Windsinger

by A. F. E. Smith

  ‘No –’ The word fell out before Miles could claw it back. He had half risen from the altar, turning towards the alcoves, before he got a grip on himself. Slowly, he forced himself to kneel once more, facing straight ahead. His heart pounded loud enough to hear, but still he caught the faceless man’s low laughter.

  ‘It is your choice. But let me assure you, war will come to Mirrorvale. The only question is whether you are willing to sacrifice the people you love in a futile attempt to stop it.’

  Miles said nothing. He could feel himself quivering like a frightened animal. Finally, he whispered, ‘Why did you tell me the truth?’

  ‘To see where your loyalties lie,’ the faceless man said. ‘And it seems they have drifted far from where they should be.’ He sighed. ‘You will report to me on a regular basis. I want to know what you are doing. And remember, Miles – there will be war. Either that, or your weaponmaster will gain first-hand experience of the nastiest, most lingering poison that Parovia has to offer.’

  Miles couldn’t speak. He nodded, then bowed his head and listened as the soft footfalls of the faceless man receded into the distance.

  He should get up. Art would be wondering where he was. Yet he didn’t move. Instead, he closed his eyes and wished, desperately, that he’d never been noticed by the Enforcers in the first place.

  It had been his fault, all of it. He hadn’t set out to become an agent of the crown; as a young man, even the idea would have been laughable to him. Speaking whatever was on your mind had never been the first prerequisite for a spy. No, he had arrived in Rovinelle – the capital city, where his older sister Mara lived – with the sole aim of studying alchemy at the Royal College, the most prestigious university in the country. He would live with Mara and her family for the five years it took him to complete his studies, graduate with high honours, and then take up a research post at one of the lesser universities. That was his entire career plan: a life of peaceful academia. That was all he wanted.

  Yet within days of his arrival, he began to hear rumours that the Royal College of Parovia had a second purpose: that the brightest and best of the students would be approached silently, in the darkness, by a king’s agent offering them a secret task. Where do you think the king gets his spies from? the whispers ran. He has to recruit them from somewhere. And gradually, those rumours became Miles’s greatest spur. Because how better to prove himself, a young unknown provincial amongst all these moneyed sophisticates, than to be selected as one of his majesty’s eyes-and-ears? He was already gaining a reputation for being far too gauche to engage in the scintillatingly witty repartee favoured by the school’s elite. Yet if the Enforcers approached him … well, that would show his detractors he was worth something. That would show them he was more than their equal: he was their superior.

  He didn’t stop to think what it would mean, to be a spy. He didn’t stop to wonder what, exactly, would be used to ensure his loyalty.

  The years passed. The rumours continued, but no-one ever seemed to know anyone who had been selected to carry out the Enforcers’ will. Perhaps, after all, it had been no more than idle gossip. Miles put the idea to the back of his mind and got on with his studies, but he never quite forgot it. Not when the other students still looked down on him. Not when all his academic achievements and the praise he received from his tutors apparently counted for nothing beside his lack of urbanity.

  Then, shortly before the end of his final term, he returned to his sister’s modest house to find her gone. His nephew, too. To start with he thought nothing of it, though they would usually be there when he came home from his lectures, but as the day shaded into dusk he began to worry. Finally he left the house, walked down to the law office where his brother-by-marriage worked. He hadn’t been in that day, the other clerks told him. No message, no reason given. He just hadn’t shown up.

  Miles ran back to the house, but it was still empty. He walked from room to room, opening cupboards, searching for a sign that this absence was normal: a family trip, perhaps, one he’d forgotten about. But everything was still there. Their winter coats. Mara’s cosmetics. The big travel case she kept under her bed. Nothing was missing … except the people.

  He made a list of all the places they might be. Favourite haunts in the city. Friends’ homes. The hall of healing – perhaps one of them had been taken ill, perhaps it had been an emergency. All through the night he walked from door to door, knocking and asking questions. But no-one had seen Mara and her family. They had vanished without a trace.

  Finally, as the sky began to lighten, he returned to the abandoned house. He sat down in a chair, staring at the list in his hand, every item crossed off to no avail. He meant to think, to regroup, to come up with the obvious place he’d missed – the one place, no doubt, he’d find them. But instead, he fell asleep.

  When he jolted awake again, a short time later, two men were sitting across from him.

  ‘We have a job for you,’ one of them said.

  ‘What?’ He rubbed his eyes, his face, trying to shake off the foggy strands of sleep. ‘Who are you?’

  They just looked at him. And as he blinked in the dim morning light, he saw the small silver token that each man wore openly on his lapel. The King’s Enforcers.

  ‘What have you done with my sister?’ he whispered.

  ‘She is safe. Her child and husband too.’ The man leaned forward and, suddenly and shockingly, smiled. ‘Call them an incentive.’

  ‘But where –’

  ‘They are safe.’ The other man spoke for the first time, his voice even and without expression. ‘They have been given a new life. A good life, if different from the one they had. And if you want them to keep it, you will do your job.’

  Miles swallowed, his throat suddenly parched. When he could speak, he said, ‘What do you want me to do?’

  They told him. When they’d finished, he protested faintly, ‘But my exams – if I fail –’

  ‘You will not fail.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  The first man smiled again. ‘Because you love your sister.’

  A week later, Miles sat his final exams, graduating top of his class. Shortly after that, he packed up the few belongings he had and took an airship to a new country. To Arkannen, in Mirrorvale, where a post had been found for him at the university.

  To start with, alone in a strange city, he tried to comfort himself with the idea that he was a patriot doing what was best for his country. That he and he alone had been selected from a classful of intelligent, ambitious boys, just as the rumours had suggested: the best of the best. Yet he didn’t think it could be patriotism if he was doing it through fear, rather than love, and eventually it dawned on him that he hadn’t been chosen because he was the best. He had been chosen because, unlike the young noblemen being educated alongside him, he had a family who could be threatened without outcry or reprisal. He had been chosen because he was nobody.

  For months he passed through his new life in a blur, living only for the instructions he received from time to time in secret: communications that always included a letter from his sister, though sometimes the details were blacked out. They were doing well. The boy was growing taller. The husband had started a better job. A new baby was on the way. Miles clung to those snippets of information as if they could lead him out of the nightmare. For Mara, he kept telling himself. He was doing it for her.

  Then, after a while, the fog cleared. He found that almost despite himself, he was making friends. Connections. Doing the job he had been given, burying himself deep in the heart of city life. He decided it wasn’t so bad, what he’d been asked to do. It was no more than reporting gossip, really. What the university academics were saying about Mirrorvale’s trade relations with other countries. What was whispered on the streets about the Nightshade line. He might have written the very same things in his letters to Mara.

  Yet he had been sent to Arkannen for more than that. After the deaths of Florentyn Nightshade and his hei
r, Parovia had thought it wise to keep an eye on Darkhaven; with a single Changer left alive, a young woman, Mirrorvale was on the brink of collapse. Street rumours and university gossip were all very well, but the Enforcers needed more. They needed information from closer to the source.

  Before they could instruct him on how to go about getting that information, he’d met Art. A chance encounter on a city street, leading to several intense, heightened evenings of conversation that culminated in one equally intense, heightened night. Miles hadn’t even thought about how Art could be of use to him. Art’s job had barely registered with him at all. But when he stumbled home through the pre-dawn chill after a night that had been everything he’d hoped for, he found his masked contact waiting for him – ready to congratulate him for something he’d never intended.

  ‘You have done well there,’ the voice whispered from behind the mask. ‘Very well. Forming a relationship with a weaponmaster would have been useful enough, but forming a relationship with Art Bryan …’

  His stomach twisted in a mixture of guilt and giddy delight. ‘You want me to continue the relationship?’

  ‘Of course. He is former mentor and close friend to the Captain of the Helm. And everyone knows what the Nightshade girl likes doing with her captain.’

  Miles nodded. The relationship between Ayla Nightshade, overlord of Darkhaven, and Tomas Caraway, her Captain of the Helm, was the subject of fully half the rumours and gossip that swirled around Arkannen like complex ocean currents. He had heard more than enough over-romanticised versions of their story for one lifetime. And indeed, Art had mentioned Tomas several times during the course of the previous few days. Miles simply hadn’t registered who he was talking about, because he’d been too busy focusing on the way Art’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.

  He truly was a terrible spy.

  All the same, he went along with the plan – still telling himself it was for Mara, when the truth was that he’d have seized any excuse to see Art again. He fell in love, hard and fast, until one day he found himself moving out of his tiny apartment into Art’s equally tiny apartment, knowing he had the full blessing of his Parovian employers. He began to think himself ever so clever, letting the faceless man believe he was doing it for his country when really he was doing it for himself. It wasn’t as if anything Art told him was more confidential than what a keen ear could pick up on any street corner. So although Miles might not be revealing the whole truth about himself, he could still convince himself that he wasn’t betraying Art’s trust.

  And then an assassination threat arose, the Kardise plotting to kill Ayla Nightshade. The Parovian spy network heard of it almost as soon as Darkhaven did.

  ‘We need to ensure the attempt is unsuccessful,’ the faceless man told Miles. ‘Parovia is not yet in a position to take advantage of Mirrorvalese weakness. If Ayla Nightshade dies, Sol Kardis will take Mirrorvale – and we cannot have that. Soon enough the Kardise would be pushing at our borders.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Miles asked.

  ‘You are an alchemist. She is a creature of alchemy. Find a way to keep her alive.’

  A lot to ask, perhaps – yet once again, it seemed luck was on Miles’s side. He was still trying to come up with a way of suggesting to Art that he should be introduced to Ayla when she sent for him herself. Let him into Darkhaven. Allowed him to test her capabilities. He learned a great deal more about the secrets of the Nightshade line than he’d ever learned before, which pleased his Parovian contact no end. And, of course, his mission was ultimately successful. He figured out how to enhance Changer strength using alchemy. His work saved Ayla’s life. Not only that, but he and Art were invited to live in Darkhaven for good.

  ‘Perfect,’ the faceless man whispered. ‘We will have the secret of the Change in no time.’

  And, for a while, it had been perfect. Miles had got on with his work, enjoyed his relationship with Art, forged friendships with the inhabitants of the tower, and fed the Enforcers just enough information to keep them happy. He’d known it couldn’t last forever, yet that hadn’t stopped him hoping – because everything had seemed to be going so well. Even when the possibility of a peace treaty between Sol Kardis and Mirrorvale had arisen, he’d assumed that Parovia would be pleased, because it meant there was no longer a risk that Ayla would fall to a Kardise bullet.

  Apparently he’d been wrong.

  I should still tell the truth, he thought. Testing the idea. Trying to find a way back to that one precarious point where he could stand and hold everything in balance and not let anyone fall. Yet his mind only ran in circles, like a rat in a trap.

  But if I prevent the war, Art will die. Mara and her children. I will lose them all. And for what? The Enforcers will only find another way to make it happen.

  At least Ayla would be warned. She could tell the Kardise. With both countries on guard, surely Parovia would be unable to manipulate them into conflict …

  But Art would be dead. Mara would be dead. I have fought too long for her life to let that happen.

  He dug his nails into his palms, trying to ground himself with pain, and sank down lower before the Sun God’s altar.

  Great Lord Luka, please! Surely there is a way for me to keep them safe? To keep everyone safe?

  And like a reply, the thought came to him: If I could just perfect these collars …

  He had already been told that if he found a way to create genuine alchemical protection for ordinary people, he wasn’t to share it with Darkhaven. Such a technology would give whichever country controlled it an insuperable advantage, rendering its troops almost invincible. Thus, obviously, it must go to Parovia – and thus, just as obviously, he could never let them have it. He had always been a patriot through coercion, not belief; the thought of Parovia getting hold of a power that would allow it to wipe every other country off the map chilled him to the core. But maybe, if he could get it right soon enough, he could create enough collars to protect the people he loved in the inevitable war with Sol Kardis, and Parovia would never have to know.

  Love. Therein lay the problem. He had done his utmost to hate the Mirrorvalese – for their godlessness, their arrogance, their misuse of alchemical powers. Maybe then he’d be able to convince himself he was a patriot and not a traitor. Yet he couldn’t. He’d fallen in love, not just with Art but with Ayla, her family, even her country. Though his own beliefs remained unshaken, there was nothing irreligious in Mirrorvalese worship. In truth, there was no difference, but that one revered the alchemy and the other, the alchemist.

  Sometimes, in the darkness of deepest night, Miles wondered whether the Enforcers had sent him here knowing he would fall in love. Perhaps the only convincing traitor was one whose treachery struck at his own heart as much as that of the one he betrayed. And strike it did, because it went against every bit of morality he possessed. Mirrorvale wasn’t a threat to Parovia; it was simply struggling to keep its place in the world. Parovia wasn’t neutralising a risk, but seeking to make an acquisition. So he couldn’t tell himself that he acted to protect his country. Nor could he believe that the preservation of Art’s life, or of Mara’s, was worth the death of thousands. Any objective morality would tell him that it was right to let a handful of people die, if by doing so he would prevent a war that claimed many more lives.

  Except he couldn’t prevent it, not really. He was quite sure of that. If this attempt failed, the Enforcers would only try again. And next time, they’d use an agent who was far more ruthless than Miles himself – one who was willing to destroy as many lives as it took. No, war would come, whether he confessed or not; and that being so, surely it was better for him to remain in place, doing what he could to mitigate the effects of Parovian treachery and keeping his loved ones alive in the process. Without his work, after all, Ayla wouldn’t possess the collar that kept her safe. That alone put Mirrorvale in a good position to win the war. And his current research might give them even more of an advantage.

/>   If Mirrorvale and Sol Kardis remained enemies, as Parovia wished, but Mirrorvale sustained minimal losses in any conflict … why, then, everyone would be happy. Mara and her family would be alive. Ayla and her family would be alive. Art would be alive. Miles’s troubled conscience would be soothed. And everything could go back to the way it had been before.

  He could only hope.

  EIGHT

  Perched on an arm of the single chair in the small living room that belonged to Diann Rawleigh, Darkhaven’s housekeeper, Penn exchanged a glance with Ree. I’ll find her for you, the housekeeper had said, when they’d asked her if they could interview the maid who had attended Lady Ayla in the library on the night of the Kardise ambassador’s arrival. Just wait here, please. But time had passed, and she still hadn’t returned.

  ‘Want the seat?’ Ree asked.

  ‘I’m fine.’ He glanced around the room, noticing vaguely how tidy it was, and said half to himself, ‘I really hoped it wouldn’t be murder.’

  ‘Me too.’ Ree tilted her head to rest against the back of the chair, looking up at him. Her greenish eyes were solemn. ‘I keep thinking … what we’re doing now, trying to prove Lady Ayla didn’t kill the ambassador, is the most important job we’ve ever done. It’s not just protecting her. It’s preventing a war.’

  Penn nodded. Ree fidgeted a moment in the armchair, then added softly, ‘So don’t let me mess it up. All right?’

  ‘Only if you do the same for me,’ Penn said. ‘I’m not –’

  He fell silent as Rawleigh swept back into the room. A girl followed in her wake, dressed in the plain black uniform of Darkhaven’s servants. She had a freckled brown face and neatly plaited dark hair, and her eyes were downcast.