Shadowshaper Legacy

by Daniel José Older

  Anthony made a meowing sound and Sierra brapped him unceremoniously with the card and then realized what she’d done. “Shit! I meant to — dammit. Did you feel anything?”

  “I felt you swat me upside the head with Elvira.”

  Sierra slid the card away and pulled the Hound of Iron out. “One more to go. If you get this, um, creature, you can track down anyone in the other houses. Theoretically.” It looked like a steampunk gargoyle, this metallic monster snarling at a distant cityscape from the top of a clocktower. She placed it on Anthony’s head.

  He frowned. “Nada.”

  “Damn.” She replaced the card. The Iron Knight was next, but that was obviously already taken. She frowned at it. Still … on a whim, she held it out to Anthony as he stood.

  “Whoa!” Anthony jumped back, shaking his hands like he was trying to dry them. “What the hell?”

  Sierra gaped at him. “Are you joking?”

  He shook his head, eyes wide. “What was that?”

  “The Iron Knight, my dude. Aka you, apparently.”

  “Shut up.”

  She held out the card. He took it gingerly, then squinted at the picture of a medieval knight riding into battle astride a fierce warhorse. Nodded approvingly. “Well, shit.”

  “But …”

  “What happened to Father Trucks?”

  “What indeed,” Sierra muttered, scrambling for her phone. “But more importantly, what happened to Tee? She was up to something with this guy Mort earlier and then wouldn’t take my calls.” She pulled it out and lit up the screen. “Holy shit.”

  “What?”

  “Shit, shit, shit.” She had about a dozen missed calls, most of them from Caleb, and thirty frantic texts.

  “King takes knight / that means we got you for ya priest,” Izzy rapped as four shadow spirits marching on either side of her solidified into something much more physical. “You a yard sale still-life / I’m a ma-ma-masterpiece! / Beast-mode, battle toad / now we coming down the road like ready, set, go!”

  Tee watched the solidified spirits launch into the fray, where Mort nimbly dodged another of Fortress’s lurching attacks as the Iron Housers groped at the floor, frantically trying to seal out the encroaching river water with their metalwork. Only Dake seemed to have his attention elsewhere: He was bent low like the others, but his gaze stayed fixed on Mort.

  Tee scratched three more chalk spears onto the plaster pillar she’d been ducking behind. She’d already sent a cadre of spirited-up shards into Iron House ranks, mostly to cause confusion and keep everyone off her and Izzy’s back while they figured out what to do next. Now she wanted to be sure Dake didn’t get a chance to make good on whatever it was his crafty little nazi brain was plotting.

  River! the King of Iron bellowed from his throne. You’ll rust us all to pieces! Stand down this deluge!

  With a snarling glance, the River hurled a thrash of dark water into Old Crane. The old ghost’s howls seemed to fracture the whole night as his spectral shards flung in all directions. Everyone looked up, astonished. He wasn’t gone — Tee could tell because that agonized screech kept shuddering through the air around her — but he’d been shattered and humiliated on his own turf.

  Izzy’s tall spirits had taken advantage of the sudden pause to swarm Fortress, who swatted them away with slow but unstoppable swings of those monstrous arms.

  “Mort!” Tee yelled. “Come on!”

  He looked up, then growled: “What are you kids doing here? Get —” The River’s cruel tide leapt up suddenly and soaked Mort, who spluttered backward but managed to stay standing. Fortress — ever ready — barreled full-on into him, and they both went tumbling into the knee-deep mire.

  “No!” Tee yelled. She and Izzy launched toward the thrashing Hierophants. Across the room, Dake had broken into a run as well and was closing fast. What was he up to?

  Tee hadn’t messed with the whole light part of Shadow and Light that much — she was still trying to master shadowshaping, honestly, and adding a whole new power into the mix didn’t seem to make much sense yet.

  But.

  But she’d felt that power inside herself. Had seen Sierra and Mina blast those brilliant flashes outward like thunderclaps when need be. Had sworn she was gonna get the hang of it soon.

  Maybe soon had come.

  And anyway, she felt it rising in her, that light, like a time-lapse video of sunrise. All she had to do was — she felt a dull thud on her shoulder and looked down, her run slowing to a jog. Up ahead, Mort was beneath Fortress, coughing and gasping, and Dake was still hurtling toward them. But something was sticking out of Tee. A metal rod, rusty and corroded. And now bloody, right at the part where it had torn through her T-shirt and entered her flesh.

  Tee tried to take another step but ended up splashing to her knees as Izzy yelled something unintelligible at Dake and the spirits around them swarmed into a frenzy.

  Then a sharp pop broke the air, and then many, many more as something pinged off a nearby gear. A bullet. That’s what had pinged. Everyone ducked and the air seemed filled with tiny, whistling shards of death. The shots sounded like they were coming from everywhere at once, but when Tee looked back (that water lapping up against her waist now, like she was sinking, slowly sinking, or maybe it was the river rising, quickly rising, even faster than she’d thought it could), Ms. R and Rohan were standing in the doorway, both with a gun in each hand, their faces calm as they laid down a steady, even blanket of fire: Pop, pop, pop, pop.

  Holy shit.

  She looked down, everything seeming to slow even further, and sure enough she was still impaled somehow. She wondered if the metal rod was sticking out the other side of her, and then Izzy was heaving her up into a broken kind of run, and Mort was with them, coughing still and soaking wet and badly bruised but definitely alive. And a wave of water crashed around them as they all made their clattering, disastrous way toward the exit, where R’s car would be.

  Tee was probably bleeding out. Or she would be when they pulled that rod from her shoulder, which she was pretty sure Dake’s sorry ass had heaved with his brand-new goddamn iron skills. And then Tee would probably die, and one of the shittiest parts about that would be that she’d have been bested by a pathetic little nazi douchebag and wouldn’t even have the chance to get him back for it.

  Maybe one of those many bullets had found his ass, and that would be something, at least.

  As they passed where Ms. R and Rohan were waving their now silenced pistols back and forth like sentries, Tee glanced back at the drowning factory. The Iron Housers were scrambling and splashing through the dark water. Old Crane had managed to reemerge, but only as a barely visible, trembling echo of the regal phantom he had been just a few minutes earlier. He stood amidst the mess, waving those jangly arms around and howling.

  That prick Dake was nowhere to be seen — hopefully he’d drowned.

  But the damn gigantic Hierophant was making a damn move, stomping toward them with humongous strides that displaced tidal waves of river water.

  “Back!” Ms. R yelled, and then both she and Rohan let loose with each hand, tiny explosions lighting the darkness as pop after pop sang out.

  Fortress didn’t seem to care. Each bullet found its mark but barely slowed them down.

  “Get out of here!” Rohan hollered, but Tee wasn’t even sure where here was anymore, or where they were supposed to go. The water in front of them churned, and then a great metal gear swung upward and stopped in front of them, blocking the door.

  Tee let out a gasp. She’d thought she might at least make it to the car, where she could die in peace surrounded by her friends. Now it looked like she might have to die along with her friends. A surge of adrenaline spiked through her, breaking that eerie trance state being impaled must have put her in. She glanced around. There, across the hall, was another doorway, although she didn’t know what would stop the Iron Housers from blocking that one too. Izzy had already seen it and was dragging Tee that w
ay with Mort sloshing along in their wake.

  Behind them, Ms. R and Rohan had leapt out of the way as Fortress came crashing into the gear and spun around. The Hierophant’s masked face turned to where Tee, Izzy, and Mort were hurrying away.

  Spirits swooshed through the air all around them. Ahead, the water vomited up a metal crossbeam that Izzy had to swerve to keep from hitting. They sloshed past it.

  Fortress growled and stomped toward them.

  Then stopped.

  A bright green shape splattered across their gas mask and spun into action, whipping across the giant’s thick body in an electrified sizzle.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Up ahead, Caleb stood at the door, arms outstretched toward Fortress. Izzy, Tee, and Mort rushed toward him as another one of his tats went whizzing past and found its mark on the Hierophant.

  Tee felt the world begin to spin out of control. Pain lanced outward from her shoulder, like her body had finally caught up to what had happened. She tried to breathe deeply, only managed to cough a few times and make things worse.

  “Hang on, baby,” Izzy growled. “Hang on.”

  “I’m okay,” Tee tried to say, but it mostly came out as more coughing, and suddenly she couldn’t seem to find any air, no matter how hard she pulled.

  A blast of dark water smacked into Mort just as they reached the doorway, and for a second he disappeared beneath the swirl. Izzy kept dragging Tee, right through the doorway and into the front room. Tee glanced back just in time to see Fortress, still writhing from the onslaught of those tattoos, heave themselves toward Caleb. And then Mort popped up with a gasp and a splash and limped to the door.

  And then the world whipped into a vicious spin cycle as Tee tried to inhale and could only barely manage it.

  “Stay with me I said!” Izzy yelled, pulling her toward the far door. Tee stumbled along, falling apart, falling down, clambering back up. The water wasn’t as deep here, and the Iron Housers seemed to be too concerned with their flailing king to bother with anything else. Old Crane’s cries still filled the air amidst the slosh of water and yells.

  And then they were outside, and Ms. R was behind them, along with Mort. “In the car,” she said in a raspy whisper that sounded like it took all her self-control to make sound calm. Izzy pulled open the door of the Crown Vic and turned Tee so she could lie back across the seat. Mort limped toward them, still panting and looking in every way like shit. But at least he wasn’t impaled, Tee thought, as Izzy helped her sit. Rohan and Caleb burst out of the factory in another gush of dark water, Rohan facing away from them and still letting off pop after pop.

  Tee found she could actually lie all the way back, which meant there wasn’t a whole other part of that metal rod poking out of her back, so that was … something.

  Then more people were yelling, and car doors slammed and the pops got farther away as tires screeched and the world outside the windows whirled into a dark spin cycle of shadowy buildings and spiraling streetlights.

  “Tee.”

  Izzy’s voice.

  “Tee, babe! Stay … stay here, babe.”

  Izzy’s voice and the vomitous hurl of motion. And then the hurl of actual vomit speeding up her throat. Tee turned her head and let out a gush of blood and bile.

  “Tee, babe, please, babe,” Izzy chanted. She didn’t sound mad anymore, like she had in the factory. She sounded terrified, anguished. Like Tee was already dead. But Tee wasn’t dead, she was pretty sure. Dead people don’t vomit, right? She was still in the back seat of Ms. R’s Crown Vic, though, which meant she’d just ralphed on the nice leather seats and may be dead soon enough if she survived being impaled.

  “Not the hospital,” someone was insisting. Mort, she thought.

  “What do you —” Ms. R growled, and then Izzy yelled, “Goddammit, Mort! She has a goddamn rod sticking out of her!”

  “I know, I know, I know, just …”

  “This isn’t the time for —” Ms. R said.

  “Let me do something!” And then Mort’s face appeared over Tee. He looked even paler than usual and the passing streetlights flashed over his furrowed brow, the dark bags under his eyes. That deep frown. “Hi, Trejean.”

  “I still d-d-don’t t-t-trust you,” Tee said through chattering teeth. She could still only kinda pull oxygen into herself, but she must’ve been able to breathe somewhat, otherwise she’d be dead. She was pretty sure that made sense.

  “Do what you’re gonna do!” Izzy yelled into Mort’s face.

  He nodded, undaunted, and placed one hand on Tee’s forehead. Then another on Izzy’s.

  “What the hell?” Izzy said, but she didn’t move.

  “What’s going on back there?” Ms. R demanded.

  “What’s going on is, do not take any of us to a hospital,” Mort said in a no-nonsense growl. “No matter what happens!”

  Izzy’s eyes looked glassy, calm, her tense face relaxed. “Ahhh,” she said, more of a sigh.

  “What are you d-d-dooo …” Tee heard the sound of her own voice trail off, become a gentle song. The orange streetlights kept sailing past overhead, Mort’s face squinted into a determined grimace; beneath it all was a song. It was still Tee’s voice singing it, but the whole world seemed to be singing along. It rose up from Tee’s lips and circled around her, a luminous serpent, a trembling vine. It became smoke, became fire, it roared, simmered, then spread.

  “How,” Tee whispered as the spreading song covered everything in a dewy, shining dapple of frost. “Whoooo …” Once again her word slid long, then echoed and extended and unraveled across the dusky air in the back seat of Ms. R’s Crown Vic. The song that Tee’s word had become found Izzy and wrapped around her. And then it pulled.

  Tee didn’t know if she had made it do that or if it did it on its own; didn’t matter, really. All that mattered was that she wanted Izzy with her and there Izzy was, slumping genially forward onto the car seat beside Tee. There wasn’t really room for both of them, so Tee kind of nudged over some and Izzy slid between her and the backrest part, and then they both lay there breathing, and the night was a song, the world was a song, and above them Mort’s face finally went slack, and maybe he even smiled, just a tiny bit, before he blinked and collapsed backward in what seemed like slow motion.

  And then there was the wide-open darkness of the sky and the swish of lights and passing cars and Ms. R’s urgent voice; and Izzy there all the while, her breath and her pulse merging with Tee’s, her almost weightless, limp body alight with the song of both their voices as it cascaded outward and outward and covered the whole world, and both their mouths filled with the marvelous taste of something spicy and sweet like ginger; and they smiled, finding each other’s eyes in the darkness of that back seat, because they knew, somehow they knew, they knew what no one else knew, and that, amidst everything else, was enough.

  Once, a very long time ago, when the wars raged between those who had once roamed freely across the land and those who came to steal and plunder and destroy, a girl broke free from her greatest enemy, her own mother.

  A Spaniard had come to visit the palace, and María Cantara could tell from the haughty, over-authoritative way he carried himself that he was terrified.

  And well he should be, although probably not for the reasons he imagined.

  La Contessa assembled her four daughters at the far end of the grand front hall, amidst tapestries and stained-glass windows and all beneath the swirling, grandiose decorations of that magnificent, over-the-top dome. The servants lined up in rows facing each other, and even though by now almost all of them (except ever-faithful, nosy old Altagracia) were conspiring to destroy La Contessa in one way or another, they formed an imposing gauntlet to stare down from the doorway.

  Even more imposing still: La Contessa’s elite guard stood shoulder to shoulder before the door. In a fit of paranoid rage following the tragic mix-up with Death, she’d maimed them, depriving each of a different sense, supposedly to heighten the other four senses. It was uncl
ear whether this was designed to inspire terror or loyalty or some creepy combination, but either way, they remained ever by her side. Well, all except Frantico, who died of an infection soon after having his skin flayed off.

  That left four: Terrizo, whose nose she’d had chopped away; Quisombo, the eyeless; Peyton, with just pale scars where his ears once were; and El Tuerco, who remained desperately in love with María Cantara’s father, Santo Colibrí, and somehow had kept his treachery and amorous pursuits a secret all this time. Still: La Contessa had had his tongue removed, and he was all the more committed to her destruction, as far as María Cantara could tell.

  The four guards parted their crossed spears as the Spaniard and the Taíno boy carrying his luggage entered the hall.

  This man was an ambassador, María Cantara decided. He carried scrolls and wore an insignia on his uniform with the symbol of the crown on it. He was an ambassador and he knew La Contessa from back in her pre-exile years.

  The Spaniard bowed low when he reached the feet of the four sisters. La Contessa stood behind them, her glare stony as ever.

  I bring the good wishes of the King and Queen of Spain, my countess, the man said elaborately.

  La Contessa laughed and then spat on the floor beside her, and the man looked up in horror from his bow. Rise, clown, she said sourly. Your pathetic demonstrations and protocols mean nothing here. This is very simple. You have need of us, mm? Otherwise the royal fools wouldn’t have come crawling back. You are short supplied, and the French, British, and now the Americans are kicking your royal backsides all over the Atlantic Ocean. Mmmm … what a tragedy….

  Pathetic demonstrations was a pretty apt phrase, María Cantara figured, because that’s exactly what La Contessa herself was engaged in. She’d spent the past three weeks preparing for this visit, which the few loyal spies she had left in Madrid had helped engineer. But whatever. She would do what need be to get what she wanted. And María Cantara would then make sure to unravel it piece by piece.