Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  In Yeola-e, Arko had taken all but those stubborn hedges of mountain in the north and southwest corners of the barbarian nation. Now—how had the Pages reports put it? “Strategic withdrawals and consolidation of our overall position.” In other words, the killer mountain boys are whipping our asses. Last he’d heard, it was three-fifths taken back. Every major military power in the area had suddenly allied with the Yeolis, lending them troops or attacking on their own fronts.

  And the non-military powers are lending them money. How else could a country all but conquered and broke half a year ago afford to buy all those war supplies? Or hire every cutthroat, sellsword, pirate and bar-brawler between Kreyen and Rand; he’d noticed evenings in the Knotted Worm had been more sedate recently. It didn’t take a god’s brains to figure out that Brahvnikian money was involved.

  The Benai is probably acting as conduit for funds. The Benai Saekrberk was considerably more than the central abbey-temple of the Honey-Giving One—only Brahvnikians would worship a bear, and a fat bear at that—and the closest thing Brahvniki had to a government. It was also the largest deposit bank on this end of the Mitval—Arkan Sea, he reminded himself. Six months ago, Arko had had a powerful enough presence in Brahvniki to gain entrance to the Benai for inspection tours. The inspector, a military type from the Arkan embassy guard, had always come back three sheets to the wind on the Benai’s famous distillate, cursing the Benaiat Ivahn as a senile dodderer and a crashing bore; but at least he’d got in. Then the Yeolis had taken back the nearest seaport, Selina, and now the Benai, politely but effectively, said no.

  And Arko had done things to offend some of the most powerful private citizens of Brahvniki. Matthas had two reasons to curse Edremmas Forin, one of the two Arkans who’d worked their way onto the Pretroi, the Brahvnikian council of merchant princes, and also happened to be his, Matthas’s, spy boss. How could he be so stupid as to stand up in council and spout that verse of the Thanish goatherd song about diddling girl-children to Mikhail Farsight, considering how rich, the little Zak bastard is, how Zak feel about kin, and how many daughters he has. The whole city had heard about it, making Mikhail an enemy of Arko for life.

  The other reason to curse Edremmas: he was dead. Not that the two were unrelated; he’d been killed on the street, in broad daylight, by an assassin good enough to cut him almost in half. Mikhail and all four daughters had just happened to be passing by, and the assassin had just happened to commit suicide while in the Benai’s custody, so no one could ever prove who’d hired him. And so I have to break in a new boss. A Mahid this time, Eforas Mahid, oh joy. Who because he got blown off course, but mostly because of those slow-as-constipation paper-shuffling donkeys in the Marble Palace, has taken six fikken months to get here. Not that I wasn’t running things all right, but fessas riff-raff like me aren’t qualified to request Imperial funding. His payroll was half promises, right now. Thank Celestialis the rubber price went up—

  Matthas pulled out the latest note from his agent in the Slaf Hikarme. “Megan Whitlock and Shkai’ra Farshot will be arriving on the rebuilt Zingas Vetri soon after the spring breakup.” Ice was still solid on the upper Brezhan; that meant a half-month hence, halfway between equinox and summer solstice. “This office was instructed to arrange for a draft of 1,500 silver Dragonclaws from the Benai Saekrberk to the liquid capital account.” Not exactly tavern-wenching money—and yes, it would be wenching, for those two.

  It had worried him for a while, that kinfolk of Mikhail and the like up the river in F’talezon had even greater resources. Involvement against Arko from that quarter, if it weren’t in place already, would be disastrous. This Whitlock was thick as thieves with all the other Zak big fish here, and was known to have a grudge against Arko. She and her mate-in-the-ultimate-perversity Shkai’ra (who could even conceive what two women did in bed?) were the hands-on type, adventurers. Ten-to-one they’re the F’talezon connection, or at least part of it, or at least cognizant of it.

  Their coming was an opportunity, he saw. Out-of-town merchants were less well-protected than resident ones, and these two had a reputation for taking risks and keeping low company, even by local standards. Knotted Worm regulars, when here. He glanced with a smile at another of the objects in his secret drawer: a glass vial of clear liquid. How much the Empire had gained in its history, by the total honesty this Imperator of drugs elicited. That’s what I love about this job, he thought. I don’t just have to ferret out information. I get intrigued.

  But this required aid from his superior, the Mahid.

  Eforas, old boy, he thought that night, creeping by midnight to the embassy for his appointment, you are about to have the pearls of my wisdom thrown before you.

  All Mahid looked the same. It wasn’t only that they were a clan or always wore black—onyxine, they called it, a glorified term for black—or had sworn the same oath, that of ultimate loyalty to the Imperator of Arko, whatever he asked. They all seemed to have the same mind, too. It was like the Press in Arko, the huge black rattling machine that spat out the Pages and other reading material: it worked when a lever was pulled one way, didn’t work when it was pulled another way, always worked exactly the same way and produced the same product, over and over and over. You got the impression that if any part were jolted slightly out of line, the whole thing would come to a smoking halt.

  It’s the training, of course, Matthas thought, their having to think no thoughts but the fifty Maxims and strangle dogs when they’re kids and so forth. One could feel sorry for them.

  He wasn’t sure which he disliked more, though: the young ones, with their boundless energy and their limitless hate, some still having the misfortune of being handsome; or the old ones with their faces of carven stone, who over the years had brought Mahidness to a fine art. Eforas, it turned out, had come out of the mold a middle age ago. It remained to be seen whether he’d combine the virtues of youth and age, or the vices.

  Matthas vaguely wondered, as he seated himself in the back office of the Arkan embassy, what Mahid women were like. All in onyxine aprons, he thought. With those same dead fish eyes, saying “Child, the will of the Imperator requires you to eat your turnips ...”

  Eforas had the usual Mahid bearing, straight and stiff as a rod, and a face incapable of expression. The two nodded to each other. “Your report of activities since Edremmas’s demise, fessas,” the Mahid intoned. Typical of Mahid, to emphasize the inferior caste.

  Matthas drew out his notes, and began. I have to pretend I’m talking to a machine, he thought, as even his most amusing and bizarre anecdotes passed one by one without bringing even a flicker of a smile to Eforas’s deathly blue eyes. His deductions about Yeoli financing, which he’d thought were quite astute, actually, didn’t bring even a nod of approval. Machines don’t laugh, or praise, he reminded himself, whether it’s deserved or not. He forged bravely ahead to his request: funding to secure the owner of the Slaf Hikarme for truth-drugging.

  “Fessas,” the Mahid interrupted. “Did you say ‘she’?”

  “I did, sir,” Matthas answered firmly. Mahid understood that syntax better than just yes, he’d learned.

  “Then I am given to understand this Megan Whitlock is a woman?”

  “She is, sir.”

  “Now how can you reconcile the ownership of said merchant house by said person, and the fact that she is a woman?”

  Celestialis, this one doesn’t know anything. By Arkan law, women could not hold property, being considered property themselves. But the first thing he d learned in the Irefas academy was that laws and customs in other lands could take any form, no matter how unnatural.

  “Zak and Brahvnikian law allows a woman to be a well-to-do merchant, as Whitlock is, sir.” Else I’d hardly be after her, would I, you bonehead.

  Somehow this seemed to get through into the cogs of the Mahid’s mind; or else was brushed off and forgotten, Matthas couldn’t tell. “Tell me more about this Shh—skira Farshot, she’s married to.”

&n
bsp; Matthas began. Two words in, Eforas interrupted. “Did you say she again?”

  “I did, sir.”

  For a moment the Mahid sat stock-still. Oh-oh. Has some part been jolted slightly out of line? “These barbarian cultures have some very perverse customs, honored Mahid,” he continued smoothly.

  “Explain entirely this Megan’s marital status,” Eforas commanded.

  Oh, my little professional God, Matthas groaned inwardly. Why did you have to ask that? He’d been hoping just to have to tell about Shkai’ra.

  “I hope you will forgive the bizarre complexity of the situation, honored Mahid, but in F’talezon, multiple marriages are quite accepted. The two are part of a foursome, with Rilla called Shadow’s Shade, who is also Megan’s cousin, and Shyll called Doglord, the one man. They were wed almost a year ago in F’talezon.”

  “Ah. A harem arrangement, with one woman owning the mercantile house in the master’s name, or because she inherited it, since her father had no sons. That isn’t so complicated, fessas, I’ve heard of such things in uncivilized lands. Why didn’t you explain it that way from the beginning?”

  Matthas remembered his classes in the Irefas training academy on dealing with alien cultures. Yeola-e, Brahvniki, Tor Ench, Laka, they taught us how to adjust to; never Mahid. “Because, if you please, sir, that’s not how it is. The four, man and women alike, act as ... equals, if you’ll forgive me for explaining something so difficult to envision; the closest they have to a leader is Whitlock. In terms of love-bonds” Celestialis, why did I have to get into the sticky parts? “—they’re actually sort of two pairs, Megan and Shkai’ra in base depravity, and Rilla and Shyll, who have produced a child. Though there are apparently feelings between Megan and Shyll as well ...”

  Eforas sat looking, though Matthas had not thought that possible, even more like metal than he had before. Remembering seeing a Press servant, when one of the smaller devices broke down, curing it with a hefty whack with his fist, he suddenly imagined himself having to thump the Mahid on the skull, on which he would snap to life and begin talking sense, and maybe even smile.

  “It is to purge this sort of cancer from the world that is Arko’s sacred mission of civilization,” Eforas said evenly.

  “Exactly,” Matthas answered smoothly. Back to the matter at hand: whew. “Which is why they must be waylaid and truth-drugged.”

  “Very well, fessas, I shall allocate funds for one embassy strong-arm; which day do you want him?”

  “Er ... Honored Mahid ... You must forgive me for not enabling you to understand what we’re up against here. By my estimation, it would take ten.”

  “Ten?” My professional God, an expression. Disapproval and contempt, of course. “You said they were both women, did you not? And one is a Zak, a race with an average height of some four feet?”

  How do I explain four feet plus about forty knives, including ten where normal women have nails? Or the other one, six feet of solid muscle with breasts, her fighting skills of the calibre that elite forces would covet. He remembered the challenge archery and climbing race that had been the talk of the city a year and a half ago, Shkai’ra’s show-off shot that had brought down a seagull from what had to be a hundred and fifty paces straight up.

  And then the manrauq, this magic thing, that Megan’s people could do ... no. He wasn’t even going to try.

  “These are ... unusual women, Honored Mahid. Extraordinary, you might say. You of course know that many barbarian lands train their womenfolk in the fighting arts. These two were exceptional students, shall we say.”

  “It is among the worst excesses of savages to force the mothers and wives of their nations to be spear-fodder,” Eforas pronounced. “No female is capable of performing the exercises or trials of proper war-training ... and you claim you need ten men to restrain two women. Is there some other operation you are planning without the permission of your superiors, fessas?”

  “Most emphatically there is not, Honored Mahid.” I’ve served Irefas totally loyally and faithfully for fifteen years, as you know damn well from your briefing, you onyxine asshole; don’t call me a fikken liar. “I’ll swear on my hope of Celestialis if you wish. I’ll submit to a dose of truth-drug myself. These women are dangerous.”

  “I think I understand,” the Mahid said. “It’s an old merchant’s bargaining trick, to ask at first for an outrageous sum, isn’t it, Matthas Bennas, fessas? Perhaps your cover profession is more suitable to your true nature.”

  They’re erecting new hitching posts at the Kremlview Inn, Matthas thought, perhaps you’d like to apply for the job. Then again, perhaps I would. Eforas wrote out the papers allocating four men, Arkans attached to the embassy. At least it was better than one. If they were four good men, with a good enough plan ...

  “But you understand, fessas,” Eforas added, as he made the last signature required, his voice taking on a pitch of claws on a chalk-board, “directing this many men for such an operation, I am taking as a guarantee of success. If by some implausible chance it fails, you will be held personally responsible.” The blank eyes fixed on his, and their very emptiness suddenly became terrifying, like a bottomless pit into which he was about to be dropped, a cavern of Hayel void even of air, in which sinners lived in the instant in which holding one’s breath becomes unbearable, stretched out to eternity ... He felt a cold sweat break out on his back and neck. “You had better not fail.”

  “I’m holding you personally responsible for this,” the Mahid said, toeing one of the corpses.

  Throat torn out by steel fingernails, Matthas thought helplessly, poor bastard ... she must have climbed up him to do it. He looked up, nauseated—from the sight at his feet or Eforas’s face? Both, he decided. He said nothing; there was nothing to to say.

  “But I’ll be merciful, fessas,” Eforas said loftily. “You’ve been a useful servant to the Imperator, and perhaps will be unto death. You are hereby dismissed from your position here. But we will not abandon your little plan. These ... women certainly acted with an alacrity suggestive of ill designs. You will act as an operative, reporting to me alone. You will truth-drug them. You will find what information they have. Since you’ve already wasted an extremely generous sum of Imperial resources on these four, three dead and the other deserted, you will be provided with no more. It is all one to me how you do it, whether you kill yourself, beggar yourself, have to swim all the way up the Brezhan after them clutching a vial of truth-drug in your mouth, but you will do it yourself, or you will not return. Go!”

  * * *

  III

  Megan had promised Nikolakiaj she wouldn’t wear any more grooves in his tables with her claws. She was drunk, and so was Shkai’ra, beautiful to Megan’s eyes, relaxed, candlelight softening the sharp angles of her face, turning her copper hair a deep russet, sparking her nose-ring of thread gold wire. She tossed bits of fish into the air for Fishhook to catch, velvet orange wings quivering and fluttering as the cat bounced, making impossibly loud crunching and smacking noises for such a tiny mouth over bits of fish with no bones.

  The Knotted Worm was busy. Even the middle tables were full, though most people who drank here preferred to keep their backs to walls. The pair had their usual seat against one of the tile stoves; Megan leaned against the beehive shape and hitched her shoulders against the warm clay. “Pssst,” Shkai’ra whispered in her ear at the top of her lungs. “Let’s test the mattress, hey?” Probably it hadn’t been such a good idea for the Kommanza to get so drunk, but they’d traveled hard down river, and then tonight’s back-alley skirmish ...

  Megan shook her head. “Always want to fuck after you fight. I wonder who those Arkans were, anyway, and who sent them after us? They looked official. If you hadn’t chopped up the last one, we might have found out.”

  “I thought you were going to save your last one, not claw out his throat,” answered Sakai’ ra, then added a cheery, “Oh well.”

  The tavern quieted; Nikolakiaj was on stage, holding up
his hands, clearing his throat. It was Bard Night: that either promised crooning or threatened caterwauling; which, remained to be seen. “Let’s have a good finger-snapping for Merikin Mara, of Selina,” he announced, “who will regale us with song and news both.”

  The bard was Yeoli. There was the crystal, strung around his neck on a thong, and the curly hair—sure signs. Beyond that, he was flashy even for a bard, with flame-red hair in ringlets falling down long past his shoulders, a streak of white like Megan’s on one side-lock, a streak of black on the other, a tunic of embroidered satin. On the stage he arranged himself, tuning a long curving harp with inlaid abalone in the soundbox, and grinning a big grin.

  “Hello, gentle—and not-so-gentle-folk. Nye’yingi.” Yeoli for hello. She spotted two Arkan warriors sitting in a dark corner. Different from a few months ago; not swaggering. And wearing their swords peace-bonded; the Benai could enforce that with them again, now. You dog-suckers will have lost a whole war, she thought, if Yeola-e’s made it to their border. She smiled. Many others in the bar looked as if they were going to enjoy this, too.

  “As our dear friend Nikolakiaj says, I do indeed have news,” the bard said happily. “Unexpected, indeed unprecedented news. News beyond your wildest conceptions, and you will see I do not exaggerate. Good Nikolakiaj said I would give news and song, as is customary. But this information so inspired me, dear listeners, that you will have the rare good fortune to hear both in one.” Suddenly his face sobered and his voice dropped. “Tragic and pathetic news, I bring. In fitting with its somber nature, I must adopt a somber mien ...” Anticipatory snickers echoed, including one from Shkai’ra. “My ballad’s title: A Lament for the Empire of Arko.”