The Shadow Watch

by S. A. Klopfenstein

  The realization that she might in fact be dead did not strike her with fear, as she would expect. Tori was… enamored… and curious. It was beyond anything she had ever thought possible. She looked to the chancellor for answers, but he merely smiled. After a few moments, he took her by the arm and brought her nearer so she could get a good look at her hanging body. In the baking sunlight reflecting off the crystal palace, the corpse smelled like the heaps where dockworkers dumped fish innards in the Fringes. Stiff and grotesque, the skin—her skin—was already taking on the thready, hanging look of decay and the picking of crows.

  Matted dark hair. Tawny skin. Pointed nose and thin lips. It was as though she were looking at her reflection in a nightmare. If Tori had not felt pain coursing through her body at that very instant, she might have thought she was a ghost looking upon her own corpse from the Aether.

  “You’ve been dead a full day,” the chancellor said. He chuckled. “In a sense.”

  “How?”

  “Not all my Morphs are limited to beast forms. This one matched your figure perfectly, didn’t she?”

  Tori was speechless, and mortified by the chancellor’s conniving brilliance. Cyrus Maro had squelched any hopes of rebellion before the thoughts could fully lodge in the people’s minds.

  “Yes, I killed one of my own soldiers. A brave and loyal woman, to be sure, but a small sacrifice to keep the peace. Already, the lowborns are doubting what they saw in the square, and their fear of the ruling class is restored.”

  “Why not actually kill me?” said Tori.

  “Magic is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?” As he spoke, the chancellor floated from the ground, only a few inches, but it still left Tori’s mouth hanging open. Though his ancestors had outlawed it across the empire, though his Morphs scoured the New World hunting down sorcerers, the chancellor wielded magic himself.

  “The First Chancellor feared magic,” said Cyrus Maro. “So, he rid the world of it. And then he died, like all rulers before him. And then my forefathers ruled, and they too feared. The world all but forgot about the powers of the Old World. But what good did ridding the world of magic do them? Before he died, my grandfather lost half his realm. And my father lost half of that. I inherited a fragment of an empire. And now, this damned civil war threatens what little is left.”

  The chancellor’s voice betrayed his disdain for his legendary forefathers. He gazed out beyond the city, toward the far reaches of his own realm. His eyes were focused and cool. “But I am different. I don’t fear magic. No, I am fascinated by it.” He took her hand again, still floating.

  Tori didn’t know what to say, but she found the tension leaving her. Was it possible the chancellor was not the monster she had always imagined? That this chancellor was different from his ancestors? He wielded magic just like her. He’d spared her life, despite her defiance in the square.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Astoria. I do not believe tales of gods and Watchers. I believe in power. And magic, if one learns to trust it, is the greatest power of all.” The chancellor returned to the ground. “Tell me, when your gifts came to the surface in the square, what was it like?”

  The longer they talked, the more Tori felt comfortable talking to the chancellor. He didn’t speak to her like a lowly servant girl. He spoke to her almost as an equal. “I became aware of the world in a… different way,” she said. “I could sense things I’d never been able to see. I saw the world, but I saw something more—beneath it, I guess. Like I could see… the makeup of the world?”

  “Yes! The makeup of the world! And what did you find in the makeup of the world?”

  Tori struggled for the right word. “It was… energy.”

  “Yes! Yes, Astoria, there is a power at the heart of the world which cannot be fully explained. Despite my ancestors’ attempts to exterminate it, it lives on. Some once attributed it to gods and Watchers. Now, we call it sorcery. Others have called it by many other names. This power threatened the Old World, and so the world moved on. But now, look at you and me. Here we are, three hundred years after the War Between the Worlds and the annihilation of magic. Yet that power lives on in us. We have access. We are special. We can harness this energy.”

  But Tori felt uneasy the more he spoke of this power. It was beyond her control. She had killed those guards in the square, innocent men, simply doing their duty. Servants just like her. And in the square below, the last cart of dead servants rode off in the streets. Tori felt a twisting in her stomach, as though the guilt were being wrung out of her. “You still haven’t answered my question,” she said at last.

  “What question?”

  “Why go to the trouble of staging my death? It would have been as easy to kill me. And you would not have wasted a loyal soldier.”

  “Wasted… no, Astoria, you would be the waste.” Ever since the day her mother abandoned her, Tori had despised her true name. She had become someone different. She had become Tori. But now, she enjoyed hearing that name again from the lips of her ruler.

  The chancellor smiled and took her by the hand. His skin was soft and warm and… enticing. She liked his attention. Throughout her life, Tori had walked in the background. She was not particularly strong or skilled. She was a hard worker, but she had never been special. Now, the greatest ruler in the New World was holding her hand. It was unfathomable how quickly her entire world had turned over on its axis.

  “My dear, you are far too rare a phenomenon to simply kill,” said the chancellor. “And so tenacious too. To defy me in my own city?”

  Is he complimenting my rebellion?

  “I spared you because I want you by my side. I want to learn from you, and you from me. Share your gifts with me, and you could have everything this harsh world has held back from you. Wealth, prestige, and power unmatched in the New World, unmatched even by those you’ve despised all your life. Those damned highborns…”

  Tori imagined this future. Learning to wield her new, blossoming power. Playing the courtier. Attending balls with lords and ladies, as she’d seen so many highborn girls do. All of them would be envious; all of them would be oblivious to the secret she and the chancellor shared.

  Tori was special. Perhaps she always had been, and she had simply not known it. And the chancellor admired it. He desired it—desired her. Gods, to be desired by the chancellor! How many highborn girls would give their left hand for this moment?

  It was true. Tori did desire to rise above the lords and ladies. To slaughter the taskmasters in the Fringes who took advantage of poor and desperate lowborns. Tori stood up straight. Her strength was returning to her; she felt something surging in her again, an awareness of the world, the way she’d felt it in the square. Her magic.

  “You want to collect me,” Tori said.

  “You might call it that,” Cyrus Maro whispered. “I want you to share your gifts with me, and I will share with you as well.” He took hold of her bare arm now, gently. Her skin tingled.

  “What if I… refuse?”

  “Refuse? Why would you ever want to do that? I want to share the world with you, Astoria. I want to discover this lost realm together.”

  Tori could feel his breath against her neck. His warmth washed over her. She imagined herself, one day, as his queen. Two sorcerers ruling over the world. She did desire it. Besides, she couldn’t do anyone any good if she was dead. Look where Darien’s resistance had gotten him. Tori was a survivor. And if this was what it took…

  Tori leaned closer. “Okay,” she said.

  The chancellor smiled. “Of course, we will have to change you.”

  “Change me?” Her fingers suddenly felt colder in the chancellor’s grasp.

  “All the city knows your mutt face, Tori. Not to mention, have you ever seen a Yan Avii noblewoman in Osha?”

  Tori shook her head. The nobles were all Oshan-born, from ancient families that had ruled the North since the ancient Elyan races had invaded the land.

  “I want to raise a diamond up from the as
hes, Astoria. But you must look like a diamond.” His fingers traced her jawline, but now, his touch felt… less alluring. “We will construct a false identity. A lady from the southern reaches of the empire who has come to court. It will not take much magic to make you look Oshan. You already have the eyes.”

  Suddenly, as though coming up from the depths of a great sea, Tori realized something. Something that should not have taken her so long to understand.

  This was the chancellor beside her, the tyrant whose line had reduced her and thousands more to slaves and peasants. The tyrant who saw her as a mutt, like all the other highborns. The tyrant who had sent Darien to slaughter in his name. Cyrus Maro’s ancestors may have created this cruel world, but he perpetuated it, even took pride in it. And now, he wanted to change her skin so she could fit in with all the other nobles she had despised all her life. After Morgath was conquered, would the Yan Avii be the next to be absolved back into the empire?

  Suddenly, Tori understood why Darien had chosen the gallows. If Tori served the chancellor, she would become the oppressor she had always despised, like the taskmasters, the nobles, the Legions who killed Darien’s family.

  “I think…” Tori pulled away from the chancellor’s touch and pointed to the dead Morph dangling above them. “I think that is the future of those who refuse and don’t refuse you, alike. I could never serve you, milord.”

  The chancellor’s gaze turned icy. He seized her arm, where her blood had been drained. Tori cried out, and the pain surged anew. The chancellor shouted for his guards. Two appeared in an instant and took hold of her arms. Now he will kill me, she thought with morbid satisfaction.

  Perhaps this was the way Darien felt when he’d walked to the gallows. Tori regretted using her magic then. She had stolen that rebellion from him, but now, she would die in his honor.

  “You’re right, precious Gallows Girl,” said the chancellor. “I want to collect you. However, you are under the delusion that I need your consent. I have been a gentleman until now, but I will share your gifts one way or another. The draining of your blood allows me to do more than simply dilute your power.”

  The chancellor took a needle and tube from one of the guards and jabbed it into the crook of Tori’s arm. Her blood drained into a chalice until it was overflowing, dripping down the chancellor’s hands and onto the ground. The hollow, out-of-body feeling returned. Her body went numb as more blood trickled down her arm. Tori collapsed in a growing pool of her own blood.

  Cyrus Maro lifted the chalice to his lips and drank until all her blood was gone. Tori clutched her arm. The numbness swept away, and waves of pain coursed through her bones anew.

  The chancellor stretched out his hand toward the dead Morph dangling from the statue. The noose of rope trembled.

  And then, the rope disintegrated in an explosion of fibers, and the Morph body of the Gallows Girl, the hope of the servants of Osha, plummeted hundreds of feet to the streets below. Tori realized with horror that he wasn’t going to kill her.

  “I hate martyrs,” said the chancellor, turning to her. “And you will never become one, Gallows Girl. You will live in rot and pain for the rest of your short life, fueling my magic with your blood. You will serve me until the day you die. But always remember—as you cry out in agony, as you wish for the end—it was you who chose your destiny, not I.”

  Tori could not respond. She could only watch, helpless, writhing in pain, her blood forming tributaries on the crystal balcony.

  Part II

  Winter’s End

  The first flower to bloom in the North is the winter lily. Long before the thaw, it springs forth against all odds from beneath the snowpack. It gives hope to the people of the North, a sign that the harsh winters will always come to an end. It is the flower now known as “Astoria.”

  —from Dawn of the Third World

  6

  Tori’s life—if it could be called a life—became a routine of blood and hunger and darkness. Her cell bore no link to the outside world. Light was perpetually dim and colorless, seeping under the iron door in bleak wisps. Day or night or whatever it was, the light remained constant. Her cell was buried somewhere deep beneath the White Citadel. There was no basis for time except when the slit at the bottom of her cell door would open, and a plate with stale bread, a fermenting apple, and a cup of water would come through. On occasion, there arrived a cold slop, which tasted vaguely of porridge. Tori guessed these meals came once a day, though there was no way of knowing for certain.

  The meals were almost worse than true starvation. They dispelled the pangs for an hour or so, but then they would return with fury, and Tori spent the rest of the day with a crushing emptiness in her stomach, trying not to speculate how long it would be before her next momentary respite.

  The little slivers of light provided enough visibility to know there was nothing in her cell to see. The room was about eight feet squared with no chairs, no drainage vents, nothing. Nothing but a small bucket in order to do her business, which reeked horribly and was switched out only when it had begun to overflow, and always while she slept. When this happened, Tori woke with a start to the sudden absence of stench.

  As days passed, the bloodletting grew less frequent. At first, it seemed to follow a pattern of every two meals, but then it was three, and then it was more. It was as though the Morphs could sense the weakening of her body. No sooner would she begin to feel a little revived than Morphs would arrive with a needle and several glass vials. When they finished, they wrapped her arm in cloth and left her to lie in aching pain and hollow starvation.

  Weeks went by, and the guards removed her shackles, as she barely had the strength to stand for the draining process, let alone to resist them. It was a small mercy.

  Tori wondered how long she would last like this. How much blood and magic could her body continue to produce before her wells went dry?

  A month passed before the chancellor summoned her to his palace. Once more, she was dolled up and dressed in fine clothes. She knelt at his throne, and the chancellor touched her jaw tenderly when he approached.

  “You look terrible, Astoria,” he said.

  Tori felt terrible. As the servants readied her, Tori had seen the dark rings around her eyes, her yellowing complexion, the way her skin drew tight around the bones of her face. Tori did not respond. I won’t give him the satisfaction.

  “It’s a shame to see you this way. Come along.” Cyrus Maro held out his hand and led Tori, again, to his balcony. The square below was filled with nobles and merchants and servants going about business as usual. The snow was beginning to melt. Spring had come, but it all felt the same in her cell.

  “No more riots,” said the chancellor. “They’ve already forgotten about you. To think, your suffering is for nothing. I’d wager you don’t last a year in the dungeons.”

  He said it as though this weren’t a remarkable amount of time. Tori dreaded the thought. A year of this hell?

  “What do you care?” Tori said. “You have my power, whether I serve you or not.”

  The chancellor did not smile. He took her hand, and his warmth spread through her, breaking through the numbness that had taken over her existence. His voice grew solemn. “Believe it or not, Tori, but I don’t enjoy seeing you this way. I don’t enjoy wasted magic. I don’t believe in wasting anyone. Take your friend from the gallows. Darien, was it?”

  Tori clenched her fists at the mention of him. She had destroyed his rebellion, and now, there was nothing she regretted more than the day she discovered her magic. “Don’t say his name.”

  “Ah, yes, a tender subject… but Darien is adjusting well to life in the Shadow Camps. He may well become a fine soldier. He thinks you’re dead, you know. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

  In a dark way, Tori wished it were true. Her fingers trembled, and it was not out of fear or cold. It was weakness. One month of bloodletting had left her feeling worse than any pain she had endured in the Fringes. She had known hunger
and cold and agony then, but she’d had Darien. Though they had lived in a mere shanty with dozens of others, though she had worked all day in a textile mill and eaten little, Tori had still clung to the hope of better days. Now, there was no hope. Only wondering how long it would take to die…

  The chancellor’s touch grew warmer. His face radiated. Tori fought the urge to draw near. That is what he wants.

  “There is so much for you to learn,” said the chancellor. “So much potential. Why waste your magic, Astoria?”

  Tori’s mind had begun to clear, the most it had since she had last been on this balcony. But a month of suffering had not swayed her. “Serving you, milord, that would be the waste of my magic.”

  The chancellor did not grow angry with her. “Well, we will see what another month brings.”

  The guards returned with a chalice and tube, and the chancellor drank her blood on his balcony. And that marked the first sick cycle of Tori’s existence.

  Spring passed, and so did the short summer. Every month, Tori was summoned. Every month, she refused the chancellor, and every month, he drank blood fresh from her veins. As each month passed, Tori felt her body and mind fading farther and farther away. For most of her waking hours, she was barely cognizant of reality. When her mind began to clear—which usually meant she had less than an hour before the next bloodletting—her thoughts often returned to her mother.

  Why did she sell me? Ever since the gallows, Tori had doubted the things she’d once thought were so clear. The memories did not return all at once. They slipped into her dreams, beginning with the boy.

  A Yan Avii boy from her village. His warm, slightly pudgy face was so vivid, dark eyes stricken with fear. In her dreams, he was swept away by the surging force of the Great Spillway. The mighty river would have borne him to his death. Tori had to do something. Something raged inside her, like a sudden rising tide…