The Wounded Shadow

by Patrick W. Carr

  “And if they do?” Gael asked.

  He sighed. “Then we’ll have to put as many of them down as it takes for us to get loose from the cathedral.” He gave me a steady look. “You know we’ll have to leave the city then, don’t you? There’s no way Vyne will ever believe this wasn’t our doing.”

  I took a deep breath, concentrating on stilling my heart. “It’s a single toss of the bones.”

  Rory laughed quietly in the dark. “I thought you said being part of the Vigil was mostly boredom.”

  Bolt’s growl might have come from Wag. “It’s supposed to be.”

  Copying Rory and the rest, I took off my boots and stockings, the smooth polished stones of the cathedral tacky beneath the soles of my feet. Then I reached up to undo the clasp of my cloak and handed it to Gael, who brushed my cheek with her lips. “Be quick. Be safe.”

  I glued myself to the wall and crept toward the intersection and the soft wash of light, rolling my gait from the outside of my foot to the inside. I breathed slowly and deeply through my nose and focused on keeping my pulse as steady as possible. Each time I came to a doorway, I pressed myself into the shadows and listened.

  I went slower than Rory had. Delving him might have given me the advice and lessons he’d given to the urchins, but it couldn’t give me his muscle memory. The movements of a thief were unfamiliar to me. Even so, I arrived at the intersection of the two hallways far sooner than I wanted.

  A pair of cosp walked by me, not close enough to touch, but a normal breath would have alerted them. As soon as they were beyond the point of being able to see me with their peripheral vision, I dared to poke my head out far enough to look back up the hallway they’d just come from.

  I started counting, and at three I saw a man’s foot come into view. I ducked back into shadow and stood there, my mouth going dry as I waited for them to pass, but when the time came for me to run, I froze.

  The next pair of guards went by. And the next. My heart raced, and the only thing I could hear was the rush of blood through my veins. I chided myself for a fool. If I could willingly lead men into the Darkwater, I could run twenty paces in the dark.

  I tried not to listen to the voice in my head that recited a litany of all the stupid decisions I’d ever made, along with the consequences and scars I still bore. I tried, but I failed. That voice in my head—my fearful self—continued, but it went too far. The list lost its immediacy, its ability to incapacitate. Yes, I’d made some incredibly stupid decisions, but I didn’t bother trying to argue this wasn’t one of them. I chose a different approach.

  What was one more?

  A pair of guards went by, and I crouched. The moment they could no longer see me at the edge of their sight, I darted from my hiding place and ran on the balls of my feet across the light of the hallway to the shadows beyond. I never made a sound, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing the whole way.

  The retreating guards stopped, one turning toward his right, to the place I’d been. He shrugged and they continued on their route.

  A few minutes later Rory relieved my solitude, his grin matching mine. Then Gael and Bolt joined us, and we followed the scent of embalming fluid.

  We stopped before a heavy door of polished wood, and Bolt whispered in the darkness. “We’re directly behind the sanctuary. Priests will be holding their vigil and some of them might be in this room.”

  I looked at the bottom of the door, saw a soft glow of steady light from beneath.

  “We should have brought Fess,” Rory whispered. “He makes a great priest.”

  I nodded. And with his gift he could incapacitate anyone in the room before they had a chance to cry out.

  “Well,” Bolt said, “there’s nothing for it but to attempt this insanity.” He opened the door and slipped through the barest crack, his dagger clutched so that he could strike with the pommel.

  I waited for a pair of heartbeats for the expected commotion, but nothing came.

  Then the door opened wider and Bolt beckoned us inside. After he closed it behind us, he pointed to a gilded coffin illuminated by a single large candle on a table behind it. “Whatever you mean to do, Willet, do it quickly. We’ve burned most of the night getting here, and there are going to be priests crawling all over the cathedral soon. “Rory, guard the door.”

  I grabbed the candle, used it to light another one, and then handed both of them to Gael. “Hold them high so that I can see her.”

  When I flipped open the casket, though death had begun its work, I saw a woman in her fifties whose face still held most of the beauty men would have ascribed to her youth. As quickly as I could, trying without success to stifle the feelings of sacrilege my actions roused in me, I removed Queen Chora’s burial dress.

  “This alone could get you executed, Vigil or no,” Gael said.

  I nodded, silently apologizing to the body within the coffin. “I know. All the more reason to hurry.” I felt along Chora’s neck, from the top of her back going upward. At the top, I no longer felt the expected jut of each vertebra. Instead, I heard and felt the grinding of splinters of bone. “Vyne told the truth about her broken neck at any rate.”

  There were bruises on her face, and it appeared that the fall had broken her nose, but I couldn’t find any evidence of a wound that would have left the telltale pools of blood. I looked at Bolt. “I can’t find the wound.”

  “Was Vyne telling the truth?”

  I shook my head. “Why was her blood at the top of the stairs? Dwimor or not, I know it was hers. Help me turn her over.”

  We put our hands beneath the queen’s body and rolled until she lay facedown in her own coffin. I tried to still the voice in my head that cited the old superstition—the one about burying people upside down to keep their souls trapped on earth. I looked down at the back of Queen Chora’s body, the back and legs still strong and muscled, the body of a dancer.

  “Kreppa,” I breathed.

  Chapter 21

  “We’ve got to get out of here now!” Bolt said. Without pausing for decorum or respect, he flipped the queen’s body back over. As quickly as we could, we dressed Chora and closed the coffin.

  Rory turned away from his position by the door. “Why?”

  I blew out the extra candle we’d lit, praying that no one would notice the difference when they came to retrieve the queen’s body. “Because she wasn’t killed by a dwimor, and she didn’t accidentally fall down the stairs.”

  “How—”

  “Later,” Bolt growled.

  We closed the door behind us and retraced our footsteps to the circuit where the cosp guards continued their patrol. “I have to go last,” I said.

  Gael shook her head in the darkness, but Bolt nodded. “I’ll go first, then Gael, then Rory.”

  “Why?” Gael’s angry whisper sounded like a sword stroke through the air.

  “Because he’s the last Errant,” I said. “This is his responsibility. Whatever happens, he has to get free so that he can demand an examination of the queen’s body.”

  “Why can’t I go after you?” she persisted. I could have kissed her.

  “Because as soon as you get free, you’re going to keep going without waiting for me,” I said. “If they raise the alarm, they’re going to bottle up the entire cathedral. If any of you are seen with me, you’re as good as dead.”

  She tried to argue, but in the end necessity won out and I was right back where I’d been an hour earlier, staring across a hallway, trying to convince my feet that what I was telling them to do wasn’t an act of insanity.

  I watched a pair of guards pass in front of me, waited until they were just past the point where they would see me out of their peripheral vision. And ran.

  For a moment, I thought that Rory’s memories and instruction had managed to see me safely back across the gap, despite my ineptitude. Then the guards stopped and turned at the whisper the soles of my feet made on the stone floor. Without a sound, their steps more silent than mine, th
ey came in pursuit, closing the gap between us with the speed only the physically gifted could muster.

  I stopped. Somewhere in the darkness ahead of me, my friends should have been making their way down the stairs to freedom. Despite Bolt’s assertion that they would, I had no doubt they were watching me from the shadows. My guard and my betrothed would no doubt be arguing about whether to kill the guards. Knocking them unconscious would only delay our imprisonment or death. As soon as they identified us and took the information to Archbishop Vyne, we would have no choice but to flee the city.

  My heart threatened to break free from its prison behind my ribs as I peeled my gloves off and turned to face my captors. They hadn’t raised an alarm. I had a chance, an achingly slim chance, to get free. The guards came forward with their swords drawn, and I thrust my hands behind my back as though hiding some stolen trinket, keeping my head down.

  “Show us your hands,” one of the guards said.

  Closer. I needed them to come closer. I put my hands out in front of me, my fists still clenched. Please, I begged Aer, let them be curious.

  One of the guards reached toward my fists with his free hand, turning it palm up. I let the fingers of my right hand uncurl and touched the guard’s wrist with the tips.

  The hall of the cathedral fled from me as I dropped into his thoughts and saw the familiar river. I grabbed the thoughts that flowed past me, his memories of the current moment, and slashed at them as if I were breaking a vault. A gap in the river appeared. Before it could close, I came out of the delve and struck him with my fist.

  The other guard grappled with my left hand as the first guard fell, and I prayed that the desire to capture me alive would outweigh his sense of danger.

  It didn’t happen.

  His sword streaked toward me as I reached to make contact with his skin. It was only a foot from me when I dropped into the delve and struck. Outside his mind, I felt an impact against my side, the pain a flare of red in my mind. I hurled the sensation into the guard, and shock flooded through the bond I shared with him. I opened my eyes to see his eyes clenched against the pain of a wound he didn’t have.

  I landed a blow to his temple that sent him to the floor next to the first guard and ran toward the stairs. The clatter of swords couldn’t have been missed, but I hoped the bodies of the two guards would cause enough of a delay to allow my escape.

  I took the stairs two at a time with my arm clamped against my side. The pain made me want to vomit, and my tunic felt wet against my skin. Halfway down the stairs my vision narrowed to a pinpoint as boots and voices sounded above me.

  I focused on putting one step in front of the other and staying quiet. If I got very lucky, the cosp upstairs would delay their search until the other guards regained consciousness. The stairs at my feet wavered, as if I saw them through a sheet of running water.

  The world went black.

  Pain jolted me awake. I found myself on horseback with the thunder of hooves around me. I struggled, and hands, a woman’s, kept me from pitching off the horse.

  “You’re safe, Willet,” Gael said.

  “I’m bleeding.”

  “I know,” her voice caught. “We’re taking you to a healer.”

  “Not the palace,” I croaked. “They’ll know they marked someone.” I felt air across my naked feet and panic gripped me. “My boots!”

  “We have them,” Gael said. “Stay quiet.”

  I didn’t have any trouble with that last part. I passed out again.

  When I woke once more, I found myself in a unfamiliar room, lamps lit against the darkness that still showed outside. Gael’s right hand was behind my head, and with the other she pressed a glass against my lips. “Drink this. The healer says it will help with the blood loss.”

  When the cup was empty, she refilled it and I drank again. The room still swam in my vision, but my side no longer hurt. It just felt numb. “What happened?” My voice sounded far enough away to belong to someone else.

  “We caught you halfway down the stairs.” She shook her head, and her black hair waved with the motion. “I’ve never seen Bolt so unsure. We were already at the bottom, sure you’d gotten clear—we hadn’t heard anything—when he turned around and headed back up the stairs. That’s when the noise started.”

  That almost made sense, but not quite. “How did you buy enough time to get me out?”

  Her lips curved upward in a way that made me wish I was hale and whole enough to thank her properly. “Rory stayed behind and threw daggers in the dark. He didn’t kill anyone but it kept them from charging down the stairs until we could get you clear.”

  The lights in the room turned to liquid, and I pulled a breath that felt as if a draft horse was sitting on my chest. “We have to get back to the palace.”

  I didn’t see Bolt in the room with us, but I heard his voice. “You can’t, Willet.”

  Another breath pulled me closer to sleep. “Why not?”

  His face appeared above mine, shimmering through tears and exhaustion. “You’ve lost too much blood. If we move you, you’ll die. The healer says it will be days before you’re able to stand.”

  I shook my head, or would have if it hadn’t been so heavy. “If we’re not in the palace by morning, that will be as good as confessing we broke into the cathedral. We didn’t put everything back the way we found it, you know.” Aer have mercy. I’d never trained as a healer, but I knew why I felt so cold. “Help me up,” I said to Gael. The room spun. Stupid room. “Do we have any chiccor root syrup?” I asked Bolt.

  Instead of answering, he looked at Gael. “See? I told you. Alright, Willet, have it your way.” He moved out of my vision and returned a moment later with a small stoppered vial. The cork made a soft popping sound, and he tilted the bottle so I could drink.

  The taste was wrong. In the space of five heartbeats my vision narrowed to pinpoint. “That wasn’t chiccor root.”

  Bolt’s face and the room faded as the drug pulled my lids closed.

  “No,” he said. “It wasn’t. Rest and heal, Willet.”

  Chapter 22

  After almost two weeks at sea, they made port under cloudy skies at the northernmost tip of the southern continent. Standing at the rail next to Pellin, Allta was the first to notice the squadrons of men on the piers.

  Pellin looked across the shortening distance to the dock and reached out with both arms to pull Mark and Allta closer. “The gauntlet to the southern Vigil is not easily run, gentlemen. Guard your words, and whenever possible, allow me to speak for the group.”

  He gave Mark’s arm a gentle squeeze. “From this moment on, Elieve will be your sister, one whom Aer favored with beauty, if not intelligence.”

  At the questioning look from his apprentice, he continued. “The mark of the forest is on her. If they discover she has a vault, even one that doesn’t seem inclined to open, they’ll kill her with hardly a thought.”

  Anger closed Mark’s expression, but his question, when it came, surprised him. “Why haven’t we?”

  Pellin nodded. “What you’ve done would have been considered impossible less than a month ago. There is something in my heart that tells me that somewhere in the girl’s redemption lies the secret for defeating the Darkwater. Elieve is important.” He sighed. “Though I cannot tell you exactly why.”

  A soft bump and the calls to make fast preceded a terse exchange between the captain and the dockmaster as well as a pair of guards. Once it was completed, Captain Onen came up to Pellin, his expression unchanged, but his shoulders curled as if unseen blows might land on his back at any moment. “Aye, this explains the traffic into port, it does.”

  Pellin took a moment to examine the broad sweep of the harbor, a huge natural arc that opened just enough to permit vessels out to sea. Everywhere along its length he saw ships bobbing gently against their piers. In the entirety of his extended life, he’d never seen so many craft in one place.

  “I don’t understand, Captain,” Pellin said, “th
e port looks full to overflowing.”

  “Aye.” Onen ground the word like a curse. “That’s because transport inland from Erimos has been pinched until it’s almost stopped. You can have a full cask, you can, but if you can’t open the spigot, ye’ll have a hard time serving yourself a drink.”

  Pellin’s intuition told him the answer to his next question before he asked it. The religious and political structure of society on the southern continent held less complication than it did on the northern one. “What’s happened, Captain?”

  “The churchmen have their dander up about something,” the captain said, “but neither the soldiers nor the dockmaster are saying. When I asked why, you would have thought they’d taken lessons from clams about being close-mouthed. They’ve got scores of ships stuck here while their factors wait for permission to transport their goods to the interior, Master Pellin. You’ll be a very long time waiting to get through.” He gave Pellin a look that surprisingly contained no graft or greed within it. “I’m only here to deliver my cargo. There’s no need to pay me for the return trip. I can’t wait that long for you.”

  Pellin dug into the purse at his waist, pulling enough silver to double the previously agreed upon fee, and extended his palm. “How much time will this buy, Captain Onen?”

  Onen hefted the metal on his palm, and for a moment he swayed like a mast at sea, refusal writ within his expression. “Time-and-a-half,” he said nodding. “Money’s better in the hand than across the sea, as we say.”

  Pellin nodded his thanks. “I hope to Aer I get to sail with you again, Captain, but if I don’t, fair winds and blue waters to you for the rest of your days.”

  Onen gave him a puzzled look. “My da’s da used to say that. Ye must be older than ye look.”

  Pellin allowed himself a smile. “We’ll gather our things and take our leave.”

  Allta stepped in beside him with Mark and Elieve trailing. Mark pointed to buildings and objects that would be strange to her, naming them in a soft murmur. Elieve’s mimicked responses still carried the joyful pitch of discovery, common to children and those who loved learning.