Midwinter 02: The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  At first she'd thought it was just a very well done glamour that she'd done, despite the fact that she knew deep down that it was something else entirely. She'd written a spiteful note on the mirror: Be as ugly out as in. That would show him!

  Then he was gone, and she wished she'd done something different. She played back every minute of their time together and realized that at every turn she'd played the desperate common girl to the hilt, that she'd been petty and foolish. He'd liked her, and he'd slipped through her fingers, and his last memory of her would be that stupid glamour. And yes, it had simply been a glamour, nothing more. What else could it have been?

  Yes, he was gone, off on his secret mission or whatever it was with gruff, gruff Mauritane and that scary woman and the human and the sullen fat one. Off they'd gone, into the Contested Lands, and she'd never seen him again.

  A month or two later, though, she'd been paging through one of the court papers, reading gossip about people she hated to admire but did anyway, and there was a likeness of Silverdun. He was a hero now. A true war hero from the Battle of Sylvan.

  Of course. Just her luck. The one she let go would turn out to be not just a nobleman but a war hero to boot.

  But then she'd noticed something even stranger, that had made her forget all about her own self-pity.

  Silverdun's face was still changed. It wasn't quite the hideous face she'd given him in her rage. But it wasn't the face she'd met him with, either. It was something in the middle. Oddly, she liked it a bit better than the pretty face he'd started out with.

  But if he was still wearing it, then it was no glamour. There was no way to elude that nagging feeling anymore. The thing-no, not a thing-Faella had done something that she wasn't sure anyone knew how to do. Certainly not an uneducated girl from a second-rate mestina in a second-rate city on the wrong side of the kingdom.

  But there it was.

  Faella reached out her hand and began the motions of a new mestina she'd just begun to write. It was called "Twine." She glamoured two thin strands of pure color: one red, one gold. The two threads weaved around her in the darkened theater, bathing her face in their light. She moved her wrist slowly in rhythm and the strands began to move more quickly, circling one another.

  Once she'd begun to believe that she'd truly done something unusual to Silverdun, it seemed to set something off in her. It started small. Little things: The very item she needed would find itself to hand without her having to look; a dress she'd been longing for would turn up drastically on sale at the boutique on the Boulevard. That sort of thing.

  But soon inexplicable things had begun to happen. One night, when the first month's mortgage payment had come due for the theater, she'd opened the cash box to find precisely the amount she'd needed to pay. What made this even more remarkable was that it was at least twice the amount it should have been, given the ticket sales that night.

  Never anything astonishing. Never more than what she needed at a given moment.

  The red and gold strands circled each other, then dove toward one another, twirling around and around. They dipped and dodged and wove in and out. Twining about in a perfect braid and then-

  The two strands became tangled; they hitched in the air above her, in a snarl. She let them go and they fell limply to the floor in a disappointing knot, then faded away.

  Certainly the others should have started appearing by now. Mestines weren't known for punctuality, but they were seldom this late.

  "Miss Faella!"

  Faella looked up and saw Bend, one of the stagehands, running into the auditorium.

  "Bend?" she said crossly. "Where is everyone?"

  "Apologies, miss. I looked for you at your home but you'd already left."

  "Why? What's going on?"

  "It's Rieger," said Bend. "He's hurt bad, stabbed."

  "Oh, hell," said Faella. She and Bend ran from the theater together. Rieger was Faella's on-again-off-again lover, but more to the point he was one of her best mestines.

  Estacana was an unusual city, having been built for giants; its roads were too wide, its windows too large, its steps too tall. Faella liked it. She liked things that were larger than life. But today the city didn't hold her interest as it usually did. She followed Bend through the streets to the fourth-floor garret where Rieger lived.

  The room was crowded with players and hands from the Bittersweet Wayward, all standing around looking worried. Leave it to mestines to become melodramatic and useless in a crisis.

  "Everyone out," she barked. "Go to the theater where you can be useful." She began shooing them out.

  Once the room was cleared she found her way to Rieger's bedside and looked down at him. A physician, an elderly woman in a starched-neck black dress, was tending a wound in Rieger's abdomen with herbs and smoke, blowing the white healing vapor into the cut. Rieger's sister Ada sat next to him on the bed, holding his hand.

  The physician looked up at her. "Who are you?" she said.

  "I'm Faella," she said. "I'm his employer."

  "Will you pay for my services?" asked the physician.

  "Yes. Use whatever cures you have at your disposal."

  The physician nodded, reached for her bag, and rummaged through it.

  Faella knelt next to Rieger and ran her fingers through his hair. He was unconscious, breathing rapidly.

  "What happened?" she whispered to Ada.

  "You know him," Ada said. "Out drinking and carrying on until day break. He and another fellow at the tavern got into a drinking competition, and somehow a fight started. Rieger went into it with his fists, but the other fellow had a knife."

  "Do they know who it was?"

  "Oh, sure," said Ada. "Malik Em. But he's with the Wolves, so they won't touch him."

  The Wolves were a band of thieves who were clever enough to invest a portion of their earnings with the City Guard. Untouchable.

  "I see," said Faella. She looked at Rieger, and a sudden wash of pity ran through her. She didn't love him, and he certainly didn't love her. But she did care for him. He was tender and talented and he made her laugh.

  She looked down at him. The physician had cleaned away the dried blood, leaving the ragged knife wound fully exposed on his belly.

  She took the physician aside. "What do you think?" she said.

  The physician looked at Rieger, thinking. "I have a few preparations I can try, but I won't lie to you. It doesn't look good. I'd say he'll likely die as not, no matter what I do. The cut's too deep and has done too much damage."

  "I see," said Faella.

  She knelt again by Rieger, looking again at the wound. She couldn't take her eyes off of it. One tiny little cut, no longer than a finger. That's all it took to kill a man.

  It seemed absurd. Laughable. How could something so small accomplish so much?

  She wanted to touch it; she didn't know why. Ada was on the other side of the room with the physician, who was showing her how to apply a new poultice. Feeling guilty, Faella reached out and ran her fingers along the jagged red opening.

  Things that were cut could be sewn. Faella's mother had been able to mend a dress so that you could never tell that it had been ripped. It was just a matter of concentration, she'd always said.

  Faella concentrated on Rieger, and her mind shifted into a kind of daydream, imagining what sorts of things lay beneath a man's skin. Blood and bone, flesh, meat. She'd never seen those things, but she assumed that he must look rather like a side of beef inside.

  Strange about healing. The body knit itself from the inside, like a torn hem taking a needle and stitching itself up. It was mysterious and wonderful. A kind of magic unlike the Gifts. The deeper magic of nature, which always desired to make itself whole. And couldn't such a thing be nudged in just the right direction? Faella had no idea how a body mended itself, but she understood desire.

  "Remove your hand from the injury, miss!" came the physician's voice. Faella opened her eyes; the physician was standing over her, scowling. Fa
ella looked down and saw her palm pressed against Rieger's belly, massaging it.

  "You're killing him!" shouted Ada. She grabbed Faella's hand away.

  The wound was gone, as Faella had known it would be.

  The physician bent over and stared at Rieger, then at Faella. Rieger's breathing was already beginning to slow.

  "I don't know what kind of trickery you mestines have gotten up to, but I don't appreciate being fooled!" the physician snapped. "Play your glamour pranks on someone else!" She stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

  When, an hour later, Rieger regained consciousness, he asked Faella what had happened. Neither she nor Ada had an answer.

  A week later, Faella was shopping in the bazaar when she saw Malik Em out roaming the aisles with his friends in the Wolves. He laughed and winked at the stallkeepers, taking a piece of fruit here and a silver ring there, paying for nothing but thanking the vendors profusely in a mockery of propriety.

  The body desired to heal itself, she had discovered. But what if it didn't? If that desire could be increased, could it be decreased as well? Removed altogether?

  Faella watched Malik Em go, lost in this thought. When she learned a few days later that Malik Em had died of a simple ague, she shrugged. Albeit with a grim satisfaction.

  Probably just a coincidence.

  No, probably not.

  Faella knew desire, and no matter how much she tried to enjoy her life as the proprietor of the Bittersweet Wayward Mestina, she knew that she never could.

  More was waiting out there. More would come to her, whether she wanted it or not.

  Someday Silverdun would return to her, she began to think. And she wondered, if it did someday happen, would it be because she herself had caused it?

  It was something to ponder, but in the meantime there was always work to do.

  In matters of war, as in love, things rarely go as expected.

  -Lord Gray, Recollections

  net was waiting at the dock when the Splintered Driftwood nuzzled into its slip, guided flawlessly by Jedron, now back in his role as Captain Ilian. Paet had a satchel slung over one shoulder and held it close to his body. Silverdun looked over at Ironfoot. Neither of them had spoken much during the brief trip back to the mainland. Silverdun had been lost in his thoughts, and apparently so had Ironfoot. "Captain Ilian" hadn't spoken to either of them at all, seeming to understand that they needed the space.

  The boat touched the dock with a light thump, and one of the automata tossed a line to Paet, who tied it. Jedron leapt from the boat onto the dock; he and Paet regarded each other, but neither spoke.

  "Come on, then," said Jedron, waving to Silverdun and Ironfoot. "We don't have all day."

  Silverdun rose and took a step forward, and stumbled. Since the night that he'd been tossed into the pit of blackness, a night that he did not care to remember, he'd felt uncomfortable in his own skin. Oddly, though, at the same time he'd never felt better. Whatever they'd dunked him in appeared to have done him some good, but still ... it was impossible to describe. Jedron had told him that the feeling of strangeness would pass. It was all "part of it," but he refused to say what "it" was, and Ironfoot claimed not to know either.

  Silverdun followed Ironfoot onto the dock and stood blinking. The sounds of the seaside assailed him all at once: the shouts of the fishermen, the shushing of the wind through a hundred sails, the calls of gulls overhead. Farther up the pier, a legless man played the ocarina for passersby.

  "All went well, I assume?" Paet asked Jedron.

  "As well as can be expected," Jedron said. "This one," he added, jostling Silverdun's arm, "gave me a bit of a turn, though. Someone forgot to tell me that he'd studied potions at Nyelcu."

  Paet's expression didn't change. "He didn't."

  "I dropped out after a week," said Silverdun. "It wasn't for me."

  Jedron glared at Paet, who shrugged. "Were they successful or weren't they?"

  "They were," said Jedron. His look said don't test me.

  "Then we're finished here. Her Majesty thanks you for your service."

  There was a moment of deep tension between the two. Then Jedron laughed. "You little shit." He untied the line and then leapt with an astonishing nimbleness back on board the Splintered Driftwood.

  For a while Paet stood and watched as Jedron and his crew of mechanical sailors eased out of the marina and into open water. Silverdun and Ironfoot watched with him. No one spoke.

  Once the boat had vanished in the waves, Paet turned and looked at Silverdun. "You think you hate him now?" he said. "Wait until you've known him as long as I have."

  "Now what?" said Silverdun.

  "Now you go home and get settled," said Paet. "Both of you. If your training was anything like mine, you're exhausted beyond belief."

  "True," said Ironfoot. "I can't remember ever having been so tired."

  Paet opened his satchel and handed them each a sheaf of documents. "Each of you has a new valet at home," he said.

  Silverdun looked at the documents. On top was a Copyist Guild-certified likeness of a man named Olou, whose title was given as "Special Services Officer" of the Foreign Ministry.

  "Olou's a good man," said Paet, pointing at the likeness.

  "What is he for?" asked Silverdun.

  "He'll do all the things that an ordinary gentleman's man would do, and a few things he wouldn't. He'll help you select the proper attire for a given assignment, clean and maintain your weapons, that sort of thing. He'll also supervise the maid and cook. His job is to look out for you when you're at home."

  "A nice perk," said Ironfoot.

  "When you get to your home, give him the sign `The master has returned.' He will offer the countersign, `And there could not be a lovelier day for it."'

  "Seems a bit paranoid," said Silverdun. "Do you really expect a faux valet might strangle me in my sleep?"

  "Stranger things have happened," said Paet. "You've become a serious investment of the Ministry. We like to look after our investments."

  "I see."

  "Oh," added Paet. "Olou told me your rooms are a shambles, and that he expects you to take better care of your things while he's in your employ."

  "It's not my fault," said Silverdun. "I had a girl, but she resigned in a dispute over wages."

  "Really?" asked Paet. "Olou gave me the distinct impression that you'd bedded her and that her husband found out about it."

  "That is true," said Silverdun wistfully. "But that's not why she quit."

  "I don't really need a valet," said Ironfoot. "I've been a bachelor for many years now."

  "I didn't ask if you needed one," said Paet. "But if you insist on dressing yourself, that's your business."

  Paet pulled another sheet from the sheaf in Silverdun's hand. There was an address written on it: Blackstone House. One Several Lane.

  "Be at that address tomorrow at sundown," he said. "That's where you'll be working. Don't be late."

  With that, Paet turned and walked off up the dock, leaving Silverdun and Ironfoot to find their own ways home.

  Blackstone House rose out of a walled garden overgrown with nettles, wild roses, and moss-covered willow trees. Several Lane was just inside the north wall of the city, in a neighborhood peopled mostly by those who valued their privacy and could afford to maintain it. Thus its secretive appearance was less out of place than it might have been elsewhere. A bronze gate was set in the wall just to the right of the house, its bars offering a view only of a chaotic line of shrubbery that might once have been an orderly hedgerow.

  The second story jutted out above the garden, a bleak promontory, its dark bricks worn and vine-covered, its windows shuttered.

  When Silverdun's hired cab dropped him off, just before sunset, he was certain there was some kind of mistake. He double-checked the address with the driver, who shrugged and whipped his horses on without a word.

  This couldn't possibly be right. The headquarters of the all-powerful Shadows was in an aba
ndoned ghasthouse? Surely Paet was having a joke at his expense.

  It was chilly out, but Silverdun's new cloak, provided by his equally new valet Olou, was just the thing to keep out the cold. Olou had turned out to be a young man, probably fresh out of the army, who'd drawn a short lot somewhere along the way. Regardless of how he'd ended up there, he tended to his duties with panache. And Silverdun had never looked better.