Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  “No!” The boy’s cry was full of terror. “No. Please.” He gripped the edge of the chair, leaning forward as if to run, but with nowhere to run to, blue eyes huge.

  “Orphanage not a good idea? Why?”

  He hesitated, biting the inside of his cheek. “I was already in one. They sold me here.”

  Megan just blinked at him, feeling anger pop like a lava-bubble inside her. Isn’t there one decent person in this whole maggot-ridden place? “Well then, not an orphanage. Until things are settled down, we won’t decide. You can be part of our household until then, all right?”

  The boy flung himself on his face, hugging her ankles. “Don’t do that.” She bent over, hauled; him up away from her, by the shoulders, careful not to claw. “You’re not a slave. Don’t grovel.” Megan caught a glimpse of Sova’s eyes, fixed on the boy with the mix of sympathy and irony, and knew she was thinking of a past moment, on a dais in Brahvniki, nearly two years ago.

  “What do you mean no one is allowed in to see him? He was wounded, you say; fine, don’t friends visit the convalescent?”

  The Yeoli guard shifted, frowning down at Megan. “I’m sorrhy, kere ranya.” Sister foreigner, that meant. They’d never called her that before. “Orders.”

  “Let me speak to your superior.” The guard called a squire from inside the building. She was at the first door off the main square, away from the main steps of the Marble Palace and the three-story-high gates; the one wing of the University building whose tower she’d seen fall, was a long block behind her, still smoldering. The chestnuts and cherry trees along the Avenue of Statuary stood charred and withered.

  It was morning. The City had quieted down. Yeoli patrols stopped arsonists at least, and the looting had tailed off as the more obvious targets were stripped bare. She had seen plenty of troops camped here and there, mostly sodden-drunk or sleeping it off; the better-organized units were busy. Here, a Schvait wagon-train, heaped with bulgy loads under businesslike tarpaulins; there, Hyerne kicking burdened prisoners along to add to an enormous heap of fabrics and weapons and chests and whatnot, with Peyepallo standing on top of it dressed in an Imperial high-priest’s robe, directing. There, a huge column of prisoners under Enchian guards, women and children mostly, ready to be hustled out of the City before the Yeolis collected their wits and remembered their emancipationist convictions. So where are you to save them, people-wills-one, Megan thought, who was going to make them your citizens?

  She tapped her foot impatiently, looking the other way, along the wall. It was covered in carvings, from the base right up to the top, gilded around the Imperial speaking balcony. At the far end of the square there was a small public park, and where the wall turned away from the square an ornamental tower rose over the flowering bougainvillaea, the fist-sized cut crystal at its peak still catching the sun though the gilding on the roof was sooted. The smoke from the fires hung like eye-stinging fog, making it hard to see across the marbled square.

  A patter of feet, and the squire was back with a piece of paper which he passed to the guard. “Kere ranya, the semanakraseye-Imperator is seeing no one,” he rattled off. “Healer’s orders as per Emao-e Lazaila, signed, Estennunga Shae-Fiyara for Krero Saranyera, Guard Captain.” Semanakraseye-Imperator; what a mouthful. It was odd, though; Chevenga’s policy was not to let people in no matter how badly he was hurt—if he was conscious—one at the very least to carry his message to everyone else, in which case she should have heard it being announced. Dead? No; they’d announce that, and make Arko his funeral pyre. No announcements had come out of the Marble Palace at all, in fact; that was stranger still. Under her anger, she saw it clear. For some reason ... he’s not in control. What’s going on?

  “All right,” she snapped to the guard. “I guess you’d better keep that for everyone else who shows up. He was friends with a lot of people.” She stamped away.

  The ornate carvings on the palace wall offered her more than enough handholds. The smoke in the night air, and the fact that the moon hadn’t risen over the cliffs edge yet, helped her too. Near the roof-edge she waited, frozen like a bug on the face of the highest god of the Arkan pantheon, Muunas, hands clawed around a stylized lock of hair, one foot on his bottom lip, the other a toe-hold on his mustache.

  Not too different from sneaking around the Arkan camps, only the guards are even less familiar with the holes for mice to creep through. I suppose that person thought he was going to stop me from seeing Chevenga. However badly hurt he is, whatever’s going on.

  The beat of the sentry’s spear-butt on the roof grew closer, overhead, then passed. She counted under her breath ... fifty-nine, sixty, before the next walked by. Same as during the day, a good enough gap ... twenty-four running paces, soft boots noiseless on the tiles; then up the next wall—twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one—each sentry’s line of sight was almost overlapping—thirty-five. Freeze, no movement to draw their eye. The sentry paced by, scanning, keeping up the light, occasional whistle that was the Yeoli contact. The second sentry round, another tiny heartbeat of time to slip through; the third, and she had to pretend to be a large marble tile flat on the roof; none of the sentries stepped on her, so it worked.

  Now, the rising moon was just showing its light over the cliff, sparking a faint glint from a distant tower crystal, giving the golden eagle on the cliff over the palace an eerie cool glow. No one had stripped that yet, she realized, because that would take organization. Below to her left, a courtyard: next to that, a glass dome enclosing a garden. She darted down over the edge. Time to go inside. That looks pretty Imperial to me.

  She had to go almost all the way to the ground to find an open window. “Yowp!” Strangerstrangerhelpmasteralarm! “Yowp, rowf!” Damn, what is it with me and enemy dogs? Megan let out a cat’s screech. A Yeoli voice:

  “Stupid beast, stop chasing cats! Temila, come!” Megan needed no manrauq to hear the question in the next bark. Really, boss, with that intruder here? “Come!” She ghosted through the window, into an office with a gilded floor-to-ceiling mirror and a huge desk whose edges and corners sparkled with gold.

  Outside the room’s door, the alcohol wall lamps were blinding to her dark-adapted eyes. The corridor was twenty meters across, nearly that high, its floor glossy-polished squares of white marble, separated by thin lines of metal ... a quick fingernail test showed it was electrum, silver-gold alloy. Koru. This place is out of a fairy tale. The walls were tessellated mosaic, tiny squares of iridescent glass and gold and semiprecious stone set right into the marble; gods and goddesses and warriors, gold-haired and sapphire-eyed, looked down with regal calm; the coffered ceiling held alternating skylights of glass so flawless it was invisible, with gold-leaf sunbursts between. Every ten meters down the center of the hall was a statue-column: giant ivory-robed maidens with baskets on their heads supporting the ceiling, their eyes shining tourmaline and emerald.

  Megan had to force herself not to gasp. Has no one found this hallway to strip yet—or was there just too much? A guard paced across where another hallway intersected. She worked her way closer from column to column, fast and silent. Wait. I know him. Elite, she’d seen his face in the secure section of camp. More to the point, he’d seen hers. She pulled off her black hood and gloves, sauntered out briskly. “Hi, Ka ... Kar ...” She knew his name started with a “k.” “... Halya, I can’t pronounce it, sorry. Which way to Emao-e’s office?”

  He stared at her for a moment. I guess near midnight is a bit late to have an appointment. But he said, “Sure. Thataway. You got pretty close to him, I hope you can help.”

  Act like I know what’s going on. “Dah, I hope so too, thanks.” She saluted, and strolled down the corridor.

  Down yellow marble stairs, across a floor patterned with alternating gold and silver tiles—some missing—hide inside an urn, pink alabaster, as two guards passed ... a servant’s corridor went the right way toward the domed garden. The first and second doors opened on gardening tools and a closet, the third
door down was locked tight. She pulled the lock-pick out of her belt buckle, was through in a moment.

  The fountain, five jets of water bubbling into a glass basin with a gentle plashing, covered her noise. She clawed her way up the wall-ivy. The floor of the balcony and the room beyond was another flame pattern in rubies and yellow tourmaline. A row of glass doors, bordered in polished brass with flame patterns edged in copper and gold, heavy cloth-of-gold curtains hung inside ...

  The centermost two doors were open. She heard Yeoli voices, sharp, arguing.

  “Yen dyanai.” Young fool. The words were fast, hard for her to follow, the voice one she didn’t know, only distinct when it was raised. “Kya krenanirae ...” The best translation of that, really, was everything goes tits up. “ ... tetyuyae ...” Kill, kill someone, which fish-gutted pronoun was that, starting with “t”...? You. Kill yourself.

  The answering voice was Chevenga’s. Though hoarser than usual, it was clearer to her than the others, being familiar. “I’ve explained to you, I’ve explained to everyone ten times, and no one will listen to reason—”

  “Reason! You call it reason?”

  “I’ve talked enough—get out of here!”

  A slithery, high clashing was followed by the sound of a slamming door, then by the echo of both. The room sounded big as a banquet hall. He would know she was there, she realized, know it was her, by his sense for weapons; but nothing happened. She shaded in.

  The room was lit by two candelabra as tall as she was, with twenty candles in each, set inside a shimmering curtain of gold chains that surrounded the bed, which was huge, three of her height long and just as wide. The headboard was an obsidian column that reached up into the dark beyond the candlelight to where the ceiling glittered indistinctly far above; against its black the Arkan sunburst blazed gold. Almost lost in the middle of it all, his skin pale white against the black of his hair and the gold-embroidered black quilt, both arms in Haian plasters and tied down, lay Chevenga.

  She walked over, checked her step; the gold chains had slivers of glass set into the links to cut anyone who tried to burst through. She used one of her knives to swing them aside—someone else doing the same had made the slithery sound—sat down on the edge of the bed. His head was turned away.

  She could kill him, easily; she had a naked knife in her hand and he was bound. Kill him, and leave Sova an orphan twice over. Why isn’t he saying anything, calling guards? Does he think because it’s me he’s safer.

  “Well.” She kept her voice low; no point drawing the guards herself. “Here we have the semanakraseye-Imperator, the Invincible, the Infallible, the Irreproachable Fourth Chevenga, most Noble Liar, who said he wasn’t planning on sacking Arko. And the fool here, who believed him.”

  His head turned to her, black tendrils of hair pasted to his cheeks and forehead. Changed: instead of looking the usual ten years older than he was, he looked twenty. His voice was barely audible. “Megan.”

  She made her whisper cut. “You realize I didn’t make any plans to find my son if the place was sacked? Should I have known not to believe you? I suppose I can turn over every piece of burning rubble calling his name, but it won’t do me much good, will it?”

  He gazed at her, dark eyes frozen, answerless.

  “‘If there’s anything you can think of that I can help with, tell me and I’ll do it,’ you said,” she went on. “Pfah! Should I toast the Imperator god of Arko who is so just? Makes this mess and leaves me to find one helpless little boy in it?” She spat full in his face then. Most landed on his nose, some in one eye, that he tried to blink clear.

  He didn’t call guards; the furrow between his brows deepened, but not with anger. “I can do one thing,” he whispered. “Chinis—” He cut the summoning call off, flinching more than when she’d spat. “Kyash. Scribe! Emao-e, I need you too.”

  Chinisa bought it? A scribe? Megan hadn’t known the old woman well; her face had faded from notice, being there always, like furniture, and, she’d thought, safe from harm.

  Footsteps came quickly; Emao-e knife-opened the golden curtain for the scribe, a man, and froze staring at Megan. The general’s use-name was Steel-eyes; now Megan truly saw why. “What are you doing in here?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chevenga cut in, rasping. “Scribe, write a letter, authorizing whatever means necessary to aid Megan Whitlock in learning the whereabouts of her son Lixand, as promised and swom by me ...” The pen flew; Emao-e’s grey stare didn’t waver.

  Whatever means necessary ... he hadn’t added the usual qualifier, “within reason.” A breath of the familiar warmth she felt near him brushed through her anger. She shook it off; no. Don’t be charmed, again. Even if this makes it possible to find Lixand, it doesn’t make his lie any less a lie.

  His voice stopped, the scratching of the pen continued in quiet. “I repeat, Whitlock,” Emao-e said, her voice deadly-edged.”What are you doing here, without authorization? Perhaps you don’t understand the concern behind my question, though having the skills you do, you should.”

  “It doesn’t kyashin matter!” Chevenga again, as if his own security was a trivial detail. “Let’s get the thing signed and done.” Lying on his naked chest was a tangle of gold: the Imperial seals, slung around his neck on a chain.

  “Emao-e, I would be glad to tell you how I got in, though I don’t think anyone but a Zak could. I’ll go through it with you point by point.” She’d say she’d made herself invisible to the sentry who had let her by; he didn’t deserve trouble for it. What did that one mean, saying I was close to him, perhaps I could help? The scribe was holding the letter to Chevenga’s half-encased hand so that, moving only his fingers, he could sign.

  The general’s eyes softened. “Well enough.”

  The scribe was doing the sealing now; four separate stamps with the Imperial seals, one with the Yeoli signet. Chevenga had made no attempt to get the spit off his face; Emao-e and the scribe, it seemed, were pretending not to notice.

  “I leave this in your hands, Emao-e,” he said, prompting the scribe to hand the letter to the general, who took it civilly enough. The scribe scurried out. “Megan, if this isn’t keeping my word well enough, I’m sorry.”

  Sorry. As if that makes any difference. Then the signs fell together, so obvious she wondered how she’d missed them. Leaving it in Emao-e’s hands, no one being let in, no announcements, his carelessness about security, his bonds, the sentry’s words, tetyuyae ...

  “You’re trying to kill yourself,” she said, amazement breaking through anger. “You’re trying to fish-gutted kill yourself!”

  His dark eyes met hers. “Weep or spit on my pyre, as you choose.”

  As if I haven’t already shown what I’d be inclined to do, she thought. Why isn’t Emao-e calling the guards to give me the heave? She studied the casts, the linen bandages used as bonds, wrapped carefully so as to be comfortable. “Mind you, I don’t see how you’re going to do it,” she said tartly.

  “Refusing water,” he answered, as casually as if she’d asked the time of day.

  She glanced up at Emao-e, and read her grim face. Another voice to persuade him to change his mind, it said; I’m not about to stop you.

  “Another small, piddling, trivial question, if I may. Why? You’ve won. You’re Imperator. You’ve killed Kurkas, obviously, no doubt in some appropriately unpleasant way—and he wasn’t your Habiku, you said. You’ve burned down the city and danced on the ashes. You should be happy! You’re making no fish-gutted sense, Gold-bottom.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Besides—are you going to leave this mess to everyone else to shovel up? There’s going to be war all around the edges of Arko and all through the middle for centuries, if someone doesn’t take it in hand—and who else in Halya can? I thought you gave a shit about that kind of thing!”

  “The hand that bore the scythe can’t give the ivy branch.” That old-school Yeoli formality again; but under it was pain beyond tears.
>
  “He’s sentencing himself to death for the child-raping sack,” said Emao-e. “If he dies Arko’s hate will be purged, he keeps arguing. You’d think he’d forgotten his own people exist!”

  Megan gazed down at him. The scythe, she thought. Not the sword; the scythe. Chevenga. You don’t do anything in half-measures, or without utter conviction, or without it creating its own truth and convincing everyone around you. Not even madness. You’re bug-fuck, Imperturbable Chevenga. The first time she’d ever seen him, she’d thought so. How many times after? Crazy from whatever they did to you. Come back to where it happened, and it’s too much. Shit, I should have known, by how tight-lipped you were, by how you wouldn’t face it. Two nights ago; seems like an iron-cycle. We all should have known it. For all I know maybe some did. What could they have done about it? No one was in a position to do anything. Your brilliance will ensure your madness leaves its mark across the whole world.

  She leaned close to him, took his chin in her hand. “Always know what you’re doing, you said. You didn’t, did you?”

  “No,” he answered, in a half-whisper. “That’s why, this.” The ultimate wrong, to his mind, she thought, so he wants the ultimate punishment. Still.

  “And I’m supposed to think you know what you’re doing now?”

  “Aigh, mamaiyana!” He clenched his eyes shut. “I’ve been arguing this all day with everybody and his sister, do I have to with you, too?”

  All through, his expression hadn’t really changed, stone-hard, a closed book. If he hadn’t turned away, it was only out of politeness. You are in a different world, she thought, a place I don’t know, and can’t understand. Suddenly her anger came apart like wet bread in her claws, and she just felt tired and vaguely sick. I know what you are, for all you make a good show of not being it: human. Fallible. The moral of the story: I shouldn’t have expected any better. Against her hand, his cheek was warm. He lay quiet, eyes closed.