Shadow Kin

by M. J. Scott

  The air no longer felt dead. Now it reeked of armor and leather. Of gunpowder and oil and a strange thread of woody incense. Mostly it smelled of men. Many, many men.

  Which hardly helped my efforts to control the need.

  As we passed by a door guarded by two knights, Guy showed Simon and me to two small chambers, side by side, in the guest quarters. Each held little more than a basic wooden bed and a small table and chair. The stone walls and floors were bare and the window coverings were thick white linen. More like a monk’s cell than a bedroom.

  After explaining how to get to the bathrooms and dining hall and admonishing Simon to keep an eye on me and not let me wander around, Guy made his excuses and left us alone.

  Or alone as we could be with guards posted at either end of the corridor.

  “How long will we be staying?” I asked when it became clear that Simon wasn’t going to leave me to my own devices just yet. Keeping my eyes firmly away from the bed, I perched on the table, pressing my back into the stone wall beneath two slim glass windows. The sky outside was a darkening blue, though the sun still rode its depths, heating the late afternoon. It would stay there for quite some hours yet. The days were long this time of year. The light shining through the windows was sliced into patterns by the bars beyond the glass.

  More bars.

  I swallowed, ignoring the caged feeling tightening my neck. Then put my feet on the chair, so Simon couldn’t choose to sit there.

  He merely raised an eyebrow, then leaned against the wall near the door. “Until Guy thinks it’s safe.”

  “Or until his brother knights decide to chop off my head?”

  “That’s not going to happen. I’ll speak to the Abbott General in the morning.” Simon seemed unworried by our change in accommodations. But his calm appearance hardly eased my fears.

  “I don’t see why he would agree for me to stay here. Not when I’m not going to do what you want,” I said, not wanting Simon to see my concern. I didn’t need comfort. Particularly not the sort of comfort he was likely to offer.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Simon said. “I’ll deal with it. You’re safe. They’ll be eating soon. Then there’ll be the evening services. Then they’ll be sleeping or patrolling.”

  “Perfect,” I muttered. Holy warriors newly inspired by their observances. Just what I didn’t need. “In that case, maybe you’d be so kind as to leave me alone and let me sleep?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  Lords of hell. More talking. I’d done more talking since meeting Simon than in the several months—if not years—prior to that. The Court not being a place full of people I wanted to talk to. Still, if he wasn’t going to leave, talking was better than silence and that hells-damned bed looming at us. “What now?”

  “At the hospital you said that you didn’t know why Lucius wants you back so badly. Is that the truth?”

  “Can’t Her Mighty Faeness tell you whether or not I was lying?”

  “I didn’t ask Bryony. I’m asking you.”

  Which didn’t answer my question, I realized. I scratched my side. I might have been healed faster than was natural, but apparently the newly healed flesh still itched like any other wound. “You should learn to use your available resources better.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  I sighed. “Apart from the obvious, that I’m a useful tool to him, then no, I don’t know why he would risk breaking the treaty to get to me.” It was partly true. Blood hunger didn’t seem like a good reason to go to war to me. Not that I was going to mention the fact that Lucius had fed from me to Simon. I hadn’t completely lost my wits.

  I studied him for a moment. “And anyway, what makes you so sure all of this is for me? Maybe he’s still trying to get to you.” I shifted, trying to find a comfortable position. “Why is he trying to kill you? Were you telling me the truth when you said you didn’t know?”

  I watched him carefully, looking for any telltale sign he was lying.

  His expression didn’t change, not even a little. “Other than the obvious, that I’m a sunmage and have a little power in the day world? No.”

  If it hadn’t been for the iron in the tunnels, I might have believed him. But I didn’t, no matter how skillfully he lied. If there was a secret hidden down there, then Simon, by his own admission, one of the most powerful sunmages and one of the most powerful healers the humans had, knew about it. Something hidden so carefully had to be something that the Night World and the Fae wouldn’t necessarily like.

  Something perhaps worth a broken treaty and a war.

  “It seems we’re both mystified, then,” I said.

  “Do you think Lucius is up to something?”

  “Lucius is always up to something.”

  His blue eyes darkened with annoyance. “Something big, I mean.”

  “Something that could impact the treaties? Yes.” I held up a hand before he could ask. “But I don’t know what it is. I’m not privy to his political councils. And Lucius plays deep. He may be the only one who knows.”

  If he was, he would wait, spring his ploy at the best—or worst—possible time. Either during the formal negotiations or in the backroom deals that went with them. The formal process dealt with grievances, proven offenses, and petitions for increased privileges. Which was why Simon wished me to testify against Lucius. But behind the scenes, the races and the factions within them made deals to vote together or to block others. And where alliances couldn’t be forged through goodwill or common interests, sometimes they were forged with good old-fashioned blackmail. With threats of making unknown misdeeds known or worse.

  Not that such a tactic would work with Lucius. The Blood and the humans did not historically cooperate, and he would laugh off any attempt at blackmail and then most likely turn around and obliterate those who threatened him.

  Which only made me even more certain that Simon was somehow doing just that. Proving a threat. I needed to know how. And unlike Simon, I believed in having as many resources available to me as possible, so if he wouldn’t tell me the truth, then I would seek it out myself.

  I left a few hours after midnight. Simon had finally left me to sleep after we’d eaten and I’d dropped off for a few hours despite my good intentions. Then it had taken another few hours of listening to figure out the timing of the guards’ patrols down the corridor. Not because I was worried about avoiding them. That part was easy. No, I needed to know if they were going to check on me.

  The door of my tiny room bolted from the inside, but it had a small flap in it at eye level that opened from the outside . Made me wonder exactly what the Templars used these rooms for. If they were for guesting knights, then why the spy holes? And if they were cells, then why the inner bolts?

  A puzzle for another time.

  The guards had made three patrols down the corridor, roughly an hour apart, but they’d made no move to open the flap. Still, I stuffed my pillow under the blanket, hoping it would look real enough in the dark of the room. With the linen curtains closed over the windows, there was little light. It wouldn’t work to fool anyone if they held a lantern up to look or something, but otherwise it should suffice.

  I still wore the dark trousers and white shirt Simon had given me at the hospital. When Simon had suggested I might get cold during the night, Guy had given me a quilted linen tunic in what I was coming to think of as Templar gray. Probably what the brothers wore to practice in if the faint hints of male sweat under the laundry smells of soap and sunshine were anything to go by.

  Gray and white weren’t as good for sneaking around at night as my black, but given that I intended to stay shadowed, it didn’t much matter what I wore.

  I’d caught my hair in a single braid, pinned in a coil around my head. I’d undone it before sleeping, hoping it would help ease the ache in my head, but I wouldn’t go out with it loose.

  I drifted through the walls, feeling relaxed for the first time in days as the world grayed around me. I fo
und my way to the tunnels easily enough. It didn’t take long to reach the intersection with the iron stink.

  I paused to listen but everything was silent. I hadn’t passed anyone at all in the tunnels, but, remembering Guy’s words about them being well defended, I’d stayed shadowed. Invisible to magic as well as any living beings.

  I let the silence speak to me for another few breaths, then started down the dark tunnel. I see perfectly well in darkness but I still moved slowly, trying to sense ahead of me. The iron smell grew stronger the farther I went. Harsh earthy metal. A large quantity of it.

  After fifty or sixty feet, I found the source of the smell. A metal door barred the path. I couldn’t tell if it was solid iron, or merely ironclad. The door spanned the width of the tunnel as well as its height. A lot of precious metal to use on a door. A heavy lock, made of some lighter metal, sparkled faintly in the darkness. Warded, then.

  I considered my options: move through the warded door, which was usually perfectly safe, or go around it through the earth and brick surrounding the tunnel. I erred on the side of caution, even though I dislike moving through solid substances for extended periods of time.

  Sliding through dirt or rock feels like something being dragged through your insides somehow. The weight presses on you until you feel you can’t breathe. Which is ridiculous because as far as I’ve been able to determine, I don’t actually need to breathe when I’m shadowed.

  This wasn’t too bad, though. I moved sideways a few feet, then forward, then sideways again once I’d cleared the door. I stepped into another short passage. Darkened again. There were lamps on the walls but they were unlit. I suspected they were oil rather than gas. Gas leaks underground could be deadly.

  The passage ended in yet another locked and warded iron door. Secrets indeed. Secrets worth guarding at a very high price. So much iron was worth a small fortune. The amounts of iron and silver allowed to the humans under the treaties were highly regulated. Iron was ridiculously expensive and silver hardly cheaper.

  As far as I knew, the humans reserved the vast majority of their allotted iron for weapons and mechanical things. Not doors and locks. Those were generally fashioned from lesser metals and fortified by a metalmage when needed. The humans didn’t have the same range of magically altered metals as the Fae—who had, after all, more power and centuries-longer lives to perfect their arts—but they did well enough. But no one had yet invented alloys that performed as well as iron and silver for certain tasks. Including deterring Fae, Beasts, and Blood.

  Like the first door, the lock of the second sparkled with wardlight. I repeated my trip through the wall and beyond it. The room beyond was not completely dark. A few thick candles burned in wall sconces, shedding a small amount of light.

  Enough perhaps for a human to see a little.

  Across the room a figure sat, bent over a desk situated a little way from yet another warded door. For a moment I thought he was an older human from the neat white tail of hair clubbed at his neck, but then the candles flickered as air moved and I caught his scent. A scent that made the need flare like the candles.

  Vampire, I thought stupidly.

  Surprise almost made me lose the shadow and I tightened my control as the figure turned in his chair.

  What was one of the Blood doing—

  His face came into the light and I bit back a gasp. Where his eyes should have been were knots of horribly scarred flesh.

  Someone had put out his eyes.

  I’d never seen such a thing. The Blood are hard to kill, quick to heal. To scar a Blood permanently took many applications of silver and fire and a twisted sense of revenge. Humans hadn’t done this, I realized. Humans wouldn’t waste time torturing one of the Blood; they’d just kill him.

  No, this was the work of the Night World.

  I swallowed. Hard.

  The scars extended down his cheeks, twisting the lines of his face. The damage gave the illusion that he wore a half mask of thickened red and white leather, the darkness of the gaps where his eyes weren’t mimicking the eyeholes of a mask eerily.

  “Is someone here?” he said, his face turning from side to side as if to search the room.

  This time I did gasp. I knew the voice. It belonged to someone I thought dead long ago.

  I let go of the shadow, though I took firm hold of my dagger as I did so. “Atherton? Atherton Carstairs?” I said softly, staying where I was.

  The vampire froze, then slowly his head moved again, stilling, with eerie precision, when he faced me. “Who is there?”

  I didn’t fool myself that he wasn’t processing information about me. The Blood have supernatural senses. Hearing and smell far sharper than humans, or indeed, most of the Fae. Even blind, he could tell a lot about me.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  He moved fast then, too fast, in the way of the Blood. A sword materialized in his hand and I didn’t doubt he could use it, blind or not. “Wraith,” he said, voice rumbling with hate. “Has Lucius finally sent you to finish me off, then?”

  I readied myself to shadow if necessary. “Put the sword down, Atherton.”

  The sword didn’t move an inch. “And make it easier for you to do his dirty work? I think not. If you wish to kill me, then you’ll have to work for it.”

  “If I wished to kill you, I could have done it already,” I pointed out.

  “He wouldn’t want it to be that easy.”

  Probably true, knowing Lucius. But if I didn’t want to be attacked by a furious blind vampire any minute now, I had to convince him I was friendly. “Lucius doesn’t know I’m here.” I said. “Lucius doesn’t know where I am at all.”

  His face moved in what would be a frown if his skin could still move in normal ways. “Don’t lie to me, shadow.”

  “Atherton,” I said, trying not to let the loathing in his voice get to me. “It’s me. You used to talk to me sometimes. I’m not here to kill you. I give you my word. Listen.” I threw my stilettos, then the dagger onto the floor, the metal chiming against the tiled floor each time. “There, I’m unarmed.” It wasn’t that great a risk. I was fairly sure I could shadow before he could reach me with the sword.

  “You could have other weapons.”

  “I could but if I did and I was here to kill you, then, as I said before, you’d already be dead. Lucius enjoys toying with his victims. I don’t.” I studied his ruined face, remembering how he used to look with a sense of growing horror. He’d been young when he’d been turned, and the slim lines of his face had suited the icy pallor of the Blood well. His eyes had been blue. Bright blue like Simon’s.

  I swallowed again, against a rising tide of nausea, that killed any lingering hints of the need. I wanted him to believe me. Yes, I could return to the shadow and move beyond him, but he would surely raise the alarm if I did so. I needed him to trust me. And I needed to know how he’d come to be living down here in the depths of St. Giles. “Atherton, what did he do to you?”

  There was no doubt as to who “he” was. Only Lucius would do something like this.

  “I would think it clear enough?” Atherton gestured toward his face.

  “But why?”

  He made a short harsh sound that might have been a laugh. “Isn’t that obvious?”

  Not really. Lucius liked to rule by fear and sometimes there was no reason behind his rampages. But I couldn’t help wondering if Atherton’s downfall had something to do with me. Because of Louisa? Atherton had never approached me directly, though he hadn’t ignored me like most of the Court. He was young in Blood terms, not yet fifty.

  When he’d vanished from Court, it had taken me awhile to realize what had happened. The Blood move between favored Court haunts and not all of them attended Lucius at all times. Those who are still building their own power bases, and must hunt for Trusted and food sources as well as playing politics, move around frequently.

  After several months had passed without seeing him or Louisa, I had assumed they w
ere dead.

  I hadn’t wanted to think too hard about how he might have offended Lucius, and even if I had, there was no one I could have asked. Either Atherton and his Trusted had been quietly done away with or, more likely, horribly done away with in one of those Blood-only sessions I was never privy to.

  The ones that left the Court smelling of fear for weeks.

  “You crossed Lucius,” I said slowly, nausea rising again. Crossed Lucius as I was doing.

  “I got played as a piece in Court politics,” he said. “A sacrificial pawn.”

  “But you lived.” Blinded, scarred, but he was alive.

  “Yes. If you call this living. But it’s fitting in a way. I was blind to what was really happening. Blind and arrogant.”

  What did he mean? Did he know something about what Lucius was up to? Surely not? Wouldn’t he have told the humans—who obviously had given him shelter—by now? Basic gratitude would seem to warrant such information. “Someone helped you escape?”

  “Yes.” Again that twisting of features, his mouth turning in what I thought was pain. “My Trusted found where Lucius was keeping me and set me free. We were pursued and she . . . she died. I got away.”

  Regret flowed through his words. One of the Blood, sorry for the loss of a human. My world kept growing stranger. “How did you end up here?”

  “I avoided my pursuers most of the night,” he said slowly.

  That could be done, if luck was on his side, I supposed. Vampires didn’t shadow, but they could wrap themselves in darkness and become invisible for all intents and purposes, even to other vampires. I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see. “And then?”

  “I couldn’t move fast. Not being able to see, it . . . it slowed me down.”