The Prince of Shadow

by Curt Benjamin

  The creatures tangled overhead, the fanged monster grappling the bird with its tail while its claws ripped at the roc’s breast. The roc darted its razor-sharp beak at the monster, and when it pulled back, the ends of a bit of flesh dangled from its mouth. The monster emitted another of its soundless screams and began to tumble from the sky, its shape blurring as it fell: now it was a creature out of nightmares with the hands, the face of a man, now it became a man with leathery wings covered in gray hair, now a creature with the hindquarters of a beast and the arms and breast of a human, its human mouth open in a scream that did not stop through all its transformations, until it had fallen to earth.

  The roc followed it down, transforming as it did into the witch Habiba, dressed in robes the colors of the bird’s plumage. But Markko was gone; no sign of him remained except for a splash of steaming blood where he had fallen, and the remnants of his scattered army.

  “You can get up now. And you did well, my daughter.” Habiba tapped the vulture on its long, curved beak, and the bird unfolded, grew arms and legs, and a familiar face.

  “Thank you, Father.” Kaydu did not have the success of her father in transforming her clothes with her body. She gathered her discarded uniform that had fallen on the battleground while Habiba bent over the heap of Thebins.

  Llesho didn’t notice until Habiba started to sort them out that Hmishi had joined them on the pile. “I’m all right,” Hmishi insisted, but his eyes darted wildly in his head, unable to fix on anything.

  “Concussion,” Habiba informed him. “Lie still until I can spare someone to escort you to the hospital tent.”

  The magician raised Lling with his own hands, and examined her arm before he declared her serviceable if damaged, and able to make her own way to the hospital tent.

  With the weight of his companions removed from his back, Llesho was able to rise on his own power and survey the damage. Markko had disappeared and left behind his army—the fallen where they lay, and the defeated wandering the battlefield in confusion and terror.

  The field was silent now except for the cries of the wounded, but the ground was muddied with the blood of the dead and churned by the hooves of the horses into a thick black muck. Squads of her ladyship’s army passed back and forth over the sucking mire, searching for their own wounded, and marking out the dead for burial.

  Closer to hand, Stipes sat cross-legged in the dirt, Bixei’s head in his lap. He still held a hand to his damaged eye, but his blood had caked and rusted his fingers in place so that he could not have comfortably moved them if he chose to, or if he’d even remembered that he held them there. Bixei’s eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell in rhythmic breathing.

  His own wounds forgotten, Master Den sat quietly at Jaks’ side. Jaks’ eyes were open, fixed on a distance living eyes could not reach. Whatever the soldier-assassin was seeing in the afterlife, it did not seem to frighten or dismay him. Tenderly Master Den wrapped a cold hand in his broad, warm grasp.

  Llesho wanted to pound at Habiba with his fists, to scream at the man and curse him for the devastation that surrounded him, but he found he could not break through the hard, numb shell that separated his bleeding emotions from the outside world.

  “What happened?” Llesho demanded an answer from Habiba with the cold authority of a prince. He didn’t feel the tears leaving trails in the dust on his face, so he didn’t try to hide them.

  Habiba looked at him for a long minute. Then he picked up the splintered remains of an arrow and drew two parallel lines in the bloody dirt, added a few lateral lines between them.

  “Our column,” he said, and put a circle midway between the front and rear. “Kaydu’s squad.”

  Next he drew a triangle, its apex driving at the circle. “Markko sent his army at your position—we knew he used birds for spies and would have your location pinpointed. When he attacked, we knew he would try to divide our army and pluck you out of the middle. So we let him try.”

  He drew two more lines, showing how the column had not truly broken at Llesho’s position, but had bent toward the flanks of Markko’s army like the blades of a scissor closing. “The emperor could not authorize imperial troops to take part in the battle without consulting his advisers and considering the messages sent to him by either side of the conflict. Fortunately, in his capacity as governor of Shan Province, the Celestial Emperor has no such limitations. Shan provincial troops moved in to close off Markko’s escape—”

  Habiba added a final line to his drawing in the blood-soaked mud, joining the two halves of the column at their widest separation to mark out the base of a triangle enclosing Markko’s wedge. Then he threw the bit of shattered arrow away from him and stared at Master Jaks, lying motionless on the ground. “He knew your position was the key. Markko must be lured in, but he could not be permitted to break through. Master Jaks chose to hold the position himself.”

  “Did the others know?”

  Habiba brought his gaze back from the dead assassin, but settled his focus inward, as if he could not face Llesho with the answer. “Kaydu, yes.”

  She had put her clothes back on, but when Llesho glanced up at her, she turned away as if she still were naked.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Stipes may have guessed. As for Master Den—” Habiba shrugged one shoulder, an admission of helplessness Llesho did not credit. “The question should be, perhaps, ‘did he choose to know?’ I don’t have an answer, though.”

  Stretcher bearers had reached them at last, grim-faced men who looked at Habiba nervously and then waited while he gave directions for the care of his charges: Bixei and Stipes, and Hmishi, to the hospital on stretchers. Lling might follow on foot, but should have her arm seen to. Master Jaks should not go to the mass grave of the line soldiers; the bearers must return him to his tent, where he would be prepared for the burial due his courage and his station. Llesho wondered what rank a former slave and assassin might command. Master Den would not leave the body, although Habiba asked him to go to the hospital to have his own wounds tended.

  When the stretchers had moved away, trailing their walking wounded, Habiba put a hand on Llesho’s left shoulder. “And now, there is someone you should meet.”

  Kaydu joined them, walking a little behind, still unwilling to intrude herself on Llesho’s grief or ask his forgiveness.

  “You should have told me,” Llesho stated.

  “Perhaps.” Habiba accepted the reproach, but his tone held no real agreement in it. Llesho was a pawn. He’d always known that—why else would her ladyship take such an interest in a deposed and rather pathetic princeling with some hint of magic about him, but no clue how to use it? Why else would Markko chain him like a dog for his amusement? He had not, until now, however, understood how dangerous a pawn he was.

  Habiba interrupted his brooding. “General Shou,” the witch said as he pulled back the cloth that covered the entrance to his own tent. The general stood in the glorious armor of his rank, but the splendor of his appearance was marred by a streak of dirt smeared across one cheekbone and ending on the bridge of his nose. More smudges of dusty sweat marked the arm he offered. Llesho clasped it, felt the firm grip of the general’s hand above his own wrist.

  “The emperor offers his grief for your losses this day, but extends his joy that you have survived the battle.” The general released Llesho’s arm after he delivered his message.

  “We can only hope that the gain will be worthy of the loss,” Llesho answered.

  The general raised an eyebrow. “We can, perhaps, do more than hope.” He turned on his heel and left the tent.

  Kaydu had not entered with them, so Llesho found himself alone with Habiba, who was the first to break the tense silence between them.

  “Kaydu will have a tent prepared for you. Clean up and rest as much as you can. We petition for an audience with the emperor tomorrow morning.”

  “I have to go to the hospital,” Llesho answered. “And I must see Master Jaks.” His v
oice broke on the last.

  Habiba, thankfully, did not comment upon his loss of control, but only said, “He would not be sorry to die protecting you. If he regretted anything, it was that he could not see you safely home.”

  Llesho nodded, but could not speak. He brushed by Kaydu, afraid that she would want to offer her own apologies and demand his forgiveness when he only wanted to weep for the blood of his teacher on his hands.

  “We did what we had to do,” Kaydu shouted after him. She did not sound apologetic at all, and Llesho did not stop to challenge her on it. If he opened his mouth, he would scream, and he wasn’t sure he would ever stop.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  HIS first impulse was to find the tent where Master Jaks lay and give the dead man a piece of his mind. A prince owed his life to the living, however. Llesho knew he shouldn’t have yelled at Kaydu, who had done her duty and deserved better for it. Much as the drama of the gesture might appeal to him, he also knew that he would not rather be dead in Master Jaks’ place. Nor would the man have thanked him if he were, any more than his brother, Khri, would have seen Llesho dead at seven summers to save his own skin. He had a mission to complete, a people to free, and Master Jaks was just one of many who had already died and would die in the future to make that happen.

  He had to stop thinking of them as friends. They were tools, weapons in his battle. A prince took care of his sword because his life depended on its readiness. Only a fool sacrificed the battle to save the sword. His heart didn’t buy his argument, but he pulled the reins in on his anger and changed direction for the pale blue of the hospital tent. First the living.

  Stipes had lost the eye. He lay on a woven rush mat rolled out on the blue canvas floor, a cloth soaked in a potion to ease the pain held in place by a bandage tied around his head. Bixei lay on the next mat over, still unconscious, but breathing steadily.

  “He took a nasty bump on the head.” Hmishi sat cross-legged on a nearby pallet, a cup of some sweet medicine in his hand, and continued the healer’s report, “But his eyes are clear behind his lids. If he wakes, his brain should not be addled.”

  If. The healers offered hope and took it away in the same breath. Lling stood nearby, leaning on a well-tethered tent pole. Her arm rested in a proper sling now, with a clean bandage on the wound. She glared at him, measuring her anger against his own. “Are we going home?” she asked him.

  Llesho knew what she meant, and so did Hmishi, who watched them both over his potion. Not Pearl Island or Farshore or Thousand Lakes Province, but Thebin. Had the pain and the death been worth giving to his cause? He nodded once. “We are going home.”

  “All right, then.” She walked away, and Llesho watched her go.

  “She’s worried about Bixei,” Hmishi tried to explain away her anger. “He should be awake by now. The healers believe that the mist from Markko’s weapon may contain a slow-acting poison, and that Bixei somehow took a greater dose than the rest of us. They call for Master Den, but he doesn’t come,” Hmishi continued with a shrug. “I don’t know what they think the laundryman can do. . . .”

  Llesho sometimes forgot that his Thebin companions had not met Master Den until Habiba’s forces came to their aid at Golden Dragon River. They could not be expected to see him as Llesho did. But even those who had worked with him in the gladiator days couldn’t be said to know Master Den. Perhaps Jaks had, but he wouldn’t be telling anyone now. Habiba guessed something, as the healers did. But Llesho figured even they underestimated the teacher.

  “He won’t leave Master Jaks.” Laundrymen, in that, had more freedom than princes. Which explained much about Master Den’s choice of rank in the world.

  “Not even if the living need him?”

  Llesho stole a glance at the unconscious form on the nearby sleeping mat. He tried to see Bixei as a tool, but his memory played tricks on him, fed him images of the training yard and the cookhouse. If Markko had poisoned them, Lling might be unconscious by nightfall. Hmishi, too, and Stipes, who had already lost an eye in Llesho’s battle, for a country he’d never heard of. Llesho might never see Thebin again, except in misty dreams the dead clung to.

  “He wouldn’t leave us here to die while he wept over his dead,” Llesho assured him, though he wasn’t certain it was true.

  “He might tell that to the healers,” Hmishi complained.

  “He will.” Now that he had satisfied himself about the condition of his living, Llesho’s mind had turned, Like Master Den’s, to his dead. “I’ll be back later.”

  Master Den looked up when Llesho entered the un-floored tent—white for mourning, with the grass still green underfoot—and gestured for him to come forward.

  “Jaks is waiting for you,” Den said. For a moment Llesho’s heart beat faster in anticipation. It was all a mistake, and Master Jaks had merely been stunned and found the premature grief at his death a sorry joke, but nothing more.

  No. Not alive. The body lay still and cold beneath a winding sheet of cloth white and fragile as chestnut blossoms in the spring. Den had removed the soldier’s bloodied leathers and washed away the dirt and sweat of battle with water in which sweet herbs and flowers had been steeped. Master Jaks might have been sleeping, Llesho thought, but no hint of breath animated the peaceful shell of flesh.

  Teacher and slave, gladiator and assassin, soldier: what other words identified this man who lay so silent on the pallet before him? Did any of the names matter now that the man was dead? Only the wounds hidden beneath the white cloth and the six bands of the assassin on his arm remained to tell the harsh tale.

  “He loved you as his liege and lord,” Master Den said.

  Llesho nodded. How could he explain how angry that made him? Jaks was gone before Llesho rightly understood him, and for what?

  “I’d rather be a slave with a live friend than a free man with a dead servant,” he said.

  “It wasn’t up to you. That’s a price kings—and princes—have to pay.”

  “What would a washerman know about being a prince?” Llesho snapped. He didn’t need that kind of pointless drivel from one who was grieving more than any of them.

  “Nothing,” Master Den answered with a sour smile. “Nothing at all.”

  “The healers think Markko used a poisoned vapor during the battle.” Llesho did not look away from the dead soldier, but still he was aware of Master Den nearby.

  “You look well enough to me,” Den answered. Llesho waited, and finally, the master bowed his agreement. “If you stay with him, I will go to your comrades.”

  “It would ease their minds.” Llesho added, not quite as a plea, “Bixei is still unconscious.”

  “He’ll wake up.” Den reassured him. Not like Master Jaks, who would never wake in this life. Llesho heard the sound of the tent flap pushed aside, and then he was alone with Master Jaks.

  “I did not give you leave to go,” Llesho said to the absent spirit of his master, and found his anger rising again, becoming a white hot rage. “If I have to stay and see this through, what right have you to abandon me just when the fight begins? What am I suppose to do now? Who can I trust—”

  Llesho’s gaze fell upon the six bands around the arm of his teacher. Assassin. He reached a hesitant finger to stroke the first dull blue band, remembering his early doubts. Six times this man had murdered for pay. Llesho wondered who those souls were. What had they done to deserve such a fate, and how had Master Jaks justified his actions with his honor? Did all men walk such a tangled path from birth to death as Master Jaks had done?

  “Fate has taken everything from me.” Foolish, Llesho knew, to blame Master Jaks for that, but he did. “Home and family, Lleck and Kwan-ti, Mara, and now you, are all gone. And I am left with lesser folk who look to me for answers I do not have. What am I supposed to learn from this?

  “Tell me, damn it!” he screamed at the corpse. Horrified at his own actions but unable to stop himself, he curled his fist and slammed it down upon the breast of the dead man. Agai
n. “Tell me!”

  A sudden gasp spasmed under Llesho’s fist, and the eyes of his dead teacher flew open, animated with fear and confusion and pain. The dead mouth dragged air down a dead throat, and the dead chest, so mortally wounded, rose and fell unevenly.

  “Master Jaks?” Llesho froze, paralyzed by his own conflicting feelings. It had all been a mistake. Jaks was alive.

  The blue lips struggled to shape a word, and Llesho bent low to hear what Master Jaks wanted to say to him.

  “What . . . have . . . you . . . done?” the voice, so near death, whispered.

  Looking into those clouded eyes, Llesho saw agony, not only for the wound that once again bled freely, staining the pure white sheet, but for something only those eyes could see, that now was lost.

  “I don’t know.” Llesho fell to his knees, lay his head upon the heaving breast, and wept. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he cried.

  “I . . . can’t . . . stay . . . here . . . !” Master Jaks’ tortured whisper cut Llesho to the heart. He had not meant to cause his teacher pain, only to demand recognition of his own anguish. But it was too late, to late for any of it. And he realized how selfish his desire to hold his teacher in this world past the time appointed for him was.