Shadow Dance

by A. E. Pennymaker

  Run, Brenorra...

  I didn't think about the binder at all. There would be men with weapons and horses guarding that west gate. I was going to go get those men, and their weapons, and their horses, and I was going to come back.

  I whirled around, driving my aching, shaky muscles forward.

  ~~~

  Run, Brenorra...

  The air seared my throat as I dragged it into my lungs. Liquid fire raced up my calves with every tortured step.

  Run, Brenorra... Run, Brenorra...

  The road wound on and on, unspooling without end. My limbs had turned to rubber, and there was no way to know how much farther I had left to go. It was taking too long. That thought raced in circles through my mind, but I kept going anyway, shoving myself back up when I stumbled, forcing my burning legs to carry me forward.

  Then I came around a bend flanked by high, wooded hills and nearly fell to my knees with a sob.

  The forest ended ahead of me, turning into a wide-open field. In the middle of the field, the road ran under a gatehouse, twin watchtowers on either side, with a portcullis and a gate and everything, set in a high stone wall that stretched off in either direction.

  A female voice shouted, "Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Inbound is friendly! It's Miss Westerby!" And then the portcullis went rolling upward in a grind of gears, and several of NaVarre's mounted manor guard came riding out to meet me.

  I tried to stop, to steady myself, but I could only walk in a haphazard circle, my hands on my sides, my leg muscles twitching and leaping as if I were still running, my chest aching. When the lead guard got close enough, I just turned around and started back the way I had come, intent only on having them follow.

  "Miss," one of the guards called, "we have orders to escort you to the manor as soon as possible. You need to come with us."

  I kept going, shaking my head. Speech was impossible. My ribs were heaving too fast.

  A horse snorted. Hooves came to a halt behind me. There was a creak of saddle leather and the scrape of chain mail, and then footsteps were coming after me. Something – the guard's hand – caught my arm and brought me up short. "Miss, you need to come with us. Right now."

  I pulled away from him, panting, "No... you come with me..."

  The guard's jaw clenched, and he narrowed his eyes beneath dark brows. "Listen. I'm sorry, but Braeton's orders were –"

  "Captain Arramy is out there." I inhaled hard before I could continue with, "We were attacked... big black things."

  The guard's gaze flicked in the direction of the forest. "Black things. Did they have white stripes?"

  "Yes —"

  "They're called khulu." He shook his head. "They don't come this far south."

  Incredulous, I glared up at him. Was he dense? "I don't care what they're called," I snapped. Then, when the guard just stood there, staring at me, I reached out, took hold of his vest, and gave him a shove toward his horse. "Move!" I snarled. "Now!"

  The guard blinked, but then, to my relief, he turned and began giving orders between asking questions: where was the captain? How many animals were there? Was he injured?

  I was given a horse – since I was going back with or without one – and in only a matter of minutes we were on our way. Even waiting for one of the guards to fetch more incendiaries made my stomach churn, though. Every possibility under the sun was parading through my mind. Arramy lying dead at the bottom of a gulley. Arramy gone without a trace, dragged off to a den in the hills. Arramy dying alone and in pain...

  I urged my mount into a full-out run, heading toward those infinite possibilities while clinging madly to only one of them: Arramy whole and alive, coming after me.

  We found him an hour later. His body was wedged under a fallen tree several hundred meters from the road, the ground around him ripped up and shredded by the claws that had tried to dig him out.

  16. Survivor's Guilt

  30th of Nima

  There was still blood under my fingernails.

  There had been more. My skin had been scarlet. Shiny and scarlet. Someone had scrubbed my knuckles hard because there had been so much of it...

  Arramy's head lolling on my shoulder. My fingers in his bloodied hair, holding him close to keep him from being jostled. The rumble of wooden wheels on pavement, the rush of wind whistling through woven-cane wagon rails. One of the guards turning to look down at us from the driver's seat as he whipped the horses into a lather. The sound of a man's voice shouting, "Almost there, Miss, almost there! Just hang on!"

  Mrs. Burre climbing up into the wagon, her lean face drawn as she presses two fingers beneath Arramy's jaw.

  The chef and the groundskeeper coming out to meet us in the delivery bay. The cold emptiness of my arms when Arramy's unresisting body is lifted out of the wagon and onto a stretcher. The crack of the swinging kitchen doors slamming open. Mrs. Burre barking orders. Something shattering as the kitchen girls sweep everything off the preparation table. Mrs. Burre cutting away Arramy's ruined vest and pants with quick, efficient slices of a knife. Arramy lying still and pale. So pale. Blood on the floor, blood on the table, blood on Mrs. Burre's apron... Blood on my skirt and soaked through my blouse, sticky on my skin...

  The snap of an ember in the fireplace yanked me back into reality. I blinked and brought my knees up to my chest, sending the bath water lapping gently around me. Then my eyes drifted shut and I was lost again:

  The plink of metal on glass. The smell of warm honey and fresh garlic and witchbitter astringent. Mrs. Burre bending over Arramy, her hand moving up and down, up and down, on and on, a curved needle glinting in the light of the mirrored lantern hanging above the table. Chef boiling water for the fifth time. Someone mopping up the trail of blood on the floor. Mrs. Burre standing back and wiping her hands on her apron, announcing that there was nothing more she could do.

  Two men in matching black jackets carrying Arramy's stretcher onto the servants' lift. The rattle of the accordion gate closing behind them, then the hum of the lift engine as it begins climbing. The gleam of Arramy's hair stark against dull metal walls, disappearing from view.

  The kitchen staff quietly sweeping up the vegetables they had been chopping before we arrived, picking up shards of the mixing bowl that had fallen, wiping the table down with bleach and lavender water, gathering the bloodied towels and wads of gauze Mrs. Burre had used to stem the worst of the bleeding. Chef dumping a pot of ruined sauce into the scullery bin.

  Someone noticing me sitting on the floor in the corner. A kitchen girl running to find Mrs. Burre.

  Mrs. Burre sitting down next to me, her back to the wall too. Silence. Then: "You did an amazing thing, today. I won't lie. I've seen men die from less. But he's a fighter... and he has a chance because of you. Now. What say we get you cleaned up a bit? You'll feel better after a good soak."

  I opened my eyes. I was in warm water up to my chin, my hair was washed and combed free of clay and grime, my skin scrubbed shiny. There was a fire dancing merrily in the grate, chasing the night chill from the room. If I pulled on the bell ribbon, Ina would come popping in. I was safe. I wasn't running anymore. Nothing and no one was hunting me.

  That only made it worse. A sob rolled through me, but my lungs wouldn't draw air. I bent over my bare knees, curling around the ache, my mouth contorting on a silent cry. I had left him and then I nearly lost him. If I had followed the guards instead of scrambling over that log; if I hadn't seen his hand; if I had found him even a few minutes later, Arramy would have died.

  He still might. Mrs. Burre wasn't holding out any promises. She had gotten the bullet out of him, but the infection wasn't gone, and blood loss had made him weak.

  Father, Aunt Sapphine, Raggan... the captain... Everyone I had ever gotten close to was either dead or in danger. I knew better than to think it was all my fault, but a cruel, insidious little whisper insisted that I was the only common denominator, before slithering and twisting itself around the new, unwelcome awareness that I co
uldn't stop any of this from happening. Just like I couldn't stop that man outside the Moonflower.

  With a strangled groan I surged to my feet and climbed out of the tub.

  17. Voices from the Grave

  30th of Nima, Continued

  10th of Uirra

  Warring:

  I'm in trouble up to my eyeballs. I don't have time to explain much more than this: someone has been smuggling girls through Warring Oceanic, and I know because I let them.

  Now I'm going to ask you to do something stupid.

  First: When you see cargo coming from anywhere in the east with the designation 1067-48, put an advertisement in the Garding Gazetteer. A 'Searching For' announcement. It just has to contain the words 'red,' and 'fox.' "Searching for red dinner jackets trimmed with fox, any size," for instance. The last line has to go: "If interested, please write to: 914M West Bartlebaker." 9 being the departure time, 14 the day of the month, and M the first letter of the ship name. You'll know my contact has gotten the message if that ship is raided in open water.

  Second: For the love of all you hold dear, do not go to the authorities. I tried, and now Sallis is on my tail, which means that the Garding Magistrate is connected to all of this. If Sallis even suspects that you know anything, this will go sideways.

  Third: Get out of Garding. This isn't the time to be honorable and selfless. This is bigger than the girls. There's more. A lot more. I don't know how much more, or who's pulling the strings, but they're long strings, and they belong to someone far, far up the ladder.

  By the time you read this, I will probably be dead. I don't have anywhere left to run, and they're closing in. I never meant for any of this to happen. I will do my hardest to keep them looking at me and not you.

  Give my love to sweet Brenorra... And run.

  Obyrron

  PS: Look in my old locker.

  I stared at the words scrawled on that piece of wrinkled paper, then put it down, got up and hobbled over to NaVarre's sideboard bar, where I poured a tumbler of the golden rum he stocked. I tossed it back, then sputtered as the unfamiliar burn of hard liquor scorched down my throat and up into my nose. I choked out a "Hah!" on a shudder, and then finished off what was left in the glass. I didn't feel any braver, but I turned around and marched back to the desk anyway, telling myself I could do this. I was strong. I was courageous. I was going to read that journal.

  An hour ago, I had stumped into NaVarre's study, intent on finding out just what my father had put in that vault box. NaVarre hadn't returned yet, so I sat down at his desk and started on the leather-bound seaman's journal.

  It had taken all of a moment to figure out whose journal it was.

  It took a full half an hour after that just to make the tears stop welling up long enough to read the letter tucked in the flyleaf.

  It was dated shortly before Len Obyrron's body was found in the canal, which helped me understand Father's reaction to the news of Len's death, but did nothing to help me plow through all the emotions that began cropping up as I read it. Nor did it make me want to find out what waited in the pages of the seaman's journal.

  Now I plopped back down in NaVarre's overstuffed desk chair, took a breath, attempted once more to distance myself, moved the letter aside and opened the front cover.

  There was a funny little blessing scrawled on the first page:

  To this new chapter in my journey: May you hold good news from beginning to end.

  The first entry was about stopping at Willistair's Tomb on the way to Sant Domynne and winding up with a stray cat on board.

  Then there were several entries that had to do with dry nautical information: latitude and longitude notations, dates and times.

  The third page had nothing but tiny cat-prints on it, which made me smile, then sniffle, then cry at the image of gruff, tough, half-wild Lendas Obyrron letting a kitten sit on his desk.

  Pages four through eight contained several more of those nautical entries. This time, though, a certain cargo bin number began popping up: 1067-48.

  Page after page after page of similar entries followed: nautical information, and more of those cargo bin numbers. The dates were approaching a time I remembered all too clearly. I frowned, and flipped through the journal, looking for the last entry. It was dated only a little more than a month before the letter had been written.

  7th of Ghyrros

  Looking back, I see how foolish it was. I thought I was being such a sly old cat, scraping a little extra cream off the bowl, but I was only a fool. A lying, cheating fool.

  It's been somewhere near five years that I've been doing this. Five years of having more money than I know what to do with so long as I kept my head down, closed my eyes, and ignored what was going on right under my nose. And I did. I lied and kept skimming the bowl from both sides.

  I took my usual payment, dropped anchor twenty clicks east of Nim K, put my feet up and read the Dailies in my cabin while Sallis brought the Aramanthe alongside and offloaded that mysterious "special cargo" from the Merrienne.

  I also turned around and told the Fox when I knew that "special cargo" happened to be girls. The Fox handed over the agreed upon amount, and I read the Dailies while his pirates "raided" the Merrienne somewhere in the middle of the Marral. Money in the left hand, money in the right hand, me in the middle. Sallis was usually angry about the girls, but he had the rest of the stuff, and what could I do about a pirate raid?

  I'm not excusing myself. Even I know how disgusting that is, and I'm not proud of what I am, but I'm also not poor, and for a former gutter dog from Pordazh Kaskara, that was all that mattered.

  Until yesterday.

  Watching Razzar die changed everything. He wasn't like the rest of us. He hadn't been with us long enough, and Morre and Darrunowa didn't want to split the take a fourth way, so we never told him why we stopped where we did, and he wasn't experienced enough to ask. He was just a hard-working kid trying to help put food on the table back home. Always ready with a joke or to lend a hand. Innocent. Decent.

  There was nothing we could do. In the span of four days, he wasted away to nothing, his flesh decaying to the bone while he was still alive to feel it.

  He touched that box. That's the only thing I can think of. There was a wicked storm on the 19th of Braxos. Things got tossed about below. One of the "special cargo" small bins fell out of its nets and got banged up, and the clampdowns popped loose on one side. It wasn't even that big of a mess. Nothing was damaged. Some sort of metal box had come free of its container, but that was all. Morre helped get the thing back into the cargo bin, but Razzar was the one who actually touched it. Morre got sick too, but for him it wasn't much more than a bad case of the purge. He got better after a few days. Razzar didn't.

  In all the years I spent working with Sallis, I never broke our agreement. I kept an eye out for the girls like the Fox wanted, but nothing else. That was the deal. No questions, look the other way, get paid, but the day Razzar died, I went through every last inch of that "special cargo," tearing it apart until I knew exactly what I wasn't supposed to see.

  Evil. That's the only word I can put on it.

  I can understand the gold. I can even understand the human cargo, but what could Sallis possibly need bluesilver powder for? And whatever was in that box Razzar picked up, the kid barely handled it. Just grabbed it by the sides and slid it back into the slot it had fallen out of. Why would anyone need something that can turn a human body into bloody, oozing pulp just from touching it?

  Darrunowa, Morre and I came up with a plan. Razzar didn't die, he jumped ship in Nim K. We didn't throw the "special cargo" overboard, it was lost with half the Warring Oceanic bins in a freak storm. Then, when we got back to Garding, we scattered like the cockroaches we were. Morre and Darrunowa handed in their notices and got out. I asked for a month's leave simply because I didn't want to look suspicious... but then nothing happened. For weeks, not a word. I began to think we had gotten away with it.

  But I wa
s wrong. They got Morre. The idiot had gone down to see his fillamena in Parynne. Her apartment exploded, blown sky high, with Morre and his girl inside it.

  Now they're after me, and the reason makes my blood run cold: I told Inspector Erody about the girls. I figured if I could do one good thing, perhaps it would erase a little of the bad. He said he would look into it, and the next thing I knew, Sallis had a man on me. He must have thought he was invisible, but I can spot a tail miles away... and the only way he could possibly have known where I was staying was if Erody told him.

  What have I done?

  I closed the journal with a snap. I didn't know what to think. The Lendas Obyrron I remembered had been a kind man who stopped by the house for a game of stakes with Father on his between-run days. He laughed easily, told the most outrageous stories, brought me little gifts, flirted with Mrs. Fosspotter, all while hiding this secret behind a ready grin.

  He had tried, at least. He had told this Fox – undoubtedly NaVarre – about the shipments of girls. Was that enough? Did it matter?

  The urge to cry had dried up as I read, leaving my eyes gritty and hot. I cradled my forehead between my palms, pressing my thumbs into the ache rising sharp between my temples. This was bigger than Lendas, and it was certainly bigger than my feelings of betrayal. Grinding my teeth, I opened the journal again, diving back in. This had to be what tied the binders together. The binders held departure times and cargo manifests, but Lendas' journal held latitudes and longitudes. Together they had to make a more complete picture. I just had to figure out what that was.

  ~~~

  I didn't look up when someone came into the study, or when footsteps slowed, then stopped on the other side of the map, a pair of big, dusty, patent-leather boots appearing at the northern edge of Panesia. I stuck another pin in the coast of Nimkoruguithu and crossed those coordinates off the list I had made from the journal entries.