Shadow Trapped

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Maybe not harmed, but it certainly did slow me.”

  Alayna flicked her gaze down the street. “I see them. You keep going, and I’ll bring up the rear.”

  Carth nodded to her friend, and she started off. She didn’t fear so much for herself as she walked alone, but she did fear for Alayna, especially having her going off without Carth. Alayna could handle herself, but until they knew what they were dealing with in the city, Carth wondered if it was wise for them to split up. Maybe they should stay together the way that she’d asked Talia and Jenna to stay together. Then again, she wanted to know if she was being followed, and if she was, she needed to know who was following her and what they hoped to accomplish.

  She hurried forward and turned a corner, ducking into a space between two buildings. Both were painted in unusual colors, one of them blue, the other a sea green. Most of the buildings in this section of the city were painted in a similar fashion. And most of them had more color than she was accustomed to seeing. It was almost as if the women had painted them this way to create a separation, a division, between their world and that of the men.

  She waited, and when no one came, she drew on the shadows and jumped to the rooftop.

  From this vantage, it was easier to see the streets. Were it darker, she might be able to move more easily and wouldn’t have to worry about keeping herself concealed, but she could draw shadows around her and not worry quite as much here that someone would pick up on her presence.

  Carth dampened her footsteps with the shadows. She crept along the roofline, surveying everything beneath her, and saw no sign of movement or of who might have been following her. The only thing she saw was Alayna moving carefully, but not as concealed as Carth within the shadows.

  Carth waited for Alayna to turn a corner, ducking into an alley and waiting much like Carth had done, before jumping back down to the street.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Alayna said when Carth removed the veil of shadows.

  “No. I don’t think we were meant to.”

  “You’re still convinced that we were followed?”

  Carth nodded.

  “How did they do it without us seeing them?”

  Carth glanced the buildings. Could they be moving from one building to the next?

  “Maybe I underestimated Waconia. Maybe we’ll find something much more interesting here than I ever expected.”

  “Interesting has never made me feel that comfortable,” Alayna said.

  Carth smiled. “Unfortunately, interesting is pretty much all we find.”

  9

  Night had settled. Carth waited on a rooftop, scanning the streets, waiting for Alayna to return from the harbor and waiting for word from the shipyard master. She wasn’t sure what they would find, and a part of her actually hoped that it would take a few more days for the shipyard to complete their work so that she could figure out what was taking place in Waconia.

  Jenna crouched next to her, and Talia sat on the other side. Neither spoke.

  “How much do you see?” Carth asked Talia.

  “I see everything,” she said.

  “Tell me when you see Alayna returning.”

  They hadn’t found anything in the street, and there were no signs of the women. Really, there was nothing that indicated why the women had excluded them. They had found no place to sleep other than an abandoned building that Carth thought they could use, but it would require them each taking watch. She would have much preferred sleeping in an inn, finding a comfortable bed, maybe something better to eat than what she had been fed in the tavern, but that was not to be.

  “Stay here and watch.”

  “Where are you going to go?” Jenna asked.

  “There has to be something here I’m overlooking. I need to satisfy my curiosity.”

  “Alone?” Jenna asked.

  “I can move more quietly by myself,” she said.

  “Maybe, but should you?”

  “Just keep an eye out for Alayna. She might be annoyed that I’ve done this,” Carth said.

  Jenna laughed softly, and the sound died out in the quiet of the night. “Now I understand why you’re doing it this way. You need to do it before she returns and yells at you.”

  “That is a consideration,” Carth said.

  Jenna laughed again. “You realize that it won’t change anything, not with her. She finds out that you went off by yourself, especially if she finds out you went and broke in someplace, she’s going to be angry that you thought you needed to do it alone.”

  “The alternative is leaving one of you two alone. Talia has the eyesight to keep you safe, and Jenna has the fighting skills.”

  “Hey. I have fighting skills, too.” Talia slipped her knife out from a hidden belt before slipping it back into place.

  “I don’t doubt that you do.”

  She didn’t want to share with Talia that she also didn’t want to leave Jenna roaming alone, fearful of what she might do if she encountered someone else. The brief cloud that crossed over Jenna’s face told Carth that the other woman suspected anyway.

  Carth took a moment and then jumped from the rooftop.

  In other places, she had used the rooftops as a way to navigate the city, but in Waconia, it wasn’t that she wanted to move undetected—at least not completely so. She wanted to know where the women of the city had gone, and why they seemed to be hiding from her.

  Carth moved openly, not shrouded in shadows, and not bothering to hide the sound of her feet, simply walking along the streets. She started to make her way gradually toward the harbor, thinking that it should appear that she had been in the women’s tower and was now departing it.

  At night, the colorful buildings were just as bright, and she noticed a clear demarcation where these buildings stopped and the more drab and dreary buildings began.

  She’d only gone a few steps when the sound of someone behind her caught her attention. Carth continued, pretending as if she didn’t notice, not sure why someone would suddenly follow her here, at the border between the women’s section of the city and the dirtier part of Waconia.

  As the sound of the person following her came closer, Carth readied her magic, prepared to push out with it and knock back whoever might be following her. She didn’t need to kill them, and probably didn’t even need to incapacitate them, but only needed to push them away if they intended to harm her.

  Someone grabbed at her arm, and she spun around.

  A thin, dark-haired woman stood in front of her. “What are you doing?” the woman asked.

  “Just out for a walk,” Carth said. She did her best to mimic the woman’s accent, trying to hide her own northern accent so that she wouldn’t pick up on the fact that Carth was not native to Waconia. She wasn’t sure how convincing she was.

  “A walk? You know the rules.”

  There were rules?

  “I do. I’m sorry.”

  The woman grabbed Carth again and pulled her back up into the women’s section. Carth didn’t resist, allowing herself to be led away. This was what she had wanted.

  “When the Cason hears of this, you will regret wanting to take a ’walk.’”

  “Please. You don’t have to tell the Cason.”

  The woman glanced over at Carth. Carth had used the faintest hint of shadows to conceal her features. Maybe the woman wouldn’t realize that she didn’t recognize Carth, or if she did, maybe there were enough other women around who were unfamiliar to her that it wasn’t such an issue.

  “If I don’t tell her and she finds out, it will be me instead of you.”

  They passed by a series of yellow buildings. It was the first sequence of similarly colored buildings that Carth had noticed. It still seemed odd to her that she would recognize the colors even at night, that her eyesight would have improved so much that she could pick up on that, but it had. It was more than her pulling away the shadows; while she did so somewhat, that was partly unconscious, and done so that she could strengthen hersel
f and be ready for any attack.

  The woman continued to march Carth through the street, and they turned a corner, heading even higher up the hillside than they had been before. The buildings here were all of a fairly uniform size, and most of them were two stories tall. Each of them had a very sharp peak to its roof, which would make it difficult for her to climb along the roofs.

  As they came to a stop, Carth noted a soft whistle splitting the night.

  She swore to herself, and the other woman glanced over.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  Carth cocked her head, listening for another whistle, but none came. She couldn’t abandon her friends, but at the same time, she was about to find out what she had wanted to know. If she left now, would she have another chance like this?

  Carth doubted it. If she were to break free now, it would only raise more questions, and if the women were out patrolling the streets, as it seemed that they were, they would send word to each other that there was a person like Carth out in the city.

  If the whistle didn’t come again, she could at least feel more comfortable that she was not abandoning her friends.

  It never came.

  “It’s nothing,” Carth said.

  “It didn’t sound like nothing.”

  The woman had a stern voice, and it reminded her of the way the blond-haired woman had greeted them at the doorway. There had to be some sort of hierarchy here, though it didn’t appear to be age related. The woman who had met them at the door had been young, and this woman was not much older.

  Could they have particular abilities that would rank them differently?

  There didn’t seem to be any magical abilities in the city, but she could be wrong about that. It was possible that there were abilities and she just hadn’t noticed them.

  She hadn’t noticed anything about the people of Keyall, though theirs was more of a resistance to Carth’s natural abilities. There were other magics that she could detect, and maybe they had something like that.

  The other possibility was that they were enhanced, using natural concoctions the same way that Boiyn had used them, creating enhancements that gifted people with similar abilities to those of natural magic.

  The woman pressed her hand on a door of an orange building. Carth had thought the building was made completely of wood, but as she followed the woman in, she noticed that it was stone. Had they painted the stone, or had they found some strange naturally occurring orange stone?

  She didn’t get the chance to consider it for too long. The other side of the door was brightly lit, and lanterns were set into alcoves, giving an orange glow to everything. A table lined one wall near the door, and two chairs were set near a hearth, though the hearth was not lit. Another doorway was at the back of the room, and the woman led her toward it.

  “You could just let me return,” she said to the woman. She thought that anyone captured would react with resistance, and Carth had to act the part.

  “You know that I can’t.”

  The woman pulled a key out of her pocket and unlocked the door, motioning Carth inside. This room wasn’t as well lit as the other, and she led Carth through it and to another room, this time with only a chair in the room. She motioned for Carth to sit, and when she did, she left, locking the door behind her.

  Carth waited a moment, counting to ten before she stood and tested the lock. It was a firm lock, and she thought that she could trigger it with the shadows, but now she was curious.

  Since coming to Waconia, she had been curious about many things. The city was supposed to be violent, run by smugglers and thieves. In the lower section of the city, it had seemed exactly that, but it was not at all that kind of place in the upper level of the city. Could that have been a front to keep people from discovering anything in this section?

  Carth waited, wondering how long it would be before someone appeared.

  Who was this Cason?

  She was someone of power, and someone that the others feared.

  When the door opened, a woman with freckled cheeks and a touch of red to her otherwise auburn hair looked in on her. She appeared meek more than anything else. Not the Cason.

  Carth sat with her hands clasped in her lap, trying to look appropriately chastised. “I’m sorry,” she started.

  “You are to come with me.”

  Carth stood and followed the young woman. They made their way down the hall, and Carth leaned toward her. “What’s going to happen?” she asked, trying to sound frightened.

  The woman glanced over her shoulder. “You know the rules,” she said.

  “I do.”

  “Then you know what will happen. It’s more likely than not she will use you as an example.”

  “What’s happened with other examples?” Carth asked.

  The woman frowned for a moment. “They’re not heard from again. She doesn’t tolerate mistakes, not like that.”

  Carth sighed. Whoever this woman was, it was increasingly obvious that she was dangerous. The people feared her, which meant that Carth would have to be careful. Maybe she should have taken Jenna’s advice and not come alone.

  Yet Carth still thought she could get free if it came to it. She didn’t doubt her ability to fight her way to freedom, but doing so would mean that she hurt people that she had no interest in harming. It was better for her to wait and see what she might encounter. Maybe this person she was being brought to meet would be benevolent. Maybe she was trying to protect the women here.

  “You need to be quiet now,” the woman said.

  “I didn’t realize I was being loud.”

  “Just say nothing. Maybe she will be more forgiving than I’ve seen her in a while.” The woman shrugged, and it seemed as if she doubted that were likely.

  She was led into another room. This one was larger and had a series of chairs along the wall, with a massive chair in the middle. Carth frowned at that chair before realizing that wasn’t where she was intended to go. That had to be for the Cason.

  “When will she be here?”

  “That’s not for you to question.”

  “I thought I should be allowed to know—”

  The woman raised a hand, almost as if she were going to strike Carth.

  All of this for discipline because she’d been walking in the streets? That seemed harsh, much more so than anything that she would have deserved.

  “You will learn what you are meant to learn when you are meant to learn it.”

  They were hard, and Carth normally appreciated strength, but what she was witnessing was something beyond mere strength. It was abuse.

  The young woman waited next to Carth, and it took a while, but a few others began to enter the room. They took seats along the back row. One of them was the woman who had found Carth in the street. Each of them was youngish, none with any gray in their hair, a fact that Carth found somewhat surprising. If there was a woman who led them, wouldn’t it be age that guided some of it?

  Once again she wondered whether there was some sort of power that she’d overlooked. What if these women had some sort of magical strength that she hadn’t determined?

  Gradually, the room became even busier. There were others who came in, and each of them took a place along the back wall. No one spoke.

  The one woman had mentioned that they would make an example out of Carth, but she hadn’t realized how much of an example.

  Now there were other women who were coming in, and they were all even younger, few outside of their teen years. They were placed along another wall, filling the room.

  Thoughts of escape turned to concern about how she could escape. If it came to it, was she willing to fight her way out from so many women? Most of them were incredibly young, and all reminded her of the kind of women that she had always intended to save, offering her protection.

  Who was this Cason?

  Carth waited, beginning to feel some anxiety. She didn’t relish the idea of needing to try to find a way to escape, but she was
curious about how these women had been organized in this way and what the purpose to that organization was.

  A soft murmur came across the gathered women, and a door along the back wall opened. Carth waited. Now she would see this person who had made everyone so afraid.

  As the face appeared, Carth felt her heart flutter.

  “Linsay?”

  10

  Carth stood before Linsay while the other woman sat on what could only be considered a throne. The massive chair engulfed Linsay, and she rested her arms on either side of it. A playful smile tugged at her mouth, and Carth had half a mind to leap at her and knock the smile off her face, but the six women behind her prevented her.

  “You found me.” Linsay lounged back in the chair, seemingly unconcerned that Carth might try to do anything.

  “Why here?” She resisted the urge to look around, feeling the weight of the women behind her watching, as if weighing her.

  “Why this room?” Linsay asked.

  Carth shook her head. “Why Waconia?”

  Linsay shrugged. “You had such success with your network. I thought it only prudent that I develop one of my own.”

  “That’s what this is about? That’s why you wanted me gone? It was jealousy over my network?”

  Linsay glared at her. “Jealousy? Ah, Carth, but you still don’t understand.”

  “I understand well enough. I see the way that they fear you. My network is built upon trust and shared concern for each other.”

  “And mine is built on concern for me,” Linsay said, leaning forward. “Which is better?”

  “How long have you been here?” Carth tried to think about how long ago Linsay had escaped from the cells in Keyall, but it couldn’t have been long enough for her to have acquired this degree of power.

  “This?” She waved her hand around her, and Carth could feel the women backing up. They feared Linsay. “This is nothing. It takes very little time to consolidate power.”

  Carth thought about what she’d seen. All the fresh paint and the appearance within the city began to make a different sort of sense. “You came directly here after escaping.”