The Office of Shadow

by Matthew Sturges

  The door opened and Mauritane strode in, wearing a uniform that Silverdun had never seen him wear: that of the commander general of the Seelie Army.

  "It's good to see you again, old friend," said Mauritane, gripping Silverdun's hand. In the year since they'd last met, Mauritane seemed to have aged five. Despite the few runnels of gray in his long braided hair, however, he looked content, perhaps even pleased. Silverdun couldn't remember ever having seen Mauritane appear content in all the years that he'd known the man.

  "Married life and martial supremacy agree with you," said Silverdun. "How is Raieve?"

  "Still in Avalon," said Mauritane, his look of contentment faltering. "We don't see each other often, but we make do."

  "Still in love, then?"

  "Very much." It was odd hearing Mauritane talk about love in the same voice that he used to talk about killing. He had a fairly narrow range of emotions, Silverdun recalled.

  "And you?" said Mauritane. "I'm frankly surprised to see you here. The last I heard you'd devoted your life to Aba and were swinging censers at a temple." A hint of mockery?

  Silverdun shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "That didn't work out quite as planned," he said. "Apparently I'm not cut out for the religious life. Or so everyone seems to believe."

  Mauritane chuckled. "I could have told you that," he said. "Though I was always willing to give you the benefit of the doubt." He paused, then said, "When men fight together, they come to know each other in ways that are otherwise impossible. You play at the disaffected rogue, but there's a depth to you that you can't always hide."

  Mauritane's judgment, concise and declarative as ever.

  "I'll take that as a compliment and move on."

  Mauritane finally sat. "It was meant as a compliment," he said.

  He patted Silverdun on the shoulder, a gesture that didn't entirely work, but with Mauritane's Gift of Leadership, it was difficult not to be affected by it. "Now, what brings you to see me? Interested in joining the ranks? We're always looking for infantrymen, though I suppose we could bring you on as a chaplain."

  A joke! Who was this fellow, so like Mauritane and yet so ... pleasant?

  "I assume, then," said Silverdun, "that Lord Everess hasn't told you about his plan to resurrect the Shadows?"

  Mauritane's smile vanished. "What are you talking about?"

  "Only last night I dined with Everess and a few other dignitaries. There was talk of war and an impassioned speech by Everess on its changing nature. Then Everess tried to recruit me into a merry band of spies, a revival of the Shadows. Very interesting stuff."

  "I see." Mauritane tapped a finger on the table in a perfect rhythm. "And what did you say?"

  "I told him I'd consider it. But there's a catch, which is that Regina Titania told me on our triumphant return to the City Emerald last year that one day she'd call upon me for a service." Silverdun scratched his nose. "And this appears to be it."

  Mauritane said nothing for a long moment, peering out the window. "Did Everess introduce you to anyone ... unusual?

  "You mean Paet? The very Shadow himself)"

  "Ah. Then this is no game. Everess has finally managed to pull this off."

  "You don't seem especially pleased."

  "Pleased?" asked Mauritane, his voice rising. "Why would I be pleased that the foreign minister has been granted his own small private army, off chasing figments and possibly precipitating wars?"

  "The intent, as I understand it, is to prevent one. Further, he very strongly implied that the Seelie Army is in no position to fight Mab as it stands."

  Mauritane scowled, clearly torn. Now this was the Mauritane Silverdun was used to.

  "You must understand, Silverdun, that in some regard I agree with Everess's position. He's correct that at present we would be outmatched by the Unseelie. Mab has her own troops, and in addition she's managed to conscript forces from Annwn and a few other tributary states in her `empire."'

  "And the Einswrath," said Silverdun.

  "Yes, there is that."

  "I take it we have no like weapon of our own?"

  "No, nothing even remotely like it. But Mab's only used the thing twice. Once on her own people at Gefi, and once on Selafae. So the question of the year is-

  "Why hasn't she used it since, or threatened its use?"

  "Precisely. We have our theories, of course, but the consensus seems to be that she's merely biding her time until she can plan a full-scale invasion of the Seelie Kingdom, with little chance of failure."

  Silverdun actually gasped. "Is this possible?"

  "Our best guess is that within a year, given our understanding of her troop movements and placement of her cities, we would be powerless to stop it.

  Silverdun knit his brow. "You and Everess seem to be in agreement, then. Something must be done. Mab must be stopped by any means necessary. Why not the Shadows?"

  Mauritane snorted. "Everess cares about nothing aside from his own position. To him, re-forming the Shadows is part of a strategy to build power for himself. He'll play upon whatever fear, whatever threat is necessary to pursue it. Don't trust him."

  "Oh, I never intended to trust him," said Silverdun. "Among nobility, trust is rarer than a hard day's work."

  Mauritane chuckled.

  "Then you think I should find a way to wriggle out of this? I admit that I have no more confidence in Everess than you do."

  "No!" Mauritane almost shouted. "You must accept. You must be a part of this. If he's received approval from Corpus and the queen's blessing, then it's going to go ahead no matter what I do. My best hope is to have someone on the inside, someone who can keep an eye on Everess and his ilk and do his best to ensure that the needs of the kingdom come before his ambition."

  "And to report back to you."

  "Yes."

  The whole thing was beginning to seem hopelessly tangled. But Silverdun could see in Mauritane's eyes that war was not a hypothesis. It was a certainty. A war that could not be won.

  "Do you think the Shadows can change things?"

  "I certainly hope so. If you do the right things. I shudder to think what those things might be." Mauritane looked down at his hands. "And by allowing it to go forward, not fighting it, then I share an equal measure of guilt in whatever those things may be."

  "We do what must be done," said Silverdun.

  "Then do this thing, Silverdun." Mauritane looked him in the eye. "Make sure that the end justifies the means." This was not a request. This was an order, with the full weight of Mauritane's Gift of Leadership behind it. Ordinarily, Silverdun would have been offended at the hint of manipulation that went into such a thing, but in this case he supposed it was forgivable.

  "Don't worry, Mauritane. I'll keep all of my most heinous acts to myself."

  "No," said Mauritane. "You'll tell me everything. I want to know exactly what it is that I need to be forgiven for."

  "And Paet. What's your opinion of him?"

  "We've crossed paths once or twice over the past year. From aught that I can tell, he's a good man, if a bit strange. But I wouldn't trust him, either."

  Silverdun left the Barrack feeling deeply uneasy. He watched the pretty Fae stroll up and down the Promenade, shading their eyes from the sun under parasols. Luxury.

  He'd never felt as though he was truly a member of Seelie society; he'd always existed on the edge. He could frolic and strut with the best of them, but something about it had always seemed hollow. There was a hole in him that had never been filled.

  And now he was about to become part of something that would only set him apart further. But would it fill that hole, or only widen it? No way of knowing.

  He squared his shoulders and stepped into the sunlight, merging perfectly with the perambulations of Seelie life.

  Everess wanted to use him. The Arcadians wanted to use him. Mauritane wanted to use him. Even the queen herself had her own hooks in.

  For a failed monk, Silverdun was beginning to feel extremely
popular.

  Sailors call the Inland Sea the One True Queen, and when a man joins the crew of a ship on that sea, he takes part in a secret ceremony in which he renounces his allegiance to his native land and swears to pay fealty only to the waves. It's said that a sailor who refuses the oath is certain to drown and fall into the abyss, to float downward into eternity.

  Stil-Eret,''At Sail on the Inland Sea;' from Travels at Home and Abroad

  small ship struggled across the surface of the Inland Sea, tacking toward the island of Whitemount. In the sky, formless masses of late-autumn clouds moved in pompous procession, now blocking, now revealing the sun.

  Silverdun stood in the bow, gripping the railing and trying to remain steady on his feet. He tried to recall the little cantrip he'd learned in prison to subdue nausea; it was a useful thing to know there, given the quality of the food. The syllables faltered on his tongue-best not to say it rather than foul it up, as it would no doubt make the feeling worse.

  The ship was called Splintered Driftwood. All ships of the Inland Sea were so named, the captain had told Silverdun, laughing. In the harbor Silverdun had seen a three-master dubbed This Way to Drowning. Gallows humor, he supposed. Hilarious.

  There were five crewmen on the ship, not including the captain; they went through their duties without speaking, ignoring Silverdun completely. When a swell came and tilted the deck up to a sincerely alarming angle, the quiet sailors paid it no notice whatsoever.

  He gripped the rail tighter.

  The railing was of smooth, polished wood, furbished to a rich luster, secured by gleaming brass fixtures. Silverdun clung to it as though it were the only steady thing in the universe. The harder he clutched, however, the more he felt the rolling gait of the ship beneath him. And if Silverdun looked too long at it, the bile began to stir in him again. He followed the advice he'd been given and fixed his gaze on the island toward which they were headed. It helped a little.

  "Enjoying your voyage immensely, I can see," came a smooth voice behind him. Captain Than strolled toward Silverdun, having no trouble crossing the rolling deck. He was of middle age, though it was difficult to tell just how old. As young as forty, maybe as old as sixty. He was trim and broad-shouldered, and had clear green eyes that evoked the surface of the sea.

  "I've never enjoyed another more," Silverdun said, scowling.

  Than patted him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit," he said. He looked up at the sky. "Long crossing to Whitemount, but not too bad. We'll be there before nightfall."

  "With all this wind I'd have thought we'd get there faster," said Silverdun.

  "Plenty of wind, yes, but all blowing in the wrong direction, I'm afraid." One of the crewman brushed by Silverdun, pulled hard on a rope, and tied it back. The dance of canvas and rope was a type of wizardry unto itself, one that Silverdun would never comprehend.

  "What if," said Silverdun, "I could get the wind blowing in the proper direction? Would that get us there faster?"

  "Aye," said the captain, a curious smile working across his face. "That it would."

  Silverdun stepped toward the stern of the ship and looked up at the sails. There were two of them, wide and full, canted heavily toward starboard to force the boat across the current of the wind.

  Despite his nausea, Silverdun was well rested, full of energy and essence. It would be nice to actually do something. For far too long, he realized, he'd allowed life to simply happen to him. After his long year of military service, Silverdun had been happy to be at play in the court of Queen Titania, wooing every lady-in-waiting he could get his hands on and steadfastly ignoring his duties at Corpus. He'd wanted nothing more than what life handed him.

  Unfortunately, Silverdun's uncle, who had been managing his estates of Oarsbridge and Connaugh in his absence, had decided that he'd prefer to be lord himself, and had had Silverdun exiled to the prison of Crere Sulace.

  There, he'd been drafted into service by the great Mauritane, and had followed the man on his mission for the queen, barely understanding why he was doing it. They'd landed themselves in the middle of an Unseelie invasion at Sylvan, after Mab had used the Einswrath weapon just to the north, at Selafae. Mauritane had led them into battle, and Silverdun had become a war hero.

  But again, Silverdun hadn't become a war hero through much choice of his own; Mauritane had practically led him out of Crere Sulace at knifepoint. Silverdun had allowed Mauritane to drag him across half of Faerie, just as he'd allowed his uncle to steal his inheritance out from under him.

  And after Mauritane, then what? He'd wanted nothing to do with life at court any longer; prison and adventuring had faded that particular blossom well and truly. He'd had no interest in returning to his family lands to try to wrest his estate from his uncle. No interest in regaining his roguish reputation at court.

  During his travels with Mauritane he'd met the abbot Vestar at the temple Aba-E in Sylvan. There was no disputing that Vestar was a holy man, that he'd found a spiritual peace beyond knowing. Meeting him and spending time among the monks at the temple had revived Silverdun's longing for something, a longing his mother had implanted in him, and which he'd struggled with all his life. Silverdun had always wanted to believe in Aba, the way his mother so effortlessly had, but he'd never been able, no matter how hard he tried.

  And so he'd ended up at the Temple Aba-Nylae, enrolling as a novice, hoping that a steady diet of prayer and instruction would be enough to ignite something in his soul. It had become abundantly clear, however, that his soul had been in no way set aflame. It was clear to everyone ... including, Silverdun reluctantly admitted, himself. And Prior Tebrit was a git, pure and simple. If nothing else, Silverdun could revel in the fact that he never had to see Tebrit's smug face ever again.

  And now here he was, following someone else's plan for him. And as before, he had little idea of what it was he was getting himself into.

  Silverdun leaned into the wind, reached out toward it with his mild Gift of Motion. Using re felt good, especially when he was full to spilling over with it. It was a kind of warmth, not physical, but almost spiritual. He'd tried to explain it to the human Satterly, but it was like describing color to a blind man. Re was simply re. There was no describing it.

  With Motion he inexpertly reached out and caught hold of the wind. He grabbed it hard with his mind and pushed. There was no binding, no words, nothing formal about this; his will against the wind and to the victor go the prize. He hurled the wind against the sails and waited for the boat to lurch forward, begin racing toward the island.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again, pouring himself entirely into the task. He was strong, and it felt good to flex. With a colossal effort he flung what felt like the entire atmosphere of the world at the sails.

  The ship seemed to rock slightly, although that might have been his imagination.

  Silverdun looked down at the ship's deck. The captain was there, watching him, laughing.

  "How goes it?" shouted Ilian.

  "You whoreson!" Silverdun called back. "I believe I've been set up!"

  Ilian strolled toward him, smug laughter fading to a friendly grin. "You university boys are all the same," he said, gesturing up to the sails. "You see the sail, big and white, and you assume that you've got to bridle the wind in order to get the job done."

  "And I take it this was the wrong thing to do," said Silverdun.

  "It was the obvious thing to do," Ilian answered. "You cannot wrestle the wind, son. The wind is connected to everything: the waves, the sun, the moon. You can blow a breeze on land by twiddling your fingers, but out here you're just pissing into it."

  "So what do you recommend I do instead?" Silverdun asked.

  "Sit and wait, and let the wind do its job." Ilian chuckled and walked away.

  The sun was just touching the horizon, its light melting into the water, streaming across the sea toward them when the Splintered Driftwood touched up against the empty wooden dock at the island of Whitemo
unt. The island was a great slab of granite thrust out from the sea, speckled with the few scrub pines in Faerie foolhardy enough to attempt to grow from it. On the island's highest point was an ungainly heap of stones in the shape of a castle. A steep trail had been cut into the rock leading up the rocky hillside toward it.

  Than leapt from the ship at the bow and caught the mooring line that one of the silent crewman threw at him. He tied it with practiced grace, then walked to the stern and did the same thing. The Splintered Driftwood now nestled against the dock, its motion subdued. "We've arrived," called Ilian. "Come ashore!"

  A rattling noise sounded behind Silverdun, from multiple directions. He turned to see the crewmen, all five of them, coming to an awkward standstill, their limbs relaxing, bowing at the waist. The air shifted as multiple glamours faded away, and in the sailors' places stood five automatons, constructions of silver and brass in the shape of men. Silverdun was impressed.

  He stepped carefully onto the dock and looked at Ilian, nodding toward the ship. "Interesting crew," he said.

  "You like them, do you?" said Ilian. "Master Jedron doesn't like visitors of any kind to the island. Only his students, whom he barely tolerates, and I, whom he loves dearly."

  "Shall I simply go up and announce myself, then?" said Silverdun, pointing at the castle.

  "Oh, no. I'm to come and present you. I'm Master Jedron's valet, after all. It's part of my job."

  Silverdun frowned at Ilian. "I assumed that you were only the ship's captain."

  Than waggled his fingers in Silverdun's face, his eyes wide, mocking. "Nothing is as it seems!" he said.