Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  Though, given the regency council, that action might not be what he wished. Mycene, for one, might take advantage of the archduke’s incapacity and the pressure on the Borders to make his move on the island territories. Unless the archdukedom itself proved the greater plum.

  The Plantageters would have to look to their own interests. Ishmael had all he could manage in the Borders.

  “I need a telegram sent to my wife,” Balthasar slipped in. “She was staying at the home of her sister, Lady Erskane. Ask her to wire that she is all right.”

  Lavender nodded and said to her father, “We’re sending a squad south toward Stonebridge and Hartman’s Barrow. They’ll meet up with the squad quartered in Stonebridge and swing out by the Barrow.”

  “Double squads,” Ishmael said. “Even from here. Same orders as th’ones to Eastbridge. And pass the word to th’post coach to hold their outbound runs.”

  “Already done,” Lavender said. Then she said, “Will you lead the squad to Upper Eastbridge. You’re one of the best we have still.”

  Lavender didn’t know about the strengthened Call—didn’t know that his risk from it was any graver than at any other time since he’d known her. Balthasar, subject to the constraints of his profession, kept silent, though Ishmael heard the breath he drew.

  Stranhorne shook his head. “Mycene would never allow it.”

  “Or he’d insist on a guard on me,” Ishmael said. “And the last thing we need is men in the squad who haven’t been trained in the way we fight—or have you forgotten th’hide-stripping I gave you and your sister, all those years ago?”

  She said with feeling, “Never.”

  “I’ll be put to good use here, getting the manor ready.”

  “Do you think,” Lavender said, sounding younger than her years, “it might come to fighting here?”

  “Aye, I think it might. Those are ominous signs, as y’rightly understood. But we’ve got solid walls between us and them, and without the walls and the killing grounds, they’ll rue the hour they crossed into our lands.”

  Except, he thought, they have magic, and magic powerful enough to bring snow in late summer. Her father knew that. But Lavender—it did not matter whether she knew or not. She could do no more than she was already doing, and would do it less well if she were frightened. “If y’can get me out of this room,” he said, “I’ll do what I can to take Lord Mycene and his men in hand. They’ll be no danger t’anyone but the Shadowborn shooting from snipers’ holes in th’upper stories.” He gestured. “And they may take t’it.”

  “And this is good how?” Lavender muttered.

  Ishmael grinned, despite the weight of his worries and the drag of the Call. “Th’enemy of your enemy, girl. It’ll be all to the good, them knowing what we’ve been up against, all these years. Make them think twice about troubling your kin in th’Islands.”

  “Who is taking the squad south?” Stranhorne said, neutrally.

  She set her lips, an answer in itself, and then said, half blurting, “Laurel and Boris will be here, and one of us—”

  “Not necessarily,” Stranhorne said. There was a silence. “Be careful.”

  “As a city lady guards her reputation.” She kissed her father’s cheek, clasped Ishmael’s gloved hand, and made a strategic retreat before either Stranhorne or Ishmael could raise further objections.

  “Stranhorne,” said Ishmael. “I owe y’an apology. I promised to keep them out of danger.” If he’d been born a sixth-rank mage, he’d be able to lift Laurel from here to safety in a moment—and he would have, even if her father banished him from his manor and she boxed his ears for it. But he couldn’t even argue for sending her to relatives in the inner Borders if the trains were stopping, and he could not pretend the roads were safe.

  “Are you?” the baron said, tartly. “I had no idea you were responsible for the Shadowborn.”

  “Get me out of this room, please, before I start tearing through th’walls. Hearne, too. Is Linneas here?”

  “Yes,” Stranhorne said, the hint of weary amusement telling Ishmael a familiar story. Linneas Straus was physician and surgeon to the Stranhorne troop. As regularly as the turn of seasons, his daughter’s husband was sacked from his latest job, the growing family descended on Linneas’s home in need of shelter, and Linneas took refuge in the manor. “It’s that,” he’d said to Stranhorne, “or y’sit magistrate on my trial for killing th’wastrel.”

  Balthasar would no doubt learn all that and more once he met the physician. “Linneas Straus is the physician who takes care of the manor and the troops,” he said to Balthasar. To Stranhorne: “Hearne’s got city hospital training; be useful should things get busy. He might be able t’help us prepare for numbers of casualties. We’ve never dealt with a mass attack before.” It would also keep the physician distracted from what might be happening in Minhorne. If his need was anything like Ishmael’s, he should be grateful.

  “And we can only hope we’re not dealing with one now,” Stranhorne said. To Balthasar: “Linneas doesn’t have a city education—he was trained by apprenticeship, as were most of our surgeons—but he’s been physician to the manor for thirty-odd years. Attended on all my children’s births.”

  Balthasar took the caution as intended, though for him, at least, it was not needed; he had little city professional arrogance about him. Ishmael added, “And never mind his sense of humor.”

  “I’ll have a word with Mycene,” Stranhorne promised, and left them.

  Balthasar sat down. “Oh, dear God,” he breathed. “Vladimer was right.”

  “Seems t’have been,” Ish said stoically.

  “You think they’ll need me?” Balthasar said.

  “They might. But there’s another reason I want us out and about. If it comes to a siege, and it might, the manor’s walls are strong, and its defenders skilled, but if there’s an agent inside—if there’s a Shadowborn inside—then that’ll do them no good whatsoever. Remember what we found in th’archducal summerhouse: th’entire household ensorcelled into sleep. If that’s done here, they’ll have no chance.”

  “Have you sensed something in the manor?”

  “Maybe. It comes; it goes. I’ve taken damage, I know, but I daren’t let this pass.”

  Balthasar said, slowly, “If I were a Shadowborn shape-shifter, and I wished to sabotage the effort to defend Stranhorne, then I would try to replace you, Baron Stranhorne, or one of his children.”

  “Aye,” Ishmael said. “That’d be my thought, too.”

  The physician’s voice was oddly tense. “Perhaps I might sense it, if it is mage enough.”

  “Y’didn’t sense th’one that wore your brother’s form.”

  “I was flat on my back, weak and panicking with the threat to my daughter.”

  His probing sonn, his braced posture, revealed his purpose. Ishmael grunted. “You’ve more nerve than sense, thinking t’spook a Shadowborn when you’re alone with it and unarmed.”

  Balthasar said, unsmiling, “You were out of contact for more than twenty-four hours.”

  “Well, I’m m’self. And this close t’you, I think I can be sure of you, too.”

  He waited, and was relieved to hear the change in the physician’s voice. “A mage or mages strong enough to bring on snow in August would have the strength to breach even these walls.”

  “We can but hope they’ve a need t’preserve this manor. I wish I’d a sense of th’way they worked. It seems so erratic—oblique one moment, excessive th’next. Vladimer’d be able to get a sense of it. I can’t.” He pushed that worry aside; they had to deal with the dangers of the moment. “I want us t’try to smoke out any Shadowborn in the manor before their forces reach us.”

  “The Shadowborn who impersonated my brother, trying to get me to tell him where Tercelle’s twins were, did not attempt to touch-read me. It may be that Shadowborn do not have that ability. If they don’t, we can check on each other, ask each other questions that superficial acquaintances would
not be expected to know. But if they do—”

  “In this flurry, we’re likely safe enough. But you’d be best t’take care not t’be alone, or with one or two. That includes Mycene’s men.”

  Balthasar’s expression changed again. “What is’t?” Ishmael said.

  “Something I noticed during last night’s ride . . . Something I—” His expression was frustrated. Plainly, Balthasar Hearne was not used to having his memory fail him. “You were about spent,” Ish said. “It’ll come t’you.”

  In the hall, an alarm bell clamored. “What—?” said Balthasar, as Ishmael moved.

  “Call t’arms,” Ishmael said, opening the door, and walking straight into the sonn of Mycene’s guards.

  Balthasar

  To Balthasar’s relief, they were all spared finding out whether Ishmael was prepared to stop, or how far Mycene’s men were prepared to go in stopping him. Young Baronet Stranhorne arrived at a run. “My father’s compliments,” he gasped out. “You’re all wanted in the ballroom immediately.”

  A diplomat in larval form, Balthasar thought, since he was sure that Ishmael was the one truly wanted. They arrived in the ballroom at the same time as did Mycene himself, who sonned them with a scowl and gestured, with a taut flick of the hand, for Balthasar and Ishmael to precede them. The ballroom, busy when they passed through it on arrival, was barely controlled mayhem now. Balthasar smelled blood, despite the dense overlay of gun oil, gunpowder, wet wools, leather, and sweat. By the turn of his head and the narrowing of his lips, Mycene smelled it, too. From the far side of the ballroom, a man shrieked through clenched teeth, and sonn resolved a bucking figure on a table, with others holding him down. Balthasar started in that direction, but a hard hand on his shoulder jerked him back. “Stay,” the guard said.

  “I’m needed—”

  “Stay,” growled Mycene. “I’m not having you take advantage—”

  “Sweet Imogene, Mycene,” Balthasar said, exasperated, “where would I go?”

  A group of men and women wearing the uniform and livery of house staff thrust past them in disregard of Mycene’s temper and rank. Most carried long-barreled guns, some more than one. Ishmael had explained that the south and west sides of the manor overlooked ground cleared, leveled, and strewn with gravel and the brittle shells of dried nuts, and cross-webbed with trip wires strung with rattles. Nothing could approach unheard. The narrow upstairs windows served as sniper posts. Mycene allowed the reservists to pass with no more than a grunt of sour approval. From within milling bodies and pulsing sonn, Balthasar could hear Laurel’s clear voice issuing orders.

  A man with one arm directed them to the side gallery, where they found Baronette Lavender, her father, and as grim, weary, and battered a group of men as Balthasar had ever managed after a brawling night in the Rivermarch, where he worked intermittently as a physician. They were gathered around a large relief model, which Balthasar recognized as being of the immediate area.

  Mycene thrust forward. “What’s happening?”

  Stranhorne sonned him, nodded curtly, acknowledging him as a peer, but spoke as much to Ishmael as to Mycene. “Shadowborn, in force. Scavvern, balewolves, some kind of winged Shadowborn—no one’s given a clear description. Ensorcelled animals—attacks by dog packs, horses, cattle, and goats, even mobbing by sheep. We’ve got envenomations, reports of beetles of some kind. . . .” He jerked his head toward the door, where the shrieks from the man on the table had diminished to a muffled keen, with an intermittent strangulation that Balthasar read as convulsions.

  “Stonebridge”—Stranhorne pointed to a marker—“has been overrun.” The bell tolled, a slow, steady knell beneath his words. “We’ve got survivors pouring in the gate as we speak. Laurel is marshaling sweeps to bring in all those we can rescue, because we’ll have to close the gate before the Shadowborn force reaches us. The squad quartered at Stonebridge was evacuating the town when last heard of. We’ve no word on Hartman’s Barrow or the hill villages beyond. We’ve sent riders out to the Crosstracks, to raise the alarm, warn the railroad, and send telegrams to Strumheller and the inner Borders. Strumheller’s our best hope of quick reinforcement, if we can hold the tracks and stop the wires from being cut. At least it’s early in the night—we’ve got hours before we’ll be completely unable to defend ourselves. If you want to take your chances on the road to the station, then we’ll mount and supply you. But I’d not refuse a dozen good fighting men.” He said that without a smile, without any play on the irony of his recruiting his enemies; the situation was too grim for that.

  Mycene’s grunt signaled neither assent nor refusal, but he leaned forward slightly, gathering himself for action. He was already committed to this fight, whether he knew it or not.

  To Balthasar, Stranhorne said, “Are you up to helping Linneas? We’ve got casualties.” He had noticed Balthasar’s stiff movements. Balthasar simply nodded. “Good.” To the one-armed man he said, “Erich, take him, introduce him.”

  In the ballroom, the reek of terrified, wounded, and sick people was even stronger, the noise louder. Somewhere, a woman was screaming wordlessly, a monotonous descant of horror, chopped by regular, wheezing breaths. To Bal’s left, a small child’s voice said, “Ma, Ma, Ma,” with a dreadful persistence; worst of all, it went unanswered. He heard Erich say to someone, “We need t’get them calmed down and cleared somehow.”

  Erich slung Balthasar toward the narrow corridor into the former ballroom kitchen, now—for the sake of its stoves and drainage—turned surgery. The Stranhorne surgeon was already at work, hands digging into a man’s belly. He barely acknowledged Erich’s introduction: “Here’s th’city man, Linneas, t’help you. Name’s Balthasar Hearne.” Bal noted that the man on the table still wore his boots, and tallied that with the set to the surgeon’s face and the viscous strings trailing from the drapes onto the floor. Without a word, he stripped off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and went to the sink to scrub his hands and forearms with harsh carbolic soap. Behind him, he heard an instrument fall, with no sound of a fumble or missed catch, the tiny sound like the last stroke of a distant sunrise bell to a man too far from shelter. The sound of a body being lifted was always different after life was gone.

  He let a few heartbeats elapse before he turned. Linneas Straus was a heavyset man in his fifties. He swept his sonn over Balthasar, approving his bared arms with a grunt. “Y’know what t’do?” he said.

  “If I don’t, I’ll ask.”

  Balthasar lost track of time. Smell, hearing, insight—all narrowed to contain only the utterly necessary. He administered anesthesia. He helped pin down a slight boy while Linneas amputated his ruined arm above the elbow, and cleared vomit from the boy’s mouth before he choked on it. He set swift stitches into the lacerated back of a young woman, knowing that for all his care, she would be scarred for life, if she did not take a fatal infection. Worse than the clawed ruin before him was the low, monotonous sobbing that did not change, no matter how deeply the needle pierced. One of the women acting as assistants whispered to him that she was infant mistress in the Stonebridge school, and that the school . . . She left the sentence unfinished. Balthasar completed his suturing, the attendants carried her away, and he let the sound and the information slip out of his mind. He knew to be grateful that it was not him but Straus who must decide who to set aside as beyond all help. Like the man with the crushed skull whose agonal breathing had so often faded to silence and then rattled into life again that when he finally died, nobody noticed at first.

  Voices floated in from elsewhere. Lavender or Laurel said, “Father, we may need your word to close the gate soon.”

  “Oh, Mother of All,” the other twin replied, “there hasn’t been time for everyone—”

  “We ran into what’s left of the Stonebridge squad.” This time it was Lavender. “The Shadowborn vanguard is three miles back. We’ve moved the armory into the second-floor gallery, and we’ve filled the ballroom and the lower floor with refugees, and se
t anyone whose nerves are up to it to reloading upstairs. Ishmael’s handling that. . . . Curse Mycene, he should have been out on the roads.”

  “How many have come through the gate?” he heard Stranhorne say.

  “Just over a thousand, by my count,” Laurel said, her voice a half whisper.

  Stranhorne said, perhaps to no one in particular, “At last census there were upwards of seven thousand between Stonebridge and the Barrow, and another three thousand in the hill villages between here and the border with the Shadowlands. . . .”

  Balthasar fumbled and dropped his scissors. “Curse it, city man,” Linneas barked. “If you need a break, take one. This is likely just th’start.”

  Someone offered him a mug of tarry tea, sweetened and laced with brandy, and meat jerky and dried fruit, which he soaked in the tea with no regard for gentility. Then a man delirious with pain planted his foot in the center of his stomach, and he nearly lost everything. By the time he was done wheezing and retching, the man had slipped meekly under anesthetic, his last resistance spent. Balthasar braced himself against the table and, still bent over, set to work. Linneas Straus remarked, more cheerfully than before, “No need t’feel ashamed of yourself there; he’s th’terror of tavern brawls from the Crosstracks to Stranhorne Port.”

  Three

  Ishmael

  Life had taught Ishmael patience, and experience, priorities. So he wasted no spleen on his frustration at being mewed up in the manor and tripping over guards every time he turned around. He had nervous snipers to settle, reloaders to deploy, ammunition runners to direct. With so many of the regulars out on the roads, trying to bring in as many refugees as possible, the majority of the manor’s defenders were reserves, trained only as far as would comply with the ducal order: manor servants, wives and sons and daughters of reservists, and young troops in training. And Ferdenzil Mycene and his men, who had listened when Stranhorne had refused to let them out on the roads because of their inexperience in fighting Shadowborn.