Shards of a Broken Sword

by W. R. Gingell

  He rose as he spoke and Dion rose with him without really thinking about it. “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere we can have a sociable drink or two and a bit of a chat,” said Padraig. “It’s a bonny night and ’twould be a shame to spend it all in the one place.”

  He pulled Dion’s hand through his arm as though they were a couple on an outing, and Dion, who hadn’t quite dismissed the magic that was gathered at her fingertips, still let it simmer below the skin. As they left the inn together, he looked her up and down very frankly, making her blush again, and said: “You’re a pleasant companion, to be sure!”

  “Your accent isn’t Llassarian,” said Dion, by way of trying to keep her composure. She wished the night wasn’t quite so well-lit with moonlight: it was harder to assume an Expression when she could feel the warmth of blood in her cheeks and know that it was visible.

  “Well-spotted,” said Padraig, not at all thrown. “You could say that I’m from beyond as well: my parents weren’t Llassarian and I seem to have taken their trick of speaking. Well now, Di from beyond, in your walkings about earlier, did you happen to take note of the signs?”

  “It was you following me!”

  Padraig grinned, his eyes dancing. “Would I be doing such a thing? Did I not see a beautiful young thing who seemed to have lost her way, and out of the goodness of my heart attend her until she reached safe haven?”

  “You– why did you follow me?”

  “I told you, cherry. I was curious to know why such a beautiful young thing was out alone after dark– and wearing a Fae glamour, no less! I’m still anxious to know about that glamour, mind: I’ve not seen its equal. It could almost have fooled even me.”

  Dion frowned. How had Padraig seen through her glamour? There was barely a touch of magic to him: a tiny spark that was so small she couldn’t even tell what kind of magic it was. He could be funnelling the miniscule flare into anything from charm to insight, but nothing more than that, and barely that. She was still wondering about it when she realised that they had paused before a notice in one of the shop windows. It was lettered in Fae cursive, beautiful and sprawling, and she had seen much the same thing in each window without taking notice of the fact.

  She read it without meaning to—almost without comprehending it—and her eyes flitted on to the next few posted notices in shocked silence.

  “There now,” said Padraig. “Do you read the Fae script, cherry?”

  “Yes,” said Dion, through a closed throat. She was very familiar with the curved script and its once-foreign words. This particular sign read: No human custom. Fae only. Scratchily, she said: “Perhaps they were having difficulties with human customers.”

  Padraig’s smile was lazy. “Aye, and I suppose every second business has the same problem? Walk with me, cherry. Look to the storefronts.”

  “I see them,” she said. Worse, she had seen the other flyers in the shop window– the ones that offered sale of services: two young humans 1xm, 1xf, useful for manual labour and some skilled applications or simply middle-aged human available: high millinery skills, fully broken in. She could feel the shivering start the way it always did: the sickness, the numbness, the nightmare heaviness of it all.

  “You’re trembling, cherry,” said Padraig, frowning. “Are you cold?”

  “No,” said Dion, through numb lips. “Don’t worry about it. It won’t stop anyway. Where are we going?”

  She was aware of his eyes on her for quite some time before he said: “Not far now. No, no, this way: we want something Seelie and grand.”

  So saying, he steered Dion away from a modest, quiet establishment that she had instinctively moved toward, and swept her onward until they were on the cusp of a great, golden facade. Dion, her eyes dazzled, took in the light of a conjured sun that slowly rose and sank across the front wall, casting an almost daylight aspect on the street below. Like all the most beautiful of Seelie things, the warmth of it didn’t quite reach her skin, let alone the cold, inner part of her that fed her shivering fits. Padraig slid his arm around her waist, his short cloak draping over her shoulders as well, and when Dion twitched herself away he murmured: “Best they not see you trembling, cherry.”

  Still, he didn’t try to put his arm around her again until she came closer, and she let the last of her built-up magic sink back down.

  They approached the tap counter, much to Dion’s foreboding. There were many other patrons also lounging at their ease by the counter; some Unseelie, but more Seelie. Padraig threw himself into a seat, nodding casually at the golden Fae closest to them, and pulled Dion in close against him, her shivering covered by his cloak and growing a little less in his warmth. He ordered drinks for both of them and said, “Well met,” to the Seelie Fae, who returned the greeting languorously.

  “Beautiful night, to be sure.”

  “Inasmuch as night can be said to be beautiful,” shrugged the Seelie, with a faint lift of his lip. “The human world has many attractions, but this passion for dreary darkness is not one of them.”

  “Darkness has its charms,” said Padraig.

  The Seelie Fae laughed. “For those with the taste for it. I am for the sunshine.”

  “Aye, I thought the days were a smidgen longer than they had been,” said Padraig incomprehensibly. “What news of Illisr? I had heard they were tending to the dark, but it’s been some time since I heard tell of them.”

  “Is it so?” the golden Fae’s brows rose. “You’ve missed a great deal. Illisr is over-run this last year—plunged into darkness—and Shinpo is half-spent as well, cut at the ankles and floundering. It’s said the royal family was taken in the night a day ago: Shinpoans are fighting a separated battle across the country, unable to rally enough to make a convincing effort.”

  “That’s news indeed,” said Padraig, lifting his tankard. He seemed to be drinking, but Dion, used to giving herself a few moments to prepare her reactions, was aware that he was surprised and dismayed at the news. What did Padraig care for Illisr and Shinpo? The news had affected him in a personal way, and not merely as an unfortunate piece of news.

  “Such a pity!” sighed the golden Fae. “Illisr has such a wealth of art and commodity: to see it attacked in such a way is dreadful. And Shinpo! Such spices! Such delicate fabrics!”

  Dion wasn’t unaware of the unrest the surrounded the Fae incursion of the human world. Like her parents she had considered the peril the Fae were fleeing as passport enough to the help and succour of Llassar; but not every country surrounding them had thought so. Montalier and Shinpo had both declined to take Fae into their cities, and Illisr had taken them only conditionally. Some of the more powerful Fae, taking exception to the exclusion, had begun to wage violent and insidious warfare against them, fighting for their less powerful Seelie and Unseelie brethren. Her father had refused to allow her to visit those countries, his righteous anger aroused against their selfish outlook and unwillingness to help, but Dion received enough information of the three countries during her tutored schooling to feel that she had a good idea of what was happening around the world. It was unfortunate, of course, that Montalier, Shinpo, and Illisr were experiencing such violence, but their policy had brought a vast measure of it upon themselves. The Fae were desperate, and had acted desperately.

  This Seelie Fae was refreshingly moderate. Dion felt an almost crushing relief: she had seen and heard such things today that had made her despair of Bithywis and almost, but not quite, of Llassar itself.

  “Barbarians!” said the Seelie Fae, his golden voice disgusted. “Using brute force and magic to overcome prejudice! There are more civilised ways of bringing the world into alignment. Witness what has been done so successfully in Llassar: a Fae-led country where Fae and humans live side by side, with everyone in their place and the proper distinguishing of rank.”

  Dion felt a sinking in her heart; a quivering deep in her soul.

  “Aye,” said Padraig, his voice soft and dangerous. “And what distinguishi
ng would that be, my pretty Fae?”

  The Seelie Fae looked faintly surprised. “The Fae are superior to humans in every conceivable way—your own blood and lineage must tell you so!—in every aspect of mind, magic, judgement and physical prowess. Their laws are inferior, their abilities more so: it was a happiness to them when we took the reins of government in Llassar.”

  “You’d best tell them that,” said Padraig, with a sharp kind of bitterness. “To be sure, they seem to have forgotten!”

  “I see it’s no use talking to you,” the Seelie Fae said, his thin nostrils flared. “Your kind ought to be outlawed as well.”

  “No doubt your kind will see to that quickly enough,” Padraig said, his teeth showing in a humourless grin. “We’d best go, cherry. I think we’ve outworn our welcome.”

  Dion stumbled through the door with him; and she thought, amidst all the bravado and affected unconcern, that Padraig wasn’t quite steady himself. When they were away from the cold light of the Seelie establishment’s conjured sun, he said softly: “I’m sorry, cherry. But you had to know, think on.”

  “Yes,” said Dion. Some time between sitting down and leaving the inn she had begun to shake worse than ever, and she could feel the familiar, deathly weariness creeping up her limbs. “I need– I have to rest now.”

  “This way, then,” said Padraig. He must have seen her chin rise and her shoulders straighten, because he didn’t try to put his arm around her again. “I’ve somewhere safe to stash you.”

  Dion knew the rest of the night in a blurred nightmare. Padraig took her somewhere that smelled of fire and iron and put her to sleep on a small, truckle-bed in one corner of a darkened room. He would have stayed and talked—she even thought he was about to sit beside her and pull her close—but Dion, shivering beneath the blanket and as sick with anxiety and wrong as she had ever been, said: “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

  He might have said something else to her, but Dion had lost consciousness by then. She slept deeply and entirely uselessly, and awoke the next day with heavy eyes and a heavier heart. Padraig was already awake, adding the scents of tea and toast to those of fire and iron. He glanced over at her when she sat up, and she was thankful to note that though he obviously saw the heaviness of her eyes, the shaking had stopped.

  “You’d best eat,” he said. “I’ve a feeling you need the energy. You’re a mite delicate, I think.”

  “No, just stupid,” said Dion, very much aware of the wedge of desolation sitting squarely in her stomach. “I’ve been like it since I was a child. I don’t...react...well. It’s not very comfortable.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so,” said Padraig, flipping a piece of bread on the toasting fork. “Is there nothing that can give you relief?”

  “Yes,” said Dion, without thinking about it; and then: “No,” because she wasn’t inclined to mention Barric. “Sometimes I can pretend it isn’t there for long enough to hide it, but it makes me so tired.”

  “That must be inconvenient for a princess,” said Padraig.

  Dion, with a buzz of shock, looked up and met his eyes. She mechanically took the plate and teacup that he proffered and said: “When– how did you know?”

  “Ah, I’ve known from the beginning,” he said. He sat down beside her, very much at his ease, a teacup clasped loosely between his fingers. “A friend of mine said you’d be here yesterday and asked me to look out for you. She seemed to think you needed to see a few things.”

  “Aerwn!” said Dion. She drew in a deep breath, slowly and shakily. “Oh, Aerwn! What did they do to her? And I thought– they said– oh! Poor Aerwn!”

  “Ah, she’s a tough nut enough,” said Padraig easily. “Takes a lot to rattle that one.”

  “You didn’t see her after she came back from Doctor Whishte,” said Dion unhappily. “I thought she was lying! She lied so much!”

  “Aye,” said Padraig. “I told her it would backfire on her, but she was ever a determined little beast.”

  Dion, finishing a tasteless morsel of toast, said: “I have to get back as quickly as possible.”

  “You’ve much to see: a week or two won’t make a difference,” he said. “Except to your people, mind. They need to see that you’re willing to help.”

  “I see,” said Dion. There was evidently a purpose and plan in place that had been so for some time. She owed it to Aerwn—not to mention the human Llassarians—to see the venture out. At length, she said: “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “Your honesty. I didn’t believe you and you told me the truth anyway. Thank you.”

  Padraig’s face lit with a smile. “Oh aye, I’ll always tell you the truth, your highness.”

  “You might as well stick with Di,” said Dion, flushing a little. “You’ve saved my life, after all.

  “Well now,” said Padraig. “Isn’t this a pleasant thing! Will you be going back to the coach?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Dion said. “Will the Fae be awake again?”

  “Not likely,” said Padraig. He was grinning. “I used vaporised iron: it takes a good deal of heat, but it knocks them out until their lungs can be pumped.”

  Dion frowned down into her cooling tea. “Vaporised iron is poisonous to humans, isn’t it?”

  “Aren’t you the clever one! Indeed it is: I was told you would have a spell on your person to protect against such things.”

  “What if I hadn’t been wearing my travel wrap?” asked Dion, in fascination. “You would have been responsible for murdering the heir to Llassar’s throne!”

  “Killing, at the very worst!” protested Padraig. “And involuntary killing, too! I’d scarcely see a decade of prison food.”

  “It was in the lanterns, wasn’t it? Iron in the casings and something to make the Fae-lights overheat–”

  “Indeed it was. Where did you learn about vapourised metals in a Fae-tutored schoolroom?”

  “That wasn’t in the schoolroom,” said Dion, going pink at Padraig’s distinctly admiring tones. “I used to visit the library a lot. I always had questions that the tutor didn’t answer and I didn’t like to cause a fuss.”

  “What did they do when they found out?”

  Dion blinked a little. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that anyone had found out, but now that she came to think of it, a little while after her fourteenth birthday there had been a fire in the royal library. At the time she had believed the story that someone had merely been too careless with a lantern.

  “There was a fire,” she said, hunching her shoulders. “They said someone knocked over one of the lanterns. Only– only we didn’t have lanterns in the library. It was all Fae lighting by then. I wasn’t allowed in the library for months after that, and when I did get back in, half the books were missing.” The Song of the Broken Sword was one of those that was missing. Dion had never been so foolhardy as to climb the shelves again, but she knew it was gone because the Forbidden Books section was the worst damaged of the lot, and there was a charred, gaping hole where once The Song of the Broken Sword had been shelved.

  “Aye, that has the scent of the Fae all over it,” said Padraig. “They like to do things indirectly when they can: they enjoy playing with their humans.”

  Dion said quietly: “I suppose we should feel ourselves fortunate that the Fae who came to Llassar took over by stealth rather than by violence. The end result has been the same, but at least here there hasn’t been such great loss of life.”

  “Stealth? No. By legislation and trickery and manipulation of feeling. Our deaths may not have been so violent, but they have been as numerous. Not all of us welcomed the Fae taking over our towns, and there was some struggle.”

  “What happened?”

  Padraig shifted his teacup between his hands. “We were slaughtered quickly, quietly, and entirely legally– with the full support of the Crown. Once the Fae were in such numbers that their votes counted for more than the rest of us, and once there were enough in the court to
hold sway with the king and queen, our laws changed more quickly than we could keep up with. Some of us found ourselves on the wrong side of the law without meaning it; others of us thought it worth-while to become rebels and fight to save our families from slavery to the Fae.”

  “Were there no petitions made to the king and queen?” Dion had never seen any such. If there had been such, they could never have reached the king and queen– they would have been quick to avenge the wrongs of their people, even if those wrongs were perpetrated by the Fae.

  “Oh, aye– once and again we sent messengers. First they were stopped on the roads, and when we sought to ally ourselves with the towns around us and send our distress together, it was outlawed.”

  “On what grounds?” cried Dion, nearly beside herself. Her parents couldn’t be aware of this! And yet, how could they have been unaware? “To outlaw a citizen’s right to petition with the Crown? How could such a thing happen?”

  “Citizens still have the right to petition the Crown,” Padraig said, with grim amusement. “Slaves, now; slaves have no such rights.”

  “Slavery was never a part of Llassar,” Dion said, her throat tight. “Those signs I saw in the shop windows– has every human in Bithywis been enslaved?”

  “Not so much enslaved as reassigned. The Fae are of the mind that humans are a bare step up from the animals, and that they need masters to keep them safe and in order.”

  “That Fae,” said Dion, and she heard the tremble of anger in her voice that was almost a sob. She had never thought she could hate, but the tar of it in her throat almost choked her. “What did he mean about your lineage?”

  Padraig shrugged. “Seelie Fae like to prick and cut where they can. He was trying to remind me of my place in this society of his.”

  “Why don’t you have a token?”

  “Ah, I’m a different thing altogether,” said Padraig. “I don’t fit into their little boxes so they leave me alone. Are you finished? There’s something downstairs you’ll be wanting to see.”

  The smell of soot and melted iron grew stronger as Padraig led Dion downstairs, but it wasn’t until they left the house, stepping briefly through a narrow alley and straight into another door, that she realised why. They were in a forge. Dion, who had grown to recognise such places almost as sacrilegious, found that her first reaction was still shock, even though she knew better. She would have asked why they were in a forge, but she could already feel the magic emanating from the hammer and anvil that were close by the fire. They were potent, metallic sources of dusky magic, bound with a scarlet something that Dion thought might be a destiny cord. Whatever they were, the hammer and anvil were important.