In Shadows We Fall

by Devin Madson

  “Mama?”

  The plaintive little voice mixed with the others and then, as though very far away, little Hana woke and started to cry. And I could not go to her. The guards tightened their grips on my arms and dragged me out into the passage. Takehiko started to wail, too, and tears dampened my cheeks.

  I clenched my teeth upon words of fury. I will fight you all. I will kill you all.

  Behind me a gasp ended in a strangled choke and I turned as best I could pinned between my jailors. One guard stood beside Takehiko, the other had fallen to his knees, juddering the boards. His breath came short and sharp, and with a hand pressed to his chest he toppled forward, hitting the floor face first and lying there still.

  Shock reigned for a breathless moment. Then everyone shouted. The noise echoed along the passage, ringing my ears. Someone rolled the man over. Someone checked inside his mouth. Someone ran for the court physician. Someone repeated over and over that Sen had been just fine that morning. He must have choked. He must have been poisoned. He must have had something wrong inside. So much noise and not once did any of them look at Takehiko. The little boy stood silent beside his remaining guard, his lips moving as though muttering something under his breath.

  Forgotten amid the chaos I stared at my son, fear settling like lead inside me. Lord Epontus had been one thing, but this... Perhaps it would be better to let Gadjo take him. Safer. Easier. Who better to raise a monster but another monster?

  Takehiko looked up, hurt in his eyes though I had not spoken. A guard once more gripped my arm. “Get them out of here.”

  I allowed myself to be marched back to my apartments – apartments that would soon be redecorated and prepared for another as the nursery would be prepared for her children. That thought proved to be the breaking point, and in the safety of my room tears fell silent and bitter as the door closed us in.

  Takehiko curled up in the corner. Zuzue went on folding a robe. A travelling chest already sat half full at her feet though I had given no orders. It seemed His Majesty had thought of everything.

  “I am almost finished, Your Majesty,” she said, bowing to me, her sign of respect enough to make the tears fall faster. “It should be ready within the hour.”

  Within the hour. General Kin had wanted me to leave that afternoon. Perhaps he had wanted to save me from the humiliation of a dissolved marriage and the pain of parting from my children. Almost the prospect of safety in exile was tempting – somewhere to fade away and die in peace.

  “Your Majesty.” Zuzue bowed again. “Prince Rikk gave me this for you.” She held out a roughly hewn wooden fish, no doubt meant to be an Otako pike had it been formed by stronger, more practiced hands. Tears blurred Zuzue’s face as I held the sculpture as carefully as I would have held Rikk’s heart.

  “Thank you,” was all I could say, but Zuzue had already returned to packing my robes. But I did not want to leave. I did not want to be sent away in disgrace. I did not want Kisia to break its treaty with Chiltae and be destroyed. So much had gone wrong.

  Midnight.

  I went to the brazier and held my hands over the coals, skin tingling. If I did not think of something in time I would have no choice but to let Takehiko go. I could warn General Kin, but Gadjo had already bypassed guards on two occasions and proved himself capable of all he threatened. Running was equally pointless. Getting Takehiko in to see Emperor Lan would solve one problem, but Gadjo would still come and His Majesty would see neither me nor my bastard son.

  While Zuzue moved about the room, soft and silent, the pop and hiss of the glowing coals held me transfixed. Plans formed only to be discarded, each one left to hang about my head in a despairing haze. There were too many guards. Too little time. But whenever I considered giving up, the memory of Gadjo grinning reminded me that I would not be beaten.

  “Zuzue?”

  The woman stopped folding and bowed. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything, Your Majesty.”

  “I wish to write a farewell message to Cheng and you will take it to him. It seems we are both to be leaving Mei’lian and I should thank him for his kindness.”

  Another bow. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  She brought the lap desk and stirred the ink while I shook out a fresh piece of parchment and checked my brush for stray hairs. Throughout it all Takehiko did not move. I looked up every few seconds while I wrote, but still he did not move, barely even seemed to be breathing. Not for the first time I wondered what went on inside his head. If he could feel everything around him then the palace must be a noisy place.

  I rolled up the finished message and held it while Zuzue lit the wax candle. Three drips. Four. Never again would I use the imperial seal whatever the outcome, so I took great care pressing the pikes into the wax. Too much care. The cold air hardened it fast, leaving it to crack around the edges as I pulled the stamp free.

  It could not be fixed, so I handed it to Zuzue and with a bow she left, my heart pounding with the close of the door.

  With nothing else to do but wait until midnight, I pulled my copy of Nyraek’s eye pendant free of my robe and turned it over in my fingers. “Do not fail me now.”

  Cheng stood at his post in the gallery, but no welcome softened his eyes. “Your Highness,” he said, tight-lipped as he bowed to Takehiko before me. “Your Majesty.”

  “I am sorry to ask more of you, Cheng,” I said, my hand upon Takehiko’s shoulder though whether to protect him or everyone else I hardly knew. “You have been a good and loyal friend to me over the years, years in which I have imposed far too much upon you.” He had kept more secrets than any man ought, had stood guard for us, had watched his commander’s back, and now it had come to this.

  “It is an honour to serve,” he said, but when I grimaced he sighed. “It has been an honour to serve, but Kisia’s future looks... messy from where I’m standing, and for the sake of my family I’m better out of it. I am an old man.”

  “Then I must thank you for your long service.”

  He grimaced again, filling his face with lines. “It is not quite done yet.” He stood aside from the door and bowed again. “Please enter, Your Majesty.”

  The door to the little-used tearoom beckoned. Some misfortune of design had meant the sun never found its windows, leaving it cold and colourless. The perfect space for such meetings.

  “He is here?”

  “I am courting treason enough in my actions that I would rather not do so in words too, Your Majesty,” he said, speaking low, an urgent note flurrying my heart. “Please enter.”

  “I will leave Takehiko here with you.”

  Cheng’s countenance went wooden, but he nodded, not looking at the boy. I squeezed Takehiko’s shoulder. “Stay with Cheng and be good.”

  “He doesn’t like me.”

  Cheng made a mumbled disclaimer, but I said: “Soldiers don’t like anyone, that is how they stay good at their job. He will look after you though, for that is also his job.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  I slid the door and chill air touched my face, scented with dust and old reeds. It might have been too dark had moonlight not eked in around the shutters to wallow like silver fog, encasing the kneeling form of Nyraek Laroth. Tightly-balled fists rested upon his knees, but he showed no other sign of disquiet.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, bowing as I entered.

  No table, no cushions, just cracked reeds and an unlit brazier in one corner. We had made it comfortable once, back when he would have welcomed me with a smile. No smile now.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I said, a flicker of doubt halting my steps. “I should not have sent for you. You should go.”

  “No, I should not, but you wouldn’t have asked for me if it was not important.”

  “But you are meant to be in exile. Who knows what he might do if he finds you here.”

  He. And to think I had been overjoyed when the emperor chose me from so many. I
had dreamed a life of happiness and luxury, but as surely as Takehiko’s birthmark marked him a bastard did my fair hair mark me as foreign, and little by little I had built tall defences.

  Nyraek gestured to the floor in front of him. “Koto is dead. I’m not going anywhere until I know what is going on, so if you’re worried about me being found then I suggest you join me.”

  Until Lord Nyraek had torn them down.

  I knelt opposite him, this enigmatic, powerful man in whose arms I had once felt safe. He knelt with his knees spread, riding breeches visible beneath the fall of his silk surcoat. Once or twice I had seen him in full court robes, but he had been a fighter too long to return easily to the soft finery of a lord. An empty scabbard even hung from his belt. That he had worn it meant trouble, that it was empty meant the Imperial Guards who let him in had only trusted him so far.

  My hands busied about the settling of my skirt, my eyes not meeting his.

  “You are leaving the court,” he said.

  Not a question. “Yes.”

  “You take Takehiko with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “If the emperor is disinheriting him then he should come to Esvar with me where he can be safe.”

  I had planned everything I wanted to say, but something about Nyraek’s sharp gaze had always choked practiced lies before they were born. “Yes,” I said. “He would be better off with you, raised with your son, but the emperor plans to recall you.”

  “I see.” His eyes narrowed. “There’s something else.”

  “There’s a man,” I said, the words struggling to come though I had practiced them over and over. “He... wants our son.”

  Our son. Words I had never spoken. Truth I had never admitted aloud.

  “Who?”

  “His name is Gadjo, a servant of Lord Epontus. He has threatened to kill Yarri and Tanaka and Rikk and Hana if I don’t give him Takehiko.”

  Nyraek laughed. “Your children are surrounded by guards, Li. They—”

  “He got into my room without a single person seeing him. He got into the outer palace without a sound from the guards. He is the reason Koto is dead. Call me a foolish woman if you like, but this man will kill my children or take our son.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know how he does it. He just seems to... appear and then disappear as though by magic.”

  Lord Laroth grunted. “I stopped believing in magic the day I Maturated. There is no magic there are only freaks.”

  “Then a freak is coming for our son at midnight and if I do not let him go he will kill the others, even little Hana. I cannot let that happen, Nyraek, you have to help me.”

  Any other man would have dismissed my fear, but not him. Not now.

  “Midnight?” He looked toward the shuttered window, rimmed in moonlight. “An hour then, probably less. You ought to have sent for me sooner, but at least I’m here now. When this man comes he’ll have to go through me.”

  Some weight ought to have been lifted from my shoulders, but the load only seemed to grow heavier. Then Nyraek said: “You had better tell me why he wants the boy.”

  And I could only shrug and shake my head, holding tight the truth lest he sense it in my thoughts. I trusted Nyraek with my life, but so had Emperor Lan, and Nyraek would not betray his emperor to a foul end whatever the cause. If Nyraek even suspected the whole of my plan it would be over before it began.

  “He must have seen Takehiko’s birthmark and realised he was special,” I said, trying for dismissive. “Perhaps he thinks the boy could be trained to be useful.”

  Nyraek leaned forward. “Li, I don’t need to be an Empath to know you’re not telling me something. Something big. I don’t want to take the truth from you, but I will if I must.”

  I threw myself back from him, but his hand never reached beyond his own knee. In a graceless tangle of silk, I righted myself some paces away. Too far for him to reach. He hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t moved. “If you dare to do such a thing I will inform His Majesty of your presence myself.”

  “You never used to be afraid of me.”

  “I am not afraid of you.”

  “Then why not tell me?”

  Because you’ll stop me. No, don’t think that. Don’t think that. “There is nothing to tell you, but all of this has me fearing my own shadow. I am to be thrown out in shame, Nyraek. Jingyi is to take my place.” Except that Lan will die first. He must die.

  His brow furrowed. “I know she is, but that felt like a lie.”

  “I said—”

  “If you don’t wish me to read you then don’t throw your emotions around,” he snapped. “Now look at you rubbing off on me. I wasn’t agitated before you came in that door. If you want my help then I will give it, but I have to know everything. What are you so afraid of?”

  I clasped my hands in my lap and took a deep breath, trying to exude only calm. It had been exhilarating in the beginning, knowing he could sense my emotions and touch my thoughts as he touched my skin, exhilarating to know the secret he kept from everyone, but now I had seen what Takehiko could do. Had seen him kill with little more than a thought.

  Takehiko. I am scared of Takehiko.

  “I am afraid for our son.”

  Nyraek lifted a hand only to think better of reaching out for mine. “Li,” he said, crumpling it back into its fist. “I told you when he was born that Takehiko couldn’t stay here, that we had a few years’ grace, perhaps, time in which to make a plan to extricate him from His Majesty’s influence. Those years have passed. This isn’t the way I would have chosen to do it, but we have the opportunity to get him out of here and we need to do it now. I know he looks innocent, I know he’s a child, but once he is old enough to understand, to form long-term memories, then he is old enough to Maturate. If he stays here beyond that he is either in grave danger, or the empire is.”

  His words froze the lie upon my lips. “What do you mean the empire is?”

  “I mean that if the emperor realises what he can do he will either kill him, or use him. Using an Empath is a slippery, dangerous path, doubly so when that Empath is a child in whom no morals have been instilled. He has been brought up as a prince, as the son of a god, such a position breeds little empathy. And an Empath without empathy is—”

  “A monster.”

  “Exactly. If he starts down that road there is no knowing where it will end. I don’t yet know how powerful he will be. That is also the reason why no one can have him whatever they threaten. It is too dangerous.”

  He can kill with a touch. The words wouldn’t come, the admission like a dagger to my own heart. I was the boy’s mother. Whatever he lacked was my fault. But the curse, as Nyraek called it, had come from his father.

  He can kill with a touch.

  “How powerful are you?”

  Lord Laroth’s brows rose. “You’ve never asked that question before.”

  “I never thought to. Answer it.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I have read histories of my family and in comparison I seem to be a poor wielder of the curse, perhaps because I have never wanted to use it. My father called it the curse because it killed my mother, so I spent half my life pretending it didn’t exist. That’s the only reason I managed to get by at court. What I allowed in was weak enough not to drive me insane.”

  He can kill.

  “Then I think it is safe to assume Takehiko will be the same,” I said. “And so you have no reason to fear anyone can use him for... evil means. How about your other son?”

  “Darius?” there was a trace of a sneer. “He shows barely any sign of aptitude for anything, so I can only hope you are right. He is a very sickly boy, spends all his time playing Errant and reading.”

  “Then at least he will be no danger.” Though I kept my distance I met Nyraek’s sharp gaze. “If you can get Takehiko away from here without having to sacrifice my children then you may have him. But if you cannot I don’t think I can do nothing and let a man kill my ch
ildren.”

  “Even if it means handing a powerful weapon to an unknown enemy?”

  “These are my children you are talking about,” I said, my voice catching on a sob. “I cannot let them die.”

  “Is Takehiko not your child too?”

  The softly spoken words stole my breath and stilled my heart.

  “Yes,” I said. “He is. Don’t make me choose between them.”

  He is a monster.

  “Li—” he reached out but I pulled my hand away.

  “No,” I said. “It is too late for that. My secrets are my own and if you will not help me then go.”

  “You have armoured yourself against me.”

  There was nothing to say. Silence passed in the grey light, every breath of cold air like knives in my throat.

  “I see,” he said at last, rising to stand before me. He bowed, just as he had as General Laroth of the Imperial Guard. The empty scabbard at his side seesawed. “Then it seems I have no choice but to stay until midnight. Where is Takehiko?”

  Leaving Nyraek inside, I went to the door and slid it a little way open. Takehiko was sitting in the corner beneath a portrait of one of the emperor’s ancestors. “Takehiko,” I said. “Come.”

  The boy rose, and as he went past me into the room, I gripped Cheng’s sleeve. “Go,” I said. “Alert the guards that we are here.”

  “What? Lord Laroth—”

  “Will be just fine, Cheng. Trust me.”

  “But Your Majesty, I—”

  “You wanted to save Kisia,” I hissed. “If you don’t do this then we will have failed. In honour of Koto, go!”

  He took a step only to look back, confusion crinkling his honest face.

  “You have to trust me, Cheng. This is the very last thing I will ever ask of you. Go. Now. That is an order.”

  Cheng bowed then, his hands clenched tight. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  With a racing heart I slid the door closed, shutting myself in with what remained of my family. Nyraek knelt before Takehiko, speaking to the boy though the boy made no answers. He shot a frown at me, full of silent question, but I used my long-perfected smile.