Chris Willrich - [BCS261 S01] - Shadowdrop (html)

by Shadowdrop (html)

  I gave him no acknowledgment.

  “You do not know me,” he said, setting down earwax termite colony, “but I am in a parallel position. I can hardly sneeze without some unfortunate being thrown into a workhouse or down a oubliette. If I wish to accomplish a good turn I must be discreet.” He played elixir of screech-eel and was compelled to draw the side effect acidic weeping. “This is because I possess primarily persuasive power against the rich, but mainly violent power against the poor. Lately the wealthy have concluded the thin spiders’ webs of safety we’ve given ordinary mortals are a costly indulgence that might deprive them of one whole soiree every year. They mean to rend those strands.”

  I pretended to swat at an invisible insect. The man worried me, but somehow his voice was catnip.

  “They will kill me,” he said, considering his last card, “if they discover how vigorously I oppose them. But they consider me an uncouth old imbecile and dismiss me. The rich, you see, confuse a lack of dignity with being weak. And they confuse a lack of scruples with being strong.” He placed a card labeled targeted luckbane—eliminate any two cards, then discard this one. He smiled as he won. “True strength of character means braving risk for yourself, not just apportioning it to others. I know you possess that strength.”

  I could only stare.

  “But the moment may come,” he said, packing up his deck, “when you have to impose a little danger on others as well, not capriciously, but judiciously, to save them from greater harm. I don’t fault you for shrinking from that crisis. Your isolation has a certain nobility. But your city may be better off for facing a small risk. Just as you may be better off taking the risk of friendship. As always the trick is knowing what cards to play and when.” He nodded. “Good evening, Shadowdrop.”

  He left the fountain and passed without interruption through the dusty crystalline doors of Castle Astrolabe. It occurred to my sluggish brain I might have been in the presence of some wizard. I had no reason to trust him, yet found that I did. But I couldn’t see what he was urging me to do, nor regard the world as a game of Treatment. Too much of life wasn’t a game at all but a hunt.

  In this reverie I spotted one of my kindred across the Forum, peering out from behind a Coliseum column. It was an old, lean, black cat, one who chose every movement carefully. She mewed.

  “Shadowdrop, is that you?” she said. “My eyes aren’t the greatest anymore. But whichever one you are, hightail it out of here! There’s a Thing that... well, a Thing...”

  “Grimtail?” I recognized the voice of our eldest.

  “It is Shadowdrop! I knew it! I’ve still got it! What was I... Right! Get out of here! And tell Whiskerdoom—”

  The message was lost as the tentacles of something hidden behind the column wrapped around Grimtail and dragged her out of sight.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about these Things before?” Whiskerdoom snapped at dawn, when I related the attacks on Grimtail and, by way of context, myself. He scratched compulsively at his neck, freshly shorn of his iron collar. “Now I’ve no time to consult the grimoires.”

  “So you don’t recognize the threat?”

  “No. I don’t like this, sister. The undercity’s getting creative. We’ve had hellsnouts for a year, and lately we’ve gotten pigeon-spiders and bedbanes. And now this whatever-it-is. It’s like someone’s making these Things on purpose, mocking the Underseers.”

  “The one I met said it knew me...” I felt I should tell him more, but his manner grew agitated, and I knew from painful, nipped-ear experience there was no talking to my brother in one of these moods. And surely, I thought in my innocence, we could discuss it later.

  “Arg. Enough of your tales! I’ve got to make my exit, before you change my mind. I’ve just warned the other cats my little sister’s visiting and not to expect me back for a day. If I go back inside now I’ll be ambushed with by-the-ways, just-one-more-things, and do-you-have-a-minutes. I have to go, sister. The sweet illusion of freedom calls.”

  I watched him dart hither and yon amongst the buildings caterwauling happily to himself, until I lost him in the morning grey. Nothing grabbed him during that time. It surprised me what a relief that was.

  Working up my nerve, I nosed in.

  Again my hair stood on end as the cat door scrutinized my aura or blood or mouse-breath or whatever and found it barely acceptable. I greeted Posgrad.

  “Hello, Shadowdrop,” said the muffled voice. “I understand you’ll be here a while. Let me give you such advice as only a scratching post can give. The cruelest cat here is Quickfang; she is Master Slint’s. The coldest is Nightwise; he is Mistress Voyd’s. The angriest is Hauntclaw; she is Master Hake’s.”

  “Quickfang, cruel. Nightwise, cold. Hauntclaw, angry. Thank you, Postgrad. I suppose I’d better go meet them.”

  “Up the stair to your left and into the lions’ den. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  I ascended into a cat’s dream of meandering stone passages, nooks, and high places. It was like a miniature sandstone canyon that had been weathered down to smoothness, with leaded glass windows bringing enough dawn illumination to perfect the shadows.

  There were just two flaws with this cozy scene. First, there was another iron door to grant access to wizards. Second, there were the other cats.

  The cruel-appearing one poked her head around a corner and sized me up, as the cold-seeming one peered aloofly from his moonlit perch and the angry-looking one slowly backed away down the central path. Hello, Cruel, Cold, and Angry.

  “I’m Hauntclaw,” hissed the angry one, stopping and puffing herself up in the way of the cornered cat. Her collar was of bronze. “You just watch it, kit. We’re wizards’ cats. Show yourself false, we’ll turn you into somebody’s lucky scarf.”

  The cold one craned his head, revealing his collar of silver. I recognized him as the colleague Whiskerdoom had once introduced me to. He yawned, pointedly.

  “Oh, do let her alone,” cooed the cruel one, slowly emerging into view. She was a sleek, quick-looking cat bearing a collar of gold. “Whiskerdoom will have warned her all about foolishness like chasing bugs into pentagrams, or climbing golems, or sleeping on our blankets. There will be no cause to break her, ha. Hello, dear. I am Quickfang. I assume you’re the great Shadowdrop. You’re dead if you’re not.”

  “I am Shadowdrop. Thanks for having me.” I called to the tom overhead. “And you must be Nightwise. Hello again!”

  “Whatever,” said Nightwise. Bits of white fur starred his brow. His answer given, he licked his paw as if exactly no one were there.

  Hauntclaw, a large cat threatening to become a fat cat, lowered her haunches, though she kept her distance. “Whiskerdoom’s such a fool. Monsters are stalking the streets! And he wants to traipse around like a meekbreed on catnip. And make us babysit.”

  “No one’s babysitting,” I said. “I am a black cat full-grown. I bear the unluck that is blessing and curse. I see the silver lines of fate, the black lines of fate unraveled. I bear the mind that knows death and life, choice and destiny, the word and the book, and yet remains cat. I will do as I will do.”

  In their various manners, Hauntclaw, Quickfang, and Nightwise silently acknowledged this declaration of old.

  “Follow me,” Nightwise said unexpectedly, and leapt down. I complied, stepping carefully past the other females. “Here,” he said, showing me an alcove at the far end. “Whiskerdoom’s lair.” There was a whiff of Whiskerdoom’s urine around the entrance, the usual ‘my place’ marker.

  “Whiskerdoom’s air, anyway, ha,” I quipped. “That was a joke,” I added.

  “Whatever. He left his collar. If you dare it.”

  Was this a test? Whiskerdoom had said nothing of the collar.

  “Thank you, Nightwise,” I said. “I wish to rest now.”

  The other could voice no objection, though he lingered. “Right.” He strolled away with the kind of slow deliberation that says the next sunbeam may be ten feet aw
ay but by heaven I’ll get to it before the hour’s up.

  I entered the lair and confronted the collar, an unbroken iron circle as simple as could be, with no hint as to how one donned it. I batted at it, nosed into it, and said hello to it, by then feeling mocked by it.

  I heard a footfall and turned to see Quickfang. She stepped exactly one paw beyond the boundary marked by Whiskerdoom’s scent.

  “Yes?” said I, raising my tail in formal greeting.

  Quickfang raised her own tail, but a little lower than mine, implying superior status. “We are going to view the crystal Orb. The wizards are rarely up at this hour on a Moonsday, and we have saved mice for the occasion. Your presence would be... tolerated.”

  I decided to leave the puzzle of the collar for later and followed the others down the stairs. I got a few appraising stares for that but no snide remarks. Apparently I hadn’t disgraced myself quite yet.

  Quickfang paused long enough to exercise her claws on Postgrad. I said nothing, though I heard murmurs of pain.

  Guilt vanished amid wonder as we entered a huge chamber taking up three stories of the tower, with a stairway climbing the walls beside vast windows. Huge tables stood cluttered with books, maps, sketches, hourglasses, gears, beakers, candles, crucibles, drafting tools, alchemy gear, unfinished mugs of coffee, and marble mazes.

  “Don’t even think about playing with the marbles,” whispered Nightwise. “They don’t like that.”

  At they don’t like that my gaze drifted upwards toward cages suspended on chains. At first I thought these were filled with broken skeletons, but my vision clarified and I realized they held junk. They spun overhead like the distilled essence of a dozen antique shops. There were cases and boxes and piled contraptions and scrolls and sculptures and curios and swords and bows and paintings and turtle shells and butterfly collections and padlocks and keys that seemed relics from opposite ends of the Earthe. There were stuffed owls and stuffed bats and stuffed humanoid heads with wings for ears. There was a complete sarcophagus and a ship’s wheel and a rusty sword that seemed to twitch a little as its cage spun and creaked, scattering dust. There were several peculiar candles whose sticks branched like stubby trees.

  “It’s like Scatterwind Market,” I said. “No, it’s more like the ships beneath...”

  “The Underseers are, sad to say, sloppy,” Quickfang said. After the resulting pause she added, “Well, it’s no crime to say it. Instead of storerooms, they have hung these cages. If they require some oddity, chances are excellent it’s in there, somewhere. The only inventory they keep is in their dear little brains.”

  “Sometimes,” Nightwise said, “they need the Orb to find something that’s ten feet over their heads.”

  “Where is this Orb?” I asked.

  “It’s over here,” Hauntclaw said, leading us to a table bearing a low pedestal with a glassy sphere twice as big as a human head. The milky look of it made me hungry. I didn’t want to admit weakness, of course, so I followed Hauntclaw’s example, leaping from floor to chair to table. The Orb was surrounded by books with names like The Seven Wands of Architecture and Civil Wizarding and Ley-lines: Their Application to Sewer Systems and Feng Shui and the Art of Street Paving. The tomes crowded like an honor guard. Black cats perched atop them.

  Quickfang rubbed her paw against the crystal. “Nightwise,” she said, not looking at him, “be a dear and get the mice, would you?”

  Sulkily, the boy-cat left. I lingered, watching strange images move about within the frosty glass like unknown insects twisting deep within tangled webs. But I pulled my nose away.

  “I’ll help,” I told Nightwise, catching up.

  Nightwise’s eyes held suspicion, but he led me to a corner beside a trap-door for garbage. There lay a dozen dead mice in a basket labeled YE INCENTIVES. It was difficult to carry the mice in our mouths without nibbling, but I managed.

  “Thanks,” said Nightwise on the sixth trip. “You’re not so bratty.”

  “Does Whiskerdoom talk about me?”

  “Sometimes. Too much, maybe. The rest of us lack kin. Familiars are usually loners. I guess the tower becomes a family. Of sorts.” He paused. “Whiskerdoom says you’ve gone batty. Spending time with humans. Ordinary ones, I mean.”

  “I suppose the humans are a kind of family.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “Is it?” I said. “Some mundane cats are fond of humans.”

  “You’re not mundane,” he countered. “Humans don’t like black cats.”

  “Sometimes with good reason,” I said.

  “We don’t do too much harm— ”

  “Maybe you don’t,” I said, “but all my life I’ve had strong luckbane. There was a time...”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s about humans. You wouldn’t care.”

  He surprised me by pausing and setting down his mice to show he was interested. “Try me.”

  “I... it was when I met Tru, the little girl who reads to me.” And for the first time in a great while I let myself remember.

  When I’d met Tru the year before, she was playing beside the Dragondraught River, toes splashing muddy water. I’d seen her before on bug-hunts, always keeping my distance, because in addition to being fragile, human children lurched and grabbed. But as I chased dragonflies I was peripherally aware of Tru dancing her way among sticks and stones and detritus. I was careful that our paths didn’t cross.

  Meanwhile her family added bits to their foot-cottages. Two adults constructed an awning, while a young man hammered upon a tiled roof.

  A peculiar thing occurred then.

  The boy paused amid his pounding and stared across the river. At first I thought he was looking at me, but his gaze appeared to focus on something above the level of my head. Curious, I turned.

  Upslope were the bustling streets of Bookside, and there strode a young woman laden with baskets, emerging from a shop painted black and covered with so many white stars and moons and orbital charts, and so many eyeballs and strange letters, you’d think it was a tavern where astronomers kept their trysts with astrologers.

  I’ve never understood human notions of attractiveness (why not rank agility above all else?) but I suspected the slender girl was indeed desirable, as was the broad-shouldered boy.

  As I watched, the Bookside girl paused and looked around as if sensing someone’s attention. She stared across the river and her gaze met the boy’s.

  A tingling in the air made me blink three times.

  In fatesight I beheld silver worldlines spearing out from girl and boy, stretching across the river. The lines bore such a lovely argent shimmer that I was transfixed—and so I didn’t move as they suddenly dipped and intersected within my body.

  I convulsed. Never had I felt such a contact, never such a backlash. Both world-lines shriveled and snapped backward like yanked springs. The concussion of misfortune was silent but dreadful.

  The girl was struck by a horse and cart. The Bookside streetcorner erupted with screams.

  The boy lost his balance and tumbled through the unfinished roof. Tru’s family’s wails echoed those across the river. And only I understood the link between them.

  As her family raced into the house, I remained to see what became of Tru. She, confused by the commotion, stumbled into the water and was swept away.

  The river wasn’t deep here, and the current wasn’t strong, but Tru was young and the folk of Archaeopolis had little practice swimming in the murky waters bequeathed by their ancestors. Tru flailed, not yet drowning but unable to escape.

  This was ordinary bad luck, such as has afflicted life since the world began. I wasn’t the cause, not directly. It shouldn’t have concerned me. But I’d just destroyed two humans. Somehow it seemed unacceptable to lose this third. It wasn’t just the pathetic waste of it all. I refused to simply be a conduit for luckbane. It wasn’t enough to be a force of nature, albeit a sublime one. I was a cat. I would act.

  I ran.

&nb
sp; I needed help. I could endure the water but I couldn’t rescue Tru. I raced along the bank, yowling. Occasionally I heard somebody in Bookside stumble or swear as a river-aimed worldline brushed me. But nobody noticed us.

  Racing ahead of Tru I reached a mill beside the Tombgreen, near where the river bent into Scarside. This was my last chance. I leapt onto a barrel and caterwauled.

  The miller burst forth armed and ready to confront monsters, and I splashed into the darkness beside the waterwheel. With his gaze directed by the sound, the miller spotted the struggling girl. Bellowing to his family he dropped his sword and dove. He, at least, perhaps from a need to maintain the wheel, could swim.

  As the family led the dripping Tru inside, I saw her darting eyes notice me. She seemed to understand something of what had happened. And I glimpsed something I had never seen before on a human face.

  A smile that was for me.

  I’d no idea what Nightwise might say. I’d given him a terse version, but it was more than I’d ever told anyone, even Whiskerdoom. It felt draining and yet freeing to give it voice.

  Nightwise’s response was, “Odd.”

  “Odd?” That was all? I had the urge to swipe at him.

  “Odd,” Nightwise said. “I study luckbane. In my off time. There’s a rumor it comes from the Elddrake itself. And that it’s twisty, like a dragon. Consider. Those humans’ world-lines intersected you. But that shouldn’t have happened.”

  “Of course not!” I said.

  “What I mean is this. Even were they crazy enough to swim toward each other, their meeting should have been downstream. Right? So why did their world-lines touch you?”

  The incident was so clouded with dread in my mind, I’d never considered this point. “I don’t know.”

  Quickfang called out, “Where are the rest of the mice? Do we have to come looking for you, you lazy meekbreeds? We’ve started without you, you know.”