Shadowborn

by Joseph DeVeau

  It could only have been a few seconds before the guards knelt at her side, but if felt like a lifetime. Grabbing the porter around the wait, they helped the man rise and hobble out of the way.

  “You,” said the Shade. All gathered shrank back at the voice, worried he was addressing them.

  Aeryn found herself standing alone, a pace in front of her guards who were supporting the bleary-eyed porter. She tried to put on a meek look. She was supposed to be a Lady frightened by the death of a man just outside her house.

  “M—me?” she managed to stammer. Hopefully it did not sound too forced.

  “Your man has kept me from Nameless’ business. Double your houses’ tithes for this month.” The Shade turned and faced forward, Aeryn forgotten. “Go.” Steps locked together, the soldiers started off without another word.

  Aeryn breathed a deep sigh of relief as the last line of soldiers’ backs was lost to the crowd. Feeling like she had just sprinted from Maerilin to Merek’s country estate, she turned to the guards and tried to calm her voice as best she could.

  “Put him in my carriage and take him to a healer,” she said.

  “But my lady, Lord Merek was quite insistent that we were to stay with you,” said one of the guards. Aeryn would have to have a word with Merek about that.

  “My lady! I am so sorry,” hissed the porter between clenched teeth. He looked around in horror. Not at the shrinking audience or his mangled arm, but at the items strewn about the street, some having landed in murky puddles from last night’s drizzle, others covered in dirt and dust. More than a few had been flattened by a passing soldiers’ feet. “I must have hit an upturned cobble or something; I don’t know what happened. I’m so sorry. I assure you, I’m ok, I don’t need to go to a healer.”

  “Nonsense,” Aeryn snapped. Don’t need to go to a healer? Aeryn could practically feel the waves of misery radiating from the poor man. She rounded on the guards. “Do as I say and take him to a healer. I’ll wait here until you get back.” The porter actually started forward as if to pick up the packages. “And stop him,” she shouted at the guards, “he’ll just make it worse.”

  Her shout sent the guards into action. Hopping too, they half-carried, half-dragged the still apologizing porter away to her waiting carriage.

  Aeryn shook her head as she watched them go. She had thought nobles were crazy, but their servants? Gods! They were just as bad. Protesting while a man withered in pain? And the man who was doing the withering apologizing and professing he was fine? What was next? Leaping headfirst into a roaring furnace if their Lord or Lady so ordered?

  Presented with the perfect opportunity to escape, Aeryn picked up a dozen of the smaller packages of meat she could carry and walked off with stately haste through the throng. She made her way towards the nearest street that lead into what she considered the real city, not some fake, cordoned off area for the rich.

  A block down, she bought the simplest woolen cloak she could find without bartering against its outrageous price. It was still too warm out for a cloak despite the changing season, but it was either that or stand out like a shiny gold piece among a pile of dull copper when outside the markets. With it wrapped around her silk dress, she had no trouble making it past the guards without recognition or protest.

  Before long, she was striding past the Lord’s Gate. Seeing a small, hard-eyed girl in threadbare clothes, Aeryn made her way over, stooped, and handed over the last of the wrapped packages.

  “Huh?” the girl asked. She took it warily, as though afraid it would bite.

  Aeryn grinned. “Open it.”

  Looking skeptical, the girl did so. She let out a gasp as the dripping red meat was revealed within.

  “Sorry I don’t have a flint and tinder on me,” Aeryn began. “Perhaps—“

  The girl ripped into the raw chunk. Blood dripped down her chin and hands. Her eyes widened at the taste. Aeryn remembered all too well that feeling. Biting into a piece of food—it did not matter what—was rapturous when you had not eaten in days. Tossing a gold to the girl’s feet, Aeryn continued on her way.

  “Who are you?” the girl called out to between bites.

  Aeryn turned her head and smiled. “Just a friend.”

  A few blocks further, dragging her fingers over the wall as she walked and feeling bad she had no more food to bestow on the multitude of urchins she saw, she could not help but roll her eyes at a remark Merek had made earlier.

  “Can’t you just climb the wall to Nameless’ castle like you did coming to my manor?” he had asked.

  A slack-jawed stare had been her response. Climb the wall. Not just any wall, but a sheer, thirty-foot wall that rose out of the Shades and Voices backyard that would deposit her into the frontyard of Nameless himself. And all without a rope, handholds, or a ladder. It was as if he assumed she was a squirrel or one of those legendary assassins from one of his books.

  She shook her head and chuckled. Lords may be experts when it came to setting traps within snares and disguising it as a delicious dinner party, but they had the brains of a fish when it came to so many other things.

  Arriving at her destination, Aeryn strolled into a workshop alive with the clanging of hammers on anvils and whooshing of heated air pumped by enormous bellows. Beneath the cloak, the beads of sweat that had formed during the run in with the Shade merged and dripped down her back.

  Looking up from pouring molten iron into molds for nails, Ty whipped a hand across his brow. He locked eyes with Aeryn and froze.

  “Why are you stopping, boy? That barrel o’ nails ain’t even half way full yet,” Master Luggard said in a voice gruff and scratchy from years of acrid smoke inhalation.

  Ty inclined his head to Aeryn.

  Master Luggard spun. “Just what in the bloody seven hells are you doing here girl? Even if I wanted to coddle you, which I don’t,” he added with a menacing glare, “this ain’t no place for the likes of you.”

  The wool now saturated and starting to itch, Aeryn undid the clasp and let it drop to the ground.

  The effect was immediate. Master Luggard’s face twisted up in horror. He fell forward in an awkward half-bow, half-kneel. “I didn’t know you was a Lady,” he professed. “My honor as a man, I didn’t. I am at the Lady’s service.” Ty, probably assuming she had stolen the clothes, watched with a grin from his Master’s back.

  Aeryn let out a sigh at the duplicity of Master Luggard’s actions. She opened her mouth to tell him no harm had been done, but changed course after settling her gaze on the twin barrels of nails and horseshoes next to Ty.

  “I had come here in hopes of dealing with the finest blacksmith Maerilin has to offer,” she said, lofting her voice haughtily, “but too late I realize he is nothing but a pompous blowhard who offers insults to his customers.”

  “My lady, I—“

  She held up a hand to silence him. “Since I don’t enjoy wasting my time with a buffoon,” she mirrored the glare he had given her just a moment ago, “and seeing as I am already here, I see little recourse but to deal with your apprentice. Whose name would be. . .?”

  “Ty,” Ty said with a grin.

  “I offer my sincerest apologies, Lady,” Master Luggard said, shooting Ty a heated look, “but he is just a simple apprentice. Why he can barely form a proper nail or horseshoe. If I may—“

  Aeryn whipped her head to face the still bent blacksmith. “You may not. That is twice you have offered me insult. Would you like to try for a third? Because I promise you, nobody has ever given me a fourth.”

  Master Luggard fell silent, his face as red as the glowing furnace at his back.

  “Good,” Aeryn said. “Now, how much do you pay your apprentice?”

  “P—pa—pay? My Lady?”

  “Yes, man. Pay. As in coins per week?”

  “The lad gets three silver a week. One goes to putting a roof over his head and food in his belly, one pays for the iron he fouls, and seven copper replace the clothing he wears out,” Lugg
ard explained.

  Three copper was all Ty made a week? Aeryn had found more than that a day on the streets. Silently thanking Merek for his lessons and forcing her to read those books on numbers, she dug into her purse and pulled out a handful of glittering gold. Deliberately and ever-so-slowly, she laid out gold one piece at a time before the blacksmith’s widening eyes.

  “That,” she said when she reached eight, “should pay for Ty’s services for six months, yes?”

  “Yes, lady,” Master Luggard said. “But who will make me nails and horseshoes if he is working for you?”

  “Hire another,” Aeryn said and doubled the size of the pile.

  He licked his lips. “But what about my workshop? There won’t be room enough for two apprentices.”

  “Don’t be greedy, Master Blacksmith. You and I both know that for but half the gold before you I could hire any other Master in the city, rather than just a ‘simple apprentice,’ as you put it.” Not to mention the pile was large enough to repair the damage she had done to his self-esteem ten times over. “Now if you’ll be so kind as to give Ty and me some privacy to discuss the work I wish to commission of him?”

  Gold scooped up and tucked away with a haste that belittled his size, Luggard darted from the room.

  “It seems you were able to filch that Lord of yours out of more than a few candelabras, eh Aeryn?” Ty said when they were alone.

  Aeryn laughed. She had forgotten how long it had been since she had talked to Ty. “Not exactly,” she said and launched into a condensed version of the events that had occurred over the past few months. If she had thought his eyes wide at watching her pour out handfuls of gold, they were all but saucers by the time she finished.

  “And here I am,” Ty said, dumping out a quenched batch of nails into the half-full barrel at his side, “slaving away making useless junk for coppers while you are out gallivanting around in silk dresses with servants attending your every whim.”

  “Nails and horseshoes are hardly useless,” Aeryn said.

  Ty let his hammer fall to the table with a resounding clank. “You know what I mean.”

  “Then you’ll be happy to work on some things for me. I didn’t line Luggard’s pockets just to hear you whine and moan.”

  “I am not whining and moaning.”

  Aeryn cocked her head to the side.

  “Fine,” Ty said. “Maybe I am little. So why did you hand over all that gold?” he added quickly, as if to convince himself he had not been whining.

  Aeryn sorely wanted to tease him more now that the tables had turned, but the guards had surely delivered the porter to a healer and were searching for her by now. If she dallied too long, they may become frantic enough to ask for help in finding her. If the Shades, Voices, or god forbid, Nameless himself, should catch a whiff of what she was doing here today, she would not even make it back to Merek’s to say goodbye to Jynx.

  “You know what a ship’s anchor looks like, right?” she asked.

  “Umm, yes?”

  “Good. So here is what I’m thinking: take two of them, say this big,” Aeryn held her hands a foot apart, “and—“

  “But those would barely hold a rowboat in calm weather, let alone in a gale.”

  “Perhaps if you’d let me finish, you would know that they don’t need to hold a rowboat, wind or no wind.”

  “Then what good are they?”

  “Can I finish?” Aeryn asked, voice as hot as the furnace behind him. Ty nodded. “So you take two anchors,” she paused, waiting to see if he would interrupt again. When he did not, she continued on, twining her hands together as she spoke, “and put them together like so, then attach. . .” She went on, explaining her idea best as she could.

  “That’ll never work,” Ty said, forgetting his promise not to interrupt less than minute later. “What you want are hooks like the back end of a halberd. Take those and fuse them like so. . .”

  Finally finished after so much back and forth her head spun—Ty really did seem to be picking up this blacksmith thing quite well, even if he mostly made nails and horseshoes—she told him the final items she needed. At least those were easy to explain. She then rose and walked toward the street. Just as she reached the lintel, she turned, called his name and tossed him the remainder of her purse.

  “You tell anyone about that,” she said, “and I’ll see you end up like Jins and his gang.”

  Ty gasped like a Lady who had just seen a rat king. “That was you?”

  Aeryn winked, savored the look on his face for a moment, and then to began thread her way back to the markets. By now, the guards were doubtless falling over themselves in panic for losing track of her. Well, at least that part she could blame squarely on Merek. Placing guards on her. Phaw! She knew she had a part to play, but having guards follow her everywhere would simply not do. Besides, she would happily trade places with the porter if it meant not having to use the contraption she had just commissioned of Ty. Just because she had agreed to help Merek did not mean she was looking forward to getting a sword stabbed through her chest. Presented with the opportunity, trading that for a broken arm was a decision a child could make.

  18

  Dust

  By the time Ty had completed his work, Aeryn was positively itching to go. Being a Lady—or at least pretending to be one—was mind-numbingly boring. The fevered war of gossip and rumor fought by the nobles only served to highlight how inane it all was.

  Merek insisted otherwise of course. His reasons included everything from gaining access to an allied noble’s resources to having more eyes and ears watching and listening to what was happening in Maerilin. The problem was that alliances shifted with the wind. Sometimes for no better reason than a perceived insult at what someone had worn or said in passing.

  Aeryn was glad Mareen was “handling” it according to Merek. Whatever that meant. Aeryn did not care. It was hard enough for her to keep up with the information Annette had begun backfilling her in on.

  All in all, Aeryn vastly preferred learning about events firsthand, out on the streets themselves. There you could see which hand your enemy held his knife. Ironically enough, Annette, the stiff-backed serving girl, had been Aeryn’s salvation after that first disastrous outing. A word with Merek, who agreed to remove the guards and porter, albeit reluctantly and only after Aeryn had threatened to run off leaving them in the dust, and a word with Melanie, who agreed her daughter was too prim for her own good, and Annette had become her new handmaiden.

  At the moment however, Annette was giving Aeryn a headache.

  “You’ll be back before noon, right?” Annette asked.

  “That’s the fifth time you’ve asked,” Aeryn said. Gods, where had she gone wrong? The first week Annette had firmly refused to budge an inch from what was “proper.” The girl had even gone as far as plugging her ears when she heard a shouted curse and averting her eyes from a shirtless sailor. The second week she had loosened up a bit after seeing Maerilin from a new perspective as Aeryn had handed out food to street urchins and showed the girl about, explaining how things worked outside of a Lord’s household.

  “But Ty is. . .”

  Oh right. Ty. I never should have introduced those two, Aeryn bemoaned silently as she washed and toweled off her face. Annette had taken to the street urchin turned blacksmith apprentice like a fish to water.

  “You’re not even listening,” Annette said, stomping her foot.

  How had Aeryn ever thought Annette had been her salvation? Downfall was more like it. “I am too. You were pouting about not being able to see Ty.”

  “I was not pouting.”

  “Oh really?” Aeryn glared at the girl as she sat down to break her fast.

  “Fine. Maybe a little. But I just have to see him. You’ll be back before noon, right?”

  “Sixth time,” Aeryn mumbled around a bite of bread and egg.

  “Well, then maybe you can answer this time. You’ll be back before noon, right?”

  “Seve
nth.”

  Annette scowled. “I told Ty I would meet him today, but mother won’t let me out of the house unless it’s with you. So you have to be back before noon or he’ll wonder where I am because I told him I’d be there at noon and if he starts to wonder where I am then he might forget about me and if he forgets me then Ijustdon’tknowwhatI’lldo.”

  Sighing, Aeryn set down her fork. I hope to be back at all, she said to herself, though aloud said, “Possibly. It all depends on how smoothly everything goes.” She shivered at the thought of running into trouble. Being all alone and surrounded by enemies that would kill you at the slightest whisper of your true intentions was not exactly comforting.

  “What are you doing there anyway?” Annette asked. She emptied the washbasin and chamber pot into a pail, made the bed, picked up the plates Aeryn had scraped clean, and all while practically floating about the room, mind no doubt full of thoughts of Ty. “Mother says it’s because you’re worried about that beggar that died here. But she never tells me everything she knows. And besides, I’ve never seen you scared. Not when that bully tried to steal from you in the streets, not even when we saw those Shadows! I was so scared I wet myself, but you just stood there like you were thinking about fighting them yourself. Mother said you’d never do such a thing, but I think she is hiding something.”

  “Your mother is a wise woman,” Aeryn said. Moving to the dresser, Aeryn took out the servant grays and stepped into them.

  Annette raised an eyebrow. “That’s hardly an answer and you know it.”

  Pulling a light silk shirt and trousers from her wardrobe, Aeryn changed the subject. “Help me into these, would you?” She knew she should have been more careful around Annette.

  The bully had been no threat; he had just been a down on his luck beggar. Aeryn had dropped a few coins for him after talking him down. The real problem had been the Shades—Shadows to Annette’s eyes—who were now stalking around Maerilin in ever-massing numbers. It made Aeryn’s task today all the more crucial.