Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  A man on his knees, nose mashed flat to his face, bleeding, whites showing all around his faded blue eyes—but grabbing up a loaded crossbow, the four edges of the pyramid-shaped head of the quarrel glittering ... Shkai’ra slipped the shield-thong off her arm, twisting her body as she flung, the shield spinning like a giant discus. It struck his throat; he pitched back to lie against the wall, biting for air as his crushed windpipe refused to pass the air his chest heaved to draw. The crossbow twanged, the bolt knocking a chip out of the stone wall across the room.

  Shkai’ra turned, staggered. No more. Over. Except for the one with no left arm to free his pinned right arm with; quiet now, he stared up at her. She wrenched the sword loose, finished him. Grey edged the corners of her vision, a grey-red mist that faded in across the icy clarity of the battlemind; the hysterical strength that had worn her like a cloak vanished. She toppled forward like a cut tree and lay, gasping and straining not to faint, tears and mucus streaming across her face as pain hit.

  The boy. Silence had fallen, the strangled man passed out and soon to die; the hanging lamp over the card table swinging was the only motion, though by making every shadow sway and shift it filled the whole room with false motion. I did come here and do this all for the zteafakaz boy. Where did he go?

  She moaned, forcing her hands underneath herself and levering her torso up. A ragged breath, and she rolled onto one side. Damn. The cut along her ribs—when did I get that?—was shallow, but too deep to clot, making a sheet of red down her side. Blood was flowing from the leg-wound, mixed with oily yellow matter. She ripped off the remains of her tunic and clamped it against the cut with an elbow, and crawled sidewinder fashion with one elbow and one knee over to the table, which still bore tall clay tumblers and an opened bottle; she hooked an elbow over the table edge and came to a knee, grabbed the bottle and poured half a dozen swallows down her throat. It was wine, cut with brandy, cloying sweet and strong. The grey receded a little and she half-fell into one of the chairs. Bending over, snarling at the pain, she managed to rip off enough of a dead man’s shirt to bind the bandage crudely to her ribs.

  She glared around. “He couldn’t have gotten out the door,” she said; her voice startled her for a moment, a breathy rasp. She drank more of the wine. “Trapdoor to the cellar’s closed. Door to the other room’s still closed.” Most of the first floor was this single large dining hall. “Upstairs, then.” There was a spiral stair at one end of the room, curling around a post of carved and inlaid oak; the stairs were beautifully inlaid parquetry.

  She heaved herself to her feet; the room swayed, then steadied. “Lixand!” The name sounded strange in her ears. Shit, what language am I talking? The bad leg nearly turned under her, unable to bear any but the slightest weight; she swore long and savagely in the ripping, clicking gutturals of Kommanzanu. There seemed to be a plate of Arkan-glass between her brain and her tongue, as if she was moving it like a puppet through a glove. “Lixand, it’s—” She stopped. He’s not likely to think of me as his mother. “Lixand, I’ve come from Megan, to take you home.” Come down those stairs, you little shit.

  No answer. She switched the sword to her left hand, to use as a crutch; a terrible thing to do to a good weapon, but devils drove. Thump-drag-wheeze, over to the base of the stairs. Prop the point against the lowest one.

  “Lixand! Come out, boy!” Thump, up a step. She gasped through clenched teeth, leaned panting on the stair-rail. Another step. Another. Faster, and the black square of the opening to the upper floor was just above her.

  She stopped just below it, bellows-panting. Maybe he got out one of the doors and I didn’t notice! she thought. Better take a look here. City boy, he won’t go far in the dark outside anyway. Shkai’ra put the point of the sword on the next step, inched her head up through the opening.

  A whistle of cloven air warned her; but she was slow, slow. Too slow to do more than begin to drop, before the icy sensation of the blow struck the back of her skull.

  There was one more, she thought, in the moment before her body went boneless. Forgive me, Megan. I failed.

  The witch-demon’s head flopped back, lax, and dropped away out of the rectangle of light; he saw the gray eyes, clenching shut, falling through a shaft of lamplight, the too-muscular-for-a-woman body with the purple spider-wound on one leg tumbled limply, thump thump thump down the stairs, turn over, lie still. The almost painful tingling in his hands gripping the oaken chair-leg, that he’d quietly unscrewed from a cob-webbed dining-room chair, seemed to linger.

  I never thought I could kill a witch-demon, Rasas thought.

  * * *

  XXII

  Redfurherdmareleadernononononono!

  Megan sat bolt upright in the dark of the tent, claws out, rags of sleep tearing away to leave the echoes of Hotblood’s thought-scream.

  She opened her mind up as far as she could, like spreading open a clenched fist, till the fingers and the webs between them burned with stretching, wide open, wider.

  HOTBLOOD! Through him, again, somehow, came Shkai’ra’s sensations. Knife-edge clear, fighting, the leg-pain so bad now Megan heard a whimper slip through her own teeth. The blow, blast of ice-needle pain through the back of my head there was one more Megan kh’eeredo ...

  The last thought, etched with weakening anguish, as the power to think sank into darkness: Forgive me, Megan. I failed.

  SHHHKKKKAAAAAIIIRRRRRAAAAA! Megan curled into a ball on her bed, hands clasped to her head, points of pain where her claws dug, unnoticed, into her scalp, her whole body shaking with the force of the thought-scream. Nothing.

  Redfurherdmareleaderdeadmoanwhimperwhimper ...

  HOTBLOOD! She sent the call out so hard she reeled sitting. Nothing. Again, again, almost to passing out. No thought-answer came. Without her, she thought dully, nothing, not even annoyance, binds him to me.

  She huddled on the bed, curled around nothing, absolutely still. The thought came dully. She thought “I’m dead,” before, when it wasn’t certain—idly, just out of fear. She would never, unless it were certain, unless she knew she’d drawn her last breath, think: “I failed.”

  “It’s been twenty-eight fikken days, Whitlock,” the icy urbane voice said, that night. “You said you’d do it. Gave your word, renounced your hesitations. It’s not a matter of my tried patience, Whitlock, not anymore, though it’s been tried to the bones. Any longer and it gets academic whether Shefen-kas dies, as you and I both know. And I’ll snuff your boy, though it makes no difference, just for failing me.”

  “I’ll snuff your boy if he isn’t dead or well on the way in another four days, and that’s it, final. You’ve known damn well how long you could play games with me; and you must know now that the time for games is over, Arko has nothing to lose, and I have to play my last card, though it be my last. No, don’t answer. I know you’ve heard me. Just get the fik out of here and do it, if you’re any kind of mother.”

  I must do this, so she will not have died in vain.

  The glow of manrauq was small, hardly more than a bright yellowish-green aureole around each claw, so that she could see in the dimness of the tent. Careful. Megan touched the tiny brush to the tips of the claws of her left hand. Dangerous. She hadn’t done this for years, too much a risk that she might scratch herself or someone she loved, but she’d brought it, just in case. A slow blood-poison, colorless, untraceable, that killed in three days, acting like flux. The sort of thing her aunt would have enjoyed. No. I am not Marie.

  I must do this, so my akribhan will not have died in vain.

  She took her unbound hair back out of her face, used to being careful with her hands. Outside cook-fires were being doused and consolidated into night-fires. With unhurried, controlled motions she screwed on the cap of the tiny jar. It looked like an ordinary bottle of nail-paint, but she always hid it in the secret pocket in her leather case.

  She’d tell him she wanted him, she wanted his help. In the bushes. “Like sleeping with a rabid wolverine!�
� Shkai’ra’s words, when they’d awakened, loud and vivid in her ear as yesterday—grief stabbed without warning, like an assassin’s knife, gushed suddenly like blood. No. She pushed it away into a corner of her mind, before tears could come. Not yet. Ten bleeding pits in Shkai’ra’s muscle-smooth back ... In a twitch of passion or fear, she would scratch him. Slightly. Men had used her; she would use a man, to get back her son. In three days, four if he were strong ... Lixand-mi.

  I must do this so she will not have died in vain. She stood, pulled the mass of her hair to the nape of her neck, and let it fall over her shoulder, as night fell.

  Calm. He’s better than good at reading people. As she searched from fire to fire, she forced it, blank, wide, dulling like snow-blindness.

  At the second A-niah fire, three men and a woman danced to the music of a bamboo flute, a Hyerne dance linking arms across her shoulders. Brown limbs swung, black hair bounced slick. Flash of white, on a gesturing hand: the signet. Those dark shining eyes, spark of gold between grinning lips. Here.

  They shuffled a place for her, waves and smiles even from familiar hands and faces seeming distant as trees across a bay. Five people away from him. She accepted the wine-flask as it came her way, took one draught.

  Take up the death of your enemies.

  She caught his eye, and raised an eyebrow at him. He raised both his back at her, smiling, making the gesture for unbound hair. He’d never seen her with it down. She smiled back.

  As people got up to dance or visit the latrine or leave, she worked her way next to him. Even her slight drunkenness was fish-bowl distant, like in a fight. She passed the wine-skin to him, careful not to puncture it with the claws of either hand. His wounded arm was out of the sling, but he moved it carefully.

  Not yet, take your time. It wouldn’t be so soon. Through song and talk she sat, waiting, feeling his warmth on her side. Then when the time was right, an hour or so having passed, she laid her right hand on his arm, half-casual, half-tentative, feeling the soft fuzz; he wasn’t a hirsute man. “I was thinking about a talk we had a while ago,” she said quietly, under the sound of the harp and flute tuning to each other. “I thought I’d take you up on your offer.” She tossed her head, sending ripples down the fall of her hair.

  His eyes remembered, understood, smiled a smile deeper than greeting. He touched three fingertips to the back of her hand, feather-gentle.

  She leaned her head into his shoulder. She’d seen others do it, friends, even strangers, wanting comfort against the stress of war. He never denied them. Someone else called him into conversation. The wine-skin came around again; she noticed he took only a short draught. She caught his, eye, tilted her head toward the woods. She slipped her right hand in his left, feeling its gentle grip, large and warm, as they stepped away from the fire. “I have a daughter in my tent,” she whispered.

  “So do I. There’s my office-cart: it’s stuffier than the woods, but more private and better guarded.” They threaded their way through trees and fires, talk and song in a score of tongues. He needed no password, knowing all the sentries’ names.

  He gave her the usual hand up to the door. Their feet drummed softly on the boards. She heard him grope for the light, the rasp of a tinder box; a flame leapt up and he lit a taper to a stone lamp, alabaster, carved in the shape of a leaping dolphin. He set it on the floor next to the bed, and sat on its edge at her feet.

  “I knew your hair was long.” His accent gave his words a silvery sound in the dimness. “I didn’t know it was so long.” She looked down at the ends brushing just below her knees, then at him, the lamplight from below and to one side making his scarred face faintly sinister.

  Now? She could half-trip and scratch him when he moved to steady her. It would be done, she could leave ... No. It would seem suspicious, he’d have it checked. For one so subtle, only the subtlest plan I have in me will do.

  “I swore I’d never cut it again. That was eight years ago.” She smiled and sat to his right—her left hand, the poisoned one, flat on the bed.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. She leaned toward him, laid her right hand softly on his chest. Warm, muscles hard like Shkai’ra’s, but in the more massive masculine form, under a small patch of black hair. The new scar on the inside of his left upper arm, still an angry red, with stitch marks. She remembered her thought: better I kill you myself than send you to that. He would never fight again.

  She brought her lips close. His came to hers, but slowly, waiting, letting her lead. His eyes were closed, showing delicate black lashes. “All through this,” he breathed, “I’m yours. You choose. You rule.”

  Yes. Lixand-mi. Akribhan.

  She slid her arms around him. “Hold me first, please.” He did it as if she were fragile; as she kissed his neck, tasting the slight trace of salt on her lip, she felt shivers shoot through his body, from head to toes in a wave. Yet he didn’t clench her. She felt the heaviness in her loins, the solid weight of her own passion, twined with the man-fear at the back of her throat, lurking at the roots of her muscles, waiting to lock her in its grip. All distant.

  She pulled at his belt buckle, right hand ... “You want me naked,” he whispered. He slid off the bed to unbuckle his kilt, then waited, kneeling, for her to beckon him, his eyes shining in the lamp-light, warm brown. She saw his hardness, standing up from black curls, stirring.

  She skinned out of her boots and trousers. Why be afraid? I carry the power of life and death, on my claws. She wiggled out of her tunic. She turned to him, held out her hand, left hand; he slid his fingers into hers, closing his eyes, making her guide him to touch. She drew him onto the bed.

  He was so large, even kneeling he loomed ... The wrong thought crept in like a thief, ship-berth, him between me and the door, naZak-big, me child-small, him male-smelling ... She stiffened, froze, hands up in front of her, trembling. Natural enough, the flat cold part of her thought. Good act, illusionist. Shit, another part thought. I should have clawed him.

  Chevenga spread his hands, away from her, leaving himself open, the motions all old-fashioned Yeoli, straight, formal. “Megan, I’d die before I hurt you.” She took a deep, slow, controlled breath, stilling the pounding of her heart by will. Yes. You will. I don’t need to fear you; I will kill you.

  “I ...” she stammered. “I need to be on the same side the door is.” He shifted back to let her change places with him. “He used to like to give me just so much running room, and then catch me.”

  She saw a line of muscle near his temple flex, as his jaw clenched. “Tell me how not to be like him,” he said. “Forbid me to be like him. Tonight, here, I am yours.”

  “Mine?” She let out a laugh, plausibly nervous. “He used to say ‘you are mine.’ Whatever your power-stingy people say, Fourth Chevenga, you’re a king; you can’t know what that means.”

  “Oh?” His brows rose, challenged. “You think Kurkas didn’t say ‘you are mine’ to me? Do you think I was a king in the Mezem, killing some other wretch every eight-day so they wouldn’t kill me, with the Mahid hauling me off every month to drug Yeola-e’s secrets out of me?” He drew up, kneeling straight, formal Yeoli warrior-style; imposing, but not frightening, somehow, every line full of the bounds of discipline. His voice softened. “What I mean is: I will do and be what you will, for this one night. Nothing you have to take; I give it. All my life I have been my people’s, doing their will, as I was born and bred to.” His words checked then, his eyes searching hers. “Look, Megan, if it seems I’m urging you, if it’s too fast, we can hold off till another night, or forget about it entirely. Whatever you choose.”

  Almost irresistibly came the urge to put it off, to be out of this too-hot walled place, to be gone and forget. No. The pain of Arkan steel again, pinning her wrists, no different than if it were real. Lixand-mi. I might not get another chance. And she will have died in vain. She calmed, made herself claw-steel, to match steel. Easily. So easily. What innocence did I miss, am I missing, having learned to b
e so hard so young? As your life shaped you, Gold-bottom, so did mine shape me.

  “I’m tired of being afraid. It’s been long enough. Kiss me?” She heard her own voice, even in the darkness, steady, alluring. His lips touched hers, softly, open. She reached with her tongue for his, holding his curly head in her clawed hands. A familiar awe, through everything else: I’m kissing Chevenga, the Invincible, the Immortal, the Gold-bottom ... Bitter inward laughter. Kissing, killing. Duty and pleasure allied. I am the Immortal’s mortality.

  He smiled—I lend you my strength, it said—and lay back on the bed. She slid down in his arms. What frightened her most, because it was what Sarngeld had most often forced from her, what she could do only very rarely for Shyll, she would do. Then in fear I’ll jump and nick him. I might not even know when I’m doing it. All I need to do is stop being so careful.

  Man-fear swelled, stifling; she choked it down, fought not to gag. His scent was a vegetarian’s, sweet on other parts of him, but here ... All men are the same. His only touch was three fingertips air-light on her shoulder.

  “Megan, are you sure?” He slid upwards, drawing away.

  “This is the hardest. Don’t make it harder!” She clasped his hips and laid her cheek against his belly for a moment, clinging, eyes closed, some part of her like a baby taking comfort from his warmth.

  “Megan. You need what will make you feel safe. Here.” He took her right hand up, laid it across his own throat, claws spread. Under her fingertips she felt his pulse-beat, quick and steady. “If I do what you don’t want, if I become him somehow, give me just a clench, the first time, a warning. If I do the same thing again—kill me.”