Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  The “something stronger” was bedeeth tea, an infusion of a desert root with stimulant properties, with a jolt of what he supposed was brandy before it ate its way through the cask. He wondered how Floria White Hand’s magical asset would have reacted to it. Tam docilely sipped hot water and honey. Fejelis crouched at Orlanjis’s side, steadying his cup and ignoring the tackiness on his hands and the tears trickling down his brother’s face. They fell silent, listening to the growing clatter of the approaching train, riding its tracks under control of a Darkborn driver, in the faith that the combined efforts of Darkborn and Lightborn kept the tracks clear. The noise was joined by a fine vibration Fejelis felt through the soles of his feet. Then the vibration coarsened to a shake, and to the accompaniment of chattering crockery in the kitchen, the train passed beneath them and receded into the night. Only the reek of engine smoke remained.

  He was not the only one who let out the breath he had been holding.

  “Eight carriages,” Jade said, “maybe nine.” He looked at Sorrel, who nodded. “The Crosstracks said nine.”

  “Engine’ll need some maintenance after.”

  Jovance opened and closed her left fist, staring at the wall in the direction of the departed train. “I don’t sense anything ahead of them,” she said, sounding strained. Then she dropped her face onto her knees with a poorly muffled obscenity. “That’s a trainload of pain and grief,” she said, face hidden. Jade eased himself down on the pallet and put his arm around her shoulders.

  Sorrel got up hastily. “I need to check if the other huts are all right.”

  “Mother’s milk,” said Jade, grimly. “If any of the others—No, save your strength,” he said to Jovance. “We’ll wait for the telegraph. There’s nothing much we could do anyway.”

  They waited in silence, listening to the tap and clatter of the telegraph. Sorrel returned, mug in hand; by that and by the ease of her movements, Fejelis could tell that the news was good. “Several skirmishes just outside Stranhorne Crosstracks. No one seriously hurt.”

  “Nat and Les?”

  “Checked in fine.”

  Jade said to Tam, “Les—Celeste—was the first Lightborn ever taken on by the Darkborn railways, forty years ago. She didn’t tell them she was a woman and six months pregnant at the time. She’s worked most of the track from Stranhorne to the Southern Ocean, and what she hasn’t, Nat—that’s her eldest son—has. They’ve got family at every branch office who’ve been after her to give up the huts and move into town—and been agitating even more since she broke her hip a few weeks back. She says she plans to end her days as grease on the track.”

  A gruesome image, Fejelis thought, who had recently seen far too many residues of quenched Lightborn, but at least Orlanjis was no longer staring or crying. He seemed distracted by the character sketch, and hopefully missed the allusion.

  Tam stirred. “Do you know whether the train had to fight off Shadowborn?”

  “I can’t say, Magister Tam,” Sorrel said, diffidently. “The train has not stopped, so we haven’t had any reports from it, but it is within five minutes of schedule . . . which means it hasn’t had to slow down.”

  “And none of the other huts came under as strenuous an attack.”

  By Midha’s expression, he, like Fejelis and Jovance, knew where Tam was going, and did not like it.

  The question had to be asked. “. . . Is it us—me?” Fejelis said, correcting himself.

  “Or me,” Tam said. “Or me and Jo. It can’t be Jo alone,” he said to Jovance. “They attacked before you started using power.” He hesitated. “Jo—”

  Her head snapped around. “Don’t be stupid.” Tam put a hand to his head, his freckles even more prominent. He had, Fejelis realized, just attempted to speak silently to her. She glared at Tam, then Fejelis. “Your brightness, he’d like me to take you out of here. I could, but I won’t abandon my brother and my friends.”

  He did not like the idea, did not like it in the least, but he owed it consideration. You’ll never have the luxury of doing something simply to impress a girl, he remembered his father saying, dryly. If he were the danger, if their attackers were still working according to some plan that sought the decapitation of both governments, and they knew he had fetched up here, then they would all be safer with him gone. But where to?

  Tam, watching him, sighed. “Forget I asked,” he said. “Curse it, Fejelis, I’m—”

  “We’re all still alive,” Fejelis said, firmly.

  Jovance put her hands down on the pallet on either side of her and stretched out her legs. “At least we’ve ammunition and a defensible position here. I just have to hope that my chucking magic around hasn’t attracted attention.” Her eyes flicked sideways, and met Fejelis’s briefly. She was not talking only about the Shadowborn.

  Midha said, “We’ll just have to deal with what happens when it happens. Jo, can you keep a sense of what’s moving outside, say for half a mile around, until we get organized?” She nodded. “Then let’s all have something to eat and work out watch schedules. Master Orlanjis”—Fejelis was relieved at how quickly Orlanjis lifted his head—“you’re first up for a shower and change of clothes. Don’t stint on the hot water; we’ve plenty. I’d like two of us outside, except when there’s a train passing, and one on the telegraph, but the others have to get some rest—”

  “Should we go down and check the line?” said Jade.

  “We’ll not be able to cover enough line to justify the risk. We can barely see two hundred yards with the fog.”

  “Is clearing the fog a higher priority than sensing for Shadowborn?” Jovance said. Tam opened his mouth; closed it. Mages seldom tried weather manipulation solo, even on a very limited scale. Even Tam, with his aptitude for handling inert matter, found it exhausting.

  Watching Midha’s expression, Fejelis thought that although Jovance’s magic was no secret among them, her companions had never seen it so decisively demonstrated. Perhaps they did not understand her limits. “. . . Since it’s dark,” Fejelis tendered, “and our vision and ability to move would be restricted anyway, I feel it would be a waste of strength.”

  She gave him a grateful glance. “So we hold out here for the night. There aren’t many Shadowborn come out by day, usually, even though the Curse doesn’t seem to affect them—or so the Darkborn say.”

  “There is one other possibility to consider,” Tam said, slowly. He looked down at his hands. “You, or even I, contact the high masters—”

  “No,” said Jovance, and then looked sideways at Fejelis, conflict in her face.

  This wasn’t the time to think his argument through before he spoke, he sensed, though he would have appreciated the chance to consider. His impulse, which, as ever, he distrusted, was to refuse. “If another attack comes, we should surely have some sense that our situation is becoming desperate. Then we could call for help.”

  “And if the high masters cannot make up their minds as quickly as you can?”

  “Don’t . . . refuse just to protect me,” Tam said.

  Fejelis cleared his throat. “. . . And who were those three crossbow bolts aimed at? Besides . . . my mother’s family has an ugly history with the Darkborn. I would like a chance to rehabilitate it. The Borders seem to have become a front for this war, and though we Lightborn are not many, we have three assets that the Darkborn do not: the ability to see, to move by day, and strong magic.”

  “Two mages, one of whom is gravely overspent,” Jovance pointed out. “And we’re just here to do a job.”

  “. . . I know this is not fair. I know it. Yet all four of you were prepared to stand guard in the night, at risk of your lives.”

  “That’s our job: safety on the railroads. Not the whole Mother-blessed Borders.”

  “Jo,” Tam said, “stop arguing for the sake of argument.”

  She rounded on him. “Someone has to. Oh yes, you read me right: I’ve never had any sense of self-preservation. But what about them?” Her snapping hand indica
ted her friends. “He’s his brightness Prince Fejelis Grey Rapids. Are any of you going to argue with him?”

  “I’d like to think I would,” Midha said, though he did not look at Fejelis as he said it. “If it were to keep us all safe. But we’ve got too many friends on the other side of sunset—” Now he looked at Fejelis. “The routine can get cursed dull at times, so we write a lot of letters, and the owners don’t mind if we use the wires when there’s no official traffic. We’ve come to know and like a number of Darkborn rather well, in Stranhorne Crosstracks and along the lines. We’re in.”

  Floria

  Beatrice spun out the exercise of putting her children to sleep, but returned before the hour was over. Floria laid before her the other information she had: that Tam had successfully escaped the Temple’s binding, that the Temple might therefore be interested in the lineage they had before this disdained. As the bells changed their rhythm from warning of darkness to warning of light, she left the woman sitting on the couch, staring into space. She had done what she could. In the foyer, she unpacked and strung lights around her waist and across her back, leaving both hands free. Below ground level in the palace was an unlit room that vigilants used for practice in moving and fighting, with only the lights they carried. Nothing and no one should hold the power of terror over a vigilant.

  Or so her father had said, the first time he pushed her through the door into the darkness.

  At first, she saw nothing but the near walls, the dim forms in the garden at the edge of the spray, and beyond that, nothingness. She closed her eyes and listened for any movement out there, besides the wind that came up around dusk. She and Balthasar had used to play listening games, ear to ear on either side of the paper wall. She could not match his hearing, but listening with him, she had learned how to use her own better. Hearing no threat, she opened her eyes and moved away from the door. Now, across the river, she could see a faint linear glow that marked the route to the council chambers. There appeared to be no other lights in the dark streets: good. She moved quietly to the gate and leaned against it. She could afford to wait a while, to ensure that no one would use the curfew to come for Beatrice.

  She waited until she saw that the lit route traced out by the princess’s party had begun to shorten; their brightnesses must be on their way back. Once they had reached the palace, once the lit way had been dismantled, the night would be returned to the Darkborn. If the mages remained adamant about that, they had the means to enforce it. She did not intend to outstay her welcome. She retraced the route as quickly as she could and more easily, since it was now downhill. The moon was just coming into view over the slopes to the east, giving an eerie glitter to the water on the river. A false promise, since should her lights fail now, the moon would merely illuminate her death. The thought raised a cold sweat, chilling the shadowed skin of her scalp, and despite her training, fear forced her on until she was almost running.

  She had almost reached the palace, almost reached the wide street—now dark—that had been used as their brightnesses’ corridor, when she heard scuffling, and then an angry, familiar voice. “. . . What you are doing is criminal.”

  The reflections on the walls lurched as she halted. It could not be—no Darkborn could be alive, not with this much ambient light.

  She drew her revolver. If it were not Balthasar, then there was only one other person it could be.

  She heard the voice gasp in pain. She remembered that gasp: she had heard it from the other side of the wall as two men manhandled Balthasar on a search through his house. He spoke again. “The curfew was laid for one purpose and one only: to permit your princess to travel to a meeting with the archduke—”

  She stepped around the corner. Three men and a woman—southerners, by their dress—encircled a fifth person. Seven servants, personal light bearers, ringed them. She recognized two of the four as members of Sharel’s retinue. One of them held an ax at half ready. Another, a pry bar. The third was restraining him. She had an impression of a lean frame; dark hair; pale skin; mottled, stiff clothing; a back arched in an attempt to ease his pinned arms. The southerners were too close for her to take a clear shot without the risk of one of them fouling it, and if they held what she thought they held, they were dead or enslaved already. They just did not know it.

  “—not,” he finished, “to terrorize Darkborn with gratuitous breakings.”

  He sounded so like Balthasar in his quiet fury at the greed, stupidity, and indifference that crippled factory workers or kept the old underground streets a disease-breeding sewer. How dare the Shadowborn mock her by so perfect an impersonation?

  “What are you, cripple?” the woman mocked. “Some kind of Darkborn-lover? Some kind of darkness freak?”

  Cripple? Floria remained still. Should she call out, hoping they would give her a clear line as they turned?

  The man who held the pry bar lowered it, saying uneasily, “Marle, there’s something off here. Where are his lights?”

  “I don’t need lights,” the creature who was not Balthasar said. “It’s complicated to explain, but I must speak to your princess or to your archmage as soon as possible.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the man holding him. His movement took Floria by surprise—took them all by surprise. He pulled his captive backward, pivoting. Floria glimpsed a white profile, whiter than any Lightborn she knew. She tracked with the revolver, her wonder intensifying. Why was the mage letting himself be manhandled? She heard the woman say, “But we can’t—”

  “Got to,” the man said with a grunt. “Don’t want him telling anyone.” He heaved; Floria glimpsed a shape hurtling into the shadows. She heard a body land and another of those sounds of pain terribly familiar from the far side of the wall.

  The revolver cracked before she knew she meant to fire. One of the hanging lights shattered, raining glowing fragments down on the head of the servant who carried the stand.

  One of the southerners went for the rifle slung over his shoulder. She shot him in the leg. He fell, shrieking. Then she shot out another of the lights. She didn’t have nearly enough bullets to threaten them all, but the psychological effect should be enough. She said, making sure her voice carried, “Leave one set of lights and go.”

  “Mistress White Hand—”

  “Go!”

  The woman was crouched by the wounded man, trying to get him to release the hands gripping his thigh. “He needs a mage,” she said, urgently.

  The man glared out of the circle of lights, his longing to fight palpable even across the distance. But the most belligerent of his companions was wounded, the woman had abandoned all fight, and the other man was standing paralyzed. He seized one of the stands of lights from a servant and threw it down, and then gestured the other man to help the woman. Floria watched them go, unmoving, guard up, revolver trained. Yes, he turned once, his eyes promising vengeance. She had made an enemy there.

  And she’d have him up before the judiciar for this night’s work. Even if the judiciary were indifferent to the Darkborn, they’d care that he had intended murder by darkness—never mind that what he intended to murder well deserved it.

  On light, deadly feet, she ran forward, revolver raised.

  He was still sitting on the ground with the fallen lights beside him. He was holding his left wrist, which must have taken the impact of his fall, in his bandaged right hand. She realized immediately why the southerner had called him “cripple.” She had seldom seen a blind person, and never one whose eyes were not visibly marred by the process that had destroyed his sight. Yet his dark eyes were flawless, with a brown, healthy iris and glossy cornea, except that his pupils were constricted and his wandering gaze did not fix on her.

  As quietly as she approached, he was still aware of her. “Floria? Was that you speaking?”

  She sighted the revolver on the center of his forehead.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Of all people, not you.”

  Her lights spilled over his face, light
ing the pallor of an invalid who seldom saw the sun. A narrow, intense face, a scholar’s—or a fanatic’s. Blinded Lightborn, knowing themselves destined to look on darkness for the rest of their days, frequently committed suicide or lost their minds. On one side of his face she could see the red, shiny marks of newly healed wounds—like knife marks—from his ear to his jaw. His clothing was too thick, too opaque, to be wearable, particularly in this light, and with that uneven, natural dye reminiscent of the little box that Balthasar had given her—and that the Shadowborn had used to craft the talisman that had killed her prince. On his index fingers were matching silver rings. She had seen a pair of rings identical to those when Balthasar had slipped them into the passe-muraille to show her. Sitting against the paper wall, he had talked until he was hoarse about his wedding and the marvel that was his wife.

  He said, almost in a whisper, “I wrote you a letter when I was thirteen. It was the first love letter I ever wrote. I imagined a meeting between us. This isn’t . . . what I imagined.”

  She still had the letter, read once and unopened all those years since. She had been eighteen, Prince Benedict had just been deposed, and childish imaginings had seemed very distant. “No,” she said. “Because you are not Balthasar.”

  He took a shallow breath. “I told you what Tercelle Amberley said: that her lover had come to her through the day. I now know who the man—men—were who used her so, how they moved through the day and what they wanted from the Amberleys. I know why the children were born sighted.”

  “A Darkborn can no more live in light than a Lightborn can live in darkness.”

  “I am living proof to the contrary. Which is why I must speak to your princess and the mages of the Temple.”

  “I can’t allow that.”

  “Floria,” he said, so familiar. “It is your voice. Were you with the party that spoke to the archduke?”

  “No, I had a separate errand.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “I know,” she said, “that their brightnesses do not believe in such things as Shadowborn. I know that I do.”