The Shadow Saint

by Gareth Hanrahan

  The spy cradles Emlin, whispers his fears away. Just a dream, he says, but the lesson has been taught.

  The boy doesn’t pray again that night.

  CHAPTER 10

  Terevant’s woken by screaming. Shana, lying on the floor, eyes open, staring blindly. Her sister, bending over her, in shock.

  Berrick stirs in confusion. “What… huh?”

  Someone hammers on the door of the compartment. “What’s going on in there? Open up!”

  “Shit.” Terevant drops to his knees, examines Shana. She’s not bleeding, and she’s still breathing. He grabs the sister’s arm. “What happened?”

  “I… the train braked, and she fell. Hit her head.” He glances at Shana’s face, pale in the shaft of morning light that now streams into the compartment. No sign of a mark in the slightest. He turns her head so she’s facing into the sunlight; her pupils don’t react. She touched the sword, he realises. The Erevesic sword, like all family phylacteries, is only for members of the bloodline. It rejects other bearers. Shana’s lucky to be alive; she’ll be luckier if she’s still sane.

  Why did the damn fool open his bag?

  “Open up I say!” shouts someone from the corridor. The train guard. Terevant wrestles Shana back up onto the seat. She convulses as he pulls her off the floor, and for a terrifying moment he fears she’s going to have a fit of some sort, but then she takes a gasp of air and vomits across her sister’s lap.

  Terevant flicks the door clasp open and sees the beefy face of a train guard, eyes bulging with fury. “Uh, a young lady in here is unwell. Everything’s fine.”

  “That’s them!” An older man with a great bushy beard behind the guard extends an accusing finger. “They took my girls!” It’s the chaperone. Terevant struggles for words. Behind him, Shana and her sister are both in hysterics, and Berrick’s crammed himself into a corner as if he’s trying to hide. The train’s brakes squeal; they’re coming into a station.

  “Everything’s fine,” repeats Terevant. “One of your, uh, ladies slipped and fell, but she’s unhurt. And nothing untoward happened. We were just, ah, discussing current events.” He could try pulling rank by producing the Erevesic sword, but he imagines Olthic’s reaction to seeing the news in a Guerdon gossip-rag. A titanic sigh not of disappointment, but of confirmation. “Look, let’s give the young ladies a moment to collect their belongings, and nothing more need be said.”

  “They’re robbers, I’ll wager! Got my silly girls drunk and had their foul way with them, then stole from them. I want them arrested! Search their bags!” shouts the chaperone. He points accusingly at Terevant’s kitbag.

  “On my honour as an officer, nothing untoward has happened here,” says Terevant hastily. The guard pauses for an instant–he doesn’t have the authority to arrest anyone, but he’s clearly on the chaperone’s side.

  “Search their bags! Fetch the watch! What if they’re demons?” The man’s drawing quite a crowd with his theatrics.

  “Step out of the compartment, sir,” orders the guard, making a decision.

  The bearded man crows. “Arrest them!”

  Terevant reaches up to his bag, and then the door to the corridor opens again and he hears Lyssada’s voice. More clipped and commanding than he recalls. Whatever she says to the guard works: he backs off as though banished by a spell. The bearded chaperone quails and vanishes back into the crowd, abandoning the unconscious girl and the sobbing one.

  Lyssada takes in the sorry contents of the cabin at a glance, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the state of it. “Change of plan. You’re both getting out here. Come on.”

  She moves like an efficient whirlwind in the cramped compartment, stepping over Shana’s twitching form, sweeping up Berrick and his belongings and hustling him out the door. Terevant follows in her wake, grabbing his kitbag off the shelf. The weight of the Erevesic sword almost throws him off balance. He tries to bid farewell to Shana, but Lyssada grabs him by the arm, pulls him out onto the platform and slams the door behind him, over the protests of the guard. The train takes off again.

  The three of them trot along the deserted platform in silence. They are the only passengers to alight here, and the train moves off before they reach the station’s concourse.

  Lyssada marches in coldly furious silence. Terevant follows, knowing he should be ashamed, but the situation is so farcical that he wants to laugh. Lys can tell; he knows by the way she bristles, by the set of her shoulders, and that makes it all the funnier.

  The rest of the station is equally deserted, and looks like it hasn’t been used in decades. Vines hang down from the broken glass roof, the paint peels like dead skin and there are deep cracks in the walls. Terevant spots crates of military supplies stacked in the concourse, but otherwise the place looks completely dead. This clearly isn’t a regular stop on the train line between Old Haith and Guerdon.

  “Lys, where the hell are we?”

  She doesn’t answer him but points at an archway and says to Berrick: “Go on. The carriage is waiting for you down there. I’ll meet you there in half an hour.” She clicks her tongue in irritation. “We’ll talk about this on the way.”

  Berrick catches Terevant’s eye and shrugs, as if to say “such is life”. He ambles off into the darkness, whistling. It’s clear that he, at least, was expecting to disembark in this ruin. Terevant’s head spins.

  “This way,” says Lys, guiding Terevant towards another archway. A tunnel, with passageways and chambers branching it off it. Terevant guesses it’s deeply buried beneath a hillside; storerooms and corridors for moving troops, maybe, safe from artillery fire or miraculous bombardment. The walls are pocked with bullet holes, spell-scars. In places, the walls are scorched; in others, stained with a glistening mud. Lys warns him not to step in it, but he’s already giving it a wide berth. He’s seen such things before in the Godswar.

  “This is Grena, right?” he asks her, and she nods. It makes sense–the little valley of Grena lies on the route between Haith and Guerdon. The rail’s only open again because the valley was recaptured by Haith six months ago.

  “That’s good,” she mutters, “you’re not a complete idiot. I expected it of Berrick, but I thought you’d have a bit more sense.”

  “He and I got a little drunk on the way to Guerdon. You and I”–and Olthic, he mentally appends–“have got more than a little drunk on the way to Guerdon.” Then, though, they went by sea. He remembers Olthic standing at the prow, wind in his hair, staring out to sea like he was already plotting his conquests. And, in retrospect, Terevant got drunk because he had nightmares about shipwrecks.

  “That was a long time ago. Now you’re an officer, and I’m an ambassador’s wife. We’re not children any more.”

  “What, are you afraid my behaviour’s going to reflect badly on the family? Like anyone on that train cares if the second son of a Haithi house got drunk with some city girl. I can cart the sword drunk or sober, you know.”

  “I take it back,” spits Lys, “you are an idiot.” She’s genuinely angry with him. His amusement turns sour. There’s the shame, oozing into his stomach, like he’s distilling the darkness of the ruined station into something cold and sickening. Terevant stops in the middle of the tunnel, spreads his arms wide as if inviting a dagger to the heart. “Enlighten me.”

  Lys turns around, looks up and down, peering into the shadows. She leads him into one of the little side chambers and speaks in a low, urgent voice.

  “This train station and the town around it was taken by the Free Grenan Devotees twenty years ago. Their fertility goddess sent war-naiads up the river and swarmed our defences. She slaughtered our troops twice over. The loss of this route cut our primary rail link to Guerdon, so obviously we had to get it back.”

  None of this is unknown or surprising to Terevant. He’s heard war stories of similar campaigns overseas all his life. Local deities, caught up in the Godswar and infected by the same divine madness as the forces of Ishmere. Gods cannot be killed
, only crippled, and doing that is exceedingly difficult. Destroy the god’s avatars, and you only blunt the god’s attention and focus in the material world, forcing it to choose another saint. Victory means a slow and bloody grind: kill every worshipper, tear down every temple, break every relic, dispel every miracle–and do it all again, over and over, until the god’s a forgotten shadow, shrieking in the void.

  The cynics say humanity will be extinct long before the Godswar ends.

  “Sounds lovely. Nice little local war,” he mutters.

  “We threw everything we could spare at Grena. Vigilants. Bone hulks. Armoured trains. Tried landward assaults, tried landing at the shore and moving up along the river. Nothing worked–their goddess had deep, deep roots in this valley. Divinity’s best projections guessed it would be fifteen years before we retook the rail line, and thirty before the valley was desecrated.”

  Now this is interesting. The only quick victories in the Godswar come when the gods themselves clash, and that’s not an option for Haith. Their spiritual strength is primarily in near-divine relics like the sword, and in the Vigilant. The death-god of Haith will not rise until the world’s ending. “What happened?”

  “Swear on the sword that you shall not speak of this.” Lys’s eyes gleam in the darkness. “Not to anyone. Not even Olthic.”

  Terevant pulls the Erevesic sword from his bag. The weapon’s magic aura whirls around him, surging with power. His fatigue melts away. The darkness recedes as his eyes sharpen. He can smell Lys’s scent, perfume mixed with the smoke from the train on her skin.

  He hesitates for an instant before grasping the blade by its cross guard. Suddenly, the little storeroom is crowded with invisible ghosts, his ancestors there to witness his oath. Some seem to crowd close to him, as if eager to hear whatever secrets Lys is about to reveal. “May the ancestors reject me if I speak of this.”

  He places the sword on the ground between them. Releases his grip, and the ghosts vanish.

  “There was a rocket launch. Not us–a Guerdonese naval vessel. One shot, and the goddess was dead. No physical damage to the valley, but a complete annihilation of the deity.”

  “Death’s face,” he swears. A weapon like that changes the war. He imagines fighting the battle of Eskalind again, when the gods of Ishmere attacked the Haithi invasion force. He remembers Kraken rising from the ocean, and Blessed Bol dancing on the surf, golden statues in the shape of dying men tumbling around him. To be able to snuff out those terrors with a single shot… “Why aren’t we using those?”

  “The alchemists’ guild won’t even admit they exist. Neither will Guerdon’s emergency council. The city’s still in chaos. Bureau and Crown are both agreed, Ter–we need to secure those weapons. It’s our only hope of stopping Ishmere when they come for Haith.”

  His heart’s pounding in the silence of the little tunnel. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Edoric Vanth–the Third Secretary at the embassy. He’s gone missing. There are rumours he’s been killed. He’s prepared for Vigilance, so if he was killed…”

  Terevant flexes his wrist, feels the iron periapt implant pull against the skin. The mortal body is fragile–one stray shot, one cut, and that’s it. The Vigilant of Haith, though, are another breed. Much harder to kill. If Vanth simply went down the wrong alleyway and got his throat cut by some footpad, he’d already have reported back to the embassy.

  “Either he’s dead, or he’s being held. Either way, it’s spooked the Bureau. They’re worried that the Guerdon embassy is compromised, that we’re already under attack.” Lys’s intense gaze transfixes him. Every atom of her being is focused on him, on this mission. There’s no one around, but Lys still lowers her voice. “Ter, I don’t trust half the embassy staff. Previous ambassadors have run Guerdon as their own private fiefdom, and I don’t know if they’re reliable. And Olthic and I… things are fraught.”

  “Fraught?”

  “Very fraught.”

  Terevant rubs his wrist. His hangover is back with a vengeance. “We’ve got to find out what happened to Edoric Vanth.”

  “You do. I’m not coming back to Guerdon with you. Not yet.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t say.” Terevant envies her ability to neatly section off aspects of herself–how she can tell him one set of secrets while keeping another, how she can be a spy one day and a socialite the next, how she can be his friend and his brother’s wife at the same time. He envies her control. She knows who she is, what she’s supposed to do, and so can slip on one mask or another. “But it’s important, too. Go into the valley, you’ll see how important.”

  Lys nods towards the waiting carriage. “I need you to find out what happened to Vanth, Ter. You’re in charge of the embassy garrison–you can take control of the investigation. If Vanth was betrayed by someone in the embassy, then they might be able to conceal their involvement by bringing in one of their own creatures to handle the inquest. It has to be someone I can trust.” She takes a breath. “Can I trust you?”

  Once, he’d have died for her with a song on his lips. Maybe that’s who he’s supposed to be. “Of course.”

  She shifts from foot to foot. A nervous tic he remembers from when they were young. She lays a hand on his arm to steady herself.

  “You’ll have to leave the sword with me, now,” she says, eyes bright.

  “It’s the Erevesic blade. I must guard it.” It’s unthinkable for him to leave the sword. Even Lys, who’s part of the family by marriage, cannot safely touch the blade.

  “Ter, listen–that incident on the train means there’ll be city watch waiting for you at the border. Our treaty with Guerdon bans us from having phylacteries in the city, same as they don’t allow saints in the other embassies. They will impound it as a divine weapon. I need you to go onto the city, to find Vanth, but you can’t bring the sword.”

  “So, what, I’m going to leave the blade of my ancestors in the bloody lost-and-found office of a bombed-out train station?” He already failed his ancestors by not securing it in the train.

  “I’ve got a plan. Trust me, Ter. Quell the blade as much as you can, and we’ll stow it in my coach–there’s a concealed and warded compartment to hold it. In a few weeks, you or Ol or a Vigilant can come and fetch it. It’s not ideal–but it’s more important to get you into position in the embassy.”

  He lifts the Erevesic sword and feels the flow of power through the rough leather of the binding. He wonders what would happen if he drew on that magic. What wonders could he perform? How would Lyssada look at him then?

  “Quell the sword,” she prompts him.

  The souls swirling in the blade sense his presence; his hand tingles as their magic pushes against him, seeking to use him as their vessel. He can feel the nerves in his hands, feel the flow of blood through individual veins and arteries, feel the interplay of bone and muscle, becoming aware of them as he has never known them before. His flesh transmuting into fire; his nerves to flashing light, his bones to unbreakable adamant.

  “Quell it.”

  He pushes back. Whispers that now is not the time, that they must sleep. The light from the sword fades, and it becomes suddenly heavy in his grasp.

  “Here,” says Lyssada, passing him an embroidered cloth, enchanted to dampen the blade’s magic, and he carefully binds up the sword. “Come on.”

  They walk back through the dark tunnel to the deserted station, and he follows her through another archway into a small courtyard. A carriage waits there–an old one, battered. There’s no suspension, and the one concession to modernity is the raptequine in the harness instead of a horse. The alchemist-grown monsters are stronger and faster than anything natural-born.

  Berrick is snoozing inside; Lys shoves him out of the way so she can show Terevant where to conceal the Erevesic sword in the hidden compartment. Even quelled, the sword is dangerous. It can unravel spells, cut through strands of fate. Old stories tell of the horrible accidents that befall
those who betray the Houses of Haith.

  “We’re late,” she says to Terevant. “One of my agents, Lemuel, he’ll meet you at Guerdon. I’ll see you as soon as I can.” She squeezes his hand, and then she’s gone–the carriage rattles off down the overgrown road south, running parallel to the rail line, leaving Terevant alone in the deserted station.

  He feels as if some part of him has gone with Lyssada, and tells himself that it’s just some lingering connection to the sword.

  He returns to the platform, finds a bedroll in his kitbag and lights a little fire to heat a tin of soup. The new service to Guerdon only passes through once a day, so he has nearly twenty-four hours of boredom ahead of him, and he’s nearly finished The Bone Shield.

  Tomorrow morning, he decides, he’ll go out into the valley and see what the grave of a goddess looks like.

  Dawn does not improve the prospects seen from the train station.

  Terevant watches the sun climb into the sky, but the light is muted, hesitant, as if some pall hangs over the Grena Valley. Everything has an artificial quality to it, as if it’s paper-thin. The valley is a landscape painting. He’s worried to step too heavily on the path, in case he puts a foot through the fragile canvas and falls out of the world.

  It’ll be midsummer in a few weeks, but there’s no heat in the air. No chill either. His skin feels numb.

  He walks down from the station along an overgrown path, but the plants don’t slow him down. The blades of grass crack and crumble when he pushes through them; the thorns snap off instead of catching on his uniform. Everything’s weak and hollow, going through the motions of growing. Signs along the path warn of dangers–unexploded ordnance, unbestowed curses.

  There are unlikely orchards on one side of the path. Conjured by some vanished miracle he guesses, as the trees sprout from ground broken and blighted by artillery bombardments. They are almost bare. Only a few of them have fruit, and he has no desire to taste any of it, even though he breakfasted on meagre military rations and the last of Berrick’s wine. The fruit doesn’t look rotten or poisonous or tainted, just… flat. Hollow, again. There should be a great buzz of bees around all those blossoms, but the valley’s deathly silent.