Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  “And who might you be?” The voice was a light tenor, a singer’s voice with a careless delivery that suggested easy power or studied manner.

  This, Ishmael thought, is where I ensure myself a conversation or a very quick death. “Strumheller.”

  “Strumheller? As in Baron Strumheller?” Magic swirled around him like a polluted river in winter, and he was glad of his empty stomach and the bracing lintel. He concentrated on not letting his aim waver. “You’re supposed to be a mage. What have you done to yourself?”

  His lips drew back from his teeth; he had just had the welcome thought that the overreach spared him the need to keep a bullet for himself. “Bad overreach, dealing with one of your kind’s ugly fire tricks. Your name, sir?”

  “Do you expect that to mean anything to you? It’s Neill.”

  He was correct; it did not mean anything. To sonn, Neill was a rangy man in his twenties with a rawboned build that Ish would have interpreted as late developer or idle skiver, depending on how charitable he felt. Perhaps this was Neill’s usual form; perhaps not. He was dressed in a jacket made of irregular pieces of skins and leather, an embroidered shirt, and leather trousers. Even from where he stood, Ishmael could sense his magical strength. And sense, too, it was not entirely under control. Neill felt—allowing for the thoroughly repellant Shadowborn aura—like one of the stronger mages at the Broomes’ commune, early in his learning and gaining capability faster than control. The difference was that the young man from the commune was fifth rank and conscientious. This man was far stronger. And Shadowborn.

  “And the lady?” Whose shape was surely not her own, not with that aura of strength around her. She stood no more than four-and-a-half feet tall and had the diminutive, inhuman beauty of an expensive doll. Except for the curl of her lip. “Get on with it, Neill.”

  “We agreed we’d do this my way,” Neill told her, without turning. And to Ishmael: “I’d like to talk, if I may, to Baron Stranhorne.”

  “Talk?” He’d met some smooth rogues in his time, including Rivermarch enforcers, but none of them had blasted in a man’s wall before turning on the charm. Though he supposed Jeremiah Coulter might have, before he reformed. “If you’d wanted t’talk, y’could have knocked on the front door with a card. We’re not couth by city standards, but that’s still th’way it’s done.”

  A sardonic smile. “You have me there. Call it . . . evolving strategy. For one thing, I believe you have something of ours.” He raised his voice, and power rushed past Ishmael. “Sebastien,” he said.

  Ishmael had thought—no, he had hoped—that the Balthasar Hearne that Laurel had slammed the door on had been the Shadowborn. The falseness of that hope was confirmed by a blast of furnace heat at his back. He whirled—no resolution could have prevented him, whatever he put behind him—to face flame. He thudded back against the lintel, but by the time he turned his head again, he was completely ringed by fire. He could feel the skin on his face beginning to sear. His soaked clothing and hair would give him only seconds.

  And then the blaze was quenched, gone as though the fire had never been—but for the heavy smell of wood smoke, scorched fabric and leather, and hot metal. He sonned the slight figure standing at the hall corner, swung his revolver, and just as his finger began to tighten, the smell of hot metal impinged itself on his wisdom. Cursed thing wasn’t safe to fire. He removed his finger from the trigger, gasping slightly.

  The newcomer—the very Shadowborn he had been searching for—was a youth of fourteen or fifteen, sixteen at the most, and surly and scrawny with it. He also had a disconcerting resemblance to Balthasar Hearne, though an incomplete one. He stood with fists clenched, arms almost vibrating with thwarted energy—his magic, though very strong, had not fully emerged.

  “Why’d you do that,” he shouted past Ishmael. “That’s the Shadowhunter.”

  “I’m interested in keeping him alive,” said Neill, from closer.

  Without turning his head, Ishmael passed the overheated revolver to his left hand, drew the other with his right, leveled it to where sound told him the man’s chest would be. “I’m not likewise minded,” he warned.

  The woman said, “Sebastien, get in here.”

  Ishmael’s sonn caught the boy as he started forward, jerking and palpably fighting every step. The woman’s magic was the most mature of the three, deft and slick, and he had no doubt she could have crafted an ensorcellment that would have brought the boy running eagerly to her side, not this rough puppetry. Ishmael rolled his shoulder around the lintel as the boy drew near, not wanting to let him within striking distance or take his muzzle off the man’s chest. Though there was no denying, with the power around him, that the revolver and even his presence were barely more than a gesture. Much as he wished to listen to the sounds around him, to know how the muster was proceeding, he concentrated on present and place. He did not know how much these three were capable of reading without touch. He trusted the Stranhornes to waste no time evacuating. In turn, he must give them all the time he could.

  He wished he could be reassured that Neill seemed in no haste. Was he, as his countryman or kinsman—the one who had seduced Tercelle Amberley—had been, immune to daylight?

  The boy, struggling still, lurched up to the woman. Deliberately, she raised a hand, transformed to the sinewy, scarred knuckles of a prizefighter, and hammered his cheek, sending him sprawling across a chaise longue and spilling half-hemmed baby clothes to the carpet. Neill, who had not intervened, said then, “Midora, enough.”

  “It is not enough,” she said. “He killed Jonquil.”

  The boy snapped from dazed to accusing, arm outstretched toward Ishmael, ending in a quivering arrow of a finger. “He killed Jonquil! I wasn’t even there.”

  Futile as it likely was for him to try to deflect attention from Telmaine, it was already established habit. “Bullets in heart, gut, and brain,” Ishmael confirmed.

  A gesture from the man, backed by a gush of his magic deflecting hers, spared Ishmael’s life, if not his churning stomach. He’d be cursed if he’d vomit at their feet, but much more of this and he would. “Jonquil must have got careless,” Neill said. “You may be good with these things”—a casual gesture toward the revolver—“but you’re not up to his weight otherwise.”

  “Where were you,” the woman said to the boy, “when he shot Jonquil?”

  “More to the point,” said Neill, “why are you here?”

  The boy, sitting on the floor, drew his knees up to his chest and hugged them, rocking slightly, holding his bruised face. “I was in Minhorne. Jonquil had gone to the summerhouse. He was going to wake up Vladimer and . . . and then kill him.” That hesitation suggested ugly things. “I felt Jonquil die. I went down to the station, waited for Vladimer to come back. That was the order, wasn’t it? Kill Vladimer. Kill Vladimer. Kill Isidore. Kill him.” He gestured to Ishmael, but Ishmael hardly registered his own name for the company it kept. “But Vladimer had a mage with him. She turned my magic back on me—burned me.”

  “In other words,” she said scornfully, “she scared you, and you ran away. She’s going to skin you, boyo.”

  “I thought it would help if . . . I sent someone to open the door.”

  “Which we hardly needed, now, did we?” Stones hopped from the two mounds of rubble and began to dance around him on the floor, jumping like vicious mice. He raised his hands to protect his face. “Neill!” he wailed.

  Behind him, in the corridor, Ishmael heard a soft whistle. It penetrated his careful inattention as, he thought, it should have penetrated his sleep. His lips twitched in something that was almost amusement. Fall back and join us, indeed.

  But if they were to execute Stranhorne’s plan, they needed the Shadowborn to be committed, in the depths of the manor, before—Don’t think.

  He shot Neill. He did not try a second shot or wait to sonn his fall; he hurled himself away from the door, even as the boy screamed and a furnace blast of flame roared out from the linte
ls on either side. His wet clothing sizzled. Thank the Mother—or the drunken patron god he had invented for himself—his face had cleared the doorway. He threw himself to one side, rolling, as behind him the ceiling caved in—more than caved; was smashed in, the fragments of plaster and shattered beams hammering down and bouncing up to hammer down again. Someone fell screaming; a young boy, one of the ammunition runners. Ishmael lurched back toward him, even though he knew the boy was already beyond anyone’s help—he could hear it in the sounds he was making. He was surprised that he himself was still alive—that Midora could not distinguish his vitality from the boy’s. But the Shadowborn could bring down the manor themselves in trying to kill him. He let out a roar, putting into it all the fury and despair and revulsion at the child’s hideous death, and then letting its authentic tones turn to a shriek, as though he himself had been caught by the falling roof. The stones’ frenzy redoubled. “Ishmael!” screamed Lavender. And, “Let me go!” He could not even answer her, else he’d undo his own ruse; he could only pray that they managed to hold her back from fatal recklessness. He backed away as soundlessly as he could on booted feet down the southward hall, while behind him the storm of debris raged. Just before he stepped around the corner, his wits caught up with him and he said in a low voice, “Di Studier—” Bullet impacts burst from the far plaster before a voice barked a cease-fire. He whispered, hoarsely, “Aye, it was a good, bloodcurdling shriek, wasn’t it?”

  “Come,” said the voice—that of Stranhorne’s one-armed lieutenant. He sidled around the corner, making himself the leanest possible target, and into the sonn of the group of a handful of men, advance guard on the corridor from a barrier built ten yards up. One of them, a jumpy marksman by the tremor in his hands, said, “But we heard—”

  “They brought the roof down, and with it, one of th’ammunition boys. He’s dead now.”

  “Stupid little sod,” muttered the lieutenant. “Should have been at the muster already. Must have gone back to pilfer.”

  He must say that, Ishmael thought. He must say that and believe it, that the boy deserved that death. Reaction caught up with him, and he had to brace himself against the wall. “Fall back,” he heard the lieutenant say, and two men caught his arms. The men behind the barricade pulled it down enough to let them scramble over, which Ishmael did well enough, and slid to his haunches in its rear, back against the wall. “Sorry,” he said, to the one-armed man. “Bit much, that.”

  “Aye, well, it’s not over. Baron wants them well committed before—” Ish lifted a cautioning hand. “Not sure how much they hear . . . There’re three. Man, woman, boy. Shot the man; we’ll find out if it sticks. He seemed t’be the leader, also th’one willing to talk,” which might make the shooting regrettable, but he did not want to find out that the Shadowborn were stalling him to their advantage, even as he tried to stall them to his. “Strong mages,” he said, grimly. “Very strong. Boy’s a shape-shifter—probably came with us in the guise of one of Mycene’s men, th’one supposedly laid up with street-cart belly. Darkborn or Lightborn mage that strong could pluck th’thoughts and plans out of our minds, though these don’t seem to be behaving that way. May not be able; may be toying with us.”

  “Can’t do anything about that; no sense worrying,” the one-armed man said. “Baron wants you leading th’vanguard. He figures that anything needs to be fought through, you’re best t’do it. Mycene will have the rear; nothing for them t’be a danger to there but Shadowborn, and he’s a cursed good fighter. Be a good thing for th’Isles if he did get killed.”

  Ishmael noted the compliment, backhanded as it was; he’d had similar ones paid to himself, not the least by his own father. And Stranhorne’s election of him as leader of the van was a high compliment indeed. But where did that put Stranhorne himself?

  “People of Stranhorne!” Neill shouted.

  Ishmael, to his shame, jumped.

  “We are not interested in wholesale slaughter—”

  “Could’a fooled us,” someone muttered.

  “If you lay down your weapons and surrender, you will be treated well.”

  Nervous snickers and scornful oaths, silenced by the one-armed man’s throat-slitting gesture. Ishmael added the signal to mute sonn, which the one-armed man conveyed forcibly.

  Ishmael started again as Lavender’s clear voice called, “What do you want?”

  “Who are you, woman?”

  Don’t tell, don’t tell, Ishmael willed, and did not hear her reply as the pain in his chest wrung breath and thought from him—idiot! She wasn’t even a mage.

  The Shadowborn was saying, “We want the manor, and enough staff to keep it livable, and we want the family.”

  Was that brassy, confident voice the voice of a man whom Ishmael had mortally wounded not minutes ago, or of the stripling impersonator? And then his question was answered by the sound of his own voice. “Y’can tell them everything’s all right. Y’can hear I’m fine.”

  Erich’s hand slammed into his shoulder, pinning him against the wall, before he was even aware he had moved. He got the point: if he so much as hiccoughed, the hand would be over his mouth. He tapped the other man’s wrist in acknowledgment, and waited, breath held, heart pounding.

  “Do you really expect us to believe that?” Lavender said, without a tremor of uncertainty. “Shadowborn.”

  He could hear the quick breathing of the men around him—not the one-armed man, who knew how to make no sound, but one with a distinct wheeze, and two who were snoring, at least to his ears. From farther away, around the corner, he heard stones grumble and slide. Magic swelled sickeningly, and he heard stones grind on wood. “Down! Everyone down!” he roared, full voice, and threw himself flat, catching Erich by the belt and hauling him down, and twisting and kicking the feet of the nearest man out from under him just as the first stones ricocheted off the wall at the corner. A woman—please not Lavender—screamed from around the corner, and the improvised barricade before him shuddered violently under the barrage of brick, spars, and plaster. There was a thud of plaster on bone, and a man sprawled back from his place at the barrier. Ishmael rolled over and sonned, catching distorted shapes of fragments passing overhead. He heard yells from farther up the hall as the missiles reached the second barricade, but he’d noticed the barrage was thinning, seeming to travel high.

  On the far side, he heard a crunch and a scrape, as of claws on wood, and felt the barricade tremble slightly—and his sonn caught the balewolf just as it scrambled onto the edge of a side-turned table. He rolled to his feet with a shout of “Wolves!” His left hand went out and caught the brute’s shaggy throat, and with the power of his legs and back behind it, he heaved it backward off the barricade, a feat he would never have ventured, let alone accomplished, in cool blood and sobriety. It landed, leaped, and caught someone’s bullet in its jaws. The entire corridor heaved with them. He heard yelling from the far corridor, and running feet approaching behind. Over his shoulder he shouted, “Fall back, back! We can’t hold here.” Maybe they could, but the enemy had to commit, had to come as deep as possible into the manor, and as long as they thought that the beasts were overrunning the defenders, maybe they would hold on the magic. Bordersmen could fight monsters, but magic . . . He caught the collar of one man who had not moved, who knelt still, fixedly firing and firing, and all but launched him down the corridor after the others. And then they were running back, two men carrying the one who had been felled by the stones. The one-armed man, covering the rear, went down beneath the claws of one of the brutes, but a second man ducked in with a knife the size of a short sword, impaled its open jaw, and slit its throat, while a third dragged Erich clear.

  Above the abandoned barricade, the ceiling fell in, crushing the animals beneath it. He heard Neill’s cry, “Midora!” with a choke of pain at the end of it, and the woman’s laughter. Then from overhead he heard shooting—someone, two someones, firing through the cavity in the roof. Suicidally brave, with the ceiling coming down i
n pieces, but that let the defenders pile through the gap opened for them in the barricade, and fall to their haunches and knees for reloading. “Shit—,” someone gasped. “Aren’t I dead? Aren’t we all dead?”

  By some miracle, none of them were, though several were bleeding from stone or bite wounds, and the man who’d been felled at the barricade was unconscious with what looked like a grave head injury, and another was likely to bleed to death from his torn groin, despite the best efforts of his fellows to staunch it. It was a wound Ishmael himself could have dealt with once. The one-armed man recalled his attention from bitter regret. “If they’ve not held th’other side, we’ll have some trouble on the retreat.”

  Truer words were never spoken. If the defenders in the north corridor had to fall back into the vestibule and entrance to the ballroom, then he and the others would be cut off. They would have to retreat into the cellars. He took a deep breath, aware of his own shakiness. How long since he’d eaten or, even more important, had anything to drink? He rasped, “Anyone got water with them?”

  Someone passed him a flask; he drank, using the moment to think and to listen to the far side. He had not been able to listen to what was happening elsewhere while he was scrambling to save his own life, but from the sound of firing, he believed they were holding. Had to believe they were holding, and that Lavender was still alive. So much, he thought ruefully, for Stranhorne wanting us in the vanguard.

  How long had it been? Long enough for the muster and breakout to be ready? He corked the flask and handed it back to its owner with a nod, then said to the one-armed man, “What’s the signal, then? Ours, that we’re breaking contact, or theirs that they’re breaking out?”

  With a crash, the ceiling collapsed, carrying the two snipers with it. Both were women. Ishmael surged to his feet. The defenders shot frantically, but there was just too little time—one had no chance at all to rise, while the other had no sooner gained her feet than a wolf leaped for her throat and dragged her into the mass. Her blank, terrified face and her wide, crying mouth seared into his memory. The man whom Ish had hauled from his post at the first barricade screamed obscenities and shot and shot and shot again, oblivious to the hammer falling on an empty chamber.