Shadow in the Empire of Light

by Jane Routley

  With all this excitement outside, I decided it would be best to sneak back through the house.

  “I’ll try and get her to sleep,” Shadow told me, nodding at Klea, bent over her task.

  “Good idea. Perhaps a glass or two of that brandy,” I suggested, pointing to a bottle our household had received as a Blessing gift from a local feed merchant. I’d hoped to trade it on for something more practical, but I was getting worried about Klea’s state of mind.

  The inside of the house was quiet. Most people had clearly settled into a post-loving slumber, while the party around the bonfire outside the Eyrie seemed to have reached the point of drunken sleeping or the maudlin singing of broken-hearted ballads.

  One of the maids was sitting on the stairs up to the second level and weeping, but when I stopped to check on her, she was simply drunk and overwrought. A couple was having an enjoyably noisy time in one of the bedrooms on level three, and Michael the blacksmith was stretched out naked and asleep in the fourth-level corridor. I suppressed a niggle of envy. I was off to the back-breaking couch in Lucient’s room while Klea slept in my comfortable bed with my ghost. Typical. At least Lucient’s room would be warm.

  With everyone so distracted by pleasuring, there seemed no reason to sneak about; I’d stopped being careful about who saw me and was pattering along, longing for sleep. So I bear some responsibility for what happened next.

  Just as I was reaching for Lucient’s door knob, I heard a shriek from above. “You! Mundane! Get away from it.”

  Blazeann was leaning over the opposite balcony of the floor above, resplendent in a red silk dressing gown. Screeching like a mad parrot, she launched herself over the railings and swooped at me.

  Hot panic filled me. I pushed open the door and fled into the room, screaming Lucient’s name. I had enough presence of mind to slam the door shut behind me. By the time Blazeann had flung it open again, Lucient was sitting bolt upright on the bed, a mage light burning in his hand and Sharlee had slid off and underneath the bed with a speed that bespoke of long practice.

  Blazeann stood in the doorway, swaying, fury writ large on her face. She was very drunk.

  “You!” she shrieked, pointing at me where I crouched on the bedside carpet. Hitting the floor is the logical reaction when faced with a drunk and angry mage; you don’t fall as far, that way. “Get out of here before I throw you out. My brother has more important women to pleasure.”

  “B... Blazeann. What are you doing?” stammered Lucy, looking like a frightened rabbit.

  “You crapulous little smoke rat,” screamed Blazeann, advancing into the bedroom. “What did I tell you about Toy?”

  “But I hate her.”

  “You useless little... You and she could breed true together. Had you thought of that? Make some mages for this family. We’re drowning in hell-cursed mundanes. What the hell are you still doing here, mundane?” She snarled at me. “Get out. I said now!”

  Her force hit me and I slid across the floor, hurtling towards the doorway. All I could think of was the balcony beyond the door, with nothing but the wooden balustrade between me and four long storeys of stairwell down through the Eyrie.

  “Stop!” shouted Lucient and I slowed, as if I had run into a bank of mud. I managed to seize the door frame and stop myself even though the original force of magic was still pulling at me and sucking my body away towards that stairwell.

  Then, suddenly, the force was gone.

  Lucient was standing up on the bed. “You can’t treat Shine like that. She’s Fam—”

  “I don’t care what she is. She’s no substitute for Toy in your bed.”

  “I hate Toy,” shouted Lucient. “I don’t want her to mount me again. I can’t.”

  “A bit less weed would fix your prick,” snarled Blazeann. She lunged out and slapped Lucient’s smoke pipe and mixing bowl off his bedside table. “You’re a man, aren’t you? Take some Rampant and shut your eyes. Light knows you take everything else.”

  “Who do you think you are?” shouted Lucient. “I can mate with whoever I like.”

  “I’m your older sister and soon enough I’ll be the Matriarch of this family. Then I’ll make sure you do as you’re told.”

  As I clung to the door frame, I saw Lucient’s mouth open and held my breath in case he told about the polluted smokeweed.

  But instead he said with soft venom, “Not everyone has your taste for incest, sister dear.”

  Blazeann screamed and flung up her arm, and Lucient was thrown back against the wall behind his bed, stopping himself just before he hit. I threw myself out of the doorway and wriggled round with my back against the wall as Blazeann came shooting out of the room. Fortunately, she streamed back up to her room without seeing me.

  “You scrofulous muckeater!” yelled Lucient from the bedroom, when Blazeann was too far away to hear him. I couldn’t blame him for putting discretion before valour. She was so much more powerful than he was.

  “Oh, my lord, my lord, are you all right?” cried Sharlee, creeping out from under the bed.

  He wasn’t the one who’d almost gone over the balcony rail. I patted the nice strong door frame with shaking hands.

  “Are you hurt, Shine?” asked Lucient. He was standing by the bed, shaking, his jaw clenched.

  “No,” I said, though my knees seemed to have turned to jelly and parts of me were badly grazed. I staggered back into his room. I’d never had a mage handle me like that before, though I’d seen it happen to others. I’d always thought I was immune, at least inside the family. But I was just some little mundane. A door to possibility had opened, and the draft chilled me to the core.

  “I am not—I am never—going to become Chatoyant’s consort,” snarled Lucient. He ruined the whole stalwart effect by picking up his smoke pipe and checking to see if there was any smokeweed in it. Sharlee seemed to know the drill, for she had already scraped up some of the spilled weed and was tucking it into another pipe. He lit it with his finger and took a deep suck on it, breathing out long and slow before sitting down on the side of the bed. Sharlee packed the bowl of another pipe.

  I found I wanted to cry. But Lucient was absorbed in his own dilemmas

  “Blazeann gets like this. Hell of a temper. I will complain to Impi... to Mother tomorrow. She had no business tossing you around like that. And if it had been Sharlee...”

  He stroked his maid’s hair and Sharlee patted her belly protectively.

  I closed the bedroom door against the outside.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked Lucient.

  “Hold firm as best I can. And hope she doesn’t become Matriarch. Once she controls my purse, I’ll have to do as she says. Fortunately Mother’s young yet, and Toy may lose interest if she manages to get pregnant some other way. Curse the prick.”

  “You might be wise to tell your mother about the smokeweed.”

  “Yes. And I better make sure I pack all her pipes in future too. Would you like one?”

  I nodded. My hands were shaking.

  DREAMSMOKE WAS ONE way to get to sleep after shock, but it put Klea’s task out of my mind. Luckily I was awoken at dawn by Katti demanding to be let in at Lucient’s window and as she crawled up onto Lucient’s couch beside me, something sparked in my brain. I threw on my clothes and ran back to my room, sucking the grazes that skidding across the carpet had made on my hands.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE MAGES ALWAYS hunted for the last two days of their stay at Willow-in-the-Mist. Traditionally the hunt had been to clear dangerous animals and rogues out of the home forest, but these days the mages seldom caught anything—or anyone—more dangerous than a few deer.

  The tradition was to go on horseback. Horse riding was a skill that all children of noble families, myself included, learned. Gentry sometimes mounted their horses and joined in too, but I never bothered; the mages used their powers to lift their horses over obstacles and through the dangerous trackless undergrowth, and you soon got left behind. A
lso I felt cruel chasing frightened animals till they were exhausted. A hunting party of mages is a formidable threat. I hoped that Dannel Graceson had taken himself away by now and that the Mooncat was hiding in a safe burrow.

  Though we didn’t join them, custom decreed that as hosts Eff and I should see off the hunting party from the steps of the Eyrie. Eff always gave a small speech thanking them for keeping our forest clear of danger, and silver cups of mulled wine were offered to warm the hunters against the morning chill. Despite the partying of the night before, most of the family and all of the magely entourage were there. I suspected many of the mages had not bothered to go to bed at all, but were using various means—Revive potions being the most popular—to extend their energy.

  The horses, which had been brought up from Elayison by mundane grooms and who had been stuffing their faces in our stables at our expense for the last week, were of the very finest stock and had been brushed to a silken sheen. Sleek hunting cats crouched beside their masters, jewelled collars around their necks. According to the stable boys, the cats would all out hunting today, so there was no chance of them sniffing through the house after Shadow.

  Even Great Uncle Nate was there on his floating commode chair with Cousin Two hanging on to the back of it as she always did. They would follow the action from a distance and enjoy the forest picnic.

  Only Auntie Splendance, Lucient and Scintillant were missing.

  Klea’s plan had been to cover everyone’s hands with the blue powder used in mage-proof boxes. To this end, she had drawn some blue powder out of an old treasure box of Uncle Batty’s and mixed it with a little face cream. I’d stolen the carefully polished silver stirrup cups from the pantry last night and Klea had brushed the mixture on the inside edges of the handles. This morning I’d taken them back down to the pantry and arrayed them on their trays so all the servants needed to do was fill the cups with mulled wine. When the servants offered round the trays of cups, the mages would take the cups by their handles and get blue powder on their fingers. The plan was that those with secrets in their treasure boxes would instantly get worried and rush upstairs to check them. Hopefully one of these would be Toy. She would find her treasure box sprinkled with powder put there by Klea, who would be hiding in her room. When Toy opened the box to check the contents, Klea should be able to see the box’s combination.

  The first part of this plan went very well. I felt a rising glow of satisfaction as I saw the mages brushing their hands against their legs and looking at their riding gloves in surprise, while they listened to Eff’s speech.

  “Someone’s been at a treasure box,” murmured a man’s voice from somewhere on my left.

  “Must I do everything myself?” snapped Lord Impavidus to Eff as she bowed at the end of her speech. “Now I find I will have to speak to the steward about dishwashing.” He held up a glove smeared with blue powder. “What on earth is this?”

  “It looks like treasure box powder,” I ventured loudly, in case anyone had missed the implications.

  Lord Impavidus harrumphed and rolled his eyes at me for speaking out of turn as he waved at the huntsman to blow his horn. He didn’t bother me as much as usual. Being attacked by Blazeann had one advantage. Now there was someone I hated more than him. Perhaps I could get through our accounts meeting tomorrow without answering him back.

  “Wait a minute,” Blazeann called.

  “Yes, wait for me too,” called Lumina and both of them flew off their horses in a flurry of bright hunting robes. I noticed Toy and Auntie Glisten had already made more discreet exits.

  “Bloody women. Expect the whole world to wait for them,” muttered Lord Impavidus under his breath.

  My shoulders were tensed, ready for the sound of shouting that would come if Klea was caught spying on Chatoyant. Nothing. A few minutes later all four mages floated calmly back down the stairs.

  “Perhaps if we could get going before lunchtime,” snapped Lord Impavidus, nodding the party into motion. “And you,” he pointed his riding crop at Eff, “see those cups are cleaned properly.”

  WHEN EVERYONE WAS safely gone and after a brief meeting with Hilly on the stairs where I cut her off impatiently (and I’m ashamed to say, with a curt remark about the state of the floor under my bed) as she was settling in to tell me all of Tane’s sins, I ran quickly upstairs to my room and knocked on the door. The first thing I saw when it was opened to me was Klea sitting on the bed weeping.

  “Apparently Lady Toy took everything out of the box, put it in her jacket and took it with her,” explained the ghost.

  “That rat!” screamed Klea. She hit out at the air, knocking over my bedside table. “That thrice-cursed devil. I should have broken open that box when I first came here and stolen everything.”

  “Ssh, Klea! Keep it down!”

  “No, I will not keep it down. She has no business prying into my affairs. I’ll show her.” She leapt off the bed, fists clenched.

  “No,” cried the ghost and I together, but it was too late. Klea went out the window, throwing it open so hard it hit the wall beyond.

  “Arskthyel Blithech,” said Shadow, putting his hand on his forehead. “What’s she going to do?”

  “I pray to the Lady she doesn’t confront Toy. Surely she wouldn’t with all the others there?”

  To be honest I was fed up with Klea’s fireworks. She refused to tell me what was in the letter and what sort of trouble she was in. She’d knocked over my bedside table in her rampage and broken a little vase that Bright had given me. Now there was a big crack in my window pane too. My palms and knees were skinned from my slide across the carpet last night and I kept thinking about the Eyrie stairwell. Nightcursed Mages! What was the good of them?

  “I’d better go back in the hidey hole,” sighed the ghost.

  “I don’t think there’s any point of you using it anymore. Scinty found it yesterday. Oh, and he found this too.” I pulled out the satiny orange bag and threw it at him.

  “Datrh. Then he’ll know I was here. Scinty. He’s the one you’ve got a crush on, right?”

  “I have not got a crush on Scinty. It’s just physical.”

  “He’s Lord Illuminus’ brother, isn’t he? So he’ll probably tell him.”

  “That’s not certain at all. They hate each other. That was them fighting last night. But he’s a chatty soul. So you might as well hide under the bed. Did Hilly clean under it, I wonder? I chewed her ear... Nope. As dusty as ever.”

  “Isn’t there somewhere else you can hide me? How about that Hagen? Has he got a room?”

  “He’s in with Great Uncle Nate’s valet. Look, Illuminus has searched this room several times already; surely by now he must have decided there’s nobody here. Anyway he’s gone out hunting with all his cats, so you’re probably safe for the day.” I wondered what to do if we did indeed lose Klea’s protection. Perhaps Hagen could—

  “Hey!” said Shadow, taking my hands and turning them up to look at the carpet burns. “These are nasty. How did this happen?”

  He was angry when I told him about Blazeann, which did my heart good to see.

  “Your cousin should be reported for throwing you around like that. Is not that breaking Shola’s Pact?”

  “Only if I’m hurt,” I said. In truth I didn’t want to think about it anymore. My chest felt too heavy.

  “Come on, report her. Who would you tell? You have a right to—”

  “You sound like Eff,” I said. “I bet you two would get on like a house on fire. In fact, maybe you should go in with her. She’s next door. I feel sort of guilty for not telling her about you. She’d love to meet a ghost.”

  “Why not expose me to everybody and be done with it?”

  “Don’t be like that. Eff’s a bit of a flutterbrain, but she knows how to be discreet, and no one could call her a conservative. And they wouldn’t be looking for you in her room. The only problem is that she’ll probably drill you about ghost politics. What do you think?”

  Be
fore he could answer, the window flew open and Klea burst back in.

  “I’ve lost them. You’ll have to come and show me the way,” was all she said as she seized me around the waist.

  “Wait, we have to take him,” I cried, gripping Shadow’s arm.

  “Can’t manage both of you,” snapped Klea. “He stays here.”

  She jerked me away from the ghost and we were away before I knew it. I glimpsed his pale frightened face briefly in the window behind us as we shot up over the house. Klea could go fast.

  “You rotten dog,” I shouted at her through the whistle of the air around us. “It’s not safe for him there.”

  “Illuminus and his lackeys are out with the hunting party,” she snapped. “Now stop fussing. I need that letter. Which way do I take?”

  She could have taken to the sky and found the hunting party easily, but she would have risked being seen. So she had tried flying low along the forest paths, sticking as much as she could to the cover of the trees. Of course she’d got lost.

  There’s not much you can do when a mage gets an idea into her head, and Klea could clearly think of nothing but this letter. I comforted myself that since Illuminus was out hunting, Shadow should be safe enough for the moment, and helped her find her way to the hunting party even with anger sitting in my belly like a hot ember. But there was pity too.