Shadow Trapped

by D. K. Holmberg

  “You still don’t understand. That’s good.”

  Could it have been longer? Carth didn’t see how, but the way these women were organized spoke of time that Linsay wouldn’t have had recently. “Waconia has a reputation that I thought would be beneficial for my plans.”

  “You wanted smugglers?” Carth asked.

  “I could care less about smugglers. Much as I could care less about slavers. It’s how they can be useful that matters.”

  There was something to the way that she said slavers that put Carth on edge. Had Linsay known about the slaver attack as soon as they left Keyall?

  Could that be how Linsay had damaged the ship?

  That seemed too much, even for Linsay, but if she had been gone from Keyall for as long as it seemed she had, then it was possible that she had been responsible for it.

  “I’m surprised that you would choose Waconia to visit, Carthenne, unless you thought that you could reform it. You might find that Waconia is a little more resistant than many of the cities you visited.”

  “We had a little difficulty with our ship,” Carth said.

  “Did you? I hope you didn’t lose any of your friends.”

  “No. I did not.”

  “And where are my sister, Jenna, and Alayna?”

  Carth stared at her, unwilling to say anything that might reveal to Linsay where the others were. If it came to it—if Carth were somehow captured by Linsay—then she might need her friends to help her escape.

  “How did you do it?” Carth asked.

  “Do what?”

  “How did you escape?”

  “How long do you think I was held captive?”

  Carth frowned. “You were there for months,” Carth said.

  A hint of a smile played on Linsay’s mouth. “Was I? Months? Perhaps you should have been more diligent with your visits.”

  Carth frowned. She hadn’t spent much time visiting Linsay, not after she had first captured her. Carth had been more interested in trying to understand the Elder Stones, and whether there was something of power hidden in other places. She had spent far too much time with Alistan.

  Could Linsay have escaped long before?

  But no. Carth had spoken to her only a few weeks before.

  “You’re trying to figure out when we last had a conversation.”

  Carth nodded.

  “Good. I’ll admit, I expected you to discover my absence long before you did. Once I learned the trick, it was a simple matter to get myself free and place an imposter in the cell, and from there, I was able to disappear. It has been an interesting game, returning to Keyall periodically.”

  Linsay had been still playing a game with Carth. She had thought their game was over when she had placed Linsay inside a cell, but that hadn’t ended the game at all. It had merely changed the pieces on the board.

  “You willingly went into the cell?”

  Linsay smiled and Carth’s heart sank.

  Had she ever been a prisoner?

  Carth had to believe that she was. There would have been no reason for Linsay to remain captive if she could escape.

  “You surprised me once, Carthenne. I will give you that much. And once I figured out how to get out, I wasn’t a prisoner. I suspect it was much the same way you felt.”

  “And how did you get free?”

  Linsay pushed off the armrests of the chair and flipped up into the air before landing in front of Carth.

  Carth’s breath caught. That was not the Linsay that she knew. She had never been a fighter, and had never been that skilled… unless she had enhancements.

  She had been wondering about the hierarchy here, but now it made a different sort of sense. As she looked around, studying the women, she thought that she understood. There wasn’t any natural magic. Not here. And there was a hierarchy, but it was dependent upon the nature of the enhancements each person had.

  “You used Boiyn’s work.”

  Linsay snorted. “Boiyn. He was dangerous. Perhaps the most dangerous person you ever employed.”

  “He beat you.”

  Linsay glared at her.

  “And that’s why you destroyed the Spald. That’s why you killed him.”

  “Do you think I sank the Spald because I didn’t like the ship? No. I needed a way to conceal the fact that all of Boiyn’s work was gone. I had found a place where there were others who trained with such knowledge, and they have helped me hone it in ways that I doubt Boiyn was ever willing to consider.”

  “Only because Boiyn worried about side effects. Don’t you fear the side effects? Many of these concoctions can have—”

  Linsay leaned toward her, silencing Carth. “Many of Boiyn’s might have had side effects, but none of these do. They are safe. And they grant strength that these people have never experienced. I have given them that strength.”

  Carth thought she understood the commitment these women had to Linsay. She had given them gifts that they feared losing.

  “Are you certain? Boiyn didn’t think his had side effects either at first.” Carth remembered vividly how distraught Boiyn had been when he had learned how the elixir had lingered within Jenna, and she had remained haunted by the effects from it. That had been the mixture with the worst side effect, though others might have had problems also. That was one thing Boiyn had struggled with, and the reason that Carth had been reluctant to use enhancements. If she didn’t know how the enhancement would alter her, she wasn’t willing to consume it.

  “They have been tested extensively.”

  “You mean that you’re allowing others to test them before you try them.”

  Linsay stared at Carth. “Do you think that you will convince the women who work with me that they should fear what I have created? They are given what they have not dreamed of before. There is power and strength, and they understand that there is a cost to it.”

  Carth wouldn’t be able to convince these women that Linsay didn’t have it right, especially as they had been given something that Carth wouldn’t have been able to offer. Maybe when she’d worked with Boiyn, there would have been possibility that she could have offered something more to them, but without the promise of enhancements, there really wasn’t anything for her to offer.

  Other than safety.

  That had been what Carth had offered everyone. It had been the reason that her network had stayed with her, wanting the promise of safety and knowing that Carth would be able to live up to it.

  If she were to convince these women to side with her, she would need to offer them safety, but to do so, she would have to convince them that they didn’t have it under Linsay.

  Was that even true? With the enhancements that Linsay offered, it was possible that they were safer with her than they would ever be with Carth. It was possible that everything that they wanted was offered to them by Linsay.

  That didn’t explain the strangeness that she’d seen from the women. There was fear to them, and it was the kind of fear that only came from uncertainty.

  No. These were not women who were confident with their positions and unconcerned about what their leadership might do to them. These were women who feared Linsay.

  Carth needed to help them.

  Only helping them would be difficult, especially with as tightly integrated into the city as Linsay appeared to be. She must have been at this far longer than Carth realized.

  How had she kept it from her?

  “I can see that you’re working through the consequences of this,” Linsay said. “But there is nothing that you can do to counter my network. In fact, had it not been for you, I don’t know that I would’ve had the idea for this network.” She smiled at Carth, and Carth shivered despite knowing that she should better control her reactions, especially with someone like Linsay. That reaction was exactly what she wanted. “You unwittingly provided an answer to a problem that I had struggled to solve.”

  Carth took a deep breath. She still had a connection to her magic, which meant that she
could escape. And she would, but not yet.

  “What is it that you want?” Had Linsay wanted to kill her, it would have been easy enough for her to have done so. The fact that she didn’t seem interested in killing Carth meant that there was something else that she was after. Could it be that she was motivated by revenge? Did she want to hold Carth captive now? Or was there something else that Linsay was after?

  “What do I want? You ask as if you haven’t been exposed to it time and again, Carthenne. What have I ever wanted?”

  “When I first met you, I would’ve said that all you wanted was safety. I provided that to you when you had none. Now? Now I don’t know what it is that you’re after. You’re the Collector, so it’s likely power that you seek, though with these enhancements, I don’t know how much more power you think you need.”

  Linsay leaned forward, and she wore a tight sneer on her face. “Power? Is that what you think this is about?”

  “I think that’s what you’re after.”

  Linsay shook her head. “You have seen the effect of a gathering of power. You’ve experienced it firsthand.”

  “The Hjan?”

  Linsay nodded. “They were the first collectors. They have accumulated knowledge, and through that, they have accumulated power, and it has made them fearsome, enough so that even the great Carthenne Rel struggles against them.”

  “There are accords with them.”

  “For how long?” Linsay leaned forward, the edge of a dark smile parting her lips. “How long do you think you can maintain the accords? You have taken great pains to ensure that the accords remain, but at a certain point, even your effort will fail. Eventually, the one you know as Danis will violate the accords.”

  What was she getting at? Linsay had not been there when Carth had forged the accords, and she had not seen the way that Carth had played Danis into submission. Without Carth, Danis would still be terrorizing others, maintaining his connection to everything that had happened in the north.

  “Danis won’t dare to violate the accords, not while I’m around. Are you saying that you intended to remove me so that the accords fail?” Carth didn’t know what purpose that would serve. The accords kept more than just the people she cared about safe. In some ways, the accords managed to ensure that Linsay was able to attack and gain her strength. Without what Carth had done, Linsay would never have managed to attain the position that she had. The Hjan would long ago have stopped her.

  “Do you really think that Danis cares about you and the things that you claim to have accomplished?” Linsay asked.

  Carth considered Linsay again. Did she know something more about Danis than what Carth knew? She spoke of Danis in the way of someone who knew him, and Carth was quite certain that he had taken great pains to ensure that few people did. It was part of what made him dangerous. He was the green-eyed man who had managed to evade her for so long.

  “I think Danis understands that he can’t attack, not with me in place. And if your intent is to attack me, then you’ll do nothing other than allow him to gain even more power.” Carth regarded Linsay for a long moment. “Unless that is exactly what you seek.”

  Linsay smiled. “If you only knew what I sought, you wouldn’t be asking such a question. And here I thought you were a much better player than you have turned out to be.”

  “You’ve withheld from me what you want, other than the fact that you’re after power that you should not have.”

  “And you should have it?” She arched a brow at Carth. “Who decides who is allowed to have power? Is it you? And if so, why? When did you get to decide who is granted access to the power in this world? Why are you the one who keeps that?” she asked.

  Carth stared at Linsay. What was the answer? It wasn’t a straightforward question, and Linsay knew it, much as she knew that her asking was not so much for Carth’s benefit as for the women arranged on the other side of Linsay, women who Linsay had helped find strength and power. Without Linsay, they wouldn’t be granted any power, and so she needed to prove to them that she was in the right so that they would continue to support her.

  Carth smiled. There was nothing else that she could do other than flash a smile.

  “I only seek to ensure that power is used the way that it should be.”

  “And my question remains the same. Why are you the one to decide? I find it interesting that those with power often try to regulate who else gains it. It’s almost as if you think that your having power grants you that right. What would have happened had you never been able to gain your connection to power?”

  “I was trained by the A’ras, and—”

  Linsay laughed, cutting her off. “I have heard your story often enough to know it in my sleep, Carthenne Rel. You were trained by the A’ras, and you were banished from them because they believed that you had attacked them, and you went on to learn from a Tsatsun master, a man who, from everything I’ve been able to determine, no longer lives.”

  Carth clenched her teeth before she reacted in a way that would reveal too much to Linsay. The last she had seen him, Ras had still been alive. Nothing could have happened to him, as he was a part of the C’than.

  “And you went on. If what you have told all of us over and over again is true, you faced the Blaphel. Of course, you referred to them by little more than a nickname, devaluing the knowledge they possessed as you destroyed centuries of their culture. You believed that your strength was more valuable than theirs.”

  “I presume you mean the blood priests, and if so, you should know the story of what they did as well as I. I didn’t hide from you—or anyone—the ways that the blood priests used their power. They sacrificed—”

  “Sacrifice? Such a loaded term, especially from someone like yourself who has forced others to sacrifice. Do you think it possible that those who were claimed by the Blaphel allowed them to use them willingly?”

  If Carth didn’t know that Linsay was saying this for the others’ benefit, she would have become angry, but Linsay wasn’t subtle with what she said, and Carth knew that the other woman was only playing a game.

  This was another move in the game, her way of attempting to maneuver Carth in such a way that she felt as if she had to react. Carth couldn’t allow herself to react in the way that Linsay wanted.

  In order to beat Linsay, she had to be unpredictable.

  With as knowledgeable as she seemed about Tsatsun, it would be difficult for Carth to be unpredictable in a way that would outsmart Linsay. Yet, Carth had one advantage that Linsay did not. She had seen—and read—books that Alistan had collected on Tsatsun. Many of the works were among the oldest that Carth had ever seen. Linsay might be the Collector, and she might have seen some of them, but could she have seen all of them?

  Carth doubted it.

  Many of them had strategies that Carth had never considered. There were whole works that had come from the originators of Tsatsun, scholars who had created the game. Many of those strategies were simplistic, but that might be what Carth needed to surprise Linsay. Complex strategies, such as Carth was accustomed to, would be more easily countered by someone who had studied them. But if Carth used different techniques, those that she would consider too basic, it was possible that she could unnerve her.

  Carth needed to maneuver the Stone. That was the winning move in Tsatsun, and in this game, the Stone was represented by the women that Linsay had gathered. Linsay had made the first move by gathering these women to her, but that didn’t mean that Carth didn’t have a chance to counter.

  Linsay won them over with a representation of strength, and Carth didn’t think that she would have such an advantage. But there was an alternative. She could show true affection, could show the person that she was and the way that she intended to help those who worked with her.

  Wasn’t that how she won over everyone else who served with her?

  Debating with Linsay was not going to succeed. Not now. What she needed was time. From there, she could learn what Linsay wanted
, and she thought that she just might be able to play the game. But it would be a difficult game, and one that placed others in danger.

  Carth fixed Linsay with a hard stare, knowing that Linsay had to know what Carth was considering. “What is it that you want? There’s something that you’re after, so let’s stop playing games and simply tell me what it is.”

  Linsay grinned. “Stop playing games? But, Carthenne, weren’t you the one who always said that everything is a game?”

  “Not when it comes to the people you care about.”

  Linsay smiled and tipped her head, a silent acknowledgment of Carth’s gamesmanship. “Perhaps not. But this is a game I think you will enjoy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because in this game, you get to protect someone you care about.”

  “Who have you captured now?”

  “It’s not who I have captured, but the result is the same. I think that you will be quite interested in helping them.”

  Carth waited. Could Linsay have captured one of her friends from Asador? Could she have taken control of someone else within Carth’s network? And if she had, did Carth have any choice but to try and help them? She didn’t think that she did. If it was someone who worked with Carth, Carth had an obligation to do anything that she could to help them.

  “Who is it?”

  “Why, it’s your old mentor. It’s Ras.”

  11

  Carth sat along the shore, looking out at the sea as the waves lapped softly against the rocks. She stared into the distance, her mind reeling. How was it that Linsay had outplayed her again? Every time Carth thought that she was making a move that would position her in such a way that would protect those she cared about, Linsay somehow countered and managed to maneuver herself into a position where Carth was forced to react yet again.

  Small boats moved out of the harbor, most under sail, but some rowed, likely fishermen heading out for the day’s catch. There was a certain comfort in seeing normalcy of movement in the harbor; despite everything Linsay had done to gain control of the city, and everything that she had done to exert her rule and ensure that others within the city did as she wanted, watching fishermen provided a welcome reprieve. She had been sitting here for most of the night, wanting nothing more than the comfort of watching the fishermen, not able to return to Jenna and Alayna—not yet.