Shadow’s Son

by Shirley Meier, S. M. Stirling

  Shkai’ra grinned. “When I woke up at the bottom of the stairs, I knew he must be Megan’s.”

  “You ... faked going missing?” The semanakraseye-Imperator’s black brows flew up. “That’s why Mad Cow Whatsername came clean! I thought that would stay an unsolved mystery.” You and your fish-gutted attention to detail, Megan thought. “I suppose,”—his grin turned a touch contrite—“you wanted to get him out of the City before we got here?”

  Thank you for giving me an out. Better a friend in a high place thought her cynical or prescient, than almost his assassin. “Well ... yes.” She waved it away magnanimously.

  His dark eyes flicked to Shkai’ra. “You might have said something, though; we all thought you were dead. You were designated successor for Brigadier-General First, you know.”

  Sheepshit! I was?! “Well, to be honest,” she lied, “we heard the hands the boy was in ... weren’t kind, shall we say. It had to be quick. And we thought ... well ... if we asked permission, you might deny us. Wanting to keep me for cavalry commanding, and such.”

  “They weren’t that bad,” Lixand piped up. “They taught me how to play cards.”

  Lixand, my precious long-lost son whom I love like life itself, Megan thought, shut your trap.

  Chevenga’s brows rose, but his smile stayed. “I might have denied you. I might also have sent in my best to do the task for you. I’m a parent too, remember? Strictly speaking, it was acting without orders; you forswore your strength-oath.”

  Megan looked sheepish for all she was worth, found enough sincerity in it to redden her face. Come on, Shkai’ra, squirm, dammit; he’ll stop asking questions that way.

  “Well ...” He shoulder-shrugged. “Stroke of the past. If it had done us harm, heads would roll, but it didn’t.” He means that literally, Megan thought; by Shkai’ra’s glance, she was thinking the same. Oh, Invincible, if you only knew. “Where to for you, now?”

  “Back to F’talezon,” said Megan, wiping sweat from her brow with a looted kerchief.

  “Which has lousy winters and that noxious little shit Ranion running it ... sorry, love,” Shkai’ra added. “I’ll be glad to see snow again. Not to mention the rest of the family.” Megan smiled. You’ll never make a courtier.

  “How are you?” Megan looked Chevenga in the eyes. So I’ll be a undiplomatic indiscreet, too. “Better than last time we talked?”

  The semanakraseye-Imperator suddenly found his desktop fascinating. “On, yes, much better, thank you,” he said, looking up after a bit. “Then, I was ... shall we say ... under stress.”

  “As long as you’ve got over it.” Megan looked significantly around the opulent office. “One wants the Imperator of Arko rowing with all oars, as it were.”

  “Ordinary people go mad; Imperators become ... eccentric,” Shkai’ra said drily.

  “I’m as unstressed as a person can be,” Chevenga shot back, “when nine of every ten people coming up to him tell him his Mind is the Fortress of the World. I’ve always been eccentric; you know that. Seriously, Megan, you might say they found someone more stubborn, or perhaps I should say arguing a better case, than myself. Amazing, I know, but true. Several people, really. Now ... I’m working. I should say: conquering Arko was easy, compared to running it.”

  You’re working too hard, she thought. Trying to make good. As you said you should; as Ivahn predicted, too. Looking at him across the desk, she reined in an impulse, then ... Why not? “Do you trust me enough to let me close enough for a good-bye hug?” They hadn’t been searched on the way in, she’d noticed.

  He smiled. “Of course. Kahara, Megan—how can you keep doubting I should trust you?”

  I wish, she thought as her heart predictably lurched, you’d damn well stop saying things like that. She stepped around the desk, put both hands on his shoulders, leaned forward and kissed him. “For lessons learned,” she said as she straightened and ran a gentle claw tickling down the scar on his cheek. I forgive you, the touch said. “And a good teacher. You’re always welcome in my house, if you visit F’talezon.”

  “Thank you,” he answered, and his eyes said, for your forgiveness. “I hope I’ve done good that will last. As a friend does, I love you.” He stood up, for the final farewells. As Shkai’ra hugged him she pinched his rear. “I can’t get you back,” he hissed frustratedly—and simultaneously put most of his weight on her toes. “With my arms, anyway,” he grinned.

  Sova took her turn. I can’t hug his casts because I might hurt him, so I’ll just have to put my arms around his neck. Ohhhhh ...

  “Imperators don’t bite, or at least this one doesn’t,” he said, crouching so that Lixand and Ardas, who were shy at first, could reach him. They’ll remember this all their lives, Megan thought.

  As they left, a clerk was already clearing her throat, trying to get Chevenga’s attention for a pile of documents.

  As they came out into the vast hall of the maidens, Shkai’ra dropped behind the others, and bent far down to whisper in Megan’s ear.

  “An agent of yours, I love it. If only our rokatzk could have heard you call him that.” They shared a snicker. “But,” the Kommanza said more loudly then, mischief dancing in her eyes, “it seems I’m not the only one in this family to wrap my legs about the semanakraseye-ish, Imperatorial, golden butt.”

  “Shush!” Megan snapped, swatting. “Honestly.”

  “Shyll will be happy. Look.” The Kommanza tilted her head back and threw her arms wide for a moment, in perfect mimicry of Chevenga.

  “Stifle yourself!”

  * * *

  XXVII

  Echera-e Lemana, Village of Voryaseretanai, Yeola-e

  Dear Echera-e:

  I’m really, really sorry, I swear I am, but it’s not my fault. I can’t come visit you, at least not now. My adopted mothers decided that the best way home would be by ship from Fispur, and I don’t have any say in the matter. I protested and yelled and told them I promised you and did all I could, but they just called it a tantrum and wouldn’t listen. They say I can visit some other time. As if they could stop me, ha ha ha.

  Shkai’ra didn’t get killed, just like I told you she probably wouldn’t. Turns out she kind of faked going missing, to find Lixand. Which she did. I know more but I can’t tell you because it’s a secret, highly classified, eyes only, for reasons of national security. I guess you know how the war finished, though. That is, we won. I fought in some more battles, and then there was the sack, mine goodness, which I’ll tell you all about when I do visit.

  I still love you and will forever and ever and ever and ever and ever ...

  Love and a million kisses. Sova.

  “Have you thought about the choice before you?” Shkai’ra asked the girl.

  They leaned on the ship’s rail in the pale light of dawn, the sky a deep pink bordered with flame-orange in the east, the water of the Mitvald a restless purple. To the east, the long forested coast of the Diradic Tongue, taken back from Arko by Laka in this war, lay dark. The wind was just enough to keep the sails full; except for waves lapping the planks, and the cries of seagulls as Fishhook chased them, skimming the water like a huge bat, there was quiet.

  “Of course I have,” the Thane-girl said.

  “Care to enlighten your mother on your decision?”

  “I would if I could. But I have no idea whether she’s dead or alive. Here, Hooky-hooky-hooky!”

  Shkai’ra spat into the sea. One of those moods, she thought. “Your training is too important a matter for word games, girl.”

  “So’s my ancestry. It’s ‘adopted mother.’ I’ve thought. I haven’t decided.”

  I’d have fewer wrinkles, Shkai’ra thought, If I’d left those two with their ditch-taken pigs of parents. Her fingers drummed her sword-hilt. “I think I gave you all the necessary advice before I left—shall I run over it again?”

  “I remember. The better trained you are the better you can deal with what comes up. But ...” Under ash-blond brows, the haze
l eyes rose to meet Shkai’ra’s. “It all depends so much more on whether you happen to be on the winning side than how well-trained you are.” Those eyes fixed on hers, with a twisted smile. “I should know that, shouldn’t I, khyd-hird?”

  “Point taken. Though forgive me if I point out you’re not exactly working in a mine, right now.”

  “No, but I wasn’t just thinking of myself—the only one of my blood, probably, who’s alive.”

  Shkai’ra turned to face her, brows furrowing. “Sova, I’ve been in many, many fights. But it’s a long time since I picked one. If people insist on fighting me, the consequences are on their own heads, nia? Neither Megan nor I went out of our way to pick that fight in Brahvniki; we’d have been more than content to pass on our way—”

  Sova shrugged, looked out to sea again. “That’s your story.”

  “It’s the truth as far as I know it.”

  “You think you know everything, but you don’t!” Sova’s eyes flashed.

  “I do know what my own motivations were, nia?” She slid a little of the saber free and touched the steel. “I swear it and I do not lie: that fight was none of our choosing. Further, I’ll tell you so under that fucking truth-drug, if you insist. I think I can liberate a little of it.”

  “There’s a reason we don’t talk about this around the dinner table,” Sova said coolly. “Something to do with language, perhaps.” The sort of thing Megan would say; even the tone reminded Shkai’ra of Megan. But it was her who brought it up, she thought. Then the girl went on to say that which could not be left unanswered. “Only zhymata knows everything that was going on.”

  “You picked up this Yeoli custom, what do they call it, chiravesa?” Shaki’ra snapped. “Pretending to be the other side? Right, be us for a moment. We’re passing through Brahvniki. Megan—entirely within the law—takes back her property, the agency for the Sleeping Dragon, paying for it to boot. She took no other action against a man who had been hired to kill her, and had sold her for a slave—ask her about that sometime. He challenged her, and then cheated on the challenge. Maybe he needed the money real bad; was that our responsibility? Should we let him kill us—and all the other people who depended on Megan—because he’d dug himself a hole too deep to climb out of? Everything I’ve said is true as the word of the gods, and can be proved. Who started it, then?”

  The girl’s face had gone livid, the cheeks, always pale, now bone-wnite. The eyes wore the same flatness they had looking at Francosz’s killer. “No one who loved me,” she said quietly, the Thanish accent strong, “vould say dis.”

  “Unless they respected you too much to lie to you,” Shkai’ra replied. “You’re not a child who rages because the world isn’t as she would have it; I’m telling you my mind, as one adult to another. Return the favor, please.”

  “You say you do not lie, and zo call me and him liar. Like everybody who doesn’t see your way. Dat’s not respect. Chiravesa.” She saw the girl bite the inside of her cheek, and take a long deep breath, to muster control. “Always both vays.

  “My Fater vass no saint; I know. I’ve only had that rammed down my zhroat, a lot by perfect strangers, all my life. But when Habiku ordered him to kill zhymata, he didn’t. Else you never would have met and loved her. Some say it was greed; maybe it was mercy, you ever think of dat? Zo she came back, and he was ruined either vay. Because of deir hate, her und Habiku, which you saw for yourself; he got caught between, he got betrayed himself by Habiku.

  “Zo be me! He had to feed us all. If you can’t win, cheat, you say yourself! How vere the rest of us at fault, my mother, my brother, and I, and the servants, who all lost deir places? Be me. Be me and Francosz. Fater pushed us away, ven you took us as your prizes, ya; if he’d clung, you vould have torn us out of his arms. Una den you cut our hair, und made us strip, right dere in front owfa crowd owf Zak,”—the lividness had turned red, now, and the eyes were bright with the beginnings of tears—“made us strip und leered at us und made everyone laugh und den chased und beat us naked all de vay to the Knochtet Voorm ... zight. You don’t understand zight. No, you do—you chust vanted to ruin it. It was the vorst blow to his zight, and mine, if I may be permitted to have some, O khyd-hird who says only you give me zight, the very worst that could be in the vorld, that you took me into your house, and made me your daughter. Und it burns my zight further still now, dat you say these things.

  “And my brother, Francosz! I don’t know vether anyone else is left alive in my family, but I do know he issn’t. Maybe he vould haf died, if you had left us—but maybe not! Definitely not, if you vould haf left my family alone! He died in your, your and zhymata’s, feud!

  “You took us to get your own back, for the rotten vay your parents treated you—as if dat vass our fault! Of course I agreed to let you adopt me—think about it! Vat else vould I, could I, have done? In your own words: scutwork somewhere! You don’t and never did treat me like a mother does—more like a slave-driver! And you call yourself Mother. How dare you! How dare you!”

  The girl was trembling from head to foot. Maybe some of it’s fear, Shkai’ra thought, but more than half is anger. “So: chiravesa,” Sova said, evening her voice. “Be me and imagine all that, if you want to be my mother.”

  Shkai’ra took a deep breath, and stared out to sea frowning. “Don’t know how the woolheads do this all the time,” she muttered under her breath to herself. “Makes my brain hurt.” It’s sort of like meditation. She was suddenly aware of Megan standing near, drawn by Sova’s raised voice, but didn’t let it interrupt her imagining.

  “Well,” she said, after several minutes. “You’re quite right, Schotter’s deeds were no fault of yours or Francosz’s or the others.” She inclined her head toward the distant coast, in the direction of Arko. “Kurkas made a mistake, and peasants get their houses burned down by warriors from nowhere; that’s the way the world works. I took you two on impulse, red-angry-drunk-on-rage, because he’d tried to kill me and my love and I wanted to make him suffer; about the consequences to you, I just didn’t think, that was sheer stupidity. Not that I’d wish it undone; it can’t be. A-hia, what’s more common or futile than the wish to be able to do it over?

  “Making you strip and run through the streets was, umm, crueler than I intended. I’d been told Thanes didn’t like to be seen naked, but didn’t realize how seriously they took it. Strange ... another point to my stupid impulsiveness and lack of empathy, as Megan told me at the time. So you’re quite rightly angry at me for that; I apologize. I was raised a savage, what can I say? No harm to your zight was intended, to my people a child that age doesn’t have any to begin with.” A thin smile. “I don’t think anyone will treat you so again and come off harmless from it, eh?”

  “Sometimes, khyd-hird, some places, it doesn’t matter how vell you vedam fight!”

  “Ultimately, it does.”

  “Not ven it’s a matter of finding somewhere you belong! Dat’s life and death, too!”

  “Because you ask it,” Shkai’ra went on, “I’ll try seeing selling Megan rather than killing her as a mercy. I’d rather be dead myself, but he may truly have seen it otherwise, and you knew him better than me. Your brother—we didn’t kill him, Habiku’s minions did. Treacherously. We couldn’t know what would happen.”

  “You made him a warrior. You ordered him to watch, to fight if someone attacked. Else he would have swum away and lived.”

  “But he was part of the crew, part of the family, in spirit, by then.”

  “Tzen kellin ripalin,” Megan muttered. “Who kills becomes. Yes, we did that.”

  “On my honor,” Shkai’ra went on, “adopting you was done purely from regard and a desire to do well by you, from all four of us. I thought ...” She looked slightly wistful. “I thought you understood that at the marriage.”

  “Oh, I understood that. And a lot of other things.”

  Shkai’ra looked aside, out to the open water, her mouth twisted with an old bitterness. “The way I was rai
sed, I remember hiding in a corner of the upper castle when the adults, parents included, had been at the drink again and wanted to rape someone small and tight. We’d hear their boots on the stairs; they knew where we were. They’d hid in the same corners.”

  “Oh, well, yes!” Sova broke in, voice cutting-high again, but this time in a startlingly accurate imitation of Shkai’ra’s accent. “It was so rough and I’m so tough and no way a weak honey-pastry wimp like you could ever survive that, little silver-spoon-born Thane-brat. And I’m doing you such a favor by just taking a belt or gauntlet or boot to you, I must be going soft in my old age!” From Megan came a snort of barely repressed laughter, which drew a furious look from Shkai’ra. “It was so horrible,” the Thane-girl went on, “you wanted to get your own back. That’s what you said.”

  Her eyes stayed on Shkai’ra’s, but her pale face went suddenly red. “So I thought ... I’d hear your boots on the stairs one day.”

  Shkai’ra’s jaw dropped. “What!? Baiwun Thunderer, dip me in shit!”

  “You looked at me like dat!”

  “I’ve never done it with anyone under sixteen, since I was sixteen myself!”

  The Thane-girl’s face was colder than the moon, even as her teeth pinched her lip. “Vell, you said I was too young.”

  “Sova, I wouldn’t touch you with a lancebutt if you got down on your knees and begged me! First, I never wanted to; I’d rather juggle skunks. Second, I’m happily married, three times, and not so ugly I can’t get more if I’ve a mind to, and besides ...” She jerked a thumb towards Megan. “Don’t you think this one would claw my intestines out through my nose if I did?”

  Sova and Megan exchanged a remembering look, which Shkai’ra didn’t miss. For a moment the Kommanza’s teeth clenched, words failing her. “Listen! Until I was exiled, I thought the way of Stonefort was the way of the world. The Warmasters said that a child taught to hate all that lived was the better killer ... warrior, most peoples say. When I saw the ways of some other peoples, where parent and child could ... feel for each other, it was as if they walked with their heads held under their arms, it was so strange. For a time, I doubted everything I’d been taught, down to how to latch my boots, because so much seemed to be lies.” A softening. “Then I met Megan ... She’s always telling me I’m sensitive as a stone shithouse, and occasionally it’s true, I know.”