The Prince of Shadow

by Curt Benjamin

  Lord Chin-shi’s competitions were over, his house crashed about his head, but other houses remained, offering higher stakes. Lord Yueh was well known for betting death matches.

  When Yueh had gone, Madon leaned heavily on the table for a moment before pushing off and presenting himself to his lord. He fell to his knees, his eyes round as copper coins with the shock, and bowed his head, waiting for his fate.

  “His man was drugged to induce madness, you know.” The stranger addressed Madon, who made no move to rise or answer the stranger.

  “On balance,” the stranger continued, “his excellency decided that the lives of two men could not stand in the way of peace in the provinces.”

  Lord Chin-shi set his hand on Madon’s shoulder, but addressed the stranger: “The Blood Tide?” Llesho recognized that soft tone, saw the wheels within wheels in Lord Chin-shi’s eyes and the ironic half-smile that accompanied the stranger’s shrug.

  “The source of that plague, like the source of fever in Yueh’s compound, remains hidden to us.”

  “It was none of my doing,” Lord Chin-shi assured him, and the stranger shook his head. “I thought not. Had it been so, of course, the peace would have been broken, and we would be at war, and not sharing entertainments together.” He spoke ironically, his eyes fixed on the back of Madon’s head, but his false smile held a warning. The governor had weighed the life of an honorable gladiator and the fortunes of one lord against the threat of war in the province, and he had decided. He put out his hand, and into it Lord Chin-shi placed the strangling rope.

  “Relax,” the stranger said, and tipped Madon’s head back to rest upon his leg. Then with a movement Llesho could hardly follow, the cord was around Madon’s throat, and the harsh “snap” of bone cracking cut the air like an ax. “I’m sorry,” the stranger said, and when he released the cord, Madon fell dead at his feet. “Have him delivered to Lord Yueh with my regards.”

  He strode to the open doorway without looking at the body on the ground, but turned to Master Jaks almost as an afterthought.

  “Bring the boys,” he said, and for a moment he was nothing but an absence in the light of the doorway. Then he was gone.

  “Who is he?” Llesho whispered to Stipes in the frozen silence that followed, but it was Master Jaks who answered the question. “His name is Habiba. He is the governor’s witch.”

  Lord Chin-shi shivered in his heavy robes. In the corner, his consort wept silently, her arms around Radimus’ neck. “We are ruined,” she moaned into the sweaty leather that covered his chest, “Ruined. And that Yueh is to blame.”

  “Not Yueh,” Lord Chin-shi corrected her carefully, his attention fixed on the body at his feet. “But fate. What man can wage war against his fate?”

  “A true man,” his wife taunted him. She let her arms slip from Radimus’ neck, trailed questing fingers down his arm until she could catch his hand in hers, and led the gladiator deeper into the shadows.

  Lord Chin-shi did not look away from Madon’s body. “You’d better go,” he said, with a vague gesture at Master Jaks. The teacher bowed, though his lordship did not see him or anything beyond the inward vision of his eyes as he walked away, into the sunlight of the arena.

  “Damn,” Stipes muttered. He helped Bixei to stand and supported him to the door, where Master Jaks commanded a leather sling and two servants to carry him. Llesho followed through a silence that had grown thick in the air, like a coming storm.

  As he moved from under the benches and into the sun, he saw a splash of brightly colored silk crumpled in a scarlet pool that was quickly soaking into the dust. Lord Chin-shi lay dead, his own knife buried in his heart. Master Jaks did not stop, or even slow his small procession, but stepped past his former lord without looking down. Llesho swallowed hard, and tightened his hands into fists, but followed the lead of his teacher. Bixei gritted his teeth, but the tears leaked from his eyes anyway. Llesho didn’t know if he cried for Stipes, gone from his life forever, or for his lord, now dead at his own hand, or for the fate that awaited them in the wake of the governor’s witch.

  Llesho almost felt guilty that he still had Master Jaks, his teacher, while Bixei had nothing. But Minister Lleck had taught him to plot his course and then take one step toward it at a time, focused on that one step completely until the next. He was a gladiator, more or less, and off Pearl Island—steps one and two on his path—but an empire’s reach from Thebin. Before he could decide his next move, he had to figure out where this last one had taken him. With Lord Chin-shi dead, there was certainly no way back.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE stranger, Habiba, led them to a door in the thick wall that circled the arena. He handed Llesho a torch and, with a snap of his fingers, set the fuel-soaked end of it on fire. The bearers carrying Bixei followed, then Master Jaks, who closed the door before lighting his own torch at Llesho’s flame. They were in a long tunnel that sloped gently until Llesho was sure they were no longer inside the wall, but were under the arena itself. The roar of the crowd was muted here, though the pounding of so many feet thundered over their heads and shook dirt into their hair. Llesho wondered if the roof of the tunnel would hold, but neither Habiba nor Jaks seemed concerned, so he turned his attention to figuring out where they were going. Away from the main entrance, that was clear. Since he hadn’t seen anything beyond the arena at the outskirts of the city, he couldn’t tell much other than that they were heading away from the direction in which they had come.

  They passed other tunnels feeding into the one they followed. One, with a heavy door barring their entrance, Llesho thought must lead from the official boxes of the governor and mayor of Farshore province and city. Just as he had started to wonder if the whole trip would be taken underground, the floor of the tunnel began to rise again, until they faced a closed door and nowhere else to go. The door had no handle. Llesho pushed, but the door didn’t budge.

  “Locked,” he said, and Habiba moved past him with a tight little smile.

  “Aren’t we lucky we have the key?” he asked, though he carried nothing but a lit torch.

  Habiba waved his hand over the door and muttered a phrase that Llesho couldn’t hear. Then he gave the door a light tap. It opened inward and Llesho jumped back, crashing into Bixei’s litter in his effort to avoid being hit by the door.

  “Get off me!” Panic edged Bixei’s sharp voice, and he gave Llesho a shove that overbalanced the already precarious bearers and propelled Llesho out into the gloomy light of the minor sun. He was standing alone in a wood of low, gnarled ginkgo trees that stank of fallen fruit in the quickening breeze of nightfall. A moment later, Jaks exited the tunnel, followed by Bixei on his litter. Habiba came last; when they had all assembled outside the secret passage, he turned to secure the door with another wave of his hand. Again he accompanied the flourish with a muttered charm, but Llesho wondered if it wasn’t really the tap on the door itself, at the center of a coiled dragon carved into its surface, that sealed the tunnel.

  Jaks seemed to know the way; he led their little band no more than a quarter li to a lane canopied by the twisted branches of ancient trees on each side. The lane’s deep, sinuous curves snaking through the forest hid them from anyone coming up from behind, but likewise hid from their sight anything waiting for them ahead. At first, when Llesho could see no houses or temples, he thought they must be leaving the city. Then the stranger rounded a bend and disappeared between two ordinary looking trees at the side of the road. Master Jaks followed, with the sling carrying Bixei right behind him, and Llesho took a deep breath and slipped between the same trees.

  He found himself on a carefully manicured path set with flagstones of varying sizes that artfully mimicked the meandering flow of a stream. The flagstone walk led them to a series of low-roofed structures. A network of ponds and waterways separated the buildings from each other while a series of gracefully arched bridges connected them again. The dim light of the minor sun wrapped the whole in a soft green slumber. Dumbfoun
ded, Llesho stared back the way he had come and saw behind him a stone wall rising higher than his head. From the lane that wall had been invisible. Not just out of sight, he realized, but invisible, hidden by some spell that buried the quiet garden in deeper privacy than even the high stone wall. Bixei had likewise looked back, and he met Llesho’s astonishment with an attempt to look worldly, but missed.

  “What have we got into?” Bixei asked him with a look, and Llesho’s answering glance said, “Trouble.”

  That Master Jaks showed no surprise at all only made matters worse, as far as Llesho was concerned. The governor’s witch: Llesho wanted to know what his teacher knew about witches and witchcraft, and why he had let Llesho suffer through months of Overseer Markko’s torment in search of answers Master Jaks could have given him for the asking. But they were crossing one of those fragile looking bridges, over a pond on which pink-and-white lotus flowers rose on stems above the water, swaying in the slight breeze.

  On the other side, they passed under the roof of a gatehouse that led them into a private garden where a pale, cold woman waited to greet them. Llesho recognized her. She had tested him with the short spear and the knife in the weapons rooms on Pearl Island, and she had accompanied the governor when he greeted the gladiators in the arena. Master Jaks bowed with bland courtesy, as if to a stranger, so Llesho did the same. He trusted Jaks, though he was beginning to wonder why, as he worried about what plot not of his choosing he had unwittingly fallen into.

  The woman opened her arms to greet them with a calculated smile that warred with something darker in her eyes. “The governor of Farshore Province welcomes you to his service,” she said. “You will need rest, of course—especially the young one with the wounds. Habiba will take care of your papers and show you to your quarters. And he will answer your questions.”

  The governor’s lady gave a slight nod of dismissal, then she turned and entered one of the low wooden houses that surrounded the garden. When the door slid into place behind her, Llesho could not tell where it had been.

  The stranger, Habiba, bowed to Master Jaks and smiled at the boys. “This way,” he said, and gestured toward another bridge, leading deeper into the complex of houses and waterways. Over the bridge, down a path between two slightly larger buildings with two tiers of curled roofs they followed him, to a small house with fragile, greased parchment screens for walls. Habiba slid a screen aside, and they entered the office of an overseer. The bearers of Bixei’s litter set him down and departed, leaving the novices alone with their teacher and the governor’s witch.

  Habiba went to the elegantly fragile desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers, turning first to Master Jaks. “Do you have your prize-book?”

  Jaks reached into his leather tunic and pulled out a worked leather case that hung by a cord around his neck. From the case he pulled a small book, which he handed to the overseer.

  Habiba opened Jaks’ prize-book and studied it for a moment. “You were close to winning your freedom when Lord Chin-shi put an end to your aspirations, Master Jaks.”

  “Lord Chin-shi pulled me from the arena before I had earned my price,” he confirmed. “His lordship valued my skill as a teacher, and did not wish to lose my services to death or manumission.” Master Jaks recited his history in a flat voice, but Llesho saw the muscles in his teacher’s throat tighten with restraint. Manumission: the freeing of a slave. What emotions the master hid, Llesho could not see, but he imagined them much as his own at his captivity: a helpless rage more suited to a child than the powerful man-at-arms.

  “Some day you must tell the tale of how a hero with the bands of an assassin on his arm landed himself in the arena at all,” Habiba commented, “and how it was that your kin allowed the slight to remain on their honor for so long.”

  “I have no clan,” Master Jaks answered with a voice like stone falling on stone. “My family all lie dead.”

  Llesho remembered the bodyguard who had died to keep him safe. Was he your brother? he wanted to ask. Your family, did they all die fighting at Kungol, too few against the invading horde? But he could say nothing in front of Bixei or the governor’s witch, who flitted an expressionless glance over Llesho before returning his attention to Master Jaks in front of him.

  “So I have heard.” Habiba reached for a chop and an inkstone, as if the conversation had revealed the likelihood of rain, not the destruction of a clan of mercenaries and assassins.

  “Her ladyship’s family rules, in the emperor’s grace, at Thousand Lakes Province, where slavery is outlawed,” Habiba explained, his voice soft but commanding, and terrible in its quiet anger. There was no comfort in his voice—a warrior would acknowledge no need of comfort—but Llesho felt the softness of his words tame some hurt he felt in his own breast. Master Jaks inclined his head, an acceptance of comradeship if not peace.

  “According to her marriage contract with his grace, the governor of Farshore Province, her ladyship’s household shall always be a mirror in which she may see the Thousand Lakes reflected. No one serves here as a slave.”

  He stamped Master Jaks’ prize-book with the governor’s chop and returned it solemnly. “The gift to his lady of your freedom has cost his excellency very little.”

  Habiba then held out the contract with its blue seal. “Your manumission papers,” he said, and added, “her ladyship would like to hire you, Freeman Jaks, to train the warriors for her house. The contract is here,” he offered a second folded packet. “If you need someone to read it to you, a scribe will be supplied for you.”

  “I can read,” Jaks informed him.

  Habiba nodded. “In that case,” he said, “shall I offer you rest in the guards’ quarters, or in the guest quarters?”

  “In the guest quarters, until I have read the contract.”

  Habiba gave them the blank smile of officials everywhere. “If you choose to accept the contract,” he said, “this will be yours.” He handed Master Jaks a slim gold chain like the one he wore around his own neck. “It marks one as being in his excellency the governor’s service, and should be worn at official functions and when representing the household in a formal capacity.” The overseer’s smile seemed more genuine when he added, “Her ladyship does ask that you leave it at home if you decide to go pleasure-seeking in the city, so that no scandal may fall upon his lordship. At any other time, you may wear it as you choose for the protection this house may afford you.”

  Master Jaks took the gold chain and slipped it into the leather case where his prize-book had rested. “I will keep that in mind,” he said, and bowed his thanks for the papers he now held in his hand.

  So the gold chain had not marked Habiba as a slave in this household, as Llesho had believed. He wondered how much difference there truly was between a free man who acted the slave, and the slave he pretended to be, but Habiba did not look like he invited the question.

  “As for the boys,” Habiba continued, “her ladyship faces a dilemma and must, for a time, bow her head to the decree of the land. His divinity, the Celestial Emperor, has foreseen the possibility that the unwanted infants of slaves may be cast upon the mercy of the empire for their upkeep. The empire has enough prostitutes and thieves already, and further has no wish to act as nursemaid to the castoffs of its lords and nobles. The law therefore requires that children born or bought into slavery must remain the property of the slaveholder, with all the responsibilities that entail to property ownership, until the youthful slave has developed the skills to sustain his or her own life at no expense to the empire.”

  “I don’t understand,” Llesho said, though it terrified him to speak up in front of the governor’s witch. “What does all of that mean?”

  The witch, Habiba, leveled the full power of his gaze on Llesho, and Llesho quaked on the inside but held his ground. He had a destiny, and had better start acting like it or he’d spend the rest of his life hiding like a rabbit.

  “It means, Llesho, that in the eyes of the law, you and your friend will rema
in the private property of her ladyship until you pass your seventeenth summer. During that time you will each choose a trade according to your talents and needs, and at the end of that time, when you have proved to the governor, in accordance with the laws of the empire, that you can provide for your own needs, you will receive these—” he lifted from his desk two packets sealed with blue ribbons. Manumission papers. Freedom. And already signed, or they would not have the governor’s seal on them.

  “What do you want to do with your life, Llesho?”

  Llesho met the witch’s gaze. The man would think him a fool if he told him the truth, or he would think him a spy and a traitor. By law, the entrails of a spy were torn out in the public square, their place in the spy’s body filled with hot coals, and the flesh sewn together around the coals with whipcord. The coals cauterized the wounds while they burned the hidden flesh; it took a long time to die. Llesho had already seen the witch’s idea of mercy—Madon was dead—so he said nothing about his quest.

  “I only wish to serve,” he said.

  Habiba studied his face for a long moment. He must have seen the color disappear, the life fading behind the stone of Llesho’s eyes, because he sighed and broke the contact to glance over to Bixei, including him in the questions to follow.

  “Can you read and write?” he asked, and Llesho answered, “Yes,” while Bixei shook his head.

  “Sums?”

  “A little bit,” Llesho said, and Bixei shook his head again. No one trained slaves destined for the arena in the arts of the nobility, and Llesho little knew how much he had given away about himself with his simple assertions of truth.

  But Master Jaks did understand. “An educated slave, a prisoner taken in battle from the same land as Llesho, took an interest in the boy when he worked in the oyster beds. He taught the boy a little of reading and arithmetic.”