Shadowcloaks

by Benjamin Hewett

  “Is that Magnus’s sword? Lucinda asks.

  The thug grins and nods. His chest inflates and he holds it out to Lucinda. “T’was Petri’s, my lady, before he died. It fell to me on account of his debt.” Then he frowns, as if making a supreme effort. “But if it belongs to your people—” He lets the sentence die. He doesn’t have the heart to finish it.

  Lucinda smiles at him and hefts the sword-turned-cudgel. She looks it over thoroughly and hands it back to him. “It’s lucky to have a second life with you. You should keep it.”

  “A third life,” the thug says. “Petri used it for a crutch.”

  “It could have nine lives,” I say, “but I still wouldn’t call it ‘lucky.’”

  I turn away and pace the footing stones. These jut into the tunnel like big, square teeth from a coppery gum. The gap between them is just like Barkus described it, just like in the model. Though only a portion of them are visible, they are massive things untouched by pick or magic.

  I smell danger at the deliberately mislaid footing. I smell danger, but there are no pressure plates, no air tubes, no wires. None of the mechanics I’ve come to associate with Tom. The stone path between the footings is dusty, and the dust blows free at my bidding. There are no tell-tales. No fissures in the rock, nothing to explain the hair rising on the back of my neck.

  I hesitate, feel both my rings biting into my fingers as I clench and unclench my fists. Carmen’s golden band is warm, matching the temperature of my skin, the temperature of the lock of her hair stuffed for luck in my pocket. Tom’s ring is cold, colder than it should be. The frost forming on its rim should be telling me something, but what, I can’t guess. I’ve never seen it do this before.

  Lucinda watches me, as if trying to guess what I’ll do next. I can usually spot traps right away, but this one must be of a different sort, of a kind I’m not familiar with. Or the pressure plate is beneath the paved passageway and the mortar isn’t as solid as it seems.

  Grippy toys absently with a dart, waiting for me to take the lead. It’s the dart that stood unshaken on the dart board so many months ago, Magnus’s blind winning throw. Grippy touches it like a talisman, his own lucky charm. His thugs loom over him, watching me.

  Make your move.

  Well, there’s one way I can enter that no one else can duplicate, one way that can’t be trapped, not without risking the entire structure. I pull the gloves from Yessy and No-No from my belt and remove the two rings from my fingers, looping them through a silver jewelry chain and tucking them under my shirt. I can feel Tom’s ring against my chest, and the twitch-fast reflexes it brings.

  Grippy’s eyes widen slightly as I pull the gloves on. There are large cinch-straps across the back of the wrist and hand, smaller cinch-straps across the back of each separate finger bone, straps to pull the wolf-leather interior tight against the hand and fingers. The fur on the outside has been trimmed so short I’m at a loss to guess the shearing tool used. Magii work, then. Every surface of the glove feels like sticky velvet to the touch, though it is clearly dry. It even repels the sweat from my arm.

  I place my hands on the footing stone and pull myself up its giant face. With these gloves, I can move across it without ever touching the ground. Now I know how Davaria and Grafnuk got to those impossible storage nooks.

  “O’man.”

  “Grippy?” I hang from the wall, fingers slipping slowly so I have to reposition them constantly, like a cat kneading its bedding.

  “Yessy and No-No would not want you starting the shadowglove legends again.”

  I know exactly what legends he’s talking about. Every decent thief or acquisitioner in the history of Teuron has heard the legends, dreamed of tight boots and gloves that defy the clutching of a jealous earth. Every assassin and Nightshade has thirsted for the blood that could be spilt with gloves that grip glass and stone, iron and bone.

  A goblin design, crafted by magii. Shadowpaws. Legends made real. If I am taken, the Nightshades will know.

  “Then guard my flanks.”

  I make a conscious effort to relax both hands, rocking back and forth, peeling and placing each as I work myself across the stone face that guards the gap into Selwin’s basement. I climb higher, so my head nearly touches the massive lintel over the gap, my feet swinging beneath me.

  “Pan’s Beard,” mutters one of the thugs as they watch me pass through the gap without touching the floor.

  The stone at my chest feels cold, cold like the mountain passes. It leaches body heat like cold water. I breathe a frosty sigh as I reach the far side of the passage between the gigantic tower footings. I reach into the open, feeling carefully for thin cables or ropes, threads to trigger alarms or set off traps. There is nothing of the sort. I swing around the corner, passing through the gap at last and onto the wall of the tower basement, the sound of my moving gloves whiffling around the wide and hollow place.

  The others don’t follow yet, waiting for my signal.

  I exhale. My breath whispers up, and I can’t tell how high it goes. I swivel my head in the gloom. There are books and broken shelves strewn about the place, covered in dust.

  I can see the floor at the tunnel entrance clearly. It’s lit by Grippy’s torch and a reflection of the same light off a fallen chandelier more suited to a fancy office than a dank basement.

  The footing gap is benign. Barkus is wrong. This place wasn’t trapped. It was forgotten. Furniture and paper lie in ruins. Smashed floorboards gather cave moss. Small, metal beads collect in pools among the detritus upon the floor. The bones of civilization litter the place, bleached and broken, as if the ancient god of ruin lifted this small library and cast it to the bottom of an empty well.

  Here the color of stone has changed from the dusty-brown fused-rock of the Dreadlord’s halls to the blackened, grey bedrock torn from the east hills of Ector. I shiver again. The chill here isn’t the cold whiteness of an alabaster altar, but the chill of death beyond death. It is the coldness of eternal service, of souls locked behind rings and stone knives and stored for centuries to serve hate and murder. The hair on the back of my neck is frozen.

  “Don’t,” I whisper as Lucinda and Grippy light-step into the room, confused by my stillness.

  The entire room shifts, air moved as from the lungs of some enormous beast. Grippy’s breathing accelerates. His steady fingers shake as he reaches into his vest for a dart. Lucinda’s fist tightens on Mother Eleanor’s sword hilt. Her knuckles are white in the light of her illuminating scars.

  “I f-feel c-cold,” she stutters, shivering. “Teacup, something’s wrong.”

  “She’s here,” I whisper. “Behind the cold and fog.”

  “She?” Grippy mutters quietly. “A winter gale?”

  A pale ray of moonlight splashes onto Grippy as he speaks, like a note of music locking him into place, hands of a magical beast. Another beam of light grabs Lucinda and she is caught mid-stride, unable to move forward or retreat. Slowly it floods the room, thrown about by shattered mirrors, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It is dead and diffused, like moonlight at the bottom of a well.

  But I am darkness. In my cloak, I cannot be held. She is looking for me, but I am as slippery as a cat’s shadow.

  My eyes adjust. Motes of dust and bone float in the new shafts of light. I know it is bone dust because I can see the source on the floor around me now. Dust and bones. Dust and books and bones. Dust and books and bones and memories.

  And as I see, she can also see me.

  Tom’s dead lover.

  Tom’s familiar.

  Wisteria.

  She smells like him, or rather, she smells like the power behind his tunnels and magic.

  She breaks on us, a maelstrom of power. She tears at our clothes in hate and grief, whipping papers and splinters about. The room vibrates. I can feel her thrumming, drawn to this place continually, leaving, returning, leaving, returning, leaving, wrenching at our clothes and weapons in an uncertain, then determined
way. Uncertain. Determined. Distracted. Determined. Angry. Determined. Bitter. Determined. Outraged.

  Grippy collapses to his hands and knees, then to his belly and face, pressed flat against the floor by her unseen, unreasoning power. Lucinda braces herself against the same weight, shoulders, hips, and legs straining against the storm, but soon she is pressed flat against as well, her piecemeal armor scritching on stone.

  I drop from the wall, dashing into the heart of the wide, round room, trying to draw her power off them, divide it. For all her fury, she cannot touch me. She cannot manhandle me like she can the others. Something about Tom’s ring, or his cloak, prevents her, like a lever that works against itself.

  She. Her. I can sense her. The room spins in her emotion only, but the others will swear later that the books and dust and bones were a whirlwind of chaos beating the walls of her prison.

  I can see our exit. It’s about thirty feet up the wall. If I can open it, perhaps it will release her. Perhaps it will divide her. I run. I leap a broken shelf. She cannot touch me. She cannot . . .

  A cold sliver pierces my heart and recoils. The needle returns, pressing painfully through my shoulder, passing through my body, coming to rest on the oath-ring against the bare skin of my chest.

  She screams all the hate she feels for the dark brotherhood, tries to whip this ring from its chain. I stop running, clamp my hand over it, press it firmly against my chest. She rips at my hand.

  Again.

  I feel tiny pinpricks of pain where blood is sucked through unblemished skin, through my gloves, misting into the frosty air.

  The room goes still.

  You may have the gardens and fountains, the woods and glades and stables, the kitchens and the cellars. But you may not have this room! You may not have my home, Nightshade!

  I am thrown down. I am pinned to the floor, though not as firmly as are Lucinda and Grippy. Something holds her back. I feel a pressure on my hand, pressure threatening to rip my fingers loose.

  I stand slowly.

  She throws me down.

  I stand. “Wisteria,” I gasp. “Stop.”

  You have no right to use that name, Nightshade!

  Tom’s ring is loosening, slipping from where I’m pinning it to my chest. I feel the chain break.

  “Wisteria! Please!”

  You. Have. No. Right!

  The oath-ring rips through shirt and jacket as it escapes. I hear it ricochet off the wall and floor. Carmen’s ring comes loose as well, but I catch this, cradle it to my cheek, unable to move, one last dream to hold onto, knowing I’ve failed.

  I cannot beat this trap.

  I’m sorry Carmen.

  Wisteria’s power and fury consolidate in one raging mountain, gather for the hammer strike that will splatter my bones clean of flesh.

  “Please.” I say. “You don’t understand.”

  The hammer hesitates.

  Where did you get my ring?

  “You have it,” I gasp.

  Where did you get my ring? she repeats more forcefully.

  “From my mentor. From Tom of Maudark.”

  Liar! I can feel her confusion and her power concentrate. He would never have given you my wedding band!

  Then I feel it, barely warm on my cheek, dying. The ring Carmen gave me months ago. Wisteria's power concentrates around it, to rip it away. Without Tom’s ring I am defenseless, but without this ring my soul is lost.

  “Please,” I say quietly. “Kill me before you take it. She is the only thing I have left.”

  The cold I feel is excruciating as she releases the ring and slams into me, her malevolence and angst ripping open a place in my soul. I can feel her entering my mind, rummaging through memories in a disorienting exchange that goes both ways, a feeling that is at once familiar and foreign.

  I am . . . me pulling a golden ring from my trouser pocket when no one but Carmen is looking. Carmen helps me put it on.

  I am . . . Wisteria is breastfeeding a small child with wispy, red hair.

  I am stabbing my own leg, with Red above me.

  Wisteria is being dragged to an altar.

  I am running from some larger boys, escaping into a tree too hard for them to climb and too high for their rocks.

  She is holding a man’s hand, trembling in fear and anticipation.

  I am bare-chested, holding Sarah, rain and thunder shaking the roof above us, bare skin drinking each other in.

  She’s kissing a man, a man in a black shadowcloak, afraid and happy all at once.

  My quill scratches letters to Carmen as I sit atop a rocking coach.

  She is reading a book she shouldn’t be reading, stomach thick with child. She is struggling in the water, a rope around her neck, dirty skirts tangled and dragging her down.

  I am sitting too close to Carmen at The Black Cat, so close I can smell her hair. Tom is watching, expression unreadable.

  I am her. She is me. The cold is heat. The heat is cold. I see . . . I see . . .

  #

  They have come to take my child.

  I struggle against the man holding me, but his fingers dig into my thin shoulders. I have grown weak.

  “Which of them would make the stronger Dreadlord?” Bletchly asks the man from Byzantus. Satchab, I think. A proctor.

  I hate them, the way they look at my breasts, the way they know I’ve invited them, out of duty, to stay in my house rather than the man who loves me.

  Tom.

  He stands across from me, equally restrained, the only person who has truly loved me. The only person I’ve never wanted to hide from.

  “And how have they done this?” Bletchly asks, still watching me, black, greasy hair dangling about his face. “You said magii were easy to control.”

  Satchab, shorter and older, caresses the wooden rail of the ladder to the highest bookshelves. His eyes sweep along the gathered wealth of knowledge. “Restraint. Unusual restraint.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Satchab spits. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  Bletchly ignores the jab. “How have they done this? How have they avoided the magii’s curse?”

  “They keep themselves apart, Mr. Bletchly. Or when they’re together, they stay in the mundane world.” He gestures to the things we have made together, the carvings, the draperies, the tiny models we have built of nearby buildings. “Well, the mostly mundane, anyways,” he says, nodding back down the hall to the nursery.

  Bletchly shrugs. He doesn’t really care. He just wants to finish the job. “Which of them dies, Satchab? Which one lives? Can a proctor tell who will make the better anchor? Can you do for Eastmarch what you’ve done for Southmarch and Loma? They press on us from the corners and mock us for being weak. Their Dreadlords fill them with power and spite. We can send Marzden’s stony corpse back to the Grand Sarcophagus today.”

  Satchab shakes his head. “No.” He says nothing as his piggy eyes sweep the shelves again. “No. It will have to wait. We’ll have to find and tune another pair from scratch, and we’ll have to keep a closer eye on them.” He points to Tom and . “These two must die.”

  I jerk against my captors, straining for the stone knife in my vest. They’re going to kill him. They’re going to kill Tom. They’re going to kill me too, but I always knew they were going to kill me. I’ve been nothing but trouble for the Dark Brotherhood.

  It’s no use, though. Bletchly’s men are wearing Sodoroffs, large, meaty rings built for large men. These rings have a hundred years of strength remembered, hundreds of years of beefy men marching heavy-laden through the taiga, and this matches their natural strength perfectly. They grip me so hard my bones should be breaking. All I can do is scream past the tangle of red hair that has come free from its bindings. “You promised us peace, Satchab! You said you needed magii!”

  “Magii?” He spits. “You weren’t magii. Magii use their power. They make the world around them hum. You spurned that every chance you got.”

  “He wanted it that way
. He wanted us to be normal.”

  “I wanted it that way,” Tom admits. He doesn’t struggle at all, as if he knew this day would come, black hair dripping against his face, almost as flat as when we join. I feel excited just thinking of that power. My hair begins to float, but he gives me the look. Not now Wisteria.

  He doesn’t struggle against his captors, skinny men like him, clever men, men full of tricks and guile.

  “Kill them both?” Bletchly asks, incredulous. “What kind of proctor are you? Marzden is two centuries old. His sanity is gone! His familiar is . . . unmanageable.” Bletchly trails off for a moment, as if his words don’t adequately describe the situation. “Marzden’s just a hollow. We need a newer, stronger Dreadlord. We need one now. My ring feels empty and quiet. Tom could change that. Tom would be a powerful . . .”

  Satchab’s voice drives a spike through the thought before it can be fully birthed. “You would replace your Dreadlord with a Paladin, Bletchly?”

  Suddenly, the world comes into focus for me. Tom’s discipline. His cynicism and irony. All his odd rules and rare smiles. The beautiful books. The philosophy. The industry. His friends. The careful avoidance of my traps. Well, most of them.

  My face flushes. To feel that power . . .

  Not now Wisteria!

  A Paladin. A Paladin forced to live in a world of shadows and vice, in a world of murder he can’t escape. It explains everything. The sadness. The caring in his eyes when he looks at the child. The way he looks at me when he abandons his damned rules.

  I am not the only one to be surprised. There are shocked expressions around my little library. From Bletchly, the Second ‘Shade of Eastmarch, right down to Tom’s shadowboy in the corner who has already wet himself, caught between his master and the brotherhood itself.

  “A Paladin?” Bletchly echoes dumbly.

  “Was it our plan, Bletchly, to raise up a Dreadlord who has learned to circumvent the oaths, to think around them?” Satchab continues. “Would you prefer a Dreadlord mother whose parental bond allows her to put children before contract?”

  Satchab circles the table from where Tom is held and goes to one of the bookshelves. He pulls a book from the wall. “Logic and Light?” He throws it to the floor and moves to the next book. “The Taking of Amador?” He flings this to the floor. “Palmgrahd’s Sanctuary of the Mind?”