The Crowded Shadows

by Celine Kiernan

  Razi didn’t answer. He let the distance grow between them, so that Wynter was left seething and glaring impotently at his retreating back.

  “Chris,” she asked. “What do we do about the Wolves?”

  He shrugged wearily. “Avoid them,” he said. He kicked his horse forward. Wynter pulled Ozkar into place behind him, and they followed Razi as he made his way through the ever thickening brush.

  André Le Garou

  To Wynter’s surprise, Razi headed back to the river. He brought them all the way to the water and followed the shore for a half mile or so until they came to a wide and sandy beach, circled by big round boulders and shaded by cooling trees. He trotted to the middle of the soft, clean sand, brought his horse to a halt and looked around him.

  “Here,” he said quietly and slid from his saddle.

  Christopher and Wynter sat looking expectantly at him, thinking maybe he needed to relieve himself, or that his horse had a problem. But he just led his mare to the tree line and began to unsaddle her. Christopher shrugged wearily and slid from his horse without comment.

  “What are we doing?” asked Wynter, and she swore to herself that if Razi Kingsson gave her another sarcastic reply she’d trot Ozkar to him and kick him in the head.

  Razi paused in the middle of lifting the saddle from his horse. He looked across at her with a tiny smile and said, “I think we’ll set up camp here, wait out the night.”

  She spread her hands in disbelief. There were hours of daylight left—what was he talking about?

  Razi nodded in understanding. “We’ll let them get ahead of us. Just let them go wherever the hell it is that they are going. Let them just bloody… let them just bloody well go. And then we won’t have to worry about them any more. All right?”

  Christopher paused at that, just for a moment, his face uncertain, then he continued tending to his horse.

  Razi carried his saddle to the rocks and laid it down, then returned to pull the blanket and saddle-pad from the mare’s broad back. “They can go to hell for all that I care,” he muttered. Then he lifted his eyes to Christopher. “But when this is settled, Christopher, between my brother and I, when all this is settled… you and I will take my knights and we will hunt the Wolves.” His face grew hard suddenly, his handsome features drawing down into dark intent. “We shall drive them from my father’s kingdom once again, and they shall pay the price for ever thinking that they could take advantage of the temporary chaos here.”

  Christopher stared at Razi, his hands spread against the dusty chestnut hide of his horse’s shoulder, his eyes questioning. “I mean it this time, Chris,” said Razi quietly.

  Christopher’s eyes narrowed and his mouth curled into a sudden, brutal smile. His pale face was like a sharpened blade then, his mouth, his eyes, the set of his jaw all lethal. He nodded and Razi smiled grimly at him and they went back to their work.

  Wynter looked behind her at the trees. They fluttered in the hot breeze, peaceful, serene and lovely. She shivered, watching the shadows, the hair on the back of her neck rising in prickly spider-legs of fear. What if the Wolves didn’t move on? What if they were not just passing through? Razi’s squad of knights wasn’t with them here, and all the violent intentions in the world wouldn’t protect the three of them if the Loups-Garous took against them.

  The darkness under the trees moved, and Wynter abruptly kicked her horse over to the others. She kept a watchful eye on the shadows and stayed close to her friends as they tended to the horses.

  “What in God’s name are you doing, Razi?”

  Razi paused at the tree line and looked back to where Wynter was laying the rain-dampened ground sheets out to dry. He had an axe in his hand and a coil of thin rope looped over his shoulder, and it was quite obvious he was going to collect firewood. But it was inconceivable in these circumstances that he would actually want to light a fire.

  “Have you lost your reason?” she said. “You will draw them down on us!”

  Razi glanced briefly at Christopher. He was down at the water’s edge in the full sunshine, shaking damp cloaks out over the bushes and draping socks across a highline. “I am going to cook us a good meal tonight, sis,” Razi said. “We are going to eat properly, and sit around a fire like human beings. I will not cower in the dark tonight. I will not have …” His eyes flickered to the river’s edge again and he lapsed into silence.

  “Oh,” whispered Wynter. “All right.”

  “Ask Christopher to tickle us up some trout,” he said, then he glanced at her uncertainly. “Would you like that? Would you like some fish?”

  “Aye,” she said softly. “I would.”

  “All right.” He went to turn away from her, and then hesitated and looked back. “I will try and find some garlics if you like?”

  “I would like that very much, Razi.”

  He nodded and they traded a smile. Then he disappeared into the undergrowth.

  Wynter finished laying out the equipment, then she jogged down to the water’s edge to help Christopher with the rest of their things. She rounded the bushes and came to an awkward halt. “Oh,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

  Christopher was sitting deep in the shade, his back against a tree, and as she appeared he scrubbed his face in a furious attempt to hide the fact that he had been crying. “Oh, curse it,” he said desperately.

  Wynter half turned to go, paused, swung back to him and trotted up the rock. “Razi wants us to tickle up some trout,” she said. “He seems to think it a great idea to light a fire. I think he’s lost his God-cursed mind!” She stepped over Christopher’s sprawled legs and dropped lightly to sit beside him, looking out at the river.

  “The …” he started hoarsely, then cleared his throat. “As long as the breeze stays blowing upriver we’ll be all right.” There was a moment’s tense silence. “I quite fancy some fish,” he said, turning to look at her. “Do you?”

  Wynter knocked her shoulder against his in an affectionate, teasing gesture, and smiled. “Aye,” she said. “I do. I can catch it if you like.”

  Christopher sniffed. “Oh aye?” he said doubtfully, wiping his hand under his eyes again. “You tickle trout do you, lass?”

  “Christopher Garron,” she admonished with another nudge to his shoulder. “Do you doubt me on foot of my sex?”

  He gave her a sideways smile, and looked out at the river again. “Nay, lass,” he said softly. “I just didn’t think court life would afford much time for dangling your arms in rivers.”

  “My dad taught me. He was very good at it.”

  He sighed. “So was mine.”

  They sat in gentle silence for a little while, watching the sun glitter on the water.

  “My dad were a lovely man,” whispered Christopher suddenly. “Lorcan would have loved him. And my dad would have loved Lorcan. They were very alike.” He breathed out a little laugh. “Though I think my dad’s language may well have shocked yours. He were a mite foul-tongued.”

  Wynter chuckled. It was true, her father had detested foul language. Though in Christopher’s case, he hadn’t seemed to mind too much. She glanced fondly at him. Dad loved you, she thought.

  “What was your father’s name, Christopher?”

  “Aidan,” he said, then repeated it quietly to himself. “Aidan Garron.

  She nodded. Aidan Garron and Lorcan Moorehawke. Gone.

  All of a sudden the light glittering off the water became a little hard to focus on. Wynter looked down at her hands. They too were blurred. She swiped her eyes angrily.

  “It hurts me, girly, that my memories of him are all caught up with those curs.” Christopher whispered this, as though he was telling her a shameful secret. “It shames me that every time I think of my dad, I end up thinking of them. It’s like I’m letting them steal him twice …”

  “Oh, Christopher. Don’t.”

  They sat rigidly side by side for a moment, both perilously close to tears. Then Christopher shook himself and ran his hands over hi
s face. “Augh!” he snarled. “Good Frith! Pull yourself together, Garron!” He knocked his head back against the tree. “Stupid baby!” he said, and dropped his hands heavily onto his knee.

  Without thinking about it, Wynter reached across and pressed gently on Christopher’s left hand, splaying the fingers out against his thigh. His hand would not quite flatten, the fingers being clawed slightly and incapable of straightening.

  At this contact Christopher grunted and jerked forward, as though to get up. It was the first time he’d ever reacted badly to her touching his scars, but Wynter looked beseechingly at him and kept her hand firmly on top of his. Gradually, he leaned back against the tree, and watched, tense but unprotesting, as Wynter pushed his sleeve back and ran her fingers along the neat white ribbon of scar tissue that ran all the way from his missing finger to the crook of his arm. It must have been a massive infection indeed to have needed so long an incision to drain it.

  “I almost lost it,” he said quietly. “If it weren’t for Razi …” Christopher bunched his hand into a fist and straightened it again. Wynter felt his muscles move under his skin. She slid her hand along his sinewy forearm and settled her palm against the warm hollow of his elbow. “After I got better, I lay in bed for weeks, just wishing I would die. Marcello thought I’d never recover.”

  “But you did.”

  “Aye. I did.”

  Wynter tried to imagine that. Wondered what kind of strength it took to pick yourself up after something like that. She found it beyond the realms of her imagination.

  “One day,” he said, “I just got up. I made my way down to the stables and I burnt everything.”

  She clenched down hard on his arm. “What do you mean? Everything?”

  “Everything. My guitars. My violins. All the music we’d collected over the years. My dad’s recorders, his mandolin, all our other little bits and pieces. I burnt them all because they’d never be aught but pain to me. Thankfully, Marcello caught me before I could burn my father’s trunk. I’m eternally grateful for that; it’s all I have left of him.” He looked at her. “It weren’t originally a dressing case, you see. It was an instrument case. All our gear fitted in it. In neat little compartments. Nice and safe. My dad had it made specially, he designed it.” Christopher’s voice became very quiet. “They sold it with me,” he said. “We were a job lot. Me and the case.”

  “Christopher,” she whispered. His eyes were wide and bright. He was looking right at her, but she was not sure what it was he saw.

  “It was desire for revenge that got me out of that bed, girly. I were a black seething pit of it. I worked daily to get my strength back, so that one day I’d be able to go and kill the bastards that had stolen my family, and stole my hands and …” He scrubbed his mouth, his eyes wide over the top of his hand. “They still had my girls, you see. My girls—the rest of my troupe.” He absently touched his cheek, just under his eye. “They had gone on ahead of me. To our new master. Already branded. Already out of my grasp. Beyond even Razi’s considerable power to save.” His eyes grew impossibly wide. “They might still be there for all I know, in that bloody place.”

  “What place, Christopher?”

  “The compound. André Le Garou’s compound.”

  “André Le Garou?” asked Wynter. “The man that these Wolves call their father?” Christopher did not answer. He was very far away now, seeing things she could not. She persisted with her question, squeezing his arm gently.

  “That is what they call their leaders… Father? And they are all considered his sons? Christopher?” She moved her head into his direct line of sight. “Chris?”

  “They say that André’s compound is filled with music,” he said distantly. “All day and all night, musicians play there. Because André Le Garou, he loves his music.” He sneered at that. “Aye, he loves his music and he loves his… he loves his women.” He swallowed, his anger falling away to despair. “Women and music,” he repeated softly. “His harem… his bloody brothel… is just crammed full of artists, captured from all around the world.”

  Christopher looked out blindly into the daylight. He was so very, very far away that Wynter wanted to grab him and hold him very tightly and say, stop. Stop now. Come back. This is too much. But he went on talking in his flat, dull voice and she went on listening, her hand on his arm.

  “We were a gift for him, you see, the famous Garron troupe. As soon as the Wolves set eyes on us, they knew that their father would want us. And so they took us to him, or what were left of us after that bloody journey. More little monkeys for André’s zoo.”

  He looked at Wynter then, really focused on her, really seeing her face instead of the memory pictures that had been there before. “Razi explained to me later how André has no right to call it a harem, how it’s nothing like a harem. He told me the very word harem implies protection and respect. André’s palace is nothing like that. The poor women… bullied and abused and shared amongst the Wolves. My poor girls,” he whispered desperately. “My poor …”

  “Why did they sell you, Christopher? And not your girls? Were you not—?”

  “I weren’t ever meant to be sold, girly. I should have gone straight in with them. Only for I’m a man, you see, a male slave. There was no way that André would have allowed me to mingle with his women.”

  He looked at her closely, hoping he wouldn’t have to spell it out. But he must have seen that Wynter didn’t really understand. “They would have to… I would have to be gelded first, you see.” He ignored her gasp of shock and went on, “André insists on doing that job himself. He don’t trust no one else to do it, for fear they damage the goods. He’s very good at it, apparently. No matter how old the slave, they very rarely die, very rarely even catch an infection.” Christopher smiled a bitter twisted smile at that. Wynter reached for his hands and squeezed them hard, but he couldn’t seem to feel her touch.

  “No doubt he would have done a very neat job,” he murmured. “Had he ever got the chance. But Le Garou was away in Fez, and his sons had urgent business outside of town, so I was left in the care of Sadaqah al-’Abbas, one of their brokers. He agreed to hold me in his pens till Le Garou returned.” Christopher went very quiet. He seemed to have lost the energy to tell any more and just sat with his hands clasped in Wynter’s, his chin almost on his chest.

  When nothing more was forthcoming, Wynter gently shook his hands and Christopher went on talking as if he were a clockwork toy. “Sadaqah decided to make a little money on the side,” he said. “So he rented me out to Hadil for the length of the wedding celebrations, strictly on the sly, of course. And that’s how I met Razi. That’s how Razi saved my life.”

  Good God, thought Wynter, the randomness of it all. She could not get past the tenuous circumstances that had brought her two friends together. Had even one small thing been different, some element of time, or of place, then they would never have met. Razi would never have been able to help him, and she would never have found this man who had come to mean so much to her. She tightened her grip on him, as if afraid he’d slip away.

  “I wouldn’t have been able to live like that, girly,” he whispered. “I’d never have let myself live, not like that.” Christopher lifted one of his hands and made a delicate pressing motion in the air, as if lightly touching something only he could see. His lips curved into a smile. “In my father’s trunk there’s a secret drawer. It hides all my knives. I had a plan, you see. Once Le Garou had… had cut me, and once they’d brought me inside the compound, I planned to take those knives and kill my girls. Then I would have killed myself. It would have been our only chance of release. It would have …”

  Christopher lifted his eyes to the horizon, his hand still poised in the air, his expression wondering. “I couldn’t believe it when he came and bought me. I still don’t know how he persuaded Sadaqah to fall in with it. Razi must have threatened him something wicked, or bribed him something wicked. Either way, the broker took a huge risk, backing al-Sayyid against
André Le Garou. They faked a clerical error, made it look as though I’d been auctioned by mistake. Razi came and bid for me. I couldn’t… I couldn’t believe that he’d kept his promise. It was just too incredible. This brand new life.” Christopher’s eyes widened in sudden horror and he curled in on himself, his wonder swallowed by darkness. “Oh, but my poor girls,” he moaned. “I left them. I left them there.” He released a groan of physical pain, and bent double, clutching his stomach.

  “Christopher!” Wynter tried to put her arms around him, but he slipped forward and crawled out of her embrace.

  He held his hand out to stop her approaching, and knelt there for a moment, his hand hard on his stomach, trying to push everything back down into the place it had been before. “It’s all right!” he gasped. “It’s all… Just …” He glanced at her, nearly lost himself at the expression on her face, and looked quickly away again. “You know,” he said. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer to catch the fish. Would you mind?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “I think,” he said, rising swiftly to his feet and pulling off his tunic, “I’ll go for a swim.” He kicked off his boots halfway down the rock and discarded his undershirt at the river’s edge. He dived headfirst into the water without removing his britches and disappeared from her sight for an alarming amount of time.

  Wynter shot to her feet, then saw him break the surface about forty feet out, his dark head, sleek as an otter, almost invisible against the glittering reflection of the sun. He did not look back and she watched him swim steadily away from her, until the dancing water-glare had so blinded her that she saw nothing but white.

  “Ahhh, Raz! I swear you could take a handful of mud and a pocketful of stones and make a meal to bring back the dead.” Christopher stretched and wriggled his toes and arched his back with a happy sigh.

  Razi smiled at him across the flames of their little fire and returned his attention to cleaning his fingernails. Christopher settled lower against the stones, and Wynter smiled at his cat-like contentment.