here, at home. My wife, children, our cook, they can all verify I never left the house.”

  The cook’s testimony would bear the most weight, more than a wife or child’s. Then again, Selwyn Midton could’ve easily hired someone else to do the killing. In fact, that was far more likely, if such a special poison had been used. For what would this coin gouger know of handling dangerous concoctions?

  And yet, how would he even know where to find the rare individual who did?

  Rodian had questioned many who’d committed whatever crime was in question—and many who hadn’t. Midton was certainly a criminal, but he’d been taken too unaware by the young sage’s death.

  “Don’t ask my family to testify!” Midton rushed on. “I swear I had nothing to do with Jeremy’s death. If a hint of this comes out I will be ruined, my wife, my family—”

  “After tomorrow you will be ruined. Fines for illegal moneylending are high . . . if a fine is all the high advocate seeks from the judges. But fortunately for you, hearsay can’t be used, and Jeremy won’t be joining you for your court appointment.”

  Midton appeared to calm a bit, and leaned on his desk with both hands, pitching his voice low.

  “I’ll be exonerated, and no one here need know it ever occurred. My wife knows nothing of my business and . . . neither does her father.”

  Rodian blinked. “Your wife has never seen your shop?”

  Midton shook his head rapidly. “She doesn’t involve herself. Her family came out strongly against our marriage, but she wanted it. We bought this house with her dowry, but I’ve managed to give her a proper life. When her father passes she will inherit, unless she is disowned. Any whisper of my involvement in a murder investigation could . . .”

  His jaw tightened as he dropped back into his chair.

  “I had nothing to do with Jeremy’s death,” he repeated. “If you pursue me publicly, you will destroy my family for no reason . . . and no gain.”

  The man’s background suddenly became clear. Midton had won the affections of a dour, plain-faced woman against her family’s wishes—a family of means. He’d hung on by a thread ever since, faking a lifestyle barely affordable as he waited for his wife’s inheritance.

  Ruining this man might squash a parasite feeding on the desperate and poor. But ten more would scurry in like cockroaches to fill his place. And Rodian had no wish to destroy the four children playing in their sitting room.

  “I require a written statement from your wife,” he said, “that you were at home on the night in question. How much truth you tell her to explain the need is up to you. Have it ready for her to sign in the presence of my lieutenant when he comes tomorrow. I will speak with your cook and your business neighbors myself. Your current legal issues with the high advocate are your own problem.”

  Gut feelings or not, Midton still had a strong motive for murder—even stronger than Rodian initially realized. Hiding illegal moneylending, along with his scheme upon his wife’s inheritance, was certainly motive enough. But Rodian’s words washed anxiety from Midton’s expression.

  “Thank you,” the man breathed.

  “Call your cook,” Rodian commanded. “I will speak to her alone.”

  Selwyn Midton hurried out the study door.

  Rodian already knew the cook would tell him that the master of the house had been home. That left him with one more lead to pursue . . . and he did not wish to.

  After a sparse lunch, Wynn shuffled through the guild’s inner bailey. She stayed near the wall as she passed through the small arboretum close to the southern tower. Beyond the wall she occasionally heard people come and go. But not many, as the Old Bailey Road wasn’t a main thoroughfare.

  When the castle’s outer bailey wall had been opened long ago, a double-wide cobbled street had been kept clear, running along the outside of the inner bailey’s wall. Only the backs of buildings across that road were visible from the keep. All those faced the other way, toward other shops across the next streets and roads. But if one stopped in a quiet garden or copse of the inner bailey, an occasional passerby could be heard beyond the wall.

  “Get, you mutt! Stay out of my garbage!”

  That angry voice interrupted Wynn’s sulking, and she peered up the wall’s height, greater than a footman’s pike. Some cook in an eatery must have come out back and shooed off a stray dog. Wynn moved on through the remains of a garden.

  The tomato bed was barren, its last harvest sun-dried for winter storage. Deflated by Premin Sykion’s refusal to let her see the texts or her journals from the Farlands, Wynn contemplated what to do next.

  “Why do they deny these crimes have anything to do with the translation work?”

  Wynn pulled her cloak tighter as a late-autumn breeze sent aspen leaves raining down around her. She talked to herself too often these days.

  High-Tower and Sykion hadn’t made her life easy since her return, but they weren’t fools. Even if they wouldn’t accept what she suspected, that the killer might be an undead, surely they recognized that guild members carrying folios might be in danger.

  Half a year of work had passed, and now someone or something was clearly desperate to see material recently to
uched upon. Whoever it was could read the Begaine syllabary; otherwise the folio pages would be worthless.

  But how had anyone outside the guild learned enough about the folios’ content to want to see them at all? Most of the guild, besides those involved in translations, knew even less than Wynn did of the content of those old texts. Unless . . .

  . . . someone within the guild—at a high level—had already read something of importance.

  But what could drive someone to kill for it?

  She passed through the narrow space between the wall and the newer southeast dormitory building. Beyond it and the keep’s wall was the old barracks and her own room.

  Wynn shook her head at the notion that the murder might be someone within the guild. If a vampire was living among them, she should’ve spotted it long ago. Once, she’d been deceived by Chane, but looking back she remembered all the signs. He’d always visited at night, never ate, and drank only mint tea . . . his pale face . . . and his strange eyes, sometimes brown . . . sometimes almost clear.

  Still, there were the moneylender and the young man who’d threatened Elias to consider.

  No, the murderer had to be an undead, and one that killed without leaving any marks, and it had to be outside of the guild’s population.

  She rounded the east tower and peered along the keep’s back at the near end of the new library. Every side of the keep but the front had an additional building added on. Only the spaces around the four towers, as well as the front side, were left open for gardens and other uses.

  The two-story library, barely more than two-thirds the keep’s height, was tall enough to view the surrounding city from its upper windows. Although its new stone was pleasant compared to the ancient castle’s weathered granite, the library contained only the best selected volumes copied for use by the guild at large. Wynn had always been more drawn to the catacombs beneath the castle—the master archives.

  She remembered the sight of Jeremy’s and Elias’s ashen skin and rigid, horrified expressions. They’d died quickly but in terror and agony.

  Wynn turned about, heading back toward the keep’s front.

  Rodian had said that whoever took the folio from Master Shilwise’s shop gained entrance and then had to break out. Wynn was sick of every new discovery making no sense.

  How and why would a Noble Dead gain unnoticed entrance, and then not be able to slip away just the same? She rounded the southern tower, returning through autumn aspens and fallow gardens, and then heard someone walking outside along the Old Bailey Road.

  The steps scraped and clicked, like a small or short-legged person hurrying to keep up with someone else. But she heard no one else.

  Beyond the undead that Wynn had seen or learned of, she knew little about the Noble Dead. Called the Vneshené Zomrelé in native Belaskian—or upír, or even vampyr in Droevinkan—the term referred to an undead of the most potent nature. Unlike ghosts or animated corpses, they retained their full presence of self from life. They were aware of themselves and their own desires, able to learn and grow as individuals in their immortal existence.

  And her peers would think her mad if she said such a thing out loud.

  But all this was recorded in her journals. No doubt all involved in the translation project had read them.

  As a girl she’d sometimes assisted Domin Tilswith with his research in Numan folklore and legend. She’d enjoyed her master’s dabbling, up to a point. It often left her wondering why he’d become a cathologer, instead of joining the Order of Metaology, like il’Sänke. Tilswith’s fascination would’ve been better served that way. She remembered the day he mentioned an old term—àrdadesbàrn.

  It meant “dead’s child” in one of the pre-Numanese dialects, the child of a living woman and a recently deceased man. She’d forgotten that bit of nonsense from her days as an apprentice, until later, when she had met Magiere.

  “Ghosts and walking dead . . .” she muttered, “àrdadesbàrn and dhampirs . . .”

  Wynn stepped out of the bailey’s south grove, headed toward the wall’s gateway across from the massive gatehouse.

  If Domin Tilswith could find references to the àrdadesbàrn, what else might be waiting in the catacombs below the guild, unread and untouched for years? What vampire could enter a scriptorium covertly, have to leave it by force, and could feed without leaving a mark?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a skittering outside the bailey wall.

  A memory rose sharply in Wynn’s thoughts. She stumbled midstep and froze in place.

  Crouched behind a water trough at night, in a small river town of Magiere’s homeland, Wynn had seen everything before her permeated with the blue-white mist of Spirit. That first time she’d raised mantic sight by dabbling in magic, she’d watched a pale undead come up the main road through the town.

  Vordana.

  Grayed, emaciated flesh stretched over the bones of his face and hands, and filthy white hair hung in mats out the sides of his cowl. His white shirt-front beneath the soiled umber robe was stained dark by old blood.

  And the mist of Spirit in all things seemed to drift toward Vordana.

  Beneath his filmy white eyes and pallid skin, Wynn had seen no translucent blue-white mist. Only darkness, as if his whole form were a void that no light could penetrate. Those drifting trails of Spirit within all things were slowly swallowed into him.

  Vordana had fixed upon Leesil.

  Leesil buckled to his knees as his life began to drain away into that undead, though Vordana never even touched him.

  Wynn snapped to her senses in the castle’s inner bailey as a cold gust of wind pulled on her cloak and hood. The clicking outside the wall came and went, again and again, as if someone paced in agitation.

  Like paws on stone, claws catching in the cobble.

  Wynn stared up wide-eyed to the wall’s top. She gasped in a breath and ran for the gateway.

  “Chap!” she cried. “Are you there?”

  The gates were open, and she raced out into the Old Bailey Road.

  There was no one in sight, let alone a dog. She spun about, looking both ways, then ahead down the Old Procession Road. She raced down that main way, skidding into the intersection with Wall Shops Row.

  “Chap!”

  All around, people went about between the shops. Three finely dressed gentlemen stood talking before a poster board where the day’s recent news was nailed up. A city guard atop a black horse leaned slightly aside as he checked in with two local constables. A dowdy woman in drab attire pushed through a small gathering to elbow her way into a confectionery.

  A carriage midstreet came on a bit too fast.

  Wynn quickly backpedaled before the paired horses ran her down. And her back thumped into someone tall and solid. That someone grabbed her by the shoulders from behind.

  “Are you all right, miss?”

  She spun about, face-to-face with a tall, clean-shaven young man in a thick wool cap and coat. Through the coat’s open front she saw a canvas workman’s apron filled with the tools of his trade—a leather crafter. A young woman in a pleated bonnet peered around his side and frowned at Wynn.

  Wynn looked about the street, filled with patrons out and about for a noon meal and errands. Something brushed harshly against her leg.

  Wynn stumbled again as another clear memory filled her head.

  Chap . . .

  She saw through his eyes as he ran the dark streets of Venjètz, Leesil’s birthplace, but this memory was much hazier than the last. Details of sights and sounds were missing or indistinct. But she could almost feel his rage as he and Leesil hunted . . . a vampire.

  Suddenly the undead vanished from Chap’s awareness. He’d been hunting on senses alone, and his quarry simply wasn’t there anymore.

  “Mama, did you see that?”

  Wynn shivered as her head cleared.

  The young woman in the bonnet sighed. She grabbed the arm of a little boy, who was dressed much like the tall young man. Blueberr
y stains encircled the boy’s mouth, and the remains of a turnover were clutched in one hand. With the other hand the boy pointed down the road.

  “It was bigger than me!” he said.

  Wynn looked through the people along the street, her heart pounding.

  “Miss?” said the young father. “Do you need help?”

  Wynn stared blankly up at his worried frown. His wife now tried to get their other two children’s sticky hands off the shopwindow. Wynn backed away from the family and peered through the busy street.

  She saw no sign of silver gray fur or crystal blue canine eyes. No dogs at all, let alone the one she ached to see.