Shadow in the Empire of Light

by Jane Routley

  “What in the Lady’s name do you think you are doing, Chatoyant Lucheyart?” yelled a clear voice above our heads. A figure streaked into the tree and landed with a loud crackle of branches beside Toy.

  It was Klea! Klea to the rescue! Lady be praised. I almost stood up and cheered. But Shadow gripped my arm and shot me a warning look.

  “I might ask the same of you, my lady. Looking for something else to sell, are you?” sneered Chatoyant.

  Klea hit her. Not with magic; she punched Chatoyant in the face, catching her completely by surprise. Chatoyant fell backwards out of the tree and crashed down into the fern fronds, but she must have saved herself before she hit the ground, because she was on her feet again very quickly. Klea hovered over her, hands on hips.

  “How dare you?” she screamed. I thought her very glare would set Toy alight. “Shine and her friend are under my protection. Go away and stay out of my business, you horrible dog. “

  Chatoyant lifted her hand. Klea lifted hers to defend.

  “What? You think you can take me? In the state you’re in? Come on! Try it! Give me an excuse to hurt you.”

  Chatoyant’s head drooped. She breathed out.

  “That’s right,” snarled Klea. “Now get out here. And take your useless rooster of a brother with you.”

  “I’ll get you for this,” snarled Chatoyant.

  “What? With poison, like you got Blazeann?”

  “That was an accident! Nothing to do with me!”

  “I know all about the poisoned smokeweed, Toy-Toy. Splendance’s get are on to you, girl. Go running back to your mama and ask her what to do next.”

  The ferns bowed as Chatoyant flew away above us. A drop of her blood fell on my cheek as she went over. A moment later she flew back into view carrying Scintillant in front of her, and turned slowly away towards the river beyond the mountain. There was a town where you could catch a canal boat towards Elayison down there.

  “Shine!” called Klea as she watched her go. “Shine! She’s gone. It’s safe to come out.”

  “Shine, Bright!” called another voice. “Please where are you? Someone please answer!”

  Eff was calling! My darling aunt must have come up the hill with Klea.

  “Eff! I’m here,” I cried, standing up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BRIGHT LAY ON Uncle Batty’s old bunk. Stefan had washed and dressed the wound in his shoulder and Shadow had taken a look at him. The ghost marvelled again at how quickly my cousin’s wound was healing. There was nothing much he could do to speed up the process. The bullet, which was the name the ghost used to describe the small pellet of lead that Scinty’s gun had fired off, had already been expelled from the wound.

  Eff and I hovered around, fretting, touching Bright’s cheeks and forehead to make sure they weren’t getting hot. Even a mage could get a fever.

  We’d started talking to distract ourselves, but with both of us so on edge, maybe the argument that followed was inevitable. Eff started urging me to go up to Elayison and I said I needed to stay for the farm work as I always did. After I’d insisted the third time, Eff lost her temper and shouted at me.

  “No!” she cried. “No, I want you to go up to Elayison with the ghost and stay there! Shadow could be ages finding your mother, and I won’t have you staying here while he does. Surely that merchant woman will still take you on in some capacity.”

  “I don’t want to leave you, Eff. What if you get sick again?”

  “What? Is that why you stay? You ridiculous child.”

  I felt a moment of hurt at that, but she soothed it away by throwing her arms around me and planting a big kiss on my cheek.

  “My darling child. It’s not your job to look after me. I’m a grown woman and your foster mother. I look after you. And I won’t have you staying here and sharing my exile. I couldn’t bear the guilt. You deserve to have your own try at an exciting life, and I know you want it. You won’t get that here in Willow.”

  I teared up. Me, tearing up. But I was very worried about Bright. And my finger hurt like hell even though Shadow had bound it up.

  “I’m not sure I want to go,” I said.

  “Oh, Shine. Who are you trying to fool?”

  I looked round the cottage. Bethel and the other Mooncats were standing around watching as Shadow washed and anointed the raw-looking burn on Dannel’s side with some kind of magical ointment out of his bag. But I had a feeling they were all listening to Eff and me.

  “Will you be able to cope without me?” I dropped my voice, but Eff didn’t. She could be so indiscreet sometimes.

  “Oh, pish! No, don’t get offended again. Now you’ve set everything up, surely Thomas can boss everyone around. Or one of the peasants. They’re not helpless, you know. Not helpless at all.”

  She was right about that. Jar the innkeeper could organise most of what I did, or even Old Man Jenkal. All Eff would have to do was chair the village meetings. And she loved doing that stuff.

  “But...”

  “Look, I promise you I won’t get sick again.”

  “You can’t promise that.”

  “True. But I’ll order Thomas to send for you and Bright should I ever get like that again. Please. Go up to Elayison with this ghost and Klea. Deliver him to his embassy and find some kind of way to stay there. Auntie Four will help you. Go to that merchant. I can’t bear to see you rotting away here. Even working in a counting house would be better than this.”

  “Stop that!” cried Shadow, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was struggling with Bethel the Mooncat woman, who was trying to rub some ointment of her own onto Dannel’s wound.

  “It’s rogue paste,” said Eff, putting her glasses on her nose. “How interesting.” She looked at the Mooncats as if she was seeing them for the first time. I had a feeling they were about to be studied.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked Shadow.

  “She cannot put that on. She will dirty up the wound. Look, it’s full of grit. Stop it!” cried Shadow.

  “He must have it on,” explained Bethel. “Otherwise he won’t be able to change.”

  “Can you not wait for a couple of days till the wound is scabbed over?” begged Shadow. “That stuff will make it fester.”

  “There’ve been mages here. There’s one still here,” insisted Bethel.

  “Oh, pish,” said Eff crossly. “Be logical! If she was going to harm you, she’d have done it by now.”

  Typical of Eff. She always expected the world to run on logic, and it didn’t. It ran on unreasonable things like love and fear.

  “Couldn’t you wait till someone attacks you, before he puts on the paste?” I suggested. “Surely you’d be safe enough hiding in the mine till then.”

  “I don’t reckon you should worry about Lady Sparklea, Bethy,” said Dannel.

  “What about the other one? She’s seen us now. When you are fit, we’ll find another home.”

  Hard to know what Chatoyant would do. I could see her being malicious enough to hunt down the Mooncats, but I didn’t really know her. Or Scintillant either. Was it possible to ever really know a mage?

  I wasn’t sure if I knew Klea any more either. I felt so sorry for what I’d learned about her and Radiant, and pity and understanding for what she’d done. Yet a part of me was still very shocked that she would give her baby to strangers. I mean, why not give it to me and Eff? Perhaps it was because I was a foster child myself that I found it so hard to accept. The thought of money changing hands bothered me too. I knew what people were capable of doing for money. Lady only knew I’d seen enough of it in the last few days.

  So I was in an uncomfortable place where someone I liked had done something I deeply disapproved of for reasons I understood. What stance should I take? How did I react? Was it even for me to judge?

  You should go and thank Klea. Katti’s thoughts intruded on my mind. Isn’t that what you monkeys do with your allies?

  I flicked her ear. She knew I didn’t appreciate
being called a monkey. But she was right about gratitude. And she must have known how uncomfortable I was about Klea, because when I went outside to talk to her, Katti came with me and sat with her head resting against my thigh for the whole conversation.

  Klea was outside sitting on the branch of a tree. She’d gone out as soon as she’d seen how unhappy the Mooncats were with her. She was swinging her feet and enjoying the view of the valley around us, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. After all she’d been through, said the mean part of me. Shut up, said the generous part of me. Why should she always be miserable because someone had done something terrible to her in the past?

  She jumped up and threw her arms round me.

  “Shine! So glad you’re safe. And Katti.” She scratched Katti’s sweet spot and Katti allowed it. “Did Eff persuade you to come up to Elayison with us? Do come! We’ll have such fun. I know a good inn. We can see the sights.”

  The thought of the baby came unbidden to my mind.

  “I’m not sure. I...”

  She drew back and looked at me questioningly.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I found this. Hagen had it.” I gave her the letter.

  “Shine, my letter!” she cried, seizing it and pulling it open. “Oh, Ladybless you, Shine. You saved me.” She threw her arms round me again and stepped back and held the letter up in the air. It burst into flame. In a moment it was ash.

  “So that’s that,” she said, wiping her hands together.

  “Klea?” I had to ask

  “What’s the matter?”

  “She not dead, is she? You lied to the elders.”

  Her face hardened. She looked at me for a long moment. “So what? Since when did they deserve truth?”

  “But why did you have to give her away?”

  “I wanted to keep her safe from this family,” she snapped. “They’re poison, always plotting and watching. Look what happened to Bright. I didn’t want her to grow up like I did. Everyone says it’s fine now Flara’s gone, but I know her. She’s up at court whispering into people’s ears, making friends. You don’t know what she’s like. She’s scary. And she wants Radiant to come back, too.”

  “But Klea, you’re a grown mage. What’s that to you?”

  She turned on me.

  “Listen, I made my decision. It was the wrong decision, but it’s done now. And it’s none of your business anyway. So if you want me to take you to Elayison, you can keep your disapproval to yourself, thank you very much.”

  “I’m not disapproving,” I lied, unable to help myself. “I just don’t understand.”

  She gave a bitter laugh.

  “You don’t know? I thought everyone in the family knew. When I was nine Radiant used to come into my room and get into bed with me at night...”

  “I know, I know. You don’t need to tell me about it. Bright told me. I’m so sorry.”

  She took me by the shoulders. “You’re all the same, aren’t you? Nobody wants to hear what it was like. How much it hurt, and how I wanted him to stop. But he was a mage and I wasn’t, and the servants were all Flara’s creatures. Blazeann and Lumi were at school, and they hated me anyway, and Mother was always away ‘taking the waters’ and when I went to Uncle Batty he told Flara. He didn’t have the guts to face Radiant. Or maybe he didn’t want to believe me. Nobody wants to believe me.”

  “I believe you,” I protested. I had been willing to hear, to support her if she wanted it. But it had all gone wrong. I tried to tell her this, but she wasn’t listening. She was shaking me, her face in my face.

  “Flara beat me and told me to stop telling lies. Radiant... I thought he would strangle me. And he said he’d hurt Lucy if I told anyone else. And I knew I had to take it, because there was nobody to help me. So I took it. For almost two years I took it.

  “Then they found out about all the money Flara was siphoning away for her own purposes. And then they found out that Radiant had been servicing Blazeann and Lumina.” She let out an angry growl. “He’d sired children for both of them, Flara had encouraged him to do that, but it wasn’t so bad because they were mages—they could have stopped him if they’d wanted to. Servants started talking, and Great Uncle Lucient came to see me and asked me if Radiant had done anything to me. And I was able to tell him. But he told me to keep it to myself for the sake of the family, because a mage mistreating a non-mage—and a child at that—breaking Shola’s pact in an Imperial household... He said they’d send Radiant into exile and they did, but they should have taken his crystal for what he did to me. But there would have been questions, and a scandal, and there mustn’t be a scandal in an Imperial household...”

  Her voice had risen to a shout.

  Her words felled me with pain. I was ashamed for even starting this topic.

  “Klea, I’m so sorry, I... It’s such an awful story. I didn’t want to make you talk about it.”

  She dropped my shoulders and pulled away.

  “Maybe it doesn’t justify what I’ve done,” she said. “I know I’ve made a terrible mistake. I didn’t want to go back to the Family House. I wanted so much to be free of the family. And they offered me so much money and said they’d take good care of her. But I’d never have done it if I thought she’d have the same childhood I did. These people were friends of mine. I cared for the man. It seems like a decent family. The children are happy and there’s only the woman and her brother... The brother is the sire too, so she’s got the safety of being a blood relation. I stayed with them in the country while I was pregnant and I promised myself that I wouldn’t hand her over if there was anything amiss. And believe me, I looked.”

  Klea’s voice broke. “I was a fool. I didn’t realise how much I’d miss her. I went away, but I can’t forget, and I long... It’s like a physical ache. Mother never longed for us like this, I’m sure. I wrote and begged them and... It’s like a madness. It’s all I can do not to go and tear her from their arms.”

  “We can help you get her back. The family…” My voice dropped away as I realized where this was leading.

  “Yes, I’d have had to live in the Family House, but I could have kept her close. If I’d known what it would be like, I’d never have agreed... But not now. Don’t you see, I can’t take her back by force. They have money and mages. I could make the family get her back, but then... Do you think they’d let me look after her after what I’ve done? Grandmother would never allow it. She’d be brought up in the Family House by nurses and governesses just as I was. She’d be completely at their mercy.”

  “Oh, Klea!” I said. I knew she was right and my heart ached for her. Even though I’d never had a child, I could imagine. People told me what it was like all the time, how much they loved their children from the very start.

  “I’ve been such a fool,” she said softly. She wiped the corners of her eyes with her fingers. “But I must try not to make it worse. She is safe and I have someone keeping a watch in case she ceases to be. That’s all I can do now. I almost pray she will not be a mage so they will give her back to me.”

  I put my arms round her. All my disapproval had been washed away by her pain.

  She leaned against me.

  “Hagen read your letter. He’ll tell Great Uncle Lucy.”

  “But they’ve got no proof. And they won’t want the scandal. Thank you for the letter. I owe you one.”

  She squeezed me, but she didn’t look at me. Perhaps she was afraid of what she’d see in my eyes if she did. I squeezed her back as warmly as I could, to try to counteract it. I felt guilty that my questions has chased away all her carefreeness.

  “Thank you for coming after us,” I said. “I owe you a lot more than you owe me. And please forgive me and take us up to Elayison. I promise...” I didn’t know what to promise. I just wanted to make it better.

  “I’ll help you in any way I can.” I added rashly, to be comforting.

  THE MOONCATS CLEARLY wanted Klea gone, and Eff wanted to nurse Bright in the c
omfort of Willow, so that afternoon we left Uncle Batty’s little hut. We loaded the semi-conscious Bright into his chariot, Eff and Stefan huddled into the back and Klea drove the chariot back down to the house. That left me and Shadow and Katti to walk back down the mountain alone. At least we didn’t have to worry about mages following us now, and we’d arrive back at our destination before dark this time.

  Despite the conversation I’d had with Klea, and all the troubling things that had happened in the last few days, my heart was light. My little finger might be broken and throbbing, my throat bruised and my body covered in grazes and cuts, but that old song, ‘Goin’ to the big town,’ the one about how we’d all go somewhere exciting and drink and pleasure ourselves stupid, kept running through my head and making me hum. I was going to Elayison. Maybe Lucient would take me to the theatre. Or… I might just take myself. How much were tickets?

  And if I left Willow for good? I felt like a world of possibilities was unfolding. My first plan was to go to that merchant friend of Eff’s again and maybe go travelling across the world to the Spice Islands. Maybe even further. But even if that didn’t work out, something else interesting was sure to happen. I would make it happen.

  “You’re happy,” said the Ghost. “Excited about going to Elayison?”

  “It’ll probably all come to nothing,” I said, to chase off bad luck.

  “You don’t believe that,” grinned the ghost.

  He looked like he was genuinely pleased for me. He gave my arm a squeeze.

  In that moment it seemed like anything was possible.

  “That silver thing of yours. Show me how you can shoot fire with it,” I said.

  He froze.

  “I… do not want to,” he said. “I’m not allowed to just fire it for fun. Only when my life is in danger.”

  “Says who?”

  “It is one of our laws,” he said.

  “But those guns—the thing Scinty used on Bright and the thing Hagen used. That’s ghost tech too, isn’t it? Someone gave them to them.”