Shadow in the Empire of Light

by Jane Routley

  A stunned silence fell. The enormity of the accusation was so great that Splendance dropped her hand from Klea’s shoulder and stared at her. Personally I didn’t believe a word of it. Why on earth would Klea do such an awful thing? It was even more outrageous than crystal smuggling. I went to Klea’s side and took her hand, and at that, Klea burst into tears.

  “Is this true?” Glisten asked Klea.

  Klea shook her head. Her hard choking sobs echoed loudly in the suddenly quiet room. I rubbed her shoulder.

  “Liar!” screamed Chatoyant. “It’s true, and may you be cursed forever for such a dreadful crime. That poor little girl—for it is a girl—I believe her to be in the hands of merchants.”

  “I hope you have proof of this outrageous accusation,” roared Glisten.

  “Indeed I do. I have a letter addressed to this... this creature, which reveals all. My maid has been holding it for me.”

  So Klea had been right. And maybe Hagen too. If only I’d looked earlier. But what could be in that letter? Not what Toy had said, that was certain. The accusation was too outrageous. I squeezed Klea’s shaking shoulders.

  Chatoyant had swept open the door.

  “Drusa! Come in here!” she shouted.

  As her maid appeared in the doorway, Chatoyant held out her hand.

  “Give me the letter!”

  The maid whispered something to Chatoyant. She was shrinking away even as she whispered in Chatoyant’s ear.

  “What?” screeched Chatoyant. “What!”

  “I can’t find it anywhere,” stammered the maid, loud enough for everyone to hear her. “Someone’s taken...”

  Chatoyant slapped her across the face so hard she was knocked back against the door.

  “You useless little rat!” she screamed. She went at the poor woman with a closed fist, but Glisten gestured and Chatoyant’s closed fist slowed as if the air had suddenly thickened.

  “Enough. Remember the pact!” shouted Glisten.

  I noticed that Klea’s shoulders had relaxed, although she was still sobbing.

  Chatoyant turned from her poor trembling maid, who took the opportunity to run away. She rounded on Klea. “You have had a baby recently. Your body will show the marks. Where is it? What have you...?”

  “It’s dead. It’s dead,” wailed Klea, and she sank to the floor so quickly that she slid out of my grasp. “It’s dead! Why must you remind me?”

  “Oh, my poor darling,” cried Splendance, throwing herself on Klea. “Oh, my poor, poor darling.”

  “You poor child! What happened?” cried Glisten, jumping out of her chair and gliding over to Klea’s side. I found myself pushed back against the wall as the two of them bent over Klea, patting her and making soothing noises. Underneath all those silken robes, Klea was muttering things about a carriage accident, a nurse being crushed to death and a baby killed. I couldn’t make out much more through the murmuring and the choking sobs.

  At this moment the door opened, and Eff appeared in the doorway beckoning energetically at me.

  I felt so sad at Klea’s pain. Such a disaster—and now this humiliating, outrageous accusation from Chatoyant. I wanted to pat her too, but there was no room for me to do so. I was a bit player in this play and here was Eff reminding me that I had a more important role in another drama. Someone else needed me far more than Klea did. With a heavy heart, I left them all to it.

  Katti was out in the hallway with Eff. She almost knocked me over in her anxiety to check that I was in one piece. Her fur felt good under my fingers.

  I shall bite that man till he bleeds, she muttered. I remembered that I too had been wronged and was still in danger, and for the first time I noticed my hands were shaking.

  “Come on,” hissed Eff, pulling me down the stairs. “We have to get you both out of the house. We can’t know how much will come out. What sort of mess has Klea got herself into? Do you think it will distract them from Illuminus enough for him to get away and come looking for you again?”

  It was a thought. Illuminus might well be able to slip away, and with Klea gone there was no mage to protect the ghost. I was it. And the traditional thing to do when a mage was after you and no other mage was available to protect you was to hide. Somewhere where there was plenty of cover.

  The forest.

  Taking care not to let anyone else overhear, I filled Eff in on the details of what had been revealed in Auntie Glisten’s room as we rushed down the stairs.

  “Ladybless!” cried Eff. “What a thing... Well I suppose it’s to be expected that something like this would happen. Klea wouldn’t want any child of hers exposed to Flara and her kin.”

  “Why not?”

  “Some other time,” she said, looking uncomfortable. “To lose a daughter in an accident like that. Poor Klea. Come on. We need to hurry.” She seized my arm and pulled me down the stairs.

  In the bottom of the Eyrie, the table was still set for lunch, but now servants were sitting on the floor by the door threading yellow silk petals into garlands. Decorations for the carriage that would carry Blazeann back to Elayison. Blazeann dead. Possibly murdered.

  My head felt like a bubbling pot. So full of thoughts about Klea and her baby (that was why she’d been crying that day!), and Blazeann’s death, and the memory of Illuminus’ face pushed into my own, and the feel of his hand across my mouth, and the tendons in my shoulder screaming as he pulled them... What I really wanted was a nice sit down and a warm cup of tea so I could still my thoughts.

  Eff dragged me through into the kitchen where Thomas met us. Hilly and Tane stopped mid-argument and stared at us as we rushed past. Was that a whole leg of lamb Hilly was brandishing at Tane?

  “Quickly!” hissed Eff, as she and Thomas bundled me down the cellar stairs out of Hilly and Tane’s earshot. Katti came so hard on my heels that she almost tripped us over.

  “I’ve already sent our friend down into the cellars with Hagen,” Thomas hissed. “We weren’t sure how much would come out. They’re just inside the tunnel. I’ve given him some food and blankets. Here!” He had my crossbow and a heavy sheaf of arrows, and of course a long cat spear.

  “Oh, you are a gem!” said Eff.

  As I shouldered the bow and arrows, she hissed instructions at me.

  “Take him up to the old mine. Bright’s hiding there. No, he didn’t go back to the frontier. He didn’t like to leave you unprotected. We’ve been keeping it a secret so that you’d have deniability, but now… He should be able to protect you from Illuminus. When there’s no light in the Eyrie, you’ll know it’s safe to come back.”

  A pulley disguised as a meat hook opened a door in the cellar wall.

  Eff hugged me. “Take care, my dear. And give my love to Bright. Tell him he’s a good boy and I love him.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HAGEN AND THE ghost were waiting inside. Hagen held a lantern. The ghost hugged me and plied me with anxious questions. Hagen merely said, “Good, you’re still in one piece. Come on. Let’s get going.”

  “You’re coming with us?”

  I didn’t picture Hagen opting for a hike up a mountain. He seemed too suave for such activities.

  “No. I’ve got to stay and help sort out this mess Lady Klea’s got herself into.”

  Something in his tone of voice... thoughts of the still missing letter that had so obsessed Klea jumped into the front of my mind.

  “Will Klea need your help? Her baby is dead and she has everyone’s sympathy.”

  “Oh, I see!” said Hagen. “How sad! Well no need for us to worry about her, then. Worry about this fellow. He’s the one in danger.”

  His How sad sounded insincere. As if he didn’t care that Klea’s baby had died. Or....

  “What I am worried about is that Illuminus will be waiting for us at the end of this tunnel,” said Shadow.

  “I doubt it,” said Hagen. “Aside from the fact that he may not know where the end is, I’ve put a word in Lady Glisten’s ear about his suspecte
d crystal-smuggling activities. I doubt she’ll take her eye off him even with all this uproar about Lady Klea. Family prerogatives are something she gets very worried about.”

  I was starting to worry about the letter. Perhaps there was more to Klea’s story than had come out. Perhaps it would still be a good thing if I got hold of this letter. I bent down and whispered in Katti’s ear. I felt her consent—and her confusion—but she didn’t question me, Ladybless her. She just nudged her cheek against my hand. I rubbed her absentmindedly in her sweet spot as I wondered why we had spent so much time and so many tears on a letter that didn’t seem to be important after all.

  We walked in silence, until Hagen started grumbling about the length of the walk and the damp earthy smell. It was only three-quarters of a mile, which I pointed out to Hagen and which he failed to appreciate. Little glow worms sparkled in the roof, which pleased the ghost but Hagen also failed to appreciate these. The man had no soul at all.

  The tunnel curved to the left, so that if someone found the entrance in the house, they could not easily find the exit in the forest.

  “At last!” Hagen muttered, as the lantern light fell on a door and the end of the tunnel. The bolt was stiff with age and underuse, and screeched as the ghost and I wrestled it open. I made a mental note to oil it sometime soon.

  The old wooden door opened onto what looked like a horizontal mine shaft. Pale light flooded in from an overgrown opening a short distance beyond the door.

  “Strike,” I told Katti.

  Katti jumped onto Hagen’s back, knocking him face down in the dirt. The lantern rolled away and, as I’d expected, went out. But at this point we were able to see without it.

  I was on Hagen the moment he hit the ground, seizing his arms and twisting them behind his back while he was still stunned from being knocked over.

  “Fkeusht wilthkic!” yelled the ghost.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m not going to hurt him. I’m going to search him.”

  I tied Hagen’s hands with my sash and sat astride him.

  “You mad dog,” snarled Hagen. “What are you doing?”

  I pulled the front flaps of his robe round to the back and started patting them down.

  “I put the evidence together. Two and two makes four, as you said. You’ve got something I want. Ah-ha!”

  Sure enough I heard the rustle of paper in his robe, but I couldn’t find out how to open the pocket it was hidden in.

  “It’s a lining,” said Hagen.

  “Of course I believe you,” I said. “That’s why you have a lining on one side of your robe and not on the other. Have you got a knife?” I asked Shadow, who was leaning against the wall with the air of a man who had ceased trying to understand and had consigned his life to the Lady’s mercy.

  “Oh, very well. Don’t ruin the robe. It opens in that seam. Not that one, the other... I don’t know why you’re bothering. I know everything now, which means my master will too, soon.”

  “But you don’t have the proof, and neither will the Premier if I take this from you.” I wasn’t going to tell him that some of my reason for stealing the letter was that I couldn’t work out how it fitted into the story. I was hoping that reading it would tell me what was missing.

  I slid four letters out of his robe and started looking through them.

  “No,” shouted Hagen. “Don’t read those, they’re—”

  One of them had a purple seal with a unicorn on it. I resisted a strong temptation to take a look at the other letters and shoved them back in his robe. My life was quite complicated enough for the moment.

  “Good,” I said, tucking the letter into my body shaper. “Toy will never be able to produce this evidence. Nor will you.”

  Hagen had relaxed back into his usual suave persona now his others letters were safe.

  “What? Are you getting up? I was beginning to enjoy myself.”

  “Oh, stop it!” I poked him with my foot and laughed. His ability to flirt at the most inappropriate times appealed to me despite myself.

  “Pity I wasn’t there to enjoy Lady Chatoyant’s discomfiture. That must have been quite something.”

  “It was,” I agreed, undoing my sash from around his wrists. “Though I feel sorry for her poor maid. And so should you, since it’s your fault.”

  “I did what was needed,” said Hagen, and suddenly he was much less appealing.

  Eff would have used this to start an argument about mundane rights, but I had more important things to worry about.

  “Come on,” I said to Shadow and we stumped up to the end of the tunnel and pushed through the overhanging vegetation. The tunnel entrance came out hidden in a copse of tree ferns. Years ago after I had failed the crystal test Hilly had shown me the safe route under the ferns to a nearby path. But I wasn’t interested in that. As soon as we were outside the tunnel I found a place where the sun slanted brightly through the fern fronds, opened the letter and read it.

  My dear,

  Stop this, or you will bring us undone and we will all lose her.

  Our family wants for nothing, neither worldly wealth nor tender care. You must know this. You have seen it for yourself. What can you offer in its place?

  We have returned it because we wish you well and we are determined to keep our side of the bargain. Keep yours. You have not done the wrong thing. She is safe and well.

  You must see that you will bring about the thing you most fear, if you continue.

  Yours sincerely

  R

  As I finished I found Shadow behind me reading it over my shoulder.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  “Curse it. What does it all mean?” How could I have gone to all this effort and still be none the wiser?

  “Lady Klea has had a baby very recently,” said Shadow. “I recognised the signs of prthigutklye depnkhthen.”

  “Yes. She told the family it had died.”

  Hagen snorted. “That makes her a liar.”

  He’d followed us up out of the tunnel.

  “How dare you?” I snapped. What really annoyed me was that he was probably right. The ‘she’ in the letter was clearly the baby, which was safe and well. So why did she lie? A new baby, a baby girl would cause jubilation throughout the family. I didn’t understand what was going on.

  “I think she’s given her baby to this R to bring up.”

  “Why would she do that?” I snapped. “What are you doing here anyway? Go back to the house.”

  He held up the quenched lantern. “Have you got a match? I haven’t.”

  Shadow took a bundle of matches out of his pack and passed one to Hagen.

  “In our country a parent alone without a settled income sometimes adopts the children out,” offered Shadow. “Often the parent sees it as best for the children.”

  I stared at him. “The family would never let her or the child go hungry. Especially not a girl. You can’t give a child to strangers, who might not care.”

  “I’ll wager that’s not what’s happened here,” said Hagen. “This R will be some wealthy merchant. She’ll pass Lady Klea’s daughter off as her own. She might even be a blood relation, if a brother is the sire. Since Lady Klea has been in Crystalline these past two years, that’s quite possible. She was away on a cruise around the Islands last winter. No one saw her then. She could easily have hidden a pregnancy and given birth.”

  “But why?” This whole conversation was so shocking. I couldn’t imagine why Klea would do such a thing. What possible reason could she have?

  “When Lady’s Klea’s daughter is of age there’s half a chance she will be a mage and that... Think of it. These merchants will have a noble in their family, one of their own to represent their interests in the Great Council. Political power. I’ve heard rumours of merchants buying the children of impoverished nobles, but I’d always thought they were myths.”

  “Buying?” I remembered how Toy had said money had changed hands, and what did the letter say?

/>   “Look here. It says we have returned it. That’s money, isn’t it? Is that how she can afford to live outside the family? Was Toy right? This is awful. No, you must be wrong. Klea wouldn’t do something like that. Would she?”

  Hagen took my arm.

  “Shine, I’m not saying she did the right thing, but I’m not saying she did the wrong thing either. She has good reasons for not wanting her child to be brought up in this family. Her experiences at the hands of Radiant and Flara were dreadful.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “It’s Lady Sparklea’s story. Not mine.” Hagen struck the match on the side of his lantern and lit the wick.

  I grabbed his arm. “Tell me. No one will tell me.”

  “No,” said Hagen. “I’ve told you quite enough. More than I should have.”

  He pushed me firmly aside and went away down the tunnel. I stared after him.

  It was all too much. I didn’t know what to think.

  “Do you think Klea could have done such a thing?” I asked the ghost. As if he would have any idea, poor outlander.

  “How can I know? But it seems to me she truly regrets what she’s done. Look at how she has been: the tears and terror.”

  “But if she told the family the truth, they would get the child back for her. There wouldn’t even have to be a scandal. They’re the Imperial Family.”

  “There is clearly much more to this than we know. We should go,” he added gently.

  “Yes, yes! Sorry,” I said to the ghost. I gave him a pat on the shoulder. “You’re right.”

  I didn’t know what to think. Was Klea really the sort of person who would do such an awful thing? She must have had a reason. Suddenly thinking was too hard.

  In a sense, it didn’t matter what I thought anyway. We were well below Klea’s level—mere mundanes.

  Time to get back to the matter in hand. It wasn’t safe to stay here. I crouched down and started crawling under the tree ferns towards the path.