The Conclave of Shadow

by Alyc Helms

  Nine

  The Rock

  Sunday found me testing my new resolution for a balanced approach as I climbed too high on a too-old wooden ladder to clean the cobwebs from the eaves of our front landing. Living in one of San Francisco’s historic painted ladies was pretty awesome, but you had to take upkeep seriously or you’d start to skew a little too Addams Family. A perfectly harmless house spider had bungeed down to say hi to Shimizu the night before. I’d offered to take care of the issue as part of my ongoing penance.

  A penance I might die for. The ladder rocked as I climbed another rung above the recommended safety step so that I could reach the corner furthest from the door. Forget running with scissors. My epitaph was going to read Missy Masters: Her reach exceeded her grasp.

  The ladder steadied underneath me, which surprised me so much that I almost tumbled off it. I dropped my duster and grabbed at the top step before I followed the duster’s tumble over the porch railing to the pavement far below.

  Mei Shen grimaced up at me in apology, both hands on the sides of the ladder. “Sorry. It looked like you were going to fall.”

  “It’s okay. Heart attack’s a more dignified way to go.” Keeping my grip on the top step, I carefully climbed down to terrace firma. Then I tossed caution after my duster and pulled my daughter into a rib-crunching hug.

  For once, she returned it just as hard instead of trying to squirm away.

  “You spoke to Johnny?” I hadn’t expected to see her, not this soon, and certainly not without Tsung attached to her side.

  “Yeah.” Now she squirmed. I let her go. “He can be really annoying. But I figured we had tickets, so…” She shrugged.

  “Tickets?”

  “Alcatraz? The ferry? Mother, we talked about it weeks ago.”

  I remembered her talking about it, though nothing of any plans. Still, I wasn’t going to let this chance go because of an early-onset senior moment. “Right. I just thought… with everything… let me change?”

  I stored the ladder and abandoned Mei Shen as a captive audience to Luis and his ever-thickening wedding plan album while I rinsed off and layered up. I’d never been to Alcatraz. It was another one of those things you only did when family came to town, which was on my not-so-much list. But everyone talked about how cold and windy it could be, even in summer. When Shimizu’s parents visited for Christmas, her father couldn’t stop repeating that he’d left Oskaloosa to escape weather like that. It had been fun to watch Shimizu laid low by Dad humor.

  “So, what did happen with Argent?” Mei Shen asked after I’d rescued her and we’d set off down the hill toward Fisherman’s Wharf.

  I dug my hands in the pockets of my coat and told her everything I’d been up to since the Academy, leaving nothing out. Not the stuff I was certain Argent would want to keep classified, not the subjugation of Asha, not even my meeting with Lung Di.

  And yet, strangely, it was the Lady who seemed to catch Mei Shen’s attention.

  “You’re sure she’s not a member of the Conclave?” Mei Shen asked as we boarded the ferry. The crowds were thick enough that we had to go to the open top deck to find two empty seats together at the back of the ferry. Even at dock, the wind whipped past us hard enough to pull hair loose from my French braid. It would be even worse out on open water. I resigned myself to eating my own hair for the rest of the day.

  “Who can say? I only ever hear them talked about as a nameless collective. I don’t think so, though. She didn’t seem fond of them, and Templeton… he serves the Conclave, but he was afraid of her. Why?”

  Mei Shen rose up on one knee, watching with interest as we pushed away from the dock. “You know about uncle’s fading protections. David and I are doing what we can to restore them, but I’m untrained and his blood is diluted by many generations. I’ve heard mention of this Lady, but it sounds like she’s much more powerful than I’d been led to believe. If she doesn’t like the Conclave…”

  “The enemy of my enemy?”

  “Exactly.” Mei Shen went to the rail as we came about, leaning over it to watch the engines churn the water. The wind blew her hair across her face as we picked up speed.

  I might have joined her, but the bump of the ferry over the choppy waters was making my breakfast sit funny. I pressed my hand to my belly, grateful to the wind for drying the clammy sweat from my face and neck. It only got worse as we headed further into the bay. I gripped the edge of my seat as if that could steady me against the rocking of the boat, and bit my tongue for pride because… really? I was getting seasick on a damned bay ferry?

  Pride gave way to nausea before we were halfway across to Alcatraz. “Mei Shen. I… I have to go below.” If I was going to puke, it was going to be over a porcelain god, not over the side of the ferry.

  Mei Shen’s excited grin died when she turned to look at me, and she helped me down to the latrine.

  Given the boarding announcements’ warning of rough waters, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the ferry crew knew how to deal with my situation. An absolutely lovely young park ranger brought Mei Shen cool cloths for my face and bottled water for me to sip after I’d emptied my stomach. When we finally docked and the ferry stilled, he told me to take my time until the nausea passed.

  “You’re welcome to return on this ferry, but most folks like to rest up a bit if they have this bad a reaction. There’s a cafe, and they have Dramamine at the park station. Might make for an easier trip back?”

  “Thank you so much, Dylan,” Mei Shen said, giving him a shy smile that was pure theater. Great. I was dying and my daughter was flirting.

  “No worries. I’ll check in on you once the ferry’s clear.”

  Mei Shen’s smile disappeared when Dylan left us. She prodded me upright and toward the gangplank.

  I stopped halfway down the ramp. My nausea had returned in full measure, but the ferry was relatively still. This wasn’t motion sickness. I planted my feet against Mei Shen’s prodding like Old Bessie being led to the abattoir.

  “Mei Shen, we have to leave.” The little dock and entry plaza looked perfectly safe. The most dangerous thing about it was the seagulls stalking tourists for whatever food they could snatch away. A knot of people clustered around the souvenir kiosk and ranger station – just arrived or waiting to leave. Most of our fellow ferry riders were already walking up the long drive to the main cell block. The wind on the eastern side of the island wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been on open water. The midmorning sun shone brightly on the pale stone and crumbling concrete of the buildings.

  But there was something else, a darkness only I could sense. I wondered if this was how the presence of the Shadow Realms felt to other people, this miasma of terror and despair surrounding the island, thin as a scream and thick as oil.

  “It’s fine, Mother. We’ll get tea at the cafe and you’ll feel better.” Mei Shen tugged me forward. I stumbled, then balked again. I could feel the edges of the veil like cobwebs brushing my skin.

  “No, you don’t understand.” I held her arm for balance and caught the brief tensing of her muscles, the guilty glance away. My daughter was good at lying – to everyone but me. I gaped at her. “You do. You do understand. You brought me here deliberately. You want me to go into that?”

  How many times had Mei Shen faced off against me with that stubborn glower – times when she knew she’d done wrong and was doubling down by refusing to admit it? We inherit more than genes from our parents. “I need you to take me across it. I don’t have the skill, and David won’t take me. You’re the only person I trust who has enough command of shadow to do it. I didn’t know it would affect you like this.” She frowned down at the water bottle crinkling in my fist. “It’s only a ward. You should feel better once we’re across.”

  “Across into what?” I hissed. The gangplank jostled under our feet, making my stomach roll dangerously. Dylan had finished whatever shore duties had taken him away and was heading up the ramp toward us. I could grit my teeth and
tell him we were heading back with the ferry. I should. But Mei Shen had to have put me through this for a reason. “You’re the one worried about trust? Try talking to me instead of lying to me. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing but a bit of recon. They won’t even know we’re here.”

  “Who? What is this place?”

  “On this side? Alcatraz. Across the veil?” Mei Shen chewed her lip for a moment, then nodded as though coming to a decision. “It’s the Citadel of the Conclave of Shadows.”

  * * *

  Dylan was infinitely understanding when I told him that yes, I would be disembarking, and that I just needed another minute.

  “You realize I have no fucking clue what I’m doing?” I hissed when he left Mei Shen and me alone again on the gangplank. “Your father’s lessons in Shadow Realms matters basically boiled down to ‘stay away’, and my grandfather wasn’t much more forthcoming.”

  And yet, my recent crash course in Shadow writing and summoning rituals had reinforced a few things I’d started to realize in Shanghai. Rituals and wards and other sorts of magic followed rules, which meant you could bypass them if you understood what they were meant to keep out. The wards around Alcatraz seemed to be a perfect example. Regular people could clearly pass through easily enough. Mei Shen couldn’t, but neither was she affected by the nausea that had flattened me. She’d said it was because her blood was too thin – her blood on my side, inherited from my grandfather.

  “So what happens if we trick the wards into thinking we’re not connected to Shadow?” I mused, digging through my backpack. Somewhere in there–

  “Hah!” I pulled out a Sharpie. I was tempted to do myself first and head down the ramp to protect Mei Shen, but if there was any validity to my blood theory, then she’d be more likely to get through safely than I would. “Give me your arm.”

  Mei Shen pushed up her sleeve, and I scrawled the Lady’s ward across her pale underarm, cutting her off from her connection to the Shadow Realms. She shivered and swayed. “That feels… weird.”

  “Give it a go.” I glanced back at Dylan, standing at the top of the gangplank and watching us with a frown. I scrawled the sigils up my own arm, and my nausea quickly receded. Better than Dramamine.

  Mei Shen took a cautious step down the gangplank, then another and another, picking up speed. She skipped down to the bottom and disembarked with a little hop. “It worked!”

  My daughter, skipping and hopping her way into probable doom. Apparently, her brother had inherited all the good sense. I followed at a more sedate pace. Just as apparent, none of that sense had come from me.

  “Now what?” I asked. The feeling of dread that had receded when I scrawled the sigils disappeared entirely the moment I stepped on land, a bit like I’d stepped out of a fogbank and into sunlight.

  “Um. Tea?”

  Mei Shen and I planned while I settled my stomach with some ginger tea – my own, dug out of my pack. The best the little cafe could offer was Bigelow. We agreed it would be best if I retained the sigils. They rendered me blind to the movement in the Shadow Realms, but I could sense something big and ominous looming behind my crappy Sharpie ward, and I didn’t want to do anything to call its notice down on me. We reasoned that Mei Shen’s thinner blood gave her some level of protection against the ward, so it might also keep her from being noticed. The fact that she was a dragon was also a big plus. Worse came to worse, I had my Sharpie on hand to renew her wards. We found a hand sanitizer station and she rubbed her skin red removing the protection.

  As ready as we could be, we headed up the hill toward the cell house for our headsets and the tour.

  Alcatraz deserved its reputation. It was a cold, cruel, eerie place, the sort of place that seemed to feed the Shadow Realms. The crumbling bits like the Military Chapel and the Officer’s Club were the nicest parts. The gulls and cormorants had reclaimed them from human use, prisoners to nobody. Weeds and wildflowers burst free of the cracks alongside exposed, rusted rebar and window casings. Thick coyote brush grew up against the foundations, and streaks of white birdshit painted the crumbling stone walls. Yes, the most pleasant thing about Alcatraz was the birdshit-streaked walls.

  Up in the main cell house, it was a different story. Grime covered both walls and windows, making everything grey and dreary even on a sunny day. Sound bounced strangely through the cell blocks, the wind a constant rise-and-fall of hollow notes.

  I wasn’t sure what it had been like when The Rock was a prison, but it remained an eerie example of state control even as a tourist attraction. A gaggle of pre-teen boys shuffled along ahead of Mei Shen and myself, some school group, but there was none of the roughhousing or jostling I’d expect. Everyone moved quietly from station to station under the steady instruction of the voices in their headphones. There was little conversation, no laughter. It was a well-ordered passion play of the systematic degradation of the human spirit, giving us all a taste of what might await us if we transgressed. Fear and remembered despair hung in the air, a miasma that weighed down everyone’s shoulders and spirits.

  The miasma here at Alcatraz was result of decades of suffering, evils large and small –gods knew we were aces at fucking ourselves over seven ways to Sunday without any supernatural support – but I was hardly surprised that the Conclave had noticed and cultivated such a place as its base of operations. Even the Lady’s sigils weren’t enough to completely disguise the taint of shadow in the air. I shuddered to think how it would feel if my connection to the Shadow Realms hadn’t been blocked, and shot concerned glances at Mei Shen. Her smile had fled. She didn’t blink enough, as though reluctant to close her eyes even for a moment, and her hand when she took mine was clammy.

  We stopped in Sunrise Alley to give ourselves both a moment to breathe. The barred windows were opaque with grime, the so-called sunlight streaming through was diffuse and thin. This was the best it got.

  “Anything useful?” I asked.

  We’d agreed to wait until we’d left the island to discuss anything of importance, in part so we wouldn’t risk being overhead and in part because neither of us wanted to stay in this place longer than we had to. But I needed to know if there was any point in pushing on.

  Mei Shen pressed her cheek to the cement wall, earning us not a few concerned glances from passing tourists. I waved them on. Nothing to see here. Move along.

  “There’s a lot of overlap. More than I’ve ever seen anywhere else.” She kept her voice low. “It’s like they used the real world as a scaffolding to build permanence into the Shadow Realms structures. The cell block is all barracks. There’s at least two knights to a cell all down the main avenues – Broadway, Michigan. These ones are empty, but I think they might be for servants? The light…” Her fingers crawled up toward one of the high-set windows as though seeking that light. I placed a hand on her back and soothed comfort and warmth into her tense shoulders. “… it rots the structures. I don’t think they like it much.”

  “Solitary’s on the other side. Sunset Strip. You think that’s for more servants?”

  Mei Shen gulped. “Or prisoners. We should check the dining hall and kitchens, but I don’t think they will be bunked down with the rabble. And I doubt they’d keep anything valuable here where there’s so much traffic.”

  They. The Conclave. “Then where?” I consulted the map we’d been given with our headsets. “The Officer’s Club is a ruin. So that leaves what? The Power House and the Model Industries Building? Aren’t there supposed to be catacombs?”

  “Pretty sure those are just legends, mother.”

  “At least on this side,” I said with gallows’ cheer.

  We exchanged a look of perfect understanding. We’d barely escaped Lung Di’s catacombs when they collapsed. Mei Shen groaned. “Let’s hope we don’t have to deal with catacombs again.”

  “Times like these, I wish your uncle wasn’t such a prick.”

  “Dining hall. Then let’s get outside. I need to be outside.” Despite he
r attempt to match my levity, Mei Shen looked as peaked as I imagined I had on the ferry.

  The dining hall plan got dumped as we approached. Mei Shen’s twitches broke into shrieks and jerk-limbed strikes at nothing. I caught her before she could start clawing at her arms. Her voice echoed above the quiet shuffle of feet. A few people around us lowered their headsets, glancing at each other, at me, as though waiting for someone else to help before they had to. Crowd dynamics at their finest. I hugged Mei Shen’s arms close and dragged her away.

  “Bee. She saw a bee. She’s allergic.”

  Comprehension dawned, followed by relief at the restoration of the social order and a few nervous chuckles and kindly smiles.

  Mei Shen was compos mentis enough to latch on to my excuse. “Bee. It was a bee. Damned bees.”

  She didn’t stop shivering until I’d dragged her along Broadway Avenue and into the relative quiet and brightness of the administrative offices.

  “Are we okay here?” I asked.

  She nodded, gulping air.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about the kitchens and the dining hall. It’s some kind of breeding ground.”

  I shuddered and stroked her hair. I didn’t care to consider how shadows replicated. “So. Not bees, then.”

  That earned me a laugh, albeit a shaky one. At least she was laughing. “No. Definitely not bees.”

  “Let’s go outside.”

  The wind blowing across the flat parade ground outside the administrative offices cooled the heat in my cheeks and dried the nervous sweat. Mei Shen turned her face to it, eyes closed and knuckles white on the top bar of the chain-link barrier that kept us from tumbling to the rocks and the surf below. The wind was salt-heavy and biting damp, but a welcome relief after the stifling air of the cell block. Apparently not for everyone, as it chased all but the most determined tourists indoors after only a few minutes, leaving Mei Shen and myself mostly alone. Just us and the gulls. Across the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge stretched between the city and the empty Marin headlands, a clay-red cat’s cradle. The fog was moving in, swallowing the bridge like some creeping, hungry kaiju.