by J. M. Frey
“I could tell by how you took your seat yesterday that you’re not an experienced horsewoman,” I admit. “I wish I had noticed earlier. I assumed that, as a landowner, your father would have had horses. I regret now that we did not make time for riding lessons.”
“What can I possibly be doing that’s so wrong to make my legs scream like this?” Pip asks. She winces and rubs her knuckles along the small of her back, as well, and I know that pain intimately, had experienced it myself before Father taught me the proper way to roll my hips with the gait of the horse. “All you have to do is sit on the thing and let it do all the work, right?”
“Not precisely,” I admit, moving to stand directly behind her. “May I?”
She stiffens, the way she always does when she realizes that someone wants to touch her. And then she nods curtly, just once. I slip down onto the ground behind her and press my thumbs into the spot just above the dimples at the small of her back, right on top of the curlicues where Bootknife’s art begins. She groans again, a mix of pleasure and pain.
“Oh my god, you’re magic,” she says into the tent pole of her knees as she leans forward to give me better access.
“You blaspheme an awful lot,” I say, conversationally. “What would your Great Writer say?”
“It’s against the rules,” she admits. “Thou shalt not take thy Lord God’s name in vain, or something like that. But it’s not like I’ve ever heard of anyone being smote with lightning for it. Besides, there’s something wonderfully poetic about cussing.”
“Your Writer gave you rules?” I ask, slightly disgruntled. “Ours didn’t.”
“Sometimes, I wonder if my world would be better than it is if ours hadn’t give us any, either. Lotsa wars fought over how people interpret what our Writer said to the people he talked to. Not sure how much good it’s done, being all about peace and faith and honesty, and then setting people up to fight over the way things are worded.” She laughs a little, but it’s not mirthful at all. “That’s what happens when you write things down. Authorial Intent. People interpret what they want out of things. Readers.” She snorts, and it’s a wet, sad sound.
“Perhaps Elgar Reed had the right of it,” I murmur, not sure if I am now the one blaspheming. “Abandoning us as he did.”
Pip cranes her head around to meet my eyes. “You think you’ve been abandoned by your creator?”
My hands pause on her lower back of their own volition. I spread my fingers wide and press them on either side of her spine. “Haven’t I?”
The way she regards me suddenly puts me sharply in mind of the look on little Lewko’s face when he’d seen what was left of the barn kitten a horse had accidentally squashed.
She turns slowly, her hips scraping against the inside of my legs as she shifts on the ground. She gets up on her knees, rises until we are eye level, and places her hands on either side of my face. She moves so slowly, like I am a deer she fears to spook, and I do not move because the pace of her movements is mesmerizing. They make my breath stop somewhere low in my stomach, make me forget to take another.
“Just because you’re a secondary character doesn’t mean you’re not a person,” she says, and her voice is low and intense. “A complete, wonderful, fleshed out person with needs and desires and hates. You are worthy, and it doesn’t matter what you were made to do, you have found a calling all your own. So fuck Elgar Reed, and Kintyre Turn. Just be brilliant, all on your own, all for yourself. The books are over. You don’t owe anyone anything else. Have a fantastic life. Okay?”
I don’t know what to say to this. I literally do not. So instead, I copy one of her favorite moves and turn my head so I can nuzzle her palm, run the cool tip of my nose against skin slightly gritty with dirt and fragrant with pine needles, bridle leather, horse, and Pip.
“Infuriating man,” she says, and turns back around, plopping back down onto her rump. She crosses her arms over her chest.
“That’s what Pointe says,” I agree. I am now in an amorous mood, and so I lean down and just breathe in the scent of her hair, where it meets the stale sweat and salt at the nape of her neck.
But no, this is meant to be about horseback riding, and no other kind. I draw my blood down and my professionalism forward.
“He’s right,” Pip says, leaning back.
I put my hands back onto her lower back and resume my massage, working quickly now so she is loose and warm enough to move on to the actual lesson without causing her pain.
“Uhngk,” she grunts, as I attack a particularly stubborn little knot.
I splay my long fingers on her hips, wrapping them around the bones to get a good grip.
“The secret of riding” —I budge up right behind her so I will be able to lead her hips with my own. I cross my knees on top of hers, so the inside of her legs are tight against the outside of mine— “is to not fight the motion. The horse has its own natural rhythm, and you must be fluid. Grip with your knees, keep your back straight and your shoulders pointing in the same direction as your beast, but let your spine be fluid.”
“That’s a lot to remember,” she says, and her voice is suddenly quite breathless and light. Like she’s been running and not yet caught her breath.
I push out with my legs. Hers spread a little, until I say, “No, grip the barrel of the horse with your knees.” Then, she resists.
“This is . . . Forsyth . . .”
She’s a good student. Already her spine has gone a bit liquid, pressing warmly into my thumbs. “You’ll learn. You need to roll with the gait,” I said, pushing her hips forward in the circle required to stay seated.
“Hmmf,” she says, moving with the forward push of my hands. She giggles once, pushing back and rolling forward again, and then resisting the tempo I was trying to set. The roll becomes slower, more deliberate, and her thighs spread further. She raises her legs, runs her feet against the outside of my calves.
“Pip? What are you—you’ll be unseated.”
She giggles again, and then moves away from me, turning on the dirt to face me. “I suddenly understand the appeal of equestrian pursuits.”
“This is serious. We have many days of riding ahead of us, and you may hurt yourself if you don’t learn. Don’t tease, Pip.”
She makes a sound of outraged amusement. “You started it!”
“Started what? You need to learn this. Come back down here.”
She giggles again. “Oh my god, your oblivious-shield is on at full strength. You just don’t get it, and you are adorable.” She pecks a sweet kiss onto the tip of my skinny, large nose.
✍
The sunset was as impressive as I’d hoped it would be.
We watched from a hillock just outside of Kingskeep, and then made our way to the Queen’s Gate—the main thoroughfare entrance to the walled city. The portico is tall and thin, to allow carts and carriages to pass through only one at a time or rows of soldiers with upright spears to pass through four across. The entrance flanks a bridge that grows ever more narrow, the alabaster walls coming together in an apex that, unfortunately, rather resembles a woman’s—
“Thighs,” Pip breathes, eyes roving over the entryway. “Reed’s mind was seriously in the gutter. Everything in this world is about sex.” She points to the heavy steel gate above us, waiting to be closed at full dark. “And what do you call that? The Chastity Belt?”
I snort. The soldiers look askance at us, and I school my expression into something more resembling the imperious lordling I am meant to be. I convinced Pip to change into my mother’s velvet dress during our last rest stop, and am glad of it. While her short hair and the fact that we are on horseback instead of in a carriage does attract unwanted curiosity, the fineness of our clothing and the fact that we both wear brooches from House Turn makes everyone’s eyes slide away, uninterested in the nobility from a frankly base and boring country Chipping.
We must wait our turn to enter, a soldier marshaling the end-of-day traffic, and Pip makes a commen
t about big-city commuting and jam. I am hungry myself, so I don’t blame her contemplating the soft fruit compote we had with lunch. When it is our turn, our two horses just barely fit side by side, my knee brushing the stone of the entryway. We make for a small taverna that I know and patronize often when I am in the city, for the windows on each floor are accessible from the roof of the stable. Not ideal, in terms of room security, but perfect for a lordling who needs to steal into the hayloft to change into the Shadow Hand.
As I oversee stabling our horses, Pip pulls out the Excel and reviews the lunar calendar. She sits on a hay bale, unconcerned with her skirts, and chews on her thumbnail as her eyes flick over her coded notes.
“What pretty boys,” the stable lad says, as I help him to remove the horses’ tack and hang it on pegs inside their stalls. “Who’s this, then?”
“Dauntless,” I say, rubbing my stallion’s nose. He lips at the top of my head, making my hair stand up frightfully. It’s a frankly extravagant name for such a well-behaved creature, but I was young and my mind was on silly quests when I named him.
“And this?” the boy asks, jerking his head at Pip’s chestnut gelding. The horse is fresh-bought—I acquired him from Pointe specifically for Pip—and as such, he has no name yet.
“Pip?” I ask. “Your horse’s name?”
“Oh, I get to name him?” she asks, packing up the Excel and walking over to pet his nose.
“You are his first master; it is your right,” I reply, untangling Dauntless’s bridle.
Her horse, young and playful, nips at her fingers and she starts back, clearly unused to working with the animals. The stable lad laughs and hands her half an apple. Her horse takes it from her hand carefully, using his lips rather than his teeth, and Pip giggles at him.
Dauntless takes the other half from me, crunching delicately, as if unimpressed with the younger horse’s obvious attempt to curry affection.
“Mr. Ed? Joey? Flicka? Shadowfax?” she muses softly, trying out names. Then, she laughs at herself. “No, no, Karl! His name is Karlurban. How’s that, kiddo? You like it? Karl.”
“I like it!” the stable lad says.
“Unusual, but, I assume, something of an in-joke?” I ask, shouldering our saddle bags. Pip tries to take hers, but the stable lad won’t hear of it and trots along behind us as we cross the stone courtyard to the taverna’s entrance.
“I’ll explain it on our way up to the Keep,” she says.
I feel the frown flit across my face. “Are we not to rest first? I thought we could go in the morning.”
Pip shakes her head. “We’ve only got fourty-five days to finish up, er, everything,” she says. “I’d rather not waste them when we know how close we are to Station Three.”
“Wise,” I allow. I’m not happy about it. I was looking forward to a bath and a rest in a real bed, even if it is straw-ticking and rope-framed, but Pip is right. We cannot afford to delay now, when we do not know what impediments might meet us at later Stations. “Then let us hope that young Master Gyre has not retired for the evening.”
✍
Smelling rather more of horse and the open road than I usually prefer when donning the costume of the Shadow Hand, Pip and I sneak out of our garret room, cross the thatched roof of the gallery, and wiggle through the thatch to land in the hayloft above the stables.
In a corner of the loft that is so squeezed under the eaves that even the boys who bring their conquests up here for their literal rolls in the hay would not find it unless they were earnestly looking, I have secured a metal chest to the floor with large bolts. It was made for me by the great dwarves of the southern mountains and is clasped shut with three separate enchanted locks that require not only the correct key used in the correct order, but also the breath from my own mouth for the hinges to loosen. The dwarves certainly know their craft.
In this locker, I have secreted all that I need to be the Shadow Hand while in Kingskeep. It would not do to be caught upon the road with this gear in my riding bags or carriage luggage, so I deemed it safer to leave it here. While Pip watches, I don the black boots and gloves, and a many-layered cloak of gray and black. It looks like roiling fog as I walk, a bit too long in the hem for me, as the Shadow Hand before me was a broader man, but impressive still. The sword is of good elvish design. It is straight and thin, and never goes dull, with a hilt that is swept back and curled like the emissions from an old gaffer’s pipe. I call it Smoke, but never out loud.
Dauntless’s kit is here as well, comprised of a black tabard big enough to drape over his body and disguise his shape, and a cloth mask of his own to blot out the distinctive cream line between his eyes. I have let all his buckles tarnish, so they do not shine and give us away as we travel the shadows.
There is one more thing in the bottom of the box, and Pip reaches in and pulls it from the black velvet pouch. It too is silver, made from the same vein of metal as the sword’s hilt and crossguard, but this time by a dwarvish craftsman.
This is my Shadow’s Mask, the face that the chief spymaster wears before all but the king. It covers the whole of my features, save for an opening the width of my mouth that begins at the bottom of my nose and runs to the base of my chin, allowing me ease of speaking. The metal is otherwise flat and entirely, eerily, featureless. There is no decoration, no expression stamped into the metal, and the only concession to the natural shape of a man’s face is the ridge for my nose and eyebrows. The eye holes are cut narrow, but through the same sort of planning as one uses on a loophole window, I have use of the full field of my vision.
It is, in short, nothing less than spectacularly intimidating. When I don this, too, Pip falls back and shivers slightly, pupils blown wide in fear and interest. I straighten my shoulders, adopt the poise and gait of the Shadow Hand.
“Wow,” she whispers.
Once Dauntless is similarly attired, Pip tucks up behind me on Dauntless’s saddle, tight against my body, head laid between my shoulder blades. My cloak goes over her, and there is so much fabric that she is entirely obscured. I will smuggle her thusly into the palace. She has changed back into her black riding gear so that she may blend into the shadows as well.
We have decided that the fewer people who know of her existence, the better. As much as I have spies in the halls of the Keep, so too does the Viceroy.
The ride to the Shadow’s Gate is swift. I push Dauntless through the side streets at a pace that is perhaps a bit reckless, but each turn forces Pip’s arms tighter around my waist, her fingers digging into my waistcoat pockets; her breath is warm on my back. I am glad the night is not too close, else she may smother under my cloak.
As it is, I am just beginning to break a sweat behind my mask when I pull up at the small, ramshackle gash of an alleyway that dead-ends several city blocks from the palace. The alley is filled with refuse, both garbage and human. One of the two bums pulls herself up from a hut made of discarded wood and paper and fish-eyes me.
“Eh, there,” she says. “Wot you want down ‘ere?”
“I am the Shadow Hand, and you will allow me to pass,” I say, voice modulated into a carefully untraceable non-accent. I speak Words of Trust under the words of recognition. “The code word you gave me upon my departure last time was ‘thatch roof.’”
No further comment is made.
The other bum shuffles to the end of the alleyway, and, oh so casually, she pushes on a particularly grimy brick. The wall judders and a doorway, just narrow and tall enough for Dauntless and I to pass through, opens. I urge Dauntless forward, and the beggar-woman by the door hands me a lantern. There is a Wisp inside, glowing blue and friendly through the glass, happy to lead us through the darkness of the underground tunnel. In exchange, I drop a brass coin into each of their hands, and they smile and tip their heads, happy to be in my service.
“Drainage ditch,” the bum who first spoke says in parting.
“Drainage ditch,” I reply, committing the new password to memory. Then, I duck in
to the darkness.
As soon as the doorway behind us is closed, Pip pushes my cloak aside and I raise my mask to wipe at my brow. In the glass lantern, the Wisp whistles and jitters, coaxing us to keep moving. I take a moment to affix the lantern to Dauntless’s pommel.
“Well,” Pip breaths against my neck. “That was sexy, Mr. Commanding Voice.”
I chuckle, nervous. Accept the compliment, I have to remind myself. It was given honestly. What I would really like to say is something to deny it. Instead I say, “Thank you,” and spur Dauntless onward.
Knowing the path to the palace, my horse takes his own lead, and I am able to concentrate on Pip.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine,” she says. “Happy to be out of the cloak.”
“It’s a bit stifling this time of year, sorry.”
“I don’t mind, really. How long until we reach the palace?”
“A few moments,” I say. “We’ll emerge in one of the hedge maze dead-ends. From there, we will enter the palace through the Shadow’s Door, and take an audience with the king.”
Pip stiffened against me. “Me too?”
I consider the tightness of her voice. “In fact, I think perhaps it would be best if the king did not know of you. It is possible that word that Lordling Turn has a strange guest has reached him, but I would prefer to keep you a secret from court as long as possible. One never knows where the Viceroy’s ears may be.”
Pip shivers at the name of her tormentor, and I feel her nod. “Good idea. Although, if we were keeping me on the down-low, maybe that big old blowout we had with Bevel and Kintyre at your house was a bad idea.”
“It made perfect sense before you declined to travel with Kintyre; any gossip coming from Turnshire and Lysse Chipping would have said that you departed in the company of a hero, which would have pulled the Viceroy’s attention off Turn Hall. Now, with you lacking a champion—”
“Hey!” she said, and pinches the skin of my belly through my shirt and waistcoat. I gasp, shocked by her boldness rather than the pain. “I have a perfectly good champion right here, buster.”
