The Council of Shadows

by S. M. Stirling

  “I killed Michiko, though,” Ellen said, taking deep breaths.

  “How do you know?” Cheba asked.

  Ellen glared at her. “I shot her in the head with a silver bullet from a rifle!”

  “Oh. Good for you, gringa!” Then briskly to Adrian: “So. This man here agreed to my terms. You will keep this promise.”

  Adrian bowed gracefully, amused and impressed. “I authorized him to bargain for me,” he said. “The citizenship and the money are”—he waved his hand—“easy enough.”

  “Easy enough for you!”

  “Precisely. Easy enough for me,” he said, with a hard smile.

  This was not a woman who would respect anyone who could be pushed, Power or no.

  “You could have asked for more.”

  “I asked for what I wanted. More I can make for myself. What I asked for, you owe me. It is justice, not charity.”

  “Very well. As to Adrienne. . . I will kill her the moment I can. So will any of us here.”

  Ellen nodded vigorously, and so did Guha and Salvador.

  “Shit, yeah,” Farmer added. “Get a number and stand in line, señorita.”

  Adrian amplified: “I certainly don’t object to your killing her if you get a chance. Be my guest; you have ample cause. But nobody will let her live an instant longer than they must. She is too dangerous, too tricky, too likely to seize any opportunity to wiggle out of a trap.”

  Cheba scowled ferociously for a moment—Adrian thought there was even the hint of a pout—then reluctantly nodded.

  “Bueno. I see that this is necessary.”

  “Living well while your enemy does not is the best revenge,” Adrian said.

  “A head cut off and put on a stick is the best revenge,” Cheba said with enormous sincerity. “Still, you are right, she must be killed.”

  “As to protection, no place will be safe while the Shadowspawn rule. The world is not safe; they plan soon to kill on a scale that the worst conquerors of the past could see only in nightmares. I will do my best; but I guarantee nothing and I wash my hands of you if you do not follow my orders in matters of your safety from them. Agreed?”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “Agreed. You are a man who does not promise more than he can do, I think.”

  “You’re right,” Ellen said unexpectedly. “Adrian . . . are we still going through with this plan?”

  “Yes,” he said decisively. “That Adrienne is alive makes everything that has happened in the past year . . . acquire a different meaning.”

  “No shit,” Farmer snarled.

  He put his hands to his head. “Nothing on precog . . . Anni?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “But with Adrienne, it would be like trying to see a match against a bonfire.”

  Adrian nodded. “We must look at each event through a different lens.”

  Guha and Farmer looked at each other; the man shook his head, and she shrugged slightly.

  “But this plan is still good. Dead or gone, she is not there, and neither are my parents, so there is no adept at Rancho Sangre. Even better, if we have the children, we have a lever over her.”

  Ellen looked at him, surprised and a little shocked.

  “You wouldn’t hurt them?”

  “No.” A hard smile. “You know that. Adrienne will suspect it. . . but she will not be sure, and she will be restrained by that uncertainty. Also it will injure her prestige with other Shadowspawn, which can only be good. Whatever she plans, whatever her cunning, she cannot simply sweep them aside. If we can prevent Trimback One, the Brotherhood is in a position to thwart her plans for the parasmallpox plague.”

  He looked around; the others remained silent. “Then let us do as we planned. With one modification.”

  Except for Cheba, the others were already in tough dark clothing and boots, gear that would be practical in a fight without screaming military or terrorist to a casual observer. Light flexible body armor of the latest nanotube variety didn’t bulk them out unduly, and for once the Power wouldn’t be with the other side. The weapons were Tavors, Israeli machine carbines with a full suite of sensor sights, and grenade launchers; the silver-inlaid and warded knives were a backup this time. Ellen had her sniper rifle, and they all wore comm headsets.

  Salvador grinned as he slapped a magazine into his stubby assault rifle. “Like old times,” he said.

  Adrian shook his head. “We are still at a disadvantage in a straight-up fight. In and out without violence is best.”

  “How?” Cheba said skeptically. “The brujos are gone, but there are many guards with guns. The lesser servants are like machines that walk, but some of the others are cunning and watchful. And. . . what do you call them . . . Wreakings in the ground, the walls, the air. I can feel them sometimes, like great hungry beasts, like giant rats scuttling between the walls of the world.”

  “So,” Adrian said, and walked up the ramp into the truck. The vehicle looked unexceptional. Inside the ordinary commercial shell was ceramic armor. The padded container within was just big enough for him and his gear. He lay down in it and swung the lid closed, dogging it firmly from the inside. Velvet blackness pressed down on his eyes, impenetrable even to Shadowspawn sight, though not to the Power. He crossed his hands on his chest, hand to opposite shoulder, and cleared his mind of all but the glyphs he sought.

  “Amss-aui-ock!”

  All of the humans bristled a little as he sat up through the lid and carefully came erect and walked down the ramp. A night-walker spoke to fears far below knowledge. Salvador was sweating a little; he was newer to this than the others . . . except Cheba, who jumped back a little.

  “So?” she said. “How will this help?”

  “I was going to go into the casa grande like this,” he said.

  And changed. Then she was looking at herself, naked. She spat something in a language that was not Spanish, and forced herself not to back away as he/she approached.

  “You have changed a little,” he said, studying her with vision and the Power. “You are in better condition . . . several teeth capped, no need to imitate that . . . no calluses on your hands. . ..”

  He closed his eyes and sought inward. The DNA template simply gave you the adult form of the organism at maturity, with optimum development; modifying it to mimic somatic changes caused by an individual’s life history was considerably more difficult. Even a little clumsiness could kill the pseudobody, which meant you had to start over. . . and subjectively experience death, as well, even if only for an instant, and a chance of the Final Death if you were really careless. The others stared as the hair grew shorter and the face a little thinner.

  “There,” he said, and opened his eyes. “I could pass for you. But now I have a better option, with your news, señorita.”

  He smiled grimly and changed once more. This was the easiest of all; the body was a Shadowspawn one, and related to him as closely as possible except for a clone or identical twin. Cheba did give a little jump backwards, as Adrienne Brézé grinned at her. Then she closed her eyes for an instant, lips moving.

  “Is this correct, Cheba? Our lives may depend on it!”

  She moistened her lips and forced herself to concentrate. “The. . . the hair is shorter. It fell out when she was sick and had to grow back. And . . . just a little thinner.”

  Another careful look as he changed. “Yes, yes, that is right.”

  “Good.” He looked at Guha. “I’ll need some of your street clothes; they’ll be the right size. Jeans and a T-shirt and a jacket, yes. A Glock and a wrought knife, too. And my Ferrari is something she might have picked up.”

  Ellen brought him the clothes, and he dressed quickly. The way the body moved was odd, in a way less natural than a beast’s, but it wasn’t the first time he’d transformed so.

  “How do I look?” he said.

  Ellen studied him critically. “Tuck the shirt in. And you need some lipstick, just a touch. . .. Here, I’ll do it.”

  “Now?” he
said, when her light, deft hands were done.

  His voice sounded a little odd to him as a soprano as well.

  “Gorgeous, lover!” she said, and gave him a long kiss.

  He grinned again as it finished. “I fear you are shocking our recruits,” he said.

  Ellen cocked a brow at Salvador. “Hey, don’t knock it. All the advantages of polyamory and monogamy rolled into one!” Fiercely, to Adrian: “We’re going to pull this off.”

  Adrian nodded. To Cheba: “It is credible that she would bring you in the front door?”

  “Yes. Sometimes she takes me places, dates, she calls it. To humiliate me, I think. I don’t let it, I just learn how to act in fancy places or wear the clothes. Someday I will have these things of my own.”

  “She is not a nice person. Let that return to bite her.”

  “Yes!”

  The brooding presence of the casa grande grew as the sports car rumbled through the streets of Rancho Sangre. The scent of time, of Power, of generations of blood and terror and unclean death.

  “You drive like her,” Cheba said, startling him a little. “Very fast, stupidly fast. But very well.”

  Adrian shrugged. “We are related.” A wry smile. “We are mirror images, in a way. Similar, but. . . reversed. Each seeks to destroy the other, because each of us sees what we might have been.”

  The great wrought-iron gates with their gilded designs of tridents and blackened bronze suns opened automatically. The Gurkha mercenaries snapped to attention, presenting their assault rifles. Adrian nodded at their noncom and followed the winding brick-paved road, with stars showing in flickers through the live oaks arching overhead. Scents of cypress and cut grass and oleander came to them, and wind fluttered their long hair beneath the head scarves.

  A servant in a braided white jacket and black trousers hurried out to open the car door.

  “Leave it here,” Adrian said, with a lordly nod. “Come, my sweet little nibblesome bizcocho,” he went on, and walked in with an arm around Cheba’s waist, feeling the stiff disdain in her body language.

  She was supposed to be acting as she would with Adrienne, which he suspected wasn’t easy.

  Tall doors and the great entry hall went by. He fought down his excitement and his dread, struggling for focus; that was always just a touch harder when he wore a female form, but he was considerably more aware of detail, more able to track multiple lines of thought and action at the same time.

  “Assistant household manager,” Cheba whispered in his ear as they reached the top of the stairs and the beginning of the corridor that led to the private wing. “Thomas Kenworth. He is the one who really runs the house, while Theresa does the bigger things.”

  A middle-aged man, cadaverous, with very cold blue eyes. Adrian could sense his blank surprise, and beneath it a very thin thread of suspicion. Not yet conscious, manifesting only as a feeling of unease, and anyone who wasn’t uneasy around Adrienne wouldn’t last long. And this one had some sensitivity; not trained, but he felt as if he were a little over twenty on the Alberman, nearly as strong as Harvey. Adrian’s night-walking manifestation was very strong; there were times when he forgot he was not embodied in this state himself. But there were ways to detect it, if you knew how.

  “Doña,” the man said, bowing. “This is unexpected!”

  “Predictability is so boring,” Adrian said. “Of course, it wouldn’t do for you to go off on tangents, Thomas, but that’s another matter, eh?”

  A flash of fear. “How may I serve you?”

  “I decided that my nights would be too lonely without athletic little Cheba here, so I ducked back to fetch her. And the children; they should be present at the historic moment. Send someone to pack their things, immediately.”

  “But, Doña—”

  A touch of ice, and a painful tug at the man’s mind. “Is there a problem with immediately, Thomas? I’ll go through to the nursery, and I would appreciate it if I didn’t have to wait. You know how waiting upsets me.”

  The man hastened off, pulling his phone from his belt as he did. Adrian suppressed an impulse to blow out a sigh of relief and wipe his brow. He didn’t hurry either, instead strolling along and remembering to sway slightly.

  “That was as she would do it,” Cheba murmured. “But she did not threaten so very often. Sometimes she would just kill instead. Mostly she would smile, and order, and they all obeyed very quickly.”

  Adrian nodded jerkily. I must remember that my Adrienne is my vision. Not untrue, but not all the truth of another being.

  They turned down the long corridor . . . and Adrian flung himself backwards, his arms outstretched. Cheba turned to him, her face puzzled as his gaze went to the tile surround that outlined the arch, and down to the floor. The way was closed by two doors of gilded bronze fretwork, but that was not the problem; they were light and not locked.

  “What is the problem?” she said. “The children’s quarters are beyond here.”

  Adrian hissed as the hint of pain ran along his nerves. One step farther . . . His stomach lurched a little as he read the twisting paths grouped around the portal. He had felt something like this at Ellen’s apartment, over a year ago, when his sister had left a trap for him. A probability cascade, an avalanche of might-bes, each more disastrous and deadly than the last. He relaxed the focus of his eyes, his hands moving in small, precise gestures, murmuring Mhabrogast beneath his breath, Seeing.

  But that had been an improvisation. This was something that had taken days or weeks, great skill, and several lives. It was so complex that it was almost sentient, alive in its own way, a thing like an eternal scream, ready to lock you in its arms and spiral down the slope of entropy on a journey that would never end.

  “What?” Cheba said again, sharply.

  “You said that you could feel the Wreakings sometimes?” She nodded quickly, her dark eyes going wide. “Well, they are here. Very strong, and some of them new. Like rats in the walls of the world, indeed, and aimed at me—or at my kind, at least. If I had walked beneath that arch with the Power active and hostile intent, neither of us would have left here alive.”

  “What do we do?”

  “You fetch the children; it is not keyed to normal humans, and I think it is keyed pass to you specifically. I will wait here. Quickly now!”

  Cheba walked through the familiar rooms with their cheery, horrible murals. Past one where the Little Mermaid dragged the Prince beneath the waves with strong cold arms and a contented little smile, and into the big play chamber. Shrill voices sounded, and one of the nannies was there reading a magazine.

  “Hi, Cheba!” she said. “The little devils are hard at it.” She yawned. “I do wish they slept at the same times as the rest of us. They’ll be going strong after midnight.”

  Cheba nodded and made herself smile, not daring to speak. The danger was like a snake coiled in her stomach, making her skin flush hot and cold. Hate drove her, the memory of laughter and unendurable pain and loathsome pleasure that was even worse eating at her soul.

  The playroom was big, nearly as big as her whole house, and that was huge compared to anywhere she’d ever lived before. There was a great complex dollhouse, and a jungle gym and trampoline and who knew what else. A small form caromed into her and threw her arms around her waist.

  “Caught you!” Leila said. “Hi, Cheba! Now I eat your brains!”

  “We’re playing Zombie Apocalypse, Cheba!” Leon called happily, lumbering with his arms outstretched. “Braaaiiins!”

  A deep breath and she smiled. “You cannot eat my brains tonight, mi reinita,” she said to Leila, rubbing her head. “Your mother is here to fetch you and Leon. She has decided that you should go on her trip with her after all, and me too.”

  “Why are you so scared, Cheba?” Leila asked innocently. “You feel all fizzy and scared.”

  “Your mama scared me,” she replied; which was entirely plausible; they knew about that, if not the details.

  “Oh. I hope yo
u taste good when she bites you; you need to be bitten, I can feel it. C’mon, Leon. It’s Maman!”

  “Oh, good!” Leon said. Then, curiously: “Is it about our dad?”

  Cheba froze, then cleared her throat. “Why do you think that, patroncito?”

  “Because I asked Maman, and she said that we might see our father sometime soon. I’d like that.”

  “Perhaps you will,” she said, and he nodded solemnly; she was unpleasantly conscious that he could probably read the truth in her statement.

  But he cannot read my thoughts. That does not come to them while they are children. Feelings yes, thoughts no.

  “Come! Your mother is impatient.”

  “The children’s luggage is ready and has been loaded into your car, Doña,” the man Thomas said; he looked as if he were slightly out of breath.

  Then he blurted out: “Why are you here, Doña?”

  His eyes lifted to the archway. Then they went wide; Adrian could feel the logic chains shifting in his mind. His mouth had just begun to open when the Shadowspawn drew and fired.

  Crack!

  A small blue hole appeared in the man’s forehead; bone fragments and pinkish gray brain, blood and hair spattered on the pale surface of the wall behind him. The ricochet peened away from the stone, flicking a divot of plaster and revealing the limestone block beneath as it keened down the passageway.

  Killing him with the Power would have been quieter, but it might have activated the guardian Wreakings . . . and he would need all his reserves before they got away, probably. Cheba stumbled to a halt with a boy and girl on either side of her, her hands resting on their shoulders. Adrian’s heart lurched for an instant at the sight of their faces; then control clamped down steely cold.

  “You’re not my maman—” the girl began, as the boy gazed gapemouthed at the dead man.

  “Tzi-ci-satza,” Adrian snarled, and made a gesture with his left hand. Push with the mind. . .

  The children’s eyes rolled up in their heads, and their minds plummeted down into something almost like natural sleep. He’d expected that, hoped for it; Shadowspawn children were often prekeyed for that, with Wreakings laid on in earliest toddlerhood. He had been, and Adrienne as well; removing it had been part of their training when they neared puberty. Cheba gave a cry of dismay and clutched at the small forms, cushioning their fall to the carpet.