House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  The young men left the music room together, Taudde politely stepping aside to allow Prince Tepres to precede him.

  Nemienne didn’t entirely understand what either of them had meant. Sometimes she felt that the ten years that lay between herself and the young men might as well be half a lifetime. She thought about the exchange as she ran down the stairs to the kitchen, collected Enkea—fortunately the cat seemed in an accommodating mood—and then headed through the infinite darkness beyond the black door to emerge in the cellars of Cloisonné House. In Lonne, as had eventually become clear to her—she was sometimes slow, but Taudde was patient—quite a number of houses hid a way into the shadows. The gallery of her father’s house, the cellars of Cloisonné, the dungeons of the Laodd, more than one shop in the Paliente, many a shadowed warehouse corner, almost anywhere where the sea came up under the docks—half of Lonne, it sometimes seemed, lay under the dragon’s shadow.

  The kitchen staff greeted her absently as Nemienne emerged from the cellars into the warmth and light. They were in a desperate flurry. Clearly some massive event was planned for this evening, which wasn’t good because it meant that Leilis was probably extremely busy.

  Nemienne found the other woman still in her room, however. Two little girls were helping Leilis dress in elaborate robes of sea blue and slate gray; spume broke around the hem of her overrobe and white gulls flew from knee to shoulder. Leilis wore a gull of pearls and hematite in her hair. She looked beautiful, calm, and remote as the sea. She greeted Nemienne with an abstracted nod.

  “Your sister is attending a dance at the House of Butterflies,” she told her. “You would do better to look for her tomorrow. Or better still, four days from now. I believe there’s a break in her schedule at noon. She’s terribly busy. Or were you looking for me?”

  “Oh, for you,” said Nemienne, rolling her eyes at the idea of trying to catch up with her keiso sister. Karah’s flower wedding to Prince Tepres was still more than a year in the future, but from the pace of preparations anyone would think that merely days remained. All of Karah’s sisters had resigned themselves to seeing very little of her until the ceremony was over.

  Nemienne explained why she’d come, and also related the exchange between Taudde and the prince. “I knew you’d understand what they meant,” she concluded, and folded her hands in her lap, looking expectantly at Leilis.

  The woman inclined her elegant head. “I know you’re an apprentice mage, Nemienne, but do try to think like a keiso for a moment. They were speaking of the burden of Seriantes trust, of course. Poor Taudde.”

  Nemienne didn’t understand what Leilis meant. She blinked.

  “There are two edges to this knife,” added Leilis, with a slight air of explaining something obvious in words of one syllable. “Taudde has to explain to his grandfather how he has become almost a friend of the son of the man who killed the son of his grandfather—”

  Nemienne unraveled this only because she already knew the story.

  “And Prince Chontas Taudde ser Omientes ken Lariodde also has to explain to the King of Kalches how he came to be in service to the heir of the Dragon of Lirionne. And this on the eve of the solstice. The King of Kalches cannot be pleased at any suggestion of divided loyalties in a prince of Kalches. I wonder whether he will understand how Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes forced Taudde’s choice?” Her expression had become calm and even more distant. Despite her youth, she looked every bit a worldly, experienced keiso. “It would be a pity if Taudde loses his grandfather’s trust because of the Seriantes Dragon. We shall need the King of Kalches to listen to his grandson. Perhaps I would like to go to Kalches, after all. Travel broadens the mind, they say.”

  “And strengthens the will” was the rest of that saying. Nemienne tried to think of someone whose will needed strengthening less than Leilis’s, but failed. And Seriantes trust… Nemienne had never thought of trust as a burden, either to give or to bear. But she understood that it might be, for Taudde. In fact, thinking about it made her flinch a little. She asked instead, an easier question, “Will Narienneh let you go?”

  “I should think so, if I put it to her properly. Almost anything can be managed if one simply goes about it properly.” Leilis slipped three silver bangles over her left wrist and turned to study the effect in the new and expensive full-length mirror that stood next to the fireplace.

  She looked beautiful. And intimidating. Her mood did not seem precisely confiding—Leilis was never in a confiding mood, as far as Nemienne knew. And the sharp side of her tongue was nothing Nemienne wanted turned her way. But Nemienne asked anyway, cautiously, “I have wondered… I know it’s nothing to do with me, but I have wondered—what sort of proper management…”

  “Led to the rearrangement in Cloisonné House’s line of inheritance?” Leilis glanced over her shoulder. Her tone was dry, but not offended. “In fact, that was hardly my management. Lily removed herself from the line by her own efforts.”

  “Oh.”

  Leilis gave a brief, matter-of-fact nod. “Mother knew well enough that her daughter would never make an acceptable successor for this House. She had known for years, of course, though she hadn’t wished to know it. I was actually sorry when she was forced to admit the truth. It was hard on her.” She sounded distantly sympathetic.

  “Oh,” Nemienne said again.

  “I didn’t expect her to name me as her heir,” said Leilis, but added without a trace of modesty, “but it was a good decision, so I wasn’t actually surprised.”

  Nemienne doubted anyone had been.

  Leilis glanced absently about the room and added, “You might hand me those slippers. Thank you. You might go to Kalches, too, if your sisters could spare you.”

  Nemienne hadn’t thought of going to Kalches herself. She didn’t answer right away, for she hardly knew what she thought of the suggestion. She had hardly been out of Lonne; she had never really imagined leaving Lirionne itself. And to go to Kalches, of all countries! She wondered what her sisters would think of the idea.

  Well, she knew, really. Ananda and Enelle and Tana would worry for her, but Ananda was too wrapped up in her marriage and Enelle in the stone yard and Tana in running the house for any of them to protest very much. Liaska certainly wouldn’t worry; far from worrying, Liaska would fight passionately to come along. Jehenne and Miande were the ones who would miss Nemienne the most: not just worry about her, but miss her. And she knew, as she would not have been able to guess half a year ago, that she would miss them both quite bitterly.

  Leilis said calmly, “I believe Taudde would agree with me that a Lonne mage with a heart tuned to the darkness under the mountain ought to learn something useful from listening to the wind in the heights.”

  “Anyone with a heart tuned to those shadows might,” Nemienne agreed. “Anybody who managed to tangle up magecraft with the magic of the dragon, for example. Especially anybody whose father was a mage.” She didn’t quite dare say, Or anybody who’s fallen in love with a mage.

  “Why, yes,” said Leilis, in an extremely bland tone. She turned back toward the mirror, adjusted her silver bangles, and said to her reflection, “Yes, I rather think that might be true.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my fabulous agent, Caitlin Blasdell, without whose critical insight every one of my books would be the poorer; and to the whole Orbit team, especially my editor, Devi Pillai, who tells me I’m “awesome.” Always good to hear!

  extras

  meet the author

  Hastings’ Creative Images, Inc.

  RACHEL NEUMEIER started writing fiction to relax when she was a graduate student and needed a hobby unrelated to her research. Prior to selling her first fantasy novel, she had published only a few articles in venues such as The American Journal of Botany. However, finding that her interests did not lie in research, Rachel left academia and began to let her hobbies take over her life instead. She now raises and shows dogs, gardens, cooks, and occasionally finds time to read. S
he works part time for a tutoring program, though she tutors far more students in math and chemistry than in English composition. Find out more about Rachel Neumeier at www.rachelneumeier.com.

  interview

  You have three main characters in House of Shadows—but do you have a favorite? Is there a reason you wrote this book with three main characters who are all about equally important?

  If you twisted my arm, I might admit to a slight partiality to Taudde. I like the big problem with conflicting loyalties that he has to deal with. But I like Nemienne’s earnestness and Leilis’s bitterness as well.

  There’s no big thematic reason I wrote this story with three main point-of-view characters. It happened because I started the book three different ways—or you might say I started three different books—and then I liked all three and came up with a plot to tie them all together.

  Many writers characterize themselves as “character” or “plot” writers—from the above, we might guess that you would say you belong to the first camp. Is that right?

  Definitely! As far as I’m concerned, characters just walk on stage and then drive the plot because of who they are and what they need. The plot itself is first suggested by the characters and the world, and then plot details get bludgeoned out of the ether by brute force.

  So is that the aspect of writing you find most challenging—plotting?

  Yep. I often know practically nothing about where the story is going to end up when I start—or else I may know the ending but have no idea about how to get there. Actually, when I started writing the climactic scenes of House of Shadows, I wrote about forty pages, then completely changed my mind about what was happening, threw them away, and came up with something that worked much better.

  About the only book where I had the basic outline of the full plot in my head from the start was Law of the Broken Earth—because I had to know something about the third book of the trilogy so that I could write the second.

  The keiso of Lonne are clearly based on the geisha of Japan. What inspired you to create the keiso?

  Actually, I’d just read Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden, and then the nonfiction Geisha, by Liza Dalby, so the keiso had a very direct inspiration. I was intrigued by the roles that geisha have played in Japanese society and, when I created the keiso, decided to emphasize their roles as artists and high-status women and completely separate them from common prostitutes.

  Do you often draw ideas for a new book this way—from books you’ve just read yourself?

  Absolutely—all the time. Nonfiction. For example, reading Self-Made Man, by Nora Vincent, made me want to write a girl character who disguised herself as a boy (in The Floating Islands). And it would never have occurred to me to write a character like Tehre (Land of the Burning Sands) except that I’d read a book on materials science by J. E. Gordon called Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down.

  I draw on fiction, too. Mienthe was based on a very minor character in a historical novel—the character appealed to me and I gave Mienthe a similar background, which is the part you see in the prologue of Law of the Broken Earth.

  You’ve written both adult and young adult fantasy—do you read both, and do you have a preference? Who are a handful of your favorite authors on both sides of the line?

  I definitely read both, and I have no preference. I do think there are a lot of very good writers in YA right now, but that’s been true for ages. I’ve loved Diana Wynne Jones’s books all my life; she and Patricia Wrede might be two of my favorite YA authors. And Robin McKinley. And Sharon Shinn. I recently read the Tomorrow series by John Marsden and it is incredible.

  On the adult side, there are too many to name, but definitely Patricia McKillip and Guy Gavriel Kay. And, more recently, N. K. Jemisin—her books are some of the best I’ve read this year.

  Do you find it difficult to switch back and forth from adult to young adult?

  Yes, it can be. If I’ve recently been working on a YA book, then it can be hard to switch to adult, and vice versa. I think it’s harder for me because I tend to write on the edge, where a book might go either way, so it can be hard for me to write a book that is decisively on one side of the line or the other.

  I had this exact trouble with Land of the Burning Sands, because I’d just finished The Floating Islands, which is YA. I kept thinking of characters and plots that would be fine for YA but not really okay for adult fantasy. Finally I declared that the main character would be forty-two years old, and that got me away from YA at last.

  What are your writing plans for the future? Any new titles we should look for?

  No specific titles, but I am currently revising an urban fantasy/paranormal story to drop it more firmly into the YA camp. Other than that, we’ll see. I’ve been reading all these books about the Ottoman Empire, so that may turn into a wonderfully exotic setting for a book in the near future.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed HOUSE OF SHADOWS, look out for

  THE GRIFFIN MAGE

  by Rachel Neumeier

  Kes woke as the first stars came out above the desert, harder and higher and brighter than they had ever seemed at home. She lifted her head and blinked up at them, still half gone in dreams and finding it hard to distinguish, in that first moment, the blank darkness of those dreams from the darkness of the swift dusk. She was not, at first, quite sure why the brightness of the stars seemed so like a forewarning of danger.

  She did not at once remember where she was, or with whom. Heat surrounded her, a heavy pressure against her skin. She thought the heat should have been oppressive, but in fact it was not unpleasant. It was a little like coming in from a frosted winter morning into a kitchen, its iron stove pouring heat out into the room: The heat was overwhelming and yet comfortable.

  Then, behind her, Opailikiita shifted, tilted her great head, and bumped Kes gently with the side of her fierce eagle’s beak.

  Kes caught her breath, remembering everything in a rush: Kairaithin and the desert and the griffins, drops of blood that turned to garnets and rubies as they struck the sand, sparks of fire that scattered from beating wings and turned to gold in the air… She jerked convulsively to her feet, gasping.

  Long shadows stretched out from the red cliffs, sharp-edged black against the burning sand. The moon, high and hard as the stars, was not silver but tinted a luminescent red, like bloody glass.

  Kereskiita, Opailikiita said. Her voice was not exactly gentle, but it curled comfortably around the borders of Kes’s mind.

  Kes jerked away from the young griffin, whirled, backed up a step and another. She was not exactly frightened—she was not frightened of Opailikiita. Of the desert, perhaps. Of, at least, finding herself still in the desert; she was frightened of that. She caught her breath and said, “I need to go home!”

  Her desire for the farm and for Tesme’s familiar voice astonished her. Kes had always been glad to get away by herself, to walk in the hills, to listen to the silence the breeze carried as it brushed through the tall grasses of the meadows. She had seldom minded coming home, but she had never longed to climb the rail fence into the lowest pasture, or to see her sister watching out the window for Kes to come home. But she longed for those things now. And Tesme would be missing her, would think—Kes could hardly imagine what her sister might think. She said again, “I need to go home!”

  Kereskiita, the slim brown griffin said again. Wait for Kairaithin. It would be better so.

  Kes stared at her. “Where is he?”

  The Lord of the Changing Wind is… attempting to change the course of the winds, answered Opailikiita.

  There was a strange kind of humor to the griffin’s voice, but it was not a familiar or comfortable humor and Kes did not understand it. She looked around, trying to find the lie of country she knew in the sweep of the shadowed desert. But she could not recognize anything. If she simply walked downhill, she supposed she would eventually find the edge of the desert… if it still had an edge, which now seemed
somehow a little unlikely, as though Kes had watched the whole world change to desert in her dreams. Maybe she had; she could not remember her dreams. Only darkness shot through with fire…

  Kereskiita—said the young brown griffin.

  “My name is Kes!” Kes said, with unusual urgency, somehow doubting, in the back of her mind, that this was still true.

  Yes, said Opailikiita. But that is too little to call you. You should have more to your name. Kairaithin called you kereskiita. Shall I?

  “Well, but… kereskiita? What is that?”

  It would be… “fire kitten,” perhaps, Opailikiita said after a moment. And, with unexpected delicacy, Do you mind?

  Kes supposed she didn’t actually mind. She asked, “Opailikiita? That’s kiita, too.”

  Glittering flashes of amusement flickered all around the borders of Kes’s mind. Yes. Opailikiita Sehanaka Kiistaike, said the young griffin. Opailikiita is my familiar name. It is… “little spark”? Something close to that. Kairaithin calls me by that name. I am his kiinukaile. It would be… “student,” I think. If you wish, you may call me Opailikiita. As you are also Kairaithin’s student.

  “I’m not!” Kes protested, shocked.

  You assuredly will be, said another voice, hard and yet somehow amused, a voice that slid with frightening authority around the edges of Kes’s mind. Kairaithin was there suddenly, not striding up as a man nor settling from the air on eagle’s wings, but simply there. He was in his true form: a great eagle-headed griffin with a deadly curve to his beak, powerful feathered forequarters blending smoothly to a broad, muscled lion’s rear. His pelt was red as smoldering coals, his wings black with only narrow flecks of red showing, like a banked fire flickering through a heavy iron grate. He sat like a cat, upright, his lion’s tail curling around taloned eagle’s forefeet. The tip of his tail flicked restlessly across the sand, the only movement he made.