Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  “Ishmael!” It was Lavender, her throat raw. “Break—break now.” And then Ishmael heard a sound he would never again be able to mistake, any more than he would the magic that fuelled it—the whumph of erupting fire. He moved before he thought. Ten strides took him to the door into the central gallery, through which he plunged in utter disregard of what might be waiting on the other side. Nothing was; he sprinted the width, hit the door, threw it open; met smoke and the roil of heat and flame to his right. He yelled, “Lavender!” and heard her answer, from the far side. He shouted, “Y’have to run—run through. Run t’my voice. I’m clear.” How long? He felt magic pour over him, heard a whumph behind him, and the gallery ignited. He roared, tasting blood, “Fall back, fall back to the muster!” The men on the other side had to come through the west gallery or hall, or go down to the cellar, and they had to do it now.

  Two figures suddenly burst, solid, from the flame: Lavender, leading the young troop who had given up his horse to Ishmael. She almost fell into his arms, as her sister had. He did not greet her with an embrace, but with frantic slaps at the smoldering edges of her clothing. She twisted and shouted, “I’m through. Come! Come! Come! Come!” To her urging, raw with need and nothing like command, they came in twos and threes, bursting out of the fire on courses toward her.

  Jeremiah Coulter wore his buccaneer’s grin. “Reminds me of a ceremony on one of th’far south islands. . . .”

  Ishmael heard running and stumbling feet on wood behind them, and turned to sonn the men and women from the barricade. He could weep with relief that they’d found their way. They helped him catch and slap down the men and women emerging from the fire. The one-armed man was not with them. The one on whom the leadership had devolved said, “Erich went down to the baron. He said they’d break out through th’south.”

  Through the bricked-up entrance they’d need to blow to get free. Sweet Imogene. He caught Lavender as she moved, with a harder grip than he’d ever taken of her. “No! Your place is here.” He couldn’t tell her her father would be fine. “We need t’get clear, and we need t’get clear now.”

  The last through the fire, a young woman, caught Lavender’s arm. “Ronina and the Prescotts—they won’t come—”

  Ishmael stepped forward, almost up to the fire. “Y’come and y’live, or y’die right here!” he challenged.

  In answer, he heard three shots. Lavender, beside him, made a sound like a puppy crushed beneath a wheel. He said, hoarsely, “This is it—sound the breakout.”

  “The fire . . . ,” she whispered. “If it reaches—”

  “Erich’s gone to warn.” He caught her hand. “Come.” He led them, a ragged, wounded, indomitable band, into the ballroom, but she had to force him to release her so she could sound the bell—Mother bless that Stranhorne had at least been willing to allow mechanical bells. She threw the switch and the final retreat began to peal, thin against the building roar of fire. She turned back to him, crying, but unaware of it. He said, “We’ll be back, lass. We’ll be back.”

  She plunged ahead, toward the heaving mass of people pushing out the far doors, and Ishmael followed.

  Balthasar

  Cold roused Balthasar where he lay, rain, close to sleet, needling his exposed skin. Breathing hurt, every inhalation pulling at his side. Beneath his hand, he could feel icy rainwater pooling on the outstretched wing of a dead Shadowborn. He could hear the spatter of wind-driven rain, and a bell ringing in staccato bursts. And he could smell fire, the rank smoke of wood and fabric.

  His hand jerked, twitching his soaked sleeve out of the puddle. He closed his fist, opened it. Not ensorcellment; the stiffness of exertion and cold. Making himself move, making himself lift his head, rise on his elbow, sonn around himself, was one of the most urgent efforts he had ever made in his life. Sonn caught shapes moving, and something growled. He froze. The movements came no closer, though the restless shapes continued to prowl. His sonn, probing the rain, delineated the gaping wall, the neat channel of cleared rubble.

  Moving very slowly, he pushed up his shirt, explored the wound with his fingers. It was closed, though puckered and drawn. Something fell from his shirt with a dull clunk. Drawing it to him, he found a deformed bullet. He remembered the Shadowborn touching him, the pain. Yet it had been a curative pain.

  From deep within the manor came a low, rumbling belch. Through the flagstones he felt a vibration, and, with the next, louder—an explosion, he realized—he felt a distinct twitch, as though the earth itself were shrugging. The very walls of the manor wavered with the force of the third explosion, and the ceiling slumped into the gap. Warm air rolled over Balthasar, reeking of a munitions factory. From beyond the wall a bugle blared and a winch whined. Then a yelled command, a volley, another shout, another volley, and he heard wheels and hooves—a great many of both—on pavestones. A woman’s voice screamed, hoarse with shouting, “Drive! Run! All speed to the Crosstracks. We hold the rear!” The manor shuddered again, though those massive walls remained intact. The woman—Lavender or Laurel—shouted, “Father! We hold the rear!”

  This made sense of the whispers and exchanges he had overheard while he worked. The Stranhornes had planned for defeat, planned for retreat, planned even for betrayal. He listened with shuddering exaltation. The coaches would be carrying the wounded and those unable to keep the pace on foot. Anyone who could walk and run would do so, carrying those they could, and those who could fight would be on foot and horse in the van- and rear guard. Laurel and Lavender Stranhorne would be riding with them. But he feared now that he understood some of the silences that had fallen around Xavier Stranhorne, and the exaltation went out of him. Someone must have fired the charges placed inside the manor, someone who had chosen to risk being entombed with Shadowborn invaders in the gutted interior of his manor.

  With a few more tired coughs, a few more tremors, the manor settled into its warrior’s death. The wheels receded into the night. Wind and rain drowned the running footsteps. The bugle cried again in thin defiance, and then all that remained was the dwindling noise of hard-shod hooves. His skin was so numb he could not know either the temperature or the force of the rain. Sunrise would not be long coming.

  At that thought, and regardless of what else prowled around those ruins, he staggered to his feet. The first step almost pitched him back into the puddles, but he shuffled toward the manor, though whether to shelter or succor, he did not know. What was not already destroyed in the explosion would be burning. Anyone living in that shell would not long remain so. Balthasar was dizzied by the war between free and ensorcelled emotions, an impotent, murderous rage that he knew was close to insanity, and a helpless pity for them all, including that child monster who held him enthralled. He hoped—how he hoped—that the Stranhornes had not left any of their own alive, but knew that some must have barred the entrance to the ballroom to the last, and some of the wounded would not survive the journey—he remembered Linneas’s revolver—if they even began it.

  Within the gap, he heard someone cough thickly. He barely caught himself from revealing sonn, and pressed his back against the wall, listening to the crunch and slither of stumbling feet on the untidy rubble.

  “Don’t—,” a man’s voice grunted.

  “Let me—” Balthasar heard a bubbling groan, and the sound of rainwet leather slapping and slithering against the wall. A familiar young voice gasped, “Neill—Neill, what do I do? Help me.”

  The ensorcellment jerked tight on his viscera at that “Help me” and dragged him forward. The boy crouched, his hands bracing Neill’s shoulders against the rough wall. Neill’s patchwork jacket was gone. Of the once-fine shirt, only its side panels and shoulders remained; the sleeves were in rags, and the front torn open. To the right of his sternum was a cavity in the flesh that frothed at every exhalation. With that wound, he ought to be dead. But he was obviously capable of healing magic, of a sort.

  “I need—,” Neill gasped, and Balthasar jumped violently as something br
istled and muscular thrust against his legs, pushing first him and then the boy aside. The balewolf padded up to Neill and pressed its muzzle under Neill’s hand and whined, like a solicitous hound. A second joined it. Silently, first one, then the other, sank to the wet rubble, their bristled flanks moving feebly as though they were exhausted. The cavity in Neill’s chest no longer bubbled.

  “Why didn’t you—?” the boy protested, his tone hurt.

  Neill said, roughly, “Don’t be a fool. You’ll need your vitality.” He summoned two more of his surviving wolves to him, and their limp bodies joined the rest. The man stroked the nearest bristled heap gently.

  Something moved within the smear of smoke and nascent heat, and from the ruined interior staggered a huge wolf moving on lacerated paws, its fur soaked—the smell was that of blood—and hide burned. Neill pushed himself painfully around to gather it in. “Ah, Mayfly,” he said hoarsely, resting his face on the gory fur. The wolf let him lean on it, mild as a sheepdog.

  “What—?” the boy began, plaintively.

  With a swift strike that belied his injury, Neill caught his chin in one hand. “How, by the . . . Mother could you . . . not find out . . . that the cellar . . . was full of explosives?”

  “It was not my fault!” the boy cried, struggling free. “How was I supposed to know? No one taught me enough.”

  The wounded Shadowborn gurgled a laugh. “D’you think . . . you’re alone?” He fell back against the wall, throwing his hand up to bark knuckles against the stone. “I wanted this manor intact. Its library alone—” He swallowed down the confession and let his head drop back. “Midora’s dead,” he said, flatly. “Beam fell on her; couldn’t help. Could barely keep myself alive.” He snorted wetly and swept a wrist across his nose. “Speaking of overconfidence.”

  “I’d rather it was her than you,” the boy said.

  The man’s expression was one common to the elders of antisocial juveniles everywhere. He turned his face toward Balthasar. “You’re Hearne’s brother. The physician.”

  “He’s mine!” the boy said, sharply.

  “I can sense that. You poor sod . . . not the least idea what’s going on, by the look of you. Don’t know whether to pity or envy you . . .” Behind Balthasar, something grumbled deep in its massive throat. He could now smell blood, ordure, and warm, wet, living fur. An atavistic sense told him he was ringed by Shadowborn. Neill raised his hand as he went to turn. “Don’t—,” he said, softly, and the ensorcellment reinforced that injunction. “They won’t harm you, as long as you just stay as you are. I try not to repeat my mistakes.” He rolled his head on its stone pillow toward Sebastien. “What happened in Minhorne?”

  “We killed the Lightborn prince!” the boy blurted. “Set up the magic on the munitions—everything was going fine. Jonquil ensorcelled Vladimer, was going to let him slowly die, keep his people disorganized, but then Strumheller became involved. And even though he was accused of the ensorcellment and . . . and murder, he was directing other people toward us, and Jonquil thought he could hurry Vladimer’s death as well as trap Strumheller’s allies. But Strumheller was working with a mage, a strong mage—it wasn’t the Broome woman; it wasn’t any one of those we knew about—and she managed to resist him, and Strumheller . . . He shot Jonquil dead while she held him.”

  Telmaine, Balthasar thought, and desperately tried to stifle the thought.

  “I got some of Jonquil’s agents and waited at the station for Vladimer, but the mage was there again—I didn’t think he was supposed to work with mages, and she turned my fires back at me. I was . . . I was alone. I was,” he said in a small voice, “scared.”

  “I can understand that, Seb, but Emeya won’t be in a mood to listen. You need to go back to Minhorne and finish up what you and Jonquil were ordered to do, and you need to do it before Emeya gets here. Come!” The boy jerked forward as though a rope had been hooked to his breastbone. “Trust me,” Neill said, as he laid the back of his hand against the boy’s cheek. “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” The boy stiffened and whined through his teeth, and Balthasar’s body tensed in ensorcelled protectiveness, remembering the man’s searing touch. But, fortunately, before he could otherwise react, the man’s hand fell away and he slumped sideways onto his elbow, arm across the oozing hole in his chest. He had tapped his own vitality to work whatever magic he had on the boy, and paid for it.

  Sebastien scrambled away, but only until he bumped against one of Neill’s wolves, which growled at him. Then he crouched, staring at Neill, mouth opening and closing. Slowly, Neill raised his head. “I’ve shown you how; now would you get going, before she calls us back?”

  The boy lunged out of his crouch to catch Balthasar’s hand, though Bal’s sensation of it was no more than of a jar at the end of a stick of wood. And then the boy threw his arms around him, and Balthasar felt an instant’s disorientation before they fell.

  Ishmael

  Someone caught Ishmael—by his left arm, curse it—and hauled him close to shout in his ear, “Baronette wants you! Up front in the grand coach.” He pointed, though how, in the shambles that was their retreat, he knew where to point, Ishmael did not know. He was supposed to be in the vanguard, but the van was already well up the road and Mycene had it. Stranhorne’s plans notwithstanding, if ever a man was temperamentally unsuited to be rear, Mycene was. By the croaking shouts from his right, Lavender was mustering Stranhorne to guard the rear. Sharp woman, but with that throat, she’d be living on hot lemon and honey for the next week. So Lavender was with them, and Laurel. “The baron?” he shouted. “Boris?”

  “Don’t know about the baron. The baronet took a mauling. He’s in the coach.”

  Holding his throbbing arm against his chest to spare it further insult, Ish struggled forward through the mob. He had not been privy to the planning of the retreat, but he had the essence: troops to the van, rear, and flank, running or riding; wheeled vehicles—everything from the Stranhorne state coach to a coal man’s wagon—just behind the van, drawn by horses, mules, oxen, and teams of men harnessed together; and a long train of foot travelers following behind. With the fugitives from the west, the manor staff, and reservists, they had thirteen hundred people to get to the Crosstracks, five miles away. And only two hours to do it in, he thought, hand going out to steady a young woman who was lugging a screeching, thrashing child of three or four. In this press, a child that size could unknowingly be trampled.

  Feeling the strength in his grip, she appealed over her shoulder, “Take him, please, sir. I can’t carry him and keep this pace.” He realized she was not a woman, but a girl, twelve or thirteen, tall for her age, but slender. Not a mother, then—a sister or cousin or nursemaid, or simply someone with a pair of empty arms. He accepted the burden. “I’ve to go forward past th’wagons. I’ll find him a place.” He hoisted the child over his shoulder, which spared his ears the howls and his wounded arm the little fists, and continued forward as rapidly as he could. The noise did seem to help clear his way.

  He handed the winded but still gamely protesting child up onto a covered cart, where he joined a crop of small ones and their harried caretakers. The jouncing had already made several of them sick, and no doubt the rest would follow. He quickly assessed the solidity of the cover over their heads. It would do. It would have to do.

  He found Laurel riding shotgun to one of her own coachmen, a rifle across her knee. Four members of the Stranhorne troop were keeping a high watch atop the coach. He swung up on the running board beside her, head level with her waist. She reached down, and they exchanged a lingering arm clasp. She wore a heavy leather jacket, too large for her frame, over her loose dress and stout riding boots, and someone—probably not she—had tucked a plump cushion behind her back. Her hair was caught back in a braid beneath her helmet. Her face was composed, even stern. He could sense her influence in the calm assurance of the people around her. He’d always known she had courage and a cool head, but this was more than he would
ever have expected of her or her sister.

  From beside and behind her, she produced a holster and a brace of revolvers, a pouch of ammunition, and a staff—all his own, he realized, as he took the holster in hand.

  “Lavender’s at the rear. Your father?” he said, knowing he could not spare her.

  She shook her head once. “The way the manor was burning, the way it went up . . . he and the others may not have had time to get out.” Her voice was small and tight. “We can’t spare anyone to go back.”

  “Y’can spare me, I think, though your father’ll take my hide, since his orders were t’get you clear. But it’s still only a few minutes run t’get down to the southwest corner.”

  “Assuming,” she said, “you meet no trouble.”

  “Assuming that,” he said. “But I doubt I’d make any great difference t’you here.”

  “Then there’s Dr. Hearne,” she said.

  “Who’d be th’first after me t’tell you you’d done the right thing by leaving him, if his mind wasn’t his own. But, yes, I’d try for the baronelle’s garden as well.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone.”

  “I’ll move fastest, going alone.” He hooked his right arm around the leg of the coachman’s bench, and quickly checked both revolvers. Not that he didn’t trust her, but he’d worked too hard to instill good habits in her and her sister.

  “Ishmael . . . ,” she said. “Please take care.”

  He briefly covered the hand on the rifle stock with his own gloved one. Being in the open air had restored him, and he felt as though he could run for hours. Illusion, but it should carry him where he wanted to go. “Who’s the best we’ve got on th’south side?”