The Shadow Saint

by Gareth Hanrahan

  “And what did Daerinth get in return for the sword?”

  “A copy of Rosha’s notes, and the work I’ve done on them. A full report on the Crisis. The location of the unforged bombs, under the New City.”

  “Those are state secrets,” says Eladora. The theft of such secrets is punishable by death.

  “Kelkin knows.”

  “What?”

  “He approved the bargain. Payment for my work here.”

  Kelkin, too. Everyone’s so short-sighted, and so callous. Scrambling over one another, wrestling in the mud for momentary advantage. A litany of betrayals, and for what? Another Godswar, pitting mortals against the divine? She imagines Ramegos’ grimoire as a history of this period. Confusion, contradiction, pages torn out and burned.

  “Terevant Erevesic’s going to die because of what you’ve done. It’s wrong. You have to return the sword.” The sword quivers again.

  “Don’t cross me, child.” Ramegos raises her hands again, reluctantly. “I don’t want this.”

  Anger like wildfire rushing through her mind. It’s hers, but not only hers. Like she’s opened a door and can’t close it.

  Ramegos senses the danger. “Don’t—”

  Saint Storm offers Eladora a sword. It’s not the Erevesic sword, nor Aleena’s sword, but suddenly it’s in her hands.

  “No!” shouts Ramegos, as Eladora flings the gurney at the older woman. There’s a flash of defensive sorcery, shattering the gurney in a blaze of arcane light. The Erevesic sword spins across the room, unscathed, trailing streamers of magical fire from the broken spell.

  Eladora swings her own miraculous blade wildly. Ramegos stumbles back and falls against the table, knocking her belongings to the ground. She gestures and a bolt of lightning leaps from her hands. The hasty spell splinters on Eladora’s divine armour. She tries again, and Eladora slashes with the blade, the holy fires disrupting the spell before it’s even cast. Ramegos sprawls at her feet, helpless.

  Eladora raises the sword. Flames ripple down the blade. Fire shall destroy them, proclaims Eladora’s mother’s voice, but Eladora can’t tell if it’s a memory or some spiritual message from the gods.

  At this moment, it’s within her power to kill Ramegos. The Khebeshi sorcerer is protected by potent life-wards and defensive spells, but she can burn through them.

  It’s within her power to compel truth from Ramegos. The Holy Beggar holds the lantern of truth, and she can take it as easily as she took Saint Storm’s sword.

  The Kept Gods will exalt her. Carry her up on wings of fire. Burn her away until she’s a thing of sunlight and translucent crystal, an empty vessel for their perfect purity, blazing as the sun.

  She fights back. The Mother is mercy.

  She can put down a sword instead.

  “TELL ME MY NAME,” says Eladora, and her voice is the shout of a heavenly host.

  Ramegos looks up, momentarily confused. Then she understands. “Eladora Duttin.”

  The power shifts, flickers, but doesn’t withdraw. Duttin was Eladora’s father’s family name. He was a simple man, honest and kind. He worked the farm until he died, never lifting his head to look at the horizon. Never looking beyond the wheel of the seasons. Eladora loved him, but his family name holds no power over her.

  “IT’S NOT WORKING!” She has to hold back the blade, fight against it–the Kept Gods want her to strike down this sorceress, who consorts with demons and meddles with things of Black Iron.

  “Eladora Thay,” says Ramegos, tentatively. Then again, authoritatively. “Eladora Thay.”

  The name binds her and defines her. The Kept Gods recoil, no longer able to find purchase on her soul. This tether to the mortal world snaps. Eladora drops the sword, and it vanishes with her armour. She sinks to her knees, next to the older woman. Embraces her, cradling her. Ramegos is shivering, too, shaken by the presence of the gods.

  “It’s wrong,” says Eladora again quietly.

  Flakes of ash fall around them both. The remains of Edoric Vanth float down, his dust-ravaged frame disintegrated in the fray.

  “All right,” says Ramegos as she pulls herself up, her old bones creaking. “Where’s the Erevesic?”

  “The Palace of the Patros.” Eladora wipes her eyes. “You’ll do it?”

  “Well,” says Ramegos quickly, “I don’t have much of a choice, do I? Without Vanth, it’d be hell to get the sword out of the city. Especially as you’ll have riled it up, taking about the Erevesics and all. I can’t touch the damn thing, and it unravels my spells. I can’t move it. Vanth could have carried it, but now…” She brushes Vanth’s ashes off her book.

  Eladora snaps her fingers. “Yoras. One of the undead guards at the embassy. Terevant trusts him. Send for Yoras.”

  “I’ll do what I can, child–but the signs are clear. The Godswar is nearly upon Guerdon. Please, come away with me. Maybe the city escapes invasion, but I don’t like the odds.”

  The walls of this chamber in Queen’s Point are fresh concrete on three sides, but the wall at the far end is made of old stone. There’s a sigil on one stone, almost invisible beneath thick layers of whitewash, but still discernible as the royal crest of Guerdon. The old royal fort, buried beneath hundreds of years of fortification. The city has been conquered before, burned before, been rebuilt before. Guerdon endures. And interwoven with all that history, her family. There were Thays in the royal court. Thays on the first ships that discovered the city, and they walked the deserted streets wondering where the first folk of the city had gone, not knowing they had gone below as ghouls.

  The city changes. The city endures.

  “I do,” says Eladora quietly. She kisses Ramegos on the brow. “Thank you for teaching me sorcery. Go and fetch Yoras. I’ll see you when all this is over.”

  Commander Aldras waits by the dockside for her. He’s too busy shouting orders at his crew to notice her flushed face, or the fragments of Edoric Vanth that dust her skirts. Maybe he notices some lingering godsent presence in her, though, because he doesn’t question her late arrival.

  “Just sit there,” he tells her, pointing to a bench that’s out of the way of the crew as they hastily load their cargo. Coils of wire and boxes stamped with the symbol of the alchemists’ guild take up some of the space on board, but the main cargo is a large box that just arrived on the back of a cart. A quartet of raptequines drew it here through the streets; they glare at Eladora, flanks gleaming with bloody sweat, jaws drooling. Sailors and dockworkers hastily secure the large crate, lifting it onto the boat using a small crane. It comes down inches away from Eladora’s knees.

  Immediately, they cast off from the dock, the boat juddering as the engine comes to life. Eladora’s close enough to hear the bubbling and churning of the reaction chamber. Sailors clamber around, securing the crate. The boat moves smoothly along the narrow channel of Queen’s Point, heading for open seas. The mountainous bulk of Kestrel is ahead of them, surrounded by a flotilla of tugs and escorts.

  As they come around the shoulder of Queen’s Point and into the open harbour, Eladora can see the whole seaward portion of the city laid out in front of her. Cheering crowds line the streets near Queen’s Point, and down into the Wash.

  Across the harbour, smoke drifts from the smouldering wound in the middle of the New City.

  The white wharves of the New City aren’t as crowded–Eladora can make out a handful of people standing on the promenade where she met Alic a few days before the festival, black dots against white stone.

  One of the sailors laughs at something behind her. Turning, she spots a figure in a wide-skirted dress jumping and waving frantically on the dockside near Queen’s Point, as close as a member of the public can get to the cove without being stopped or shot. The person’s waving a hat of some kind, desperately trying to attract their attention. The crowds jeer. Some projectile splatters on the ground nearby. Then, desperately, the figure jumps into the water with a tremendous splash. The crowds laugh, seeing it as a comic
sideshow to the display of military might. A tattered dress, empty and torn, bobs to the surface.

  “Wait,” orders Eladora. She rises, but the boat rolls beneath her, and she half falls against one of the crates. The sailor curses at her. Aldras looks over, and Eladora points across the water. There, head breaking the surface like a seal, swims a sleek shape. Hoof-footed ghouls don’t make good swimmers, but Silkpurse’s powerful arms carry her through the water towards the boat. Aldras throttles back the engine, and the boat slows, allowing the ghoul to catch up and haul herself on board. Shaking water from her hair like a wet dog.

  “She’s with me,” says Eladora to the sailors.

  Silkpurse crouches down next to Eladora. “Lord Rat sent me,” she says between gasps. “Said I was t’go with you.”

  Eladora stands again, more careful this time, and crosses to Aldras at the helm. “Might you have a coat or something my companion can borrow?”

  “The ghoul?” Ghouls usually wear rags stolen from corpses, or nothing at all. Silkpurse is exceptional among her kind. “There’s an oilskin in the locker, there.”

  Eladora fetches the coat and gives it to Silkpurse. “Thank’ee,” says the ghoul. Despite the warmth, she draws the coat close around her shoulders. “I wish we were going anywhere but Hark.”

  Eager to make up time, Aldras orders the boat to full speed. She labours under the weight of her cargo, but still she races already, overtaking Grand Retort and her escorts. Their boat darts alongside the Retort, running parallel to the seagoing iron mountain of her hull, bouncing along in her wake. Then out, out into the open harbour.

  Guerdon dwindles behind them. The city looks so small and fragile she could hold it in one hand. A precious heirloom.

  They pass the Bell Rock. Ahead, the long, low shape of Hark.

  The guards take Alic to a room two levels up, still in the old part of the prison. Three chairs, a desk. And there, against one wall, a metal locker. The tools of the interrogator’s trade, he guesses, or at least he’s meant to think the cabinet is full of knives and thumbscrews.

  Two interrogators wait for him. One’s a round-faced man with a large moustache and kindly eyes that might twinkle in other circumstances. A loving grandfather, reluctantly forced to chastise, eager to forgive. The other interrogator’s face is hidden behind a mask of lenses and breathing tubes; he’s got a pistol at his belt. The lenses rotate and click as the spy crosses the room to sit down. Protective runes of warding glow softly; the only light in the room comes from the brazier-cage in the ceiling.

  “I’m Edder,” says the old man. “Alic, isn’t it? I’ve seen you in the New City.”

  Edder doesn’t mention the masked figure at his right hand, doesn’t even acknowledge his presence. He produces a bundle of papers, reads them by the light of a handheld lamp. He peruses them in silence for a few minutes.

  Cautiously, the spy rouses. Probes Alic’s resolve, offering a way out. Acknowledging that the spy’s false identity has, on some level, a claim on existence. Listen to me, the spy whispers, follow my lead, and Alic can live.

  “I want to see Emlin. He’s a child–he doesn’t deserve to be here.”

  “No,” agrees Edder, “he doesn’t.” The shuffle of papers, again.

  Lenses click. Smoke from the brazier in the ceiling drifts down. When the light from the lamp catches the wisps of smoke, they look like torn strands of cobweb, tumbling through the air.

  Deny everything, deny Emlin, and the spy can walk out of here. The spy weaves an argument in his mind: such a tragedy, to be god-touched–he’s not my son, really, he’s adopted, the child of distant relatives, I brought him with me out of obligation. This is the best place for him. Jaleh couldn’t gentle him, why don’t you keep him? Why, it’s a good thing that you were tipped off. I wonder who did it? Ah well, the kindness of strangers.

  “Would you like anything to eat or drink, before we begin?” asks Edder. “I’m going to get a cup of tea for myself, so it’s no trouble.”

  “No. They gave me breakfast.” It’s sitting heavily in his stomach, though, weighing him down more than it should. Makes it even harder to concentrate. Drugs in the food, too, maybe.

  “All right. Let’s just get started, then.” Edder takes a small rubber breathing mask from under the desk, connected to a brass bottle of some gas. He takes a deep breath. Clean air, the spy guesses, something that counteracts the soporific poison in the braziers. You’d want a clear head for an interrogation.

  “You come from Mattaur?” asks Edder.

  “Severast. By way of Mattaur.”

  “And you fled Severast after the invasion by Ishmere.”

  “Yes.”

  “After,” asks Edder, “or during?”

  “After.”

  “Were you present,” asks the masked interrogator, “for the sundering?”

  “That was before the invasion. They came afterwards.”

  “Describe it.”

  Alic wasn’t there. The spy was.

  The earth shook. The altars of the temples cracked. Blinded, maddened priests crawling across the ground. Saints killing one another. Krakens in the harbour sinking into the mud, tentacles wrapped around one another in a deathly embrace. Lion Queen throwing down her sword and taking up a shield of gold. The priests in the shadows of Fate Spider’s temple, knives in their hands, finding those whose souls were closer to the gods of Ishmere than to the gods of Severast and culling them. So much blood on the temple floor, and all those sacrifices brought him here. It’s up to the spy to make them count.

  The spy makes Alic shrug. “A theological argument among priests. No one paid it much heed until Ishmere called us a city of heretics and attacked.”

  “Is Alic your real name?”

  “Yes,” Alic answers. The spy hastily corrects. “It is now. But back there, I was Sanhada Baradhin.”

  Lenses whir. Edder makes a note.

  “And you arrived in Guerdon under that name?” asks Edder.

  “We, I–Emlin and I didn’t come through regular channels. Things were chaotic–we barely made it out of Mattaur before it fell to Ishmere, too.”

  “I see,” mutters Edder. “These things happen, of course. Oversights. It’s a little unusual, though. Tell me, did you have friends here in the city when you arrived? Former colleagues perhaps? Or people you were told about, back in Mattaur?”

  “I was a merchant. I had lots of business contacts. Guerdon’s a trading city.”

  Another note. “Was it Annah Vierz you knew, or was it Tander Vierz?”

  How much do they know? Has Emlin talked? Or Dredger? No–the arms dealer’s in too deep, between the illegal money for the election and the supply of weapons. Someone else. Jaleh? Silkpurse? Or someone the spy’s never spoken to–the bartender at the King’s Nose tavern?

  He forces himself to laugh. “They come as a pair, don’t they?”

  “Not any more,” says the masked interrogator. The mask distorts the wearer’s voice.

  “What was the nature of your contact with the Vierzes?”

  Tander’s dead. Put it on him. “I knew Tander slightly from his mercenary days. I supplied him when he was campaigning in Severast. He told me to look him up if I was ever in Guerdon.”

  “Did Tander ever talk to you about Guerdon’s defences?”

  “He might have. I don’t recall.”

  “Let’s talk about Emlin. Is he your son?”

  The spy tries to recite his planned spiel, but Alic’s mouth won’t cooperate. He just says, “Yes”. The spy hides his own alarm, his own anger at his stupidity. It’s the soporific smoke, it has to be, dulling his mind and disrupting his thoughts.

  Edder takes another hit of clean air from his little breather mask. Smiles at the spy, as if he can detect Alic’s confusion.

  “He was chosen by the Fate Spider?”

  “It was an honour. The Fate Spider was worshipped in a different way there, compared to Ishmere. He wove the proper fate for all who lived in the c
ity, and his chosen priests could walk the webs, divine the future.”

  “But Severast has fallen, and the Sacred Realm of Ishmere has conquered it,” says the masked interrogator, a metallic note of triumph in his voice. “Did he continue to worship the Fate Spider afterwards?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did he visit the Paper Tombs?” The Ishmeric temple of the Spider.

  “Maybe once or twice.”

  “Did he manifest any supernatural gifts?” asks Edder. His pen scratching on his pad as he makes notes. The masked interrogator unmoving except for the click of lenses rotating, his hand twitching near the gun at his belt.

  “No.”

  “Did he,” asks Edder gently, “ever visit any of the shrines consecrated to the Fate Spider? Any holy places?”

  The spy takes his chance. He speaks quickly, lying with dexterity, before Alic can interfere. His words are an incantation, sealing the boy’s fate, and the fate of the city.

  “I don’t know. We met with Annah. Not Tander, I don’t know where he is. But Annah took him away, in the dead of night. Up to the Street of Shrines.”

  “When?” The masked interrogator.

  “A week ago, maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “I think, maybe… I think maybe he sent a message. Annah did, through Emlin. To Ishmere. Calling them.”

  Edder makes another note. His hand shakes as he writes. He looks at his masked companion. “Please, give us a moment.”

  The two inquisitors leave the room for a few minutes, then Edder returns alone.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” asks the spy.

  “You’ll be returned to the mainland. Hark’s only for divines. The city watch will have more questions for you, but it won’t be our section. Wait here until you’re called for.”

  “What about Emlin?” asks the spy.

  “I’m afraid he’ll have to remain here,” says Edder.

  “Can I see him?”

  Edder looks at the spy, then shakes his head. “No.”

  A siren blows distantly across the waters, an industrial air horn blaring a warning.