Shadowshaper Legacy

by Daniel José Older

  Freedom.

  The air was freedom. Unstoppable, irretractable, utterly chaotic, and endlessly spacious freedom. Freedom taken, not granted, uninhibited.

  This was Mort’s strange gift. The Hierophant powers flowed through each new inheritor in some ever-evolving type of lineage that was barely fathomable; the emptiness within Mort — which had allowed him to take in and remodulate other powers as his own — adapted into something else entirely with Tee and Izzy: air.

  Air and the power to become it, to join it.

  Air and all that entailed.

  And all around: Brooklyn’s rooftop kingdoms shimmered and rose and fell and dipped, turned, dove; here a glass tower, there a project, brownstones, firehouses, a school yard, hospital, more row houses, the whole world, all the way to the bay.

  A simple spin revealed it all, but there was somewhere they had to be.

  An urgent turning point approached. The whole web trembled with it, each line and filament crackled and sizzled the song of all that came.

  But it was a broken song, unfinished. No one really knew what would happen next.

  The city reeled beneath them, swept along like an ancient highway beneath soaring wings. The city, then the sliver of water that divided one from another, and then down and down and down as the buildings swam up larger and larger and each turning car and cyclist, each sign and pavement and post and layer of concrete and window and light.

  There.

  The web knew where, the spirits did too. They’d all gathered outside the tall walls of a dusty lot covered in crumpled old cars.

  A clamp must’ve been instated; no spirits in, no spirits out.

  But that was for simple ghosts.

  Yes, there was a clamp in place, they felt it burn and bristle against them as they breached; it was no match for simple air. And then they were within, and down, down, down amidst the wreckages and stains, the slow-growing rust and rising filth and bright sun glinting off shattered windshields and rearviews.

  Swoop.

  There behind a tower of cars, the shadowshapers cowered for cover: Nydia, Robbie, Caleb. Across from them, the tall, well-dressed figure of Uncle Neville peered around the corner, gun in one hand, signaling his taxi gangster friends to hold back with the other.

  Swoop.

  Between towers, through the glassless window of a corrugated hatchback, the stale air within, out the other side, and there: streaming in from a far entrance through a rusted-out forest of school bus carcasses — the Bloodhaüs, crouched low for stealth. Their mostly shaved heads, their heavy weapons. Iconography that begged for another time to come hurtling back into view and make them feel powerful again. The same men from that faraway night in upstate New York, a whole lifetime ago, but really just a few months.

  A culmination in the works, for there in the center of it all — swoosh — there in the dust field surrounded by trash, rust, decay, the King of Iron stood sparkling in the midday sunlight to all those who could see him.

  One ghost had been granted entrance then. The shadowshapers left without their favorite attack, the Iron House unimpeded.

  Still — something else was in the works … the King of Iron’s caw seared the air, echoed over the heinous jingle of his phantom form. The King was displeased. Probably had been since being thrashed the night before.

  Swoop.

  Undetected, they inhabited the dusty air among the House of Iron’s encampment.

  There: Fortress, their hulking form standing perfectly still, not even the rise and fall of breath, their humongous body decaying and regenerating endlessly within those thick folds of gear. And beside them, the River, a seven-foot tower of molding filth and hair and dinge and swamp.

  The two corporeal Hierophants stood perfectly still, silent as stone, as the King of Iron raged.

  And what did you fools think would happen? What was the endgame? What was the plan? You fatuous, nonsensical demons don’t think, don’t care, don’t build!

  Discomfort and shiftiness from the men and women of Iron House, who weren’t used to dealing with Hierophants, let alone seeing them berated. And who witnessed and barely escaped the disaster at the warehouse.

  You do nothing! For ages and ages, you do nothing at all! Adherent to a code you yourselves don’t understand or respect. And then one day, when it’s convenient or when some other fool Hiero inspires your petty wrath, you just show up and rage and destroy, flood and wreck, and bring your rust and decay and corruption and then lo! Years, decades of work — disintegrated and drowned.

  There: Anthony, looking stoic and unmoved, impossible to read, as he should be. Good.

  And there: the Sorcerer of Iron, Officer Grintly, beside his king, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, making eye contact with someone across the crowd from him.

  There: the young one, Dake, sent by Lucera to spy, but whose own house even now crawled ever closer.

  Answer me, fiends! Explain your actions! How can you call yourselves allies to the House of Iron when all you do is bring decay and more decay?

  “We don’t.” The River’s mucousy, gargled baritone.

  Eh?

  And there it was, and in it came; the change the whole trembling web had awaited, finally afoot. The world seemed to hold its breath, watching.

  “We don’t call ourselves allies to the House of Iron. Our only regret is not finishing what we started.”

  Oh? That’s not the song you were singing just two days hence, eh?

  “Something changed,” the River droned.

  What, then? What changed? I demand answers.

  “This,” the River said. And then the man beside the King, Grintly, drew something from his jacket, a blade of some kind — it glinted in the sun as he pulled it back and then jammed it straight into the midst of Old Crane’s sparkling form.

  The King’s shrieks hurled outward, tore the sky, shredded through steel and dust in terrible jagged earthquakes.

  Betrayed! he howled, rounding on his assassin, his own sorcerer, even as Dake made his way through the crowd of Iron Housers, drew another blade of the same caliber as Grintly’s, lunged forward, plunging it through Old Crane’s shimmering back. A horrific crowing and the endless dissonance of metal clattering against metal. Crane whirled again, swinging his long scepter in a feeble arc. Dake dodged easily, stepped back, ready to strike again.

  Fentrath steel, Crane warbled through rattling gasps. Only a Hierophant would have access to those blades. He reared up to his full height, pointing his staff directly at the River and Fortress. Neither moved, neither spoke. Grintly approached from behind, but Crane spun, knocking the blade into the dirt. And then Dake was on him, bringing the steel down directly on the old king’s head, once, twice, and a third time as the ghost clattered to the ground with gurgling howls.

  For a few moments, no one moved, no one spoke. Then Dake glanced at Grintly as the murmurs of shock and dissent began to rise, and Grintly stepped forward. “For the Iron House to grow, to survive, we must begin anew. A new age has dawned while we slept and clung to the ancient ways. A new enemy has risen, the House of Shadow and Light. They hoard the Deck of Worlds and seek only our destruction, not mutual growth like the Sorrows once did. To meet this new threat, we must forge new alliances, be born anew.”

  “You murdered the King!” someone yelled. The crowd began to close around them. “Traitor!”

  “Calm, Iron House!” Grintly protested. “To advance we must shed our old skin. I did what I did in the name of survival! To survive we must adapt. We must grow. Today —”

  “Traitor!”

  “Break him!”

  “Today!” Dake’s voice, carrying over the din of the crowd. “Today we witness the birth of a new house: the House of Blood and Iron. We rise from the tattered remains of our two broken houses, of betrayal and the onslaught of shadows. Those who we have spoken to, those who will join us, step forward, brothers and sisters. Join us!”

  Scattered fights broke out amongst th
e Iron Housers as some made moves to join Dake and Grintly. And then shouts came from the end of the lot. The Bloodhaüs stepped out of the shadows into the fray. Armed and fierce, they streamed forth and a strange silence fell over the dusty lot.

  “Who will oppose us?” Dake crowed. “Who dares?”

  A man stepped forward from the Iron House crowd, opened his mouth, and then Dake slashed the blade once across his chest and the man fell, bled out into the dust, twitched and then died, the ghost-killing Fentrath steel brokering no chance for his soul to emerge.

  “Who else? Who else?” Drunk on his own power, on the success of his plan, Dake stalked back and forth before the cowering crowd. The Bloodhaüs soldiers silent and smug behind him. “If you will join us, step forward and our Sorcerer of Blood will initiate you into this new army, as the two houses fall around us and a new one arises. You will join the forces of triumph, and we will banish the shadows. Step forward, step forward, my brothers and sisters, and we will rise.”

  And one by one, they did.

  Up, up, up, past the towers of crumpled cars and into the sky. The change had come, and it rippled along the taut cords of power, through each Hierophant, all the way back to the source. The world had tipped sideways once more, and the change touched everyone. It had been on the way, and the Deck had felt its inevitability and responded in kind, girding, strengthening, maneuvering. And now a whole new order would take shape, but how or what remained to be seen.

  One thing was clear, though: This carnage-hungry new house had the upper hand and was ready to defend it ruthlessly. The House of Shadow and Light may have held on to the Dominant spot amongst houses, but that was probably only momentary, and possession of the Deck seemed about the only thing keeping it there.

  Up, up, up, trembling and nearly undone by the sudden shifts amidst that vast web of power. Up and up, but they couldn’t simply disappear and disperse now that all seemed lost. They couldn’t abandon everything, everyone. There was too much at stake. As the world seemed to veer toward dissolving, they let themselves hover slowly down.

  Below, the House of Shadow and Light crept along the edges of their hiding places, whispering and wondering. They should’ve run, but it was already too late. The trap had been sprung, all that was left was to see how it would all play out.

  “Now!” Dake called as the last few members of the House of Blood and Iron were receiving their powers. This boy. He had been there on that dark night upstate, had helped coordinate the kidnapping and near murder of one of the neighborhood girls. He had looked so much younger then, just a few months ago. He’d been scared. He’d been there in the field the night they broke apart the Bloodhaüs. He’d been plotting and planning all along, and now he would reap unimaginable destruction as soon as he got the chance. If only they knew how to fully control their powers, if only they could kill. It would be a simple thing: air to deprive air. But it wasn’t the answer to this. It wouldn’t solve the problem of what had just happened, only exacerbate it. “All we need is the Deck of Worlds to complete our supremacy!” A terrible pause. “Good thing” — he stomped from one side of the lot to the other — “we have some unannounced visitors who might know something about that lurking around, don’t we?”

  “Sierra!” Dake’s jubilant voice called out. “Sierra Santiago!”

  She cringed in the deepest parts of herself. This … this disaster. This trap. She’d walked right into it. She’d let all this happen, and now it was only going to get worse.

  “Or should I say … Lucera?” Nervous laughter from the pathetic, disgusting men and women who had just trampled their leader to form a new house with a bunch of nazi scum. “Come out, come out, House of Shadow and Light!”

  She wouldn’t be paraded out there for everyone’s enjoyment. She wouldn’t let herself be put on display. Better to pull out while they could, before anything else happened.

  “You have something I want!” Dake said, a new menace in his voice. “And I’m not planning on letting you keep it.”

  If Ms. R and her crew laid down some cover fire, they could probably make it out. There were enough barriers to hide behind, and even if they didn’t have the spirits helping them, they could use their light and shadow powers and … hopefully … get away.

  Somehow it all seemed impossible. Dake had been one step ahead all along, planning his own coup.

  “All we ask is that you be as reasonable as the House of Light was,” Dake called. “No one’s trying to destroy you! We just want what’s ours. What’s fair.”

  Fair. Sierra had to resist the urge to spit.

  “And anyway,” he went on, laughter tingeing his voice. “It seems like a reasonable trade.”

  Trade?

  “You have something we want, and we, well —” Sounds of a scuffle and then the sheer clap of a fist meeting flesh. A voice grunted in pain. Anthony’s voice. No. “We have something you want.”

  No. No. No. No.

  This was all too much, but there was no time to think, no move to make. Nothing except sheer defeat and the buckling hunger for revenge. How could she have let herself get put into this position?

  “You want me to waste him?” Ms. R asked. She’d crept up beside Sierra without a sound, and now Sierra had to suppress the urge to laugh and cry at the same time.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But no. It’ll turn into a gunfight that we might not win.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Ms. R snorted.

  “But either way, if he dies, he’ll probably just get more powerful, and the last thing we need is that guy as a ghost.”

  Ms. R just stared at her for a few seconds, and Sierra realized that she’d been so enmeshed in her own world, she’d completely forgotten there were people out there that didn’t parlay with strange magical powers or believe in spirits. Then Ms. R just shrugged and kept her Glock ready. “Suit yourself.”

  And anyway, it didn’t matter, Sierra thought, stepping out from the shadows and pulling down her hood. Whatever happened next, however bad it got, she would make sure Dake paid the price in full.

  “Ah,” he said. “There you are.” He stood in the middle of his brand-new, utterly despicable house. Someone had dragged away the body of the man Sierra had heard Dake slaughter; a trail of blood in the dust led off to some car towers. Beside him, two Bloodhaüsers were roughly helping Anthony pick himself up from the dust. Officer Grintly stood on the other side, his service pistol trained on Anthony’s head.

  “Make a slick move,” Grintly said. “Please. I’ve been dying to off this kid since I found out he was a traitor.”

  “Tough talk from a guy who just killed his own king,” Sierra said.

  “Hey!” Grintly waved the gun around as if she’d forgotten about it and anything she said might cause it to go off.

  Sierra managed to keep the shrieking terror she felt buried deep inside. The truth was: These men very well might kill Anthony right in front of her face, even if she did do what they asked. And if that happened, she would probably spend the rest of her life trying to figure out what she could’ve done differently to save him. She shook her head. “What do you want, Dake?”

  “I only ask that you provide us with what we rightfully des —”

  “I don’t have the Deck. Do you really think I just walk around with it?”

  “I didn’t think you would, no,” Dake sneered. “You weren’t smart enough not to get yourself put in this position, but I do believe you were at least smart enough not to bring the Deck with you.”

  “Well,” Sierra said as if that ended it, knowing it didn’t, hating every second of Dake having the upper hand, of Anthony’s life hanging by a thread.

  “Well, indeed,” Dake said, and then he nodded at a short, balding Bloodhaüser in a leather jacket standing off to the side. The man tapped some things into his phone.

  “Was that guy using his cell phone supposed to convince me of something?” Sierra asked.

  “Check your phone,” Dake said. “It’s prob
ably on silent since you were sneaking around here.”

  It was damn near always on silent, Sierra thought, pulling it out, but that wasn’t the point. The point was staring back at her very clearly as photo after photo showed up in her message box.

  Uncle Neville, walking down some random street in the Stuy.

  Two kids out trick-or-treating, whom Sierra immediately recognized as Nydia Ochoa’s.

  Carmela, Anthony’s sister, leaving the rec center with a duffel bag over her shoulder.

  An older black man and red-haired white woman walking down a street in Crown Heights, arm in arm — they had to be Caleb’s mom and dad.

  Ma Satie, Tee’s grandmother, gazing out from a window.

  The Jacksons, Bennie’s parents, at church.

  Sierra’s heart beat faster with every picture. Some faraway part of her knew that that was exactly what Dake had designed this to do, and she steadied her breathing as much as she could, held the phone close to her body to keep her hands from visibly shaking.

  Then the final two pictures came through, the ones she’d known were coming: her father in his uniform, standing at the entrance to Woodhull Hospital where he worked security.

  And then an image she’d never imagined she’d see under these circumstances: Gael, wearing his camo pants and a beige T-shirt, napping in his bunk in Tora Bora, muscular arms clasped behind his head, sunglasses on, a Popular Mechanics magazine halfway covering his face. No, no, no, no … But of course this fiend would have people placed in the military. And now he had them in the prison system too, thanks to his treachery with Grintly. But Gael … Gael …

  “You …” She tried, she tried to keep her reaction in check, not to let him see how much he’d gotten to her. A thousand screams threatened to pour out of her. Instead, nothing came.

  “Yes, the rules are explicit that we’re not to take away heads of houses’ powers or actually execute each other. But there is nothing in the rules about friends and family, you will see. You, though — you broke the rules when you took away Axella’s powers. So as far as I’m concerned? All bets are off. It’s open season. And then you sent your phantoms to tail our people, isn’t that right?”