Shadowcloaks

by Benjamin Hewett

  I put my hands up to placate her. “I’m not saying I’d trade the comforts of Fortrus for the cave-life.” When she relaxes, I finish the thought. “But when was the last time you saw a Nightshade lounging around in a cave eating wolf-meat stew? They don’t. They go where the money is. And the power.”

  Lucinda says nothing, chewing quietly. The squabble around the pot has died down, and most of the goblins watch her intently for a response.

  Either Lucinda doesn’t have an answer, or she’s smart enough to realize that it may have been an event just like this, years ago, that pulled Grippy from his own goblin community and thrust him into the world of men. I think she’s smart. I think she does have an answer. She just doesn’t want to stir up more trouble.

  M’ma Ownie finally breaks the silence. “The little one asks us a question,” she says pointing at me. “ ‘When do Nightshades break bread with goblins?’ “ She grins wickedly at Lucinda.

  “Is the evidence not a’fore us?” She points at me. “My children say CupufTea moves like smoke and that even the shadowcloak wolves fear him. There is darkness in his step and the shadows flock to him. And does not the lichen burn more brightly in whatever room you enter? Do the silk caterpillars crawl your shoulder without fear?

  “This scar,” she gestures to Lucinda’s arm, “burns like the winter stars when you are angry, like Pan’s own Winter Lily.” Ownie grins, and the smile seems to wrap around her entire face, showing every tooth, rotted or not.

  “I will answer this riddle for you. ‘Wherever there is light, the darkness follows, nipping at the edges. Whenever a Paladin breaks bread with goblins, a Nightshade will be there too.’ This is the balance of life in Teuron.”

  Her point strikes like a dagger. I wear the ring. I move like a Nightshade, and when I get to Ector I will be the killer she assumes I am. I will kill the ones who have taken Carmen.

  Only now do I realize how well Pale Tom has done his job. My sudden desire to run from the cave has nothing to do with the awful food. I disentangle myself from my shadow Kiri, who has begun braiding my unkempt hair. I hand her what food is due as payment, and depart. She takes my half-empty bowl, but looks hurt all the same.

  #

  M’ma Ownie finds me in the bear pen, pressed up against Brontok, safe from her words in the shadows. Brontok licks me once and allows me to bury myself in his fur, but Ownie finds me anyways. She isn’t kind or consoling, either. If anything, she is even more pointed and testy than before.

  “You find my words distasteful, the CupufTea?”

  “I am not a Nightshade.”

  “You are,” she insists. “I can taste the air around you. You move like one, look like one, and you wear the Nightshade’s Oath upon your finger.”

  “I haven’t taken any oaths.”

  “But they are taking you,” she cackles, continuing on to the side gate and “The Drop,” a crevice to the outside world where the goblins defecate and rid their cave of anything they cannot reuse.

  M’ma Ownie is the chief of this cave. We wouldn’t be here without her approval, and now I know why she let us stay. We are the embodiment of her philosophy, proof to her children that the path of Giranna is safest. While Lucinda is great and good and kind and loving, she is balanced by shadow and darkness, a man who even the hungry wolves of the mountain passes have learned to fear, a man swallowed in hate, and fear, and worry.

  But I do not remove the ring or throw it into The Drop. I still need it to save Carmen.

  #

  “Teacup,” Lucinda huffs later that night, when we are making up our beds and she has kicked her straw pile closer to my sleeping pen. “No woman is worth this.”

  Lucinda has bite marks on her shoulder, from where Kiri got her after dinner. It looks infected.

  “Carmen isn’t a woman,” I counter. “She’s my wife.” Of course, this isn’t by any public ceremony, and Lucinda knows it. Lower Ector is still governed by an older standard, a rule of rings and hospitality. I gave Carmen a place to stay when her home burned to the ground. She gave me a ring from her family line. In Fortrus, this isn’t considered a proper marriage, but in Ectorian tradition, I’ve practically sworn my life away by taking that ring.

  “Fat good that’s done her,” Lucinda huffs.

  I don’t take issue because this isn’t about really about Carmen. On top of all the abuse Lucinda’s taken tonight, she’s thinking about Magnus. She gave him a ring just like Carmen gave me, and he also—however unwittingly—showed her hospitality by sheltering her for a night. By Eastmarch’s standards they’re married, and they should be living together happily ever after.

  Or, at least living together.

  Unfortunately for Lucinda, customs in Solange are different. In Magnus’s mind they aren’t married until they’ve fulfilled the ceremonies customs of his country too, and Pan’s Beard, his country has a lot of ceremonies. Marriage by his definition is not likely to happen anytime soon. Magnus is too busy cleaning up the mess he and Cobalt made of the abbey’s succession chain when they killed the fallen Altus Mitre. In this chaos he’s forgotten someone who should be more important to him than life itself.

  But I have confidence in Magnus. He’ll come around. His left-handed attempts recommend him. While he takes his meals in council and is rarely seen otherwise, Magnus always sits with us after morning prayers, shoulder to shoulder with Lucinda. The other brothers avoid him for exactly one quarter hour as they rest and rehydrate, and then they whisk him up and away to the business of solving abbey problems. The real problem is, Magnus usually falls asleep during this fifteen-minute respite with Lucinda, and she sits and grinds her teeth at all the important things that aren’t being said. A man who can go from sweating through sword forms to a dead sleep in less than two minutes needs to re-evaluate his life.

  That’s something Magnus hasn’t been doing enough of.

  “Be patient with Magnus,” I say quietly, reaching my tired fingers through the dowels of my sleeping pen. I squeeze her hand. “I know he loves you.”

  Which is just another reason for me to leave her behind. She needs Magnus, and he needs her.

  #

  That night I make my move. I cannot bear to stay inside another minute. I leave Three-Caves-Hold, using borrowed meat-hooks to navigate The Drop. It’s a nasty affair, but it’s the only hole to the outside world large enough to fit through. I also borrow one of Grafnuk’s boots.

  My plan is not elaborate, but I know the general direction of the nearest settlement, and from there the nearest town. I just have to make it out of the mountains first.

  Once I clear the crevice, I scramble up the icy bank and across the top of a flat snowbank, led by the moonlight. This breath of freedom is intoxicating. I feel like I could run all the way to Ector like this.

  Unfortunately, the snowbank doesn’t cooperate.

  I make it all of twenty steps before I hit a sinkhole. Quick reflexes do nothing. There is nothing in my head, or the ring, about falling to the bottom of an eight-foot snowdrift. Except something vague and distant about suffocation.

  I try to relax and not breathe too quickly. This time the snow doesn’t cover me, but it doesn’t matter. I’m stuck like a loaf of dough in a forming pan, and I get to cold-bake a long time.

  It’s Lucinda who fishes me out, early in the morning. She’s groggy and not especially talkative. She sends Kiri and Crooktooth down a rope to loosen and harness me up.

  “We made the bears dig out the entrance,” Kiri brags as she straps me up. “After I told Lucinda you’d run away.”

  Even for two giant stone bears, that would have been a daunting task, and would have started shortly after I left.

  “You’ve b-b-been watching me c-c-closely.”

  To this, Kiri shows me her teeth and scampers back up the rope.

  Lucinda finds her voice as she wraps me up in a warm pelt and stretches me out on a drag sled hitched to the smaller of the two bears. “Dammit, Teacup.” she swears. “You’re
not the only one who cares about Carmen.”

  “W-w-we’re g-going t-too s-s-slow.”

  “Only if you want to die before you find her.”

  They drag me back to the cave, shivering and soaked.

  #

  I sit morosely by the fire, incapable of doing the one thing in my life that I need to do. No one talks to me. The entire den has been up since way before dawn in the rescue effort. Everyone is tired and cold. Even M’ma Ownie looks at me askance, as if the crazy Nightshade’s death-wish bothers her. She actually hands me a bowl of food with a look that’s nearly not awful. “Your friend Winter Lily tells me you have a lover in a place called Ector.”

  I nod.

  “Is this not worth living for, CupufTea? Why would you throw yourself down a crevice?”

  “I am foolish. I am afraid. The Nightshades will kill her if I do not go quickly.”

  M’ma Ownie passes the serving bowl to Davaria and grabs my face, turning it so that I must look at her. Her skin is heavily wrinkled on her impish face, so much that one could lose half a queenpence in it. I realize that some of these wrinkles were once laugh lines. Ownie forces me to stare into her charcoal eyes for long minutes. The way her hands cradle my face, unforgiving but soft, says she understands me, oh so much more than Lucinda, or Father Lorin, or Magnus.

  I have loved like this before, her eyes say. Losing him to the ice was the greatest pain I have ever felt.

  When she does speak, though, she surprises me.

  “My only son lives in Ector,” she barks. “I am angry with him for leaving, but there is purpose in everything. He is strong and brave. He will help you find your lover. And you will tell him I love him.”

  I nod quietly as she releases my face.

  There’s only one half-goblin in Ector.

  FOUR

  It’s been a light day. Nobody asks for my help on chores, and without that, my afternoon is incredibly boring. They force me to stay wrapped in blankets most of the day while Laraf and Ardiel spoon-feed me something that tastes better than wolf meat.

  “Trout soup,” Laraf explains, sneaking a spoonful from my bowl for herself. Of course she uses my spoon to do it.

  “Where’s Kiri?”

  Ardiel giggles. “Prolly pouting about yern lover in Ector.”

  Laraf elbows her in the ribs. “M’ma said not to talk about that.”

  “What? Kiri’s fancy for CupufTea?”

  “No. The other part.”

  By the time dinner rolls around for everyone else, I’ve already been fed and thawed and can sit up and watch them dig into an unusually large meal. Tonight’s meal is quite different than the usual noisy free-for-all. There is no grabbing, or wrestling, or scuffling. The fare is laid out on a long table for once, and the children drift toward it whenever they want some food. It’s obvious that Davaria has had her way in Three-Caves-Hold before. Inexplicably, M’ma Ownie has agreed to follow human custom for once, and they’re treating us like honored guests for once. An honorary feast to me, for not being dead, Lucinda calls it.

  She and Davaria are sitting so close to each other on my right that no one else can hear what they’re whispering about. They’re laughing, and glancing at me occasionally, and grinning. Between helpings, Trig and Grafnuk throw darts against a cross-section of a hardwood tree, using the tiny tree rings to count score. With the door dug out there’s a breath of fresh air in the cave, and everyone seems more relaxed.

  It’s the most peaceful this place has felt since we arrived three days ago. Nobody is planning to eat us, and M’ma Ownie has taken to staring at me with a surprisingly mild look on her face.

  Lucinda asks Davaria about several features of the caves, including the storage nooks that are too high to reach. Davaria shrugs and insists that goblins are very good climbers. It’s an irritating answer, since I can’t think of anything short of a stone salamander that could climb that high. But it doesn’t seem polite to press, so I say nothing.

  Since there’s nothing else to do, since I’m too weak to scheme about getting to Ector, I turn my attention to the humming in my ears. I haven’t thought of it much since the first day, but it’s always there, just out of reach, buzzing between my earlobes. Only now it’s much closer. The air directly in front of me seems to shake and tremble and dance, though I feel it more than see it.

  There are stories of will-o’-the-wisps that do this, lighting briefly to lure travelers off the path, and stories of Lo-Tan-Wi and his invisible cat. But in my own experience the sound suggests some sort of magical precaution against thieves, bless them. Only this trap isn’t stationary. It sways in front of me before drifting over to the long table and coming back.

  I begin to throw pebbles as the meal progresses. The pebbles pop and hiss, deflecting in unlikely ways, though no one seems to notice this. Eventually, Lucinda does notice my peculiar behavior, probably because Davaria has gone off on some errand. She looks at me pointedly.

  “What?” I ask, throwing my last pebble.

  “You’re fidgeting. And now that you’re out of pebbles, it’s especially annoying.” She hands me a couple large pebbles. “Relax.”

  Living in a confined space can put your teeth on edge, even on days when the food is good. I glance around my temporary pallet by the fire. The immediate area around my bowl has been swept clean of loose debris. I take the pebbles.

  “What are you doing, anyways?” she asks.

  “Nothing. Just bored,” I say.

  “Well, it’s irritating.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re irritating.”

  “Oh. Well . . .” I don’t stop throwing pebbles. “You can’t be that irritated,” I say, holding up the pebbles she has just given me.

  Lucinda rolls her eyes and turns back to Davaria, who has just returned, intent on telling the woman stories about Grippy. Apparently, our secret is out and that’s what they’ve been talking about all evening. Davaria listens quietly, almost shy in the presence of Lucinda, except when she barks a correction to one of her wayward goblings, instructing them ruthlessly in some important human mannerism.

  I turn back to the roving magical trap. The pebbles deflect as I toss them, blown aside by an unseen wind. They don’t shatter, explode, or bounce back toward me, unlike the previous traps I’ve encountered.

  As I’m probing, Kiri finally makes her appearance. She seems sullen, but somehow unable to resist the novelty of an outsider. She sidles up to me, hands me a sharp stick. “Oiyo. Works better.”

  Her dark, black hair is worked in beautiful braids and feathers. That she’s a girl is a lot more obvious now, and accounting for goblin stature, not more than seven.

  I take the long stick that she’s brought me from the fire. The sharp end is red like a bar of iron coming out of a forge fire, and smoking.

  “Sorry I bit yer,” she says quietly. “I got excited. Yer lucky my teeth aren’t bigger.” She grins.

  “I am quite lucky.”

  “Would yer like me better if I didn’t bite yer?”

  I adopt my most fatherly tone, and the bits of her dialect that I can manage. “Yer just fine the way you are.”

  Kiri smiles.

  I don’t tell her that I prefer not being bitten, or remind her that I’m already spoken for. No sense rubbing salt in it. Instead I wave the stick. “Works better for what?”

  “Poking.”

  She smacks the hand with the pebbles so that I lose most of them, and I realize what she wants me to do.

  Nobody else seems to be paying attention to us.

  “Yer can’t poke a trap,” I whisper. “It travels up yer arm and . . .” I make a sizzling noise.

  “What?”

  “A trap.”

  Conversation around us tapers off as people realize that Kiri is now wrestling me for control of the stick. “Dreadlords make traps to catch people, or blow them up,” I tell her. “Ouch! Stop! There was. This. Wardrobe. . . .”

  “Oh, that’s not a trap,” she
says simply. “And we don’t let Dreadlords in here, CupufTea. It’s just No-No and Yessy fooling around with each other.”

  All conversations cease as Kiri regains the burning stick. She doesn’t throw it, but jabs it into the humming sound in front of me. From the horror on the adult’s faces, I can tell this is the wrong thing to do.

  The trap explodes, blowing bowls, food paste, and small goblings backward. Kiri has one hand on my shirt, but she loses the stick.

  When the dust settles, and before the “parenting” begins, Kiri grins up at me, blown halfway back into my lap and certainly happy to be there. “See? No trap!”

  I can see. Clearly. In the middle of the blast radius is a shriveled, old man, calm as ever, shoveling paste into his mouth.

  A magii. Hiding in plain sight.

  Not a goblin, either. He’s human, old, and small. He glances at me briefly, exhales in irritation, and goes back to eating the bowl of paste that he must have been holding this whole time. His eyebrows twitch, back and forth, back and forth, madness dancing in tune. His eyes are just as crazy. They dart around, flitting from person to person, but always returning to the small crowd of girls.

  Again I can see. There’s an old woman huddled in the middle of them, one who hadn’t been there before. Or, rather, she had been there and I hadn’t seen her. Hiding in plain sight.

  The dart game ceases. The eating ceases. The talking ceases. The children’s eyes go wide and jump from parent to parent, to rest finally on M’ma Ownie.

  Kiri’s mother, Aisha, scowls. “Kiri, come here.”

  When Kiri doesn’t move, Aisha stands, aiming herself in our direction.

  Kiri’s father, Trig, stops Aisha, holding up a hand with a dart still in it. “He was going to find No-No sooner or later.”

  Aisha glares at him. “Maybe not. Yer said yourself that the storm lessens. Tomorrow may be warm enough to travel, and his kind are the very ones that shouldn’t know. You know that, Trig-a-lig.”

  M’ma Ownie stands, hands flexed in claw shape, and I suddenly wonder if the wrestling is about to start again. She motions brusquely for Aisha to sit.