The Prince of Shadow

by Curt Benjamin

  “I can believe it,” she answered him with a laugh, handing Llesho a flatbread covered with a combination of hot and cold fillings that made his mouth water. “He’s nothing but a stick—buy him two, before he fades away to a shadow.”

  “That wouldn’t do at all,” Shou agreed, pressing a few copper coins into her hand. He bit into his own flatbread and motioned for Llesho to take the extra that she had wrapped in paper for him.

  She wished them enjoyment of the market and added, “Take him to see the performers over by the Temple to The Seven. The puppets have a play that reenacts the ascension of the new emperor, and a woman with a performing bear has drawn favorable audiences enough to annoy the cloth merchants.”

  “Why don’t the cloth merchants like the bear dancer?” Llesho asked her around a mouthful of flatbread and meat.

  “Her audiences block their entrances, so their business suffers when her bear dances. He is a very droll bear, however.”

  Llesho wasn’t in the mood for watching bears dancing. He’d lost Mara to the dragon and Lleck first to death and later to the rapid current of Golden Dragon River, and the memory of his lost friends still hurt. That was all before he’d met General Shou, of course. The general couldn’t know about Llesho’s harrowing escape at the river, or his anguish at watching the healer give her life for his safety. So Shou headed straight for the knot of laughing people at the steps of a low, shabby temple.

  Pushing his way through the crowd which had already begun to disperse, Llesho followed. When they reached the steps of the temple where the performers worked, the bear dancer had already gone. Shou stopped to chat companionably with a temple priest in threadbare garments who gathered up the offerings of the day from the worn wooden steps. No thick packets of cash changed hands here, but a flower, a bowl of rice, and one of vegetables fresh from a supplicant’s garden. The priest interrupted his conversation to give thanks for each as he gathered it into his basket.

  Llesho gave the area a quick scan—the bear dancer could not have disappeared so quickly—and caught a glimpse of her turning a corner between two vast warehouses almost before he recognized her.

  “Mara!” He followed and discovered a short alley leading away from the market square. The alley had collected a few people on their way home, but Llesho saw nothing of the woman or the bear, who must be Lleck if he had seen the bear dancer aright.

  “Llesho!” General Shou caught up with him and grabbed his arm, and he couldn’t be a good enough spy to fake the near panic in his eyes. “By ChiChu, boy, don’t disappear like that.”

  “I am not the trickster here,” Llesho answered tartly, but he knew he owed the man a sensible answer. Unfortunately, he didn’t have one to give. “I know her. The bear dancer. I saw her die.”

  He didn’t add, And if it is she, her bear used to be my teacher. He had already given the man more wonder tales to believe than one afternoon could support, and didn’t want to add any more fuel to that fire.

  Shou peered down the alley as if he could see those few short minutes into the past and discover where the woman and her bear had gone, but his answer addressed the present. “Either you know her and she didn’t die after all, or your friend is truly dead, and memory plays tricks on you.”

  “I saw her die at Golden Dragon River,” Llesho repeated, “and I saw her slip into this alley just now.”

  “If your dead are walking the streets of Shan,” the general said with a colder, harder tone than Llesho had heard him use before, “we had better find out why.”

  “How?” Llesho asked him.

  The general’s expression had closed around his thought. “Your companions from the road should have reached the palace by now,” he said. “Perhaps they can shed some light on the question.”

  Llesho didn’t know how his friends could help him. They hadn’t seen the Dragon swallow Mara whole, and hadn’t seen her in the marketplace either, but they had known Mara, and Lleck, too. They could at least confirm he was not mad when he told Shou about the reincarnation of his teacher into the form of a bear. Habiba had seen the dragon eat Mara in payment for their passage across the river, however, and he had seemed sure that Llesho would see the healer again.

  “We need Habiba.”

  General Shou winced.

  “I thought he was your friend.” Habiba had introduced him to the general, and Llesho left the question hanging: What lie is about to catch up with you now?

  “We are allies.” Shou scrunched up his face in a very unmilitary show of mixed feelings. “Habiba often does not agree with my methods.”

  Llesho set aside that objection with a tart reply. “That makes two of us.”

  The general laughed. “Don’t tell Habiba that when you see him.” He led Llesho through the alley rather than back the way they had come, winding around the marketplace rather than through it. They met fewer passersby away from the square, though once a sharp-eyed Harn shoved by them with a sneer for Shou in his disguise as a merchant. The general gave no indication he had noticed the slight, but he uttered a single, sharp word when Llesho’s hand wandered to his throat. Killing a single Harn trader wouldn’t gain the prince anything but a moment’s satisfaction, but it could cost him everything.

  A wide boulevard emptied into the market square above the slave block. Crossing, Llesho did not let his gaze linger on the source of his nightmares, except as a reminder of his purpose here. He had a general at his side and tomorrow he would find his most beloved brother, Prince Adar. All he had to do was stand by and let it happen when General Shou bought Adar as a slave. He hoped he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life. Habiba, and even Mara, could wait.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  SHOU’S winding path returned them to a secluded spot where a cluster of low bushes obscured the bottom half of the palace wall. Pulling away some branches, the general revealed a wayside shrine, carved in relief into the pink stone wall.

  “Turn around,” the general instructed Llesho absently, while he studied the carvings intently. “I haven’t used this passageway for years; it may take a few minutes to remember the sequence.”

  Llesho did as he was told, but after a moment Shou gave a thoughtful grunt. With the grinding of stone shifting upon stone, the shrine swung inward to reveal a dark tunnel. The palace walls seemed so riddled with the things that Llesho wondered why they hadn’t fallen in on themselves already, but he followed General Shou inside, took up a torch when it was handed to him, and helped to push the massive door back into place. When they were in pitch darkness, Llesho heard the snap of a match firing, saw the tiny flame, and watched it take hold on the fuel-soaked end of Shou’s torch. The general waited until his torch burned steadily, then fired the one Llesho carried.

  They walked some hundred paces down the straight passage, until they came to a dead end at a blank wall. Shou found a latch in what seemed to Llesho to be a flaw in the pointing of the rough stone, and another hidden door swung open.

  “I used to sneak out of the palace by this route when I was about your age.” Shou laughed softly as he led the way up a narrow stairway of age-worn stone. “Good to see it hasn’t been discovered since then.”

  “You lived in the palace?” Llesho asked sharply. Of course, only a high-ranking nobleman could aspire to become a general of the Imperial Guard, but the idea suddenly made him nervous. Shou was also a spy, and when the general had come upon him in the park, Llesho had been too free with his opinions about the emperor. And he’d shown the man Lleck’s pearl. Being a spy didn’t make him a thief, but he’d clearly known more about the nacreous gem than he was telling.

  However, General Shou was nodding. “I was raised here. Had anyone asked what title I wanted attached to my life, I would have told them explorer. Of course, that was not an option even then.”

  Llesho thought that the general had too much excitement in his life as it was. “All I ever wanted was Thebin,” he answered. Not quite a reprimand, or a complaint about the unfairness
of the world, it nevertheless made him uncomfortable to have said it out loud.

  Fortunately, General Shou did not take the comment as a slight. “Then we will have to win Thebin back for you, won’t we?” he promised, and led the prince down another turning.

  They came out of the tunnel into a chamber shrouded in richly decorated banners hanging from ceiling to floor. Low couches had been pushed to the edges of the room, and a meeting table and chairs sat in the center. Lling lay in a restless sleep on one of the couches, her color flushed and sweat beading her temples. Hmishi sat next to her, occasionally stroking the hair from her forehead. They both still wore their Thebin uniforms, now stained with the dust and grime of the road—only the bandage on Lling’s arm was clean and fresh. In the chairs, an equally travel-worn Bixei and Kaydu had draped themselves in poses of exhaustion and disappointment. Little Brother, Kaydu’s monkey companion, sat in the middle of the table, peeling a banana, while Habiba paced nervously back and forth by the door.

  Little Brother was the first to notice that Llesho and General Shou had entered through the secret passage. He dropped his banana and began to hop up and down and screech the alarm. Suddenly, the companions were on their feet, reaching for weapons they did not have. Even Lling roused from her sleep and half rose from her couch.

  “Lord General!” Habiba bowed low when Shou stepped from behind a long, floating banner. “Or should I say, Lord Merchant?”

  When Llesho followed, his guards shouted his name—”Llesho!“—together. All but Lling ran to greet him, and she grinned smugly from her couch.

  “So you found him,” Habiba remarked. “Did retrieving him cost you much?”

  “Not yet, but I expect it will cost me a tael or two before we are done,” the general confirmed with a sigh. He took a chair and waited while the companions reassured themselves that Llesho was indeed safe and sound.

  “Where were you?” Kaydu demanded, and Bixei exclaimed angrily, “We have been looking for you since noonday! We thought you’d been kidnapped.”

  Hmishi just shook his head. “He wandered off. I told you he wandered off.”

  “And I told you he would turn up in his own time,” Lling reminded them.

  Hmishi pressed her to lie down again, but she resisted. “Habiba says you need rest,” he scolded.

  “What’s the matter with Lling?” Llesho interrupted the welcome with his own question, directed at Habiba. He sat down in the chair between Bixei and Kaydu and tugged on Kaydu’s tunic, urging her to sit back down as well.

  Lling answered the question tartly for herself. “Lling’s wound became infected. It is now well on its way to healing and no cause for alarm.”

  The look that passed between Hmishi and the witch told a different tale. Habiba shrugged. “She needs to keep the wound clean and the arm still, or she risks losing it.”

  “Have you alerted the emperor’s physician?” Shou asked.

  “I don’t want a fuss made over a stupid cut on my arm!” Lling snapped. The skin above and below the bandage was pink. Llesho guessed it was hot to the touch, but it was not unduly swollen. He looked for the telltale red streaks that would indicate the infection had invaded her blood, and was relieved to find none.

  Habiba graced her with a sour grimace. “That won’t be necessary, Lord General. But if you could recommend a good locksmith? I am beginning to fear that nothing short of restraints will ensure the cure is taken.”

  Llesho smothered his laughter. Lling glared at him, but she did permit Hmishi to help her lie down again on the couch.

  “Tell me about your trip,” Llesho asked his companions when the greetings were over. “Did you run into any trouble on the road?”

  “Since Markko traveled with you,” Kaydu pointed out, “we didn’t expect much trouble for ourselves.”

  “We tried to catch up with you.” Lling spoke up from her couch. “But you were traveling too fast for the horses to follow, and we didn’t want to leave them behind.”

  Llesho winced. It was his fault she was in danger from her wound, because she had neglected her own care to protect him.

  Kaydu nodded, glaring at him. Well he should wince, she seemed to say

  “Our troubles began when we arrived at the palace,” Bixei said, “and found that the emperor was away, our charge had disappeared, Master Markko had likewise vanished, and no one could find General Shou. Oh, and Master Den had gone out to see if he could find any one of the missing people.”

  “We thought that Markko must have taken you,” Kaydu added. “We were trying to figure out where he might have gone when the general materialized through a solid wall with you in tow. He has our thanks, but I’d still like to know where you were.”

  “I’d like to know that myself.” Master Den, with his usual good timing, chose that moment to open their door. He glowered at them all with a sweeping flash of his eyes. Once he made sure the door was securely closed behind him, he settled the disfavor of his frown on Llesho.

  “Markko takes his ease in an unpleasant eating establishment in the city,” he said. “The place has a bad reputation for serving the Harnish slavers who frequent the market, and Markko does not dine alone. The traders who attend him have a Harnish look about them, and they seem to be on familiar terms.

  “I expect he will be returning soon, and some of us should be in our rooms on the other side of the palace when he does. Before we go our separate ways, however, we’d all like to know what Llesho has been up to.”

  Llesho stared down at the table, as if the grain of the wood had mesmerized him. Now that it came to telling them, he hesitated, as if speaking about it aloud could somehow put him back in the slave pens. But it had to be done.

  “We went to the slave market.”

  Three of his companions went very still. Kaydu, who had been born free in Thousand Lakes Province, had never seen the slave block or the pens, but she had seen the products of them and she respected the silence of her friends. Little Brother, with the sensitivity of his monkey kind, edged closer to Llesho. The monkey chittered softly, and reached to touch Llesho’s hair in a gesture of comfort. Llesho took the monkey’s hand and smiled at the distraction.

  “I think we have found Adar, my brother,” he said.

  “You ‘think’?” Habiba pressed him. “You do not know him?”

  Llesho stared at the witch, trembling suddenly; the afternoon became confused in his mind with his experience as a child on the slave block, and he could not speak.

  General Shou watched him with concern while offering an explanation in his place. “Llesho posed as a slave, and I as a merchant with a taste for Thebins and a wish for a Thebin healer to tend my small collection.” His smile was thin and dangerous. “They have such a one on their books, and have agreed to broker a sale with the current owner for me.”

  Kaydu looked from Llesho to her father, balancing the need for secrecy with Llesho’s need for reassurance, but her father gave her no signal on which to base a judgment. Finally, she decided that Llesho ought to know. “We brought five hundred soldiers with us in case we had to fight to get you out of here, but we left them outside the city wall until we had scouted out the situation.”

  “And how long have you told them to wait until they are to attack the palace and rescue you?” General Shou asked. His voice was harder than Llesho had ever heard it, and the man’s piercing gaze made him quail.

  “Until midnight, tonight,” Kaydu answered. She sounded sure of herself, but her eyes grew dark and calculating. She didn’t breathe while she waited to hear the general’s response.

  “Then perhaps you should send them a message.” General Shou spoke very softly, but the steel of a blade rang in his voice.

  Kaydu nodded. “Of course. The question is, what message to send. Will we need them tomorrow to secure Llesho’s brother?”

  “I think a few bits of gold will work better than a foreign army,” General Shou answered her. “As an officer in the Imperial Guard, I can tell you tha
t if your soldiers enter the city, the emperor will have no choice but to consider it an invasion by a hostile force. Why set friend against friend when I have gold enough to spare and a willing broker for the bargaining?”

  “You have a plan, I see.” Master Den took a couch by the wall nearest where General Shou and Llesho had entered. Llesho figured that was no coincidence; he wondered how much Den knew about the palace. Did his teacher know the emperor himself?

  “Part of one,” Shou admitted. “I should be able to buy Adar with little trouble, and there are officials enough in the palace to prepare the manumission papers. But there is the problem of Master Markko.”

  “He may be working with the emperor against us,” Bixei suggested.

  General Shou shook his head. “The emperor is not so easily fooled or frightened as Master Markko may believe.”

  “But Llesho must still petition the emperor for help to cross the Harn lands and free Thebin,” Kaydu insisted.

  She hadn’t included herself in that goal, and Llesho wondered if, beyond Shan, he would be traveling alone. Well, not alone if they succeeded tomorrow. Adar would be with him.

  “I believe the emperor may sympathize with Llesho’s petition,” the general confirmed, only to dash their hopes again: “It may not be in the best interest of the Shan Empire—or Thebin—to announce an alliance, however.”

  “Then what was the point of our mad dash to the capital?” Llesho demanded, frustrated.

  General Shou looked at him as if he’d gone quite mad, and even Habiba had the grace to look embarrassed for him.

  “A hypothetical problem in strategy, Llesho,” the general explained as if to a particularly dim child. “In the name of the governor of Thousand Lakes Province, for the honor of his daughter, the widow of the murdered governor of Farshore Province, a witch marches at the head of his master’s troops. In his train he bears a boy whom all know to be the exiled son of the murdered King Khorgan of Thebin.

  “In pursuit come the armies of Farshore Province, led by the magician who has murdered that province’s governor in the name of Lord Yueh, the usurper. This murderer proclaims himself regent of a child who may or may not be born to the usurper’s widow. If the child exists at all, it may be the usurper’s own child, born out of the union of husband and wife and blessed by the goddess, or it may be the murderer’s child, forced upon the grieving widow. Or it may be the product of a secret union plotted by the widow and her magician lover, to replace her husband with his murderer.