Shadow Queen

by Unknown

  The Iltheans waited in companies a hundred strong, ignoring the causeway for the moment. Instead they brought out their machines of war: the cartwheeled onagers, their spoons resting empty against their stops; the nimble-footed catapult called the scorpion for its stinging tail; and the bulkier ballistae, complete with crossbow bolts the size of a man. My heart cramped to see the weaponry being screwed together while other men carted forward armful after armful of ammunition.

  As Sidonius approached, he fired commands like volleys into those flanking him on the right, and directed questions at three weary men to his left, their faces bleary with lack of sleep.

  ‘Fetch Matilde,’ he commanded at one point.

  Someone pointed me out, and moments later his steps crunched behind me. I didn’t turn, just kept staring at the Turholm’s walls.

  ‘Lady,’ he murmured, folding his arms behind his back and joining my vigil with an air of satisfaction. ‘It’ll be ours in a week, if that.’

  ‘You’re very confident,’ I replied, measuring the ramp and trying to guess how many days would pass before it was completed. The Turasi would not be so complacent as to let construction continue unhindered. The last spans to the top of the wall would be hard-won now.

  Some force kept me guarding the secret of the bolthole through which we’d escaped the Turholm, the revelation of which would see Ilthea boil inside the walls and overtake the Turholm with ease. I was determined not to aid the serpents so completely – and they didn’t even need it.

  ‘Ilthea didn’t become an empire on the strength of idle boasts, lady,’ Sidonius said. His easy certainty reminded me of his reputation, the emperor’s favoured general who had never failed to conquer.

  ‘Is that why you serve them?’ I asked, my voice icy.

  His eyes were as cold and bright as the curtain of northern lights in a winter sky. ‘No. I do it because they took me in when my people cast me out. They are a better race, a people who understand loyalty and duty. The Turasi …’

  ‘Yes?’ I demanded. ‘What of them?’

  He shrugged. ‘The Turasi are no more than barbarians making sport in the straw they share with their swine. You will see,’ he said, fervour lighting his features. ‘When you are crowned, you will travel to Ilthea and see what a city is. You will see what civilisation means.’

  ‘It’s a wonder Ilthea takes an interest at all if we are so vile,’ I said.

  His answering look bordered on contempt. ‘The vilest of creatures can nest above a gold mine. Or iron ore mines, as the case may be.’

  I let the rebuke pass unremarked. If we’d used our resources better, perhaps it would never have come to this.

  It was midday when Sidonius ordered the attack to begin with a nod which trumpeters turned into bugling cries, triggering the Iltheans to thump their spears into the ground and set up a rattling of shields.

  From the Turholm, silence answered the challenge.

  The onagers fired first. With a smack of wood against their stops, boulders hurtled through the blue sky. The machines kicked out when they fired, the force of their own blow almost too much for the wooden frame. Most of the stones fell short, but two shattered down over the wall, sending back screams and the shriek of tortured masonry from inside the city. The ballistae sent enormous arrows arcing after the stones, and these flew truer, all but one breaching the walls.

  The Turholm would not long withstand these men, even without their earthen ramp.

  ‘Now, lady,’ Sidonius turned to me after yet another stone inflicted its damage inside the walls. ‘Where does the city draw its water?’

  I wanted to prevaricate or delay or even deny outright any knowledge. The best I managed was vagueness. ‘There’s a well in the city, and a natural spring in the heart of the palace. And the river, of course.’

  ‘Drawn by hand?’ he demanded, the condescension in his tone stiffening my spine.

  ‘No,’ I snapped. ‘It’s siphoned off upstream, and run through pipes to a reservoir inside the walls. The rain water collects there as well. If you’re thinking to drive them to their knees through thirst –’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m thinking,’ he interrupted. ‘I suggest you hold back on claiming I won’t succeed because, all things considered, you’ll look foolish when I do.’

  I ached to shove my balled fist into his face. Instead I turned back to the city as the machines fired again: buckshot this time from the onagers, and stinging bolts from the scorpions.

  ‘Cutting off the water is a siege tactic. This,’ I said, indicating the army, the machines, the earthen ramp, ‘Isn’t a siege.’

  ‘I’m not interested in a protracted affair. You tell me all the drightens were present when you left, but that may well have changed by now. Even if it hasn’t, they’ll have summoned reinforcements, not to mention those demons of the northern plains. If Dieter’s not bluffing and they are riding to his aid, then I face the uncomfortable circumstance of being stuck between the walls and the oncoming hordes.’

  I wanted to claim my mother’s kin wouldn’t support Dieter over me, but a mutter from Grandmother warned me not to dare it.

  Again the machines fired, their missiles this time trailing yellow flame. At least one took root inside the walls and soon tongues of fire licked skyward as cries echoed faint and thin.

  His enemy distracted, Sidonius signalled an officer to sound the next attack. Within minutes the Iltheans marched forward in step, helmets and interlocked shields providing little access for Turasi missiles. A rain of Ilthean arrows sang through the sky to provide extra cover.

  Ravens above, would they be inside today?

  ‘There’s also the matter of Dieter’s creature,’ Sidonius continued.

  It took an effort to drag my attention from the Turholm. ‘What of it?’

  ‘What’s to stop him concocting an army of the creatures? Given time, he could swell his ranks until he outnumbers me.’

  An army of Clays? I shook my head, though my heart raced. ‘They need blood,’ I reasoned. ‘He’d deplete his strength at the expense of creating them.’

  Sidonius glanced at me sidelong. ‘From what Achim tells me, they need only a drop. If it were me, I’d judge the price worth the return.’

  Only a drop. I shuddered. How many drops did a glass vial hold? Even if Clay was dead, Dieter could send golem after golem hunting me, each of them given life by my blood, each of them tied to me.

  ‘I must attend to the battle, lady. You might prefer to retire to your tent,’ he added, his tone less an invitation than an order. ‘This won’t be decided today.’

  With that he stalked off, summoning a team of men and giving them orders to find and stop the water supply pipes even as he left.

  I watched him go with my heart in my throat. Perhaps it wouldn’t be decided today – but it would be soon.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I PASSED THE LONG afternoon in my tent with Roshi and Sepp for company. Sepp had barely opened his mouth to speak since arriving in the Ilthean camp, as if he feared drawing attention to himself. It was Roshi who solved the mystery of his behaviour.

  ‘They recognised him as Helena’s son, when he and the men of House Vestenn first encountered the army,’ She explained in a murmur.

  I cursed myself for not realising sooner what the Ilthean army would mean to Sepp’s fate. As Helena’s son, the Ilthean would count him as one of her husband’s household. Sepp’s lack of Ilthean heritage would not concern the white serpents – they considered everyone and everything the rightful property of their empire.

  In allying with the emperor’s favoured general, I had as good as handed Sepp over into true slavery.

  In contrast to Sepp’s silence, Roshi chafed at our enforced isolation and the lack of news. Every noise drifting back to us, from the slam of the ballistae against their stops to the distant whine of arrows, brought from her fresh speculation as to what might be occurring on the field of battle. She demanded news from our Ilthean guards, but t
heir task was to ensure I did not slip away unnoticed or otherwise create strife, and they told us nothing.

  The day waned and passed into night with little change. To my surprise, the battle did not cease with the failing light. Cries still came from afar – perhaps, under cover of darkness, the Iltheans were at work on their ramp again. We had long since worn ourselves to silence, speaking only when anxiety or restlessness burst through our restraint. Now we huddled, swathed in blankets to fight the settling chill, and waited as best we could.

  Some hours after true dark fell, a boy slipped into the tent, his gaze seeking me. ‘The general calls for you,’ He said.

  I squinted up at him, seized by a cold spike of dread. ‘What for?’

  ‘You’re needed,’ he answered, truculent. ‘With some urgency, lady.’

  ‘All right, I’m coming.’

  I looked at Roshi and Sepp, who both nodded and stepped up to accompany me – regardless of anything the boy might say.

  We stepped out into the moon-frosted night together and the boy led us across the field, its surface rutted and potholed by Ilthean cleated sandals. He walked without misstep, and Roshi glided behind him as if she had the eyes of an owl.

  Lantern and torchlight dotted the top of the Turholm’s nearest wall, shedding dim shadows over the swarm of bodies on the earthen ramp.

  Sidonius waited before the ramp’s base, out of arrowshot.

  ‘I don’t know what he thinks I can do,’ I muttered.

  Achim was by the general’s side, his gaze cast downwards. A slight hunch of his shoulders betrayed his tension. Now I understood how the earthen ramp had been constructed so quickly. The soldiers fought only to distract the Turasi and protect the Amaeri shadow-worker while he used his power to build the ramp, or at least they had. By the melee on the causeway something had changed. Something Achim couldn’t – or wouldn’t – counter.

  ‘The Turasi will hardly listen to anything I have to say,’ I forestalled Sidonius.

  ‘It’s not your oratorical powers which interest me,’ he replied, pointing at the ramp.

  Squinting through the darkness, the figures on the ramp I had at first taken for soldiers were in fact dark-skinned, and I didn’t need light to know they were hairless and marked as Dieter had marked Clay, as he had marked me. Golem. Dieter could lose any number of them without significant harm, but every Ilthean who fell sapped Sidonius’s strength.

  ‘Get rid of them,’ Sidonius ordered me.

  I opened my mouth to protest, but his look forestalled any protest.

  ‘My men saw what you did to the other. Buried him to his knees in solid earth, they tell me.’

  My stomach squeezed tight around a flutter of anxiety. ‘Your men have sharp eyes. Sharp enough to know precisely how little impact that had on the creature.’

  Sidonius grabbed me by the arm and pulled me close, sending a jolt of pain up my spine. ‘I don’t care how you do it, just kill them,’ he hissed, releasing me.

  Roshi’s hand on my shoulder steadied me as I stumbled back. I dared a glance at Achim.

  ‘He’ll not help you,’ said Sidonius. ‘He won’t lift a hand to stop them.’

  ‘Dieter is their mechaiah,’ Said Achim without lifting his head. ‘For any other to extinguish the anima he gave them is sacrilege.’

  ‘If you won’t help, don’t disturb the silence,’ snapped Sidonius. ‘I’ll not have you handing her excuses to refuse me – she’s not in the position. As for you, lady, if I lose one more man to those creatures, I’ll take payment out of your own hide when all this is settled.’

  ‘Keep a civil tongue in your head when you address me, General,’ I retorted, the words putting starch in my spine. ‘Making threats you can’t follow through is a fool’s practice.’

  I didn’t delay, however, immediately edging nearer the ramp. But the night was too dark; even closing the distance didn’t improve the view. I drew Achim to my side. He came reluctantly, pulling against my grip. If it weren’t for Roshi directly behind him, he would have stopped altogether.

  ‘The general spoke true,’ he said, when we halted. ‘I’ll not kill those creatures. Think carefully on what you undertake, my lady – destroying a golem brings a burden with it. You will owe their mechaiah the anima you have stolen from him.’

  ‘I owe my husband more than a little stolen anima,’ I muttered, the foreign word strange in my mouth.

  I wondered what hold Achim had over Sidonius that he could refuse the general’s demands. Perhaps, when the time came, the Amaeri shadow-worker would come in useful in my struggle against both brothers. I tucked the thought away; there was no time now.

  ‘Stop your moralising,’ I went on. ‘You were happy enough to build a bridge which would lead to the deaths of Turasi men and women, and you’d lift your hand against them quickly enough if those golem hunted you.’

  ‘They do not.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Which means you can help me figure out how to do … whatever I did last time.’

  He turned surprised eyes on me. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be asking if I did.’

  A terrible cry drew my attention to the ramp. One of the golems gripped an Ilthean by the throat, crushing his flesh. The crack of his neck breaking caused the soles of my feet to tremble.

  ‘Now, Achim,’ I said.

  He closed his eyes and held his breath, but he acceded. ‘Empty your mind. You must be calm. You’re not calm.’

  ‘You’re not hurrying,’ I said.

  ‘You need to find the quiet within, where you can listen to the voice of the mechaiah.’

  I choked on a rising rush of panic. There hadn’t been any quiet within when I fought Clay, and there wasn’t any now.

  Roshi touched my forearm, her fingers warm, her eyes so compelling I couldn’t look away.

  ‘Think of the earth beneath them,’ she said. ‘What does it feel like?’

  As I stared into her eyes, the earth sent a tingle up my spine. Suddenly it was as if I could sense every single grain in that thrice-cursed ramp, rubbing each against the other, and the vortices and sippets of air threading through them.

  ‘Earth can ebb and flow like a wave on the shore,’ murmured Roshi. ‘It can reach for the sky, or open wide its maw and swallow us whole.’

  ‘Call the men off,’ I whispered, frightened to lift my voice lest I break the tender thread connecting me to the earth.

  ‘The men, General. Call them back!’ Achim cried across the night.

  A fluting summons disturbed the night, causing the Iltheans to break free and back down the ramp, desperately trying to fend off the golems who dared follow.

  The last soldier jumped off the ramp. This was my chance, while the Iltheans were safe but the golems still stood upon the ramp. Closing my eyes, I clutched at the thread connecting me to the earth, sending my will plummeting down it.

  The ground rumbled, a great roar building like a leviathan surfacing, then it split open, releasing its pent thunder with a blasting breath of sulphur and rot. Excess earth flowed away from the lip of the maw but, caught in the centre of the eruption, the golems and ramp tumbled into its depth, swallowed without trace.

  Still I didn’t release my hold, though it was like clutching a filament of silk under water. The pressure of the displaced earth pushed at me until my ribs creaked with every breath. The connection transmitted tiny sounds back to me, the sensation like a plucked lute string, telling me the golems had fallen to the bedrock.

  I turned my face skyward and let go, and the earth rushed back in like a tidal wave, crashing and foaming, closing over the gaping hole as if it had never been.

  The connection broke with a snap, and I sagged where I stood, shivering with sudden cold. Solidity eluded me, as if the hole had opened inside me, a spinning, gaping, directionless whorl.

  Roshi caught me and held my weight, and we turned as one at the sound of Sidonius laughing.

  ‘Brilliant,’ he called, grinning broad
as a split melon. ‘Now why couldn’t you do that?’ he said to Achim, clapping him on the shoulder.

  The Amaeri cast me a shadowed look, and his eyes slid away.

  Somewhere deep inside the hole I’d opened inside me, I could feel fingers scraping, scraping, digging for air.

  ‘Roshi,’ I cried, my voice cracking as I swung my head around, seeking her.

  ‘Ignore it, Tilde,’ she said gently, her hands firm and warm on my shoulders. ‘It’s the effect of the power, that’s all. It will pass.’

  ‘Lady, I need you to –’ Started sidonius, drawing my attention back to him.

  Roshi pushed forward before he could make any further demands. ‘That little stunt you had her pull wasn’t exactly easy – you do realise that, don’t you?’

  ‘You coached her in it as surely as I asked her to do it,’ he countered. ‘Which reminds me – I should hope you’re not hiding any talent of your own.’

  The uncertain light of nearby torches took on a menacing hue and I blinked prisms of light from my eyes. My legs shook and my ribs were on fire.

  ‘You have until dawn,’ Sidonius relented, his gaze sweeping from me to Roshi to Achim. ‘Eat, sleep if you can. But be ready before first light.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  DAWN BROUGHT LITTLE by way of relief.

  The sense of a chasm yawning open inside me hadn’t vanished with sleep. I eyed the ground warily as I sat up, convinced any step would be the booby-trapped one – and down I would go, tumbling end over end until the earth closed off the sky and there was nothing left but to scrape and dig, dig and scrape, my fingers working blind as maggots.

  Roshi put a bowl of stew into my hands. ‘Eat,’ She said. ‘It’ll help.’

  The scent of lamb and coriander cleared my head a little, and thank the ravens it did because I’d barely managed three mouthfuls before a soldier poked his head in. Fixing the space behind my left shoulder with a stare, he announced, ‘The general wants you.’