The Shadow Saint

by Gareth Hanrahan

  They search his baggage anyway. Terevant sits there, trying to keep his knee from jiggling. In a few hours, he’ll be walking the fabled streets of Guerdon again; the arcades off Mercy Street, the great fortress at Queen’s Point, the Barbed Palace, Holyhill…

  It is strange, this combination of apprehension and excitement. He thinks back to the landing on Eskalind. Then, he’d trained for the task, rehearsed it over and over. Led his troops off the boat and up beaches along Shipbreak Strand a hundred times, so the landing on Eskalind was ultimately an anticlimax, the same dull routine again. Until the gods struck. Guerdon promises a different form of action, and he’s eager for it. He’s spent too long knocking about the Erevesic mansion, sitting at his father’s interminable deathbed, or writing endless reports about Eskalind. Six months of preparation before, six months of dissection afterwards, for sixty minutes of action.

  The guards move on, and he exhales. He’s tired of waiting. He has a mission again, a way to serve the Crown. A place in Haith. No longer a poet, no longer quite a soldier. Another life before death.

  Slowly at first, the train moves on, too, gathering speed as it rushes down the rails towards Guerdon. A tunnel swallows them. Terevant packs up his bags in the dancing lamplight. He wonders what the inspectors would have done if he’d had the Erevesic sword. They must some sort of supernatural backup, he guesses, a sorcerer or something at least. The Guerdon/Haithi border is possibly the last frontier in the world where divine wrath is a likely prospect, but surely they don’t leave this flank unguarded? Out through the little viewing port, he saw new fortifications, towers and tunnels and spiked walls facing north. At the station, he passes through a maze of little offices, a clerk hiding in each one. Like birds in a crumbling wall, he thinks, nests feathered with papers. There were sea-cliffs off Eskalind, where tens of thousands of seabirds nested. When Cloud Mother descended, the birds had risen up as one, wheeling round until the whole flock took on the shape of a woman, a giant made of wings. Hands made of a hundred ripping beaks. The clerks snatch his papers, check the details, but they don’t bite. They hand back his documents, point him towards the exit.

  He walks away from the clerks, and for the first time in months he doesn’t hunch his shoulders against the shrieking of the gulls. He walks across the marble floor of the concourse with military discipline, heels clicking against the stone.

  And so he enters into Guerdon.

  Night has fallen over the city, and alchemical lanterns blaze in rows along the streets, while a radiance like frozen moonlight shines from the great bulk of the New City down by the harbour. The streets are crowded even after dark, and everyone in the crowd is alive, full of heat and noise. Overwhelming, compared to the cool quiet of Old Haith. The crowd feels like it’s a heartbeat away from becoming a mob–or a street party. He smiles despite himself. They’re like children at play, blessed in their innocence. None of them, he guesses, have ever seen the Godswar. They press leaflets into Terevant’s hands, offering him anything from the pleasures of the flesh to a cheap hotel to eternal joy in the Dancer’s embrace to something about a vote for Kelkin being a vote for stability.

  Across the square comes a figure in a Haithi uniform, the moleskin hat cutting through the crowd like a shark’s fin. To his surprise, the soldier’s wearing a mask and heavy gloves. He must be Vigilant, one of few in the city. Most of the embassy staff in Guerdon are living. There are long-standing restrictions on the numbers and movements of the Vigilant in the city–a legacy of old rivalries and old suspicions. Haith has meddled in the affairs of Guerdon many times before. City watch guards glare at the Vigilant as he crosses to greet Terevant.

  Welcome to Guerdon, sir.

  “I’m–uh, yes. Thank you.” Terevant salutes awkwardly around his kitbag.

  You don’t recognise me, do you, sir?

  This strikes Terevant as an odd question as the Vigilant’s face is hidden, and wouldn’t tell him much anyway–one skull is much like another. Terevant tries to make out the family sigil on the soldier’s chest, but it’s too dark.

  Yoras, sir. I was with the Ninth Rifles at Eskalind.

  He remembers Yoras as a new recruit, as green as the seawater he puked into at Shipbreak Strand. By the time they set out for Eskalind, though, he’d been as well trained and ready as any soldier in that invasion force.

  He remembers Yoras dying, too. A scaly thing that crawled out of the sea–a god-birthed monster, a far-gone saint, who knows? It had claws, though, and rifle shots bounced off its hide like raindrops. He remembers Yoras stabbing it through the mouth even as it disembowelled him. Terevant hadn’t looked back–the temple was within sight, and he’d urged his troops onwards.

  “Of course, Yoras.”

  I didn’t get a chance to thank you, sir. You saved my life.

  Terevant coughs to hide his involuntary laugh.

  In the retreat, sir. We were surrounded by enemy troops, and your company came at them from the flank. Cut us a way out, sir. They had holy relics, sir, that we could not abide in undeath.

  That, he can’t remember. The retreat is a blur in his memory “Have you been assigned down here long?”

  Best part of five months, sir. Half the embassy guards got killed in the Crisis, so they needed replacements. An honour to guard so distinguished a hero as your brother, of course. I didn’t know you came of such a family, sir.

  Yoras leads him to a waiting carriage.

  We’ll be a few moments getting out of here, sir. There was a big Hawker meeting in the hotel across the square tonight, so there’s a lot of traffic. I don’t hold with it myself. The election, that. Seems unreliable, like building on sand. Haith has had the same ruler for more than a thousand years. The Crown, forged of steel and magic, is eternal. The wearer of the Crown changes–when one dies, a successor is chosen by the necromancers–but the collective intellect in the Crown, the braided souls of all previous rulers of Haith, continues to rule, now and forever.

  “It seems exciting, though.”

  Secretary Vanth thought so too, sir. Yoras opens the door for him.

  Waiting inside the carriage is another man. Sprawled against the seats, longish dirty-blond hair, high cheekbones, thin and bloodless, like he’s been bleached of colour. He wears a battered army jacket without insignia. Three fresh scratches on one cheek, parallel lines like he’s been raked. The man doesn’t rise to help Terevant on board, he just waves a hand in a vague greeting.

  Terevant involuntarily checks the man’s wrists for implant marks–nothing. Supplicant-caste? Or undercover–deliberately risking dying out-caste in order to hide anything that might tie him to Haith. Lys took the same risk, earlier in her career. Or perhaps he’s not even Haithi at all. “And who are you?”

  “Lemuel,” says the man, and adds nothing more. His accent is all Guerdon. His own gaze travels languidly over Terevant, sizing him up. Then he smirks, and there’s something knowing about it, like he’s making Terevant the butt of some unspoken joke.

  Terevant settles in the seat opposite. “Where’s my brother?”

  “His Excellency is at the embassy. Things are a little… fraught, what with the election and all.”

  “Fraught” was how Lys had described the situation in Guerdon. And while his Excellency is technically the proper honorific for an ambassador, it’s also a mocking nickname that Terevant and Lys sometimes used for Olthic. An old joke based on a school report, when Olthic was rated “excellent” by every tutor. Terevant finds he resents this stranger being part of their private joke. Unless… he has to think like a spy now, look for hidden messages. Maybe Lys is sending him a signal, telling him that this Lemuel is part of their circle, that he can be trusted despite appearances.

  “Fraught,” he echoes. “Who are you at the embassy?”

  “Oh, I help out where I’m needed,” says Lemuel airly.

  “Which Office?”

  “None of them,” says Lemuel, and smirks again.

  Terevant nods at the ma
n’s cheek. “What happened?”

  “Trouble with a girl.” Terevant imagines long nails clawing at the man’s face. Lemuel rubs his scratched cheek gingerly. “They gave you a folder in Haith, right?”

  Terevant digs the folder out of his kitbag. Lemuel reaches up and pinches his cheek, squeezes the deepest scratch until a little droplet of blood wells up, then smears the blood on the wax seal of the folder, disarming the magical ward. He starts reading through the documents in silence, using the streetlamps they pass for light. Alternating bands of light and darkness cast Lemuel in different shades, catching the bones of his lean, wolfish face. Lemuel’s lips curl in amusement as he reads some tidbit or aside in the Bureau folder, but he doesn’t share his insight with Terevant.

  Terevant decides he doesn’t like the man very much, in any light.

  The gates of the embassy swing wide to receive them. Somehow, Terevant can tell he’s back on Haithi soil. It’s colder, quieter. The servants in the yard–all living, he notes–hurry over to take charge of the snarling raptequine, but they don’t run, don’t raise their voices.

  Lemuel vanishes so quietly that Terevant only notices his absence. He has taken the folder with him.

  This way, sir. Yoras escorts Terevant through a doorway. As soon as he’s across the threshold, Yoras removes his mask and strips off his gloves. There are runes burned into the bones of his wrists, the patterns matching the periapt implants beneath Terevant’s own skin. Spiritual anchors to keep soul and bodily remains together.

  The embassy is silent apart from the shuffling of papers.

  I’ll show you to the ambassador.

  They stop outside a pair of ornate double doors, marked with the family crest of the Erevesics. The ambassador’s study. Terevant can’t help but note the freshly painted bar above the crest, signifying that the presence of the Erevesic, the head of the family and bearer of the phylactery.

  Yoras takes Terevant’s kitbag. I’ll stow this in your room, sir. He pads silently down the corridor, leaving Terevant alone on the threshold. He raises his hand to knock, then thinks better of it and just pushes the door open.

  Olthic rises from a stuffed armchair beside the fire, drops the book he was reading, and strides across the room. “Ter!” he booms.

  Terevant salutes. “Lieutenant Terevant Erevesic, transferred from the Ninth Rifles, reporting.”

  “Welcome to the comfortable side of the war!” Olthic returns the salute, shuts and locks the heavy door, and gestures to the other chair by the fire. He rings a bell by the desk and slaps his belly as he sits down. “Come in. Sit down. Eat. The food’s good here. You’ll like it better than the front lines.” Olthic’s still in fighting trim–of course. Too disciplined to let himself indulge, despite this diplomatic post. “I’ve missed you, Ter. What news from home? How was your journey?”

  “Lys said—”

  “You’ll have to remember to call her Lady Erevesic in public. She’s the ambassador’s wife, and we can’t be informal.”

  “Lys told me—”

  “But first.” Olthic looks around eagerly. “Where is it? The sword?”

  “It’s with Lys. She’s smuggling it across the border, hidden in her carriage.”

  Olthic doesn’t reply for several long moments. His breathing is so loud that Terevant swears the flames in the grate dance back and forth in time to his inhalations.

  “You left the Erevesic sword–the enshrined souls of our ancestors, the foundation of our house, seventeenth of the treasures of Haith–behind?” He doesn’t shout, but Terevant can tell he’s furious.

  “What else was I supposed to do?” Annoyed, Terevant flings himself into the chair opposite his brother. “The Lady Erevesic said it was dangerous to bring it in to the city. I assumed you’d discussed the care of the family sword–the enshrined souls of our ancestors, the foundation of our house, seventeenth of the treasures–with your wife.”

  There’s a knock at the locked door, the smell of food. “Go away,” shouts Olthic, and he hurls his book at the door for good measure.

  “Don’t blame the servants.”

  “Oh, I don’t. I blame you. And her. That is my sword. I am the Erevesic.” Olthic paces.

  “She said it would be noticed, but that she’d smuggle it in later, or one of us would go and fetch it in a few weeks—”

  Olthic snarls, springs across the room, tries to yank open the door. It’s locked, but he pulls it with such strength that the heavy door nearly cracks. “Get out. Get out,” he snaps, turning the key. “Get out before I do something unwise. Weeks. Bloody weeks.”

  This reunion is going marvellously. “My orders are to review the guards.”

  “So you can lead them into an ambush? I read the reports from Eskalind. I saved you from a court martial.” He flings the door open. “Get out.”

  Terevant steps into the corridor. “Always a pleasure, your Excellency.”

  “Daerinth!” roars Olthic. Another door across the corridor opens instantly–this Daerinth must have been waiting for the call. He’s old enough to be Terevant’s grandfather, but he shuffles across to Olthic’s office with remarkable speed. Instinctively, Terevant’s gaze flickers over the old man’s robes. A house sigil he doesn’t recognise, with some obscure curlicues whose meaning he can’t recall. Lys was always the best of them at studying the books of heraldry, at recalling the honoured dead.

  The door slams in Terevant’s face. Muffled conversation from the far side.

  Yoras steps out of the shadows, holding a tray of food. His skeletal face is, of course, unreadable.

  Your room is this way, sir. He gestures down the corridor with his free hand. Terevant and Yoras instinctively fall into lockstep, the cadence of their march drilled into both of them at Shipbreak Strand.

  Symbols of past diplomats and their great deeds loom down from the walls, reminding Terevant of his failure to find a place in the great order of Haith. Every step takes him away from his brother, away from what remains of his family–away from the wreckage of his career. Where next? He could refuse the assignment to the embassy. He might be able to accept a demotion and get back to the lines, give his life and death to the Empire on some distant battlefield. End up like Yoras, here, a skeleton endlessly patrolling some outpost of the faltering Empire.

  For a moment, he imagines Haith’s fall. Imagines the palace of the Crown and the Bureau in ruins, the temples of death fallen. All empty, no sound except the click of skeletal heels on marble, as the last Vigilant patrol the tombs forever. There’s no shame in being Supplicant, he’d told his father. The usual platitudes one says to the dying, without believing them yourself for an instant.

  Behind him, the door to Olthic’s study opens again.

  “Terevant! Come here!” shouts Olthic.

  Yoras stops, inclines his skull quizzically. Terevant waits a fraction of a second, a little personal rebellion, before turning on his heel and marching back. Olthic waits at the door.

  “Terevant Erevesic,” says Olthic, formally, “by will of the Crown, you are appointed captain of the embassy garrison at Guerdon, with all the responsibilities and duties of that role. Do you accept?”

  “I—” A thousand objections. He’s not a diplomat, or a spy. He’s not even vaguely qualified. He doesn’t want to stay in Guerdon, with Olthic raging at him. Being around Lys and Olthic will be like putting his emotions into the teeth of some grinding engine. A thousand reasons to say no.

  “Do you accept, damn you?”

  Only one reason to say yes. It’s his duty to obey, and he’s done with running from duty.

  “Yes.”

  Olthic gestures into the study. The old man’s at the desk, hastily filling out some forms. “Sign there.” Olthic sighs. “Your job is to command the embassy guards and protect the embassy grounds and staff. March them up and down, keep the living out of the worst of the whorehouses, don’t get obviously drunk on duty. That’s it.”

  “And Edoric Vanth? Lys said—” Terev
ant stops, corrects himself. “The Lady Erevesic said I should look into it.”

  Olthic scowls. “Lemuel’s handling it.”

  “Your grace, it would be better to have Lieutenant Erevesic, ah, oversee the inquiry. More proper to have an officer of a great House involved. Lemuel can assist, if it proves necessary.” Daerinth’s voice is like the rustling of paper; as if the effort of speaking exhausts him. Still, he manages to smile weakly at Terevant.

  Olthic bristles for a moment, then stalks away across the room, picks up the book he flung, smoothes out the pages and slams it back onto the shelf. “Fine.”

  Daerinth takes the signed letter, folds it neatly, slips it into Olthic’s desk drawer. “That will be all, lieutenant,” whispers the old diplomat. “It will be good to have you here at the embassy.”

  Yoras is waiting outside. It’s impossible for a skeleton to raise its eyebrows in surprise, but something about the inclination of Yoras’ skull suggests exactly that.

  Your quarters are this way, sir.

  “And my office?” He’s tired after the journey, but eager to get started. His task is important, vitally important, to the security of Haith. Lys is depending on him.

  Yoras pauses. I’m afraid I haven’t been told where to put you, sir.

  “Well, Vanth’s office is free, isn’t it?”

  Quite so, sir. This way. Yoras leads him down another corridor. The Vigilant sorts through a bundle of keys as he walks, looking for the right one for the office of the Third Secretary. It’s been locked since he left, sir. He finds the key, unclips it from the ring, and hands it to Terevant. Your bedroom’s right above this office, sir, two levels up. Do you want me to wait and show you up when you’re finished, or…

  “No, you can go. We’ll discuss the embassy guard in the morning.”

  All the same to me, sir. I don’t sleep any more.

  They come to a stop outside the office. A band of light shines from under the door. Terevant tests the handle. It’s unlocked.

  Sir? Yoras lays a bony hand on the hilt of his sword.

  Terevant pushes the door open. Lemuel looks up at him from behind a messy desk, strewn with papers. “That was a quick reunion,” he mutters. “Figured you’d have more to say to his Excellency.”