Trading into Shadow (The Magic Beneath Paris Book 1)

by C. M. Simpson

  “Rude!” she said, and Scruff gave a muffled wuff at her side.

  Great, Marsh thought. Just what I need—commentary from the peanut gallery. Time to change the subject.

  “Where to?” she asked.

  Aisha looked at her brother, and Tamlin frowned.

  “Do you think the shadow mages knew Mum and Dad were coming?” he asked. “Maybe they were expecting me?”

  From the way he said it, he didn’t hold out much hope of it being true, but it was a good idea.

  “Why don’t we go check it out?” Marsh told him. “The clerk said there was a visiting mage. Maybe they have offices.”

  “Hungry,” Aisha chimed in and patted the puppy sitting beside her. “Scruffy’s hungry.”

  Oh, Scruffy is, is he? Marsh gave Aisha a disbelieving look and the little girl giggled. The sound brought a smile to Marsh’s face, and she ruffled the child’s hair.

  “You sure you don’t want anything too?” she asked, and Aisha gave her a coquettish look.

  “Maybe….”

  “Uh huh.”

  Marsh took a left turn and headed for the eatery, figuring it had to be the shop under the banner showing a kaffee cup and a crescent-shaped pastry.

  12

  Ruins Hall Welcome

  Despite the early hour, the eatery was busy. Unusually so, Marsh thought as she pushed through the doors. Tamlin and Aisha were two steps behind her. Men and women in traveling leathers gathered around the tables. They were dressed like every caravan guard she had ever seen, and every single one of them looked up when she came in. Marsh ignored them and headed for the counter.

  After all, a mouton was free to look at a shadow mage.

  She stopped halfway across the room when one of the caravan guards stepped into her path. The woman was a head taller than Marsh, and her platinum hair was tied back in a braid that would keep it out of her face in a fight.

  “I know you.”

  Marsh took a step back, looking her up and down. Hard brown eyes stared back. There was nothing familiar in the guard’s features.

  “Pretty sure you don’t.”

  The woman closed the space between them and laid a hand in the center of Marsh’s chest.

  “Yeah, I do. You were on the caravan scheduled to leave Kerrenin’s Ledge after mine—and not happy with being put at the back.”

  Marsh shrugged, looked down at the hand and back into angry eyes, and she decided she wasn’t backing up anymore. That wasn’t how to win this game. She folded her arms across her chest and fixed the woman with a hard stare of her own.

  “Name me a single traveler who is ever happy with being last in line.”

  She made a show of looking toward the counter.

  “I need to eat.”

  “Not here, you don’t.”

  To Marsh’s surprise, several of those around her growled their agreement. Marsh held her ground.

  “Only place that’s open.”

  She resisted the urge to use the children as a bargaining chip and looked again at the woman’s hand and back to her face.

  “You need to clear a path.”

  “No, I need to toss your ass out of here.”

  “You can try.” With that, Marsh twisted around the woman’s hand, ducking under her reach to ram her shoulders into her waist and wrap an arm around her.

  She’d been hoping to tip her over the leg she’d slipped past her ankles, but her opponent wasn’t a stranger to a good fight.

  Caravan guard, Marsh reminded herself as the woman got one hand on her shoulder. Idiot!

  An elbow slammed into the center of her back and Marsh grinned as the woman yelped. The artifact was solid metal, and any good fighter should have known better than to strike someone’s pack. Of course, if it was the only place she could hit, and the blow had been instinctive…

  The heavy impact of a well-placed fist under the pack caught her in the side, and her opponent moved back, stepping over her foot.

  “Nice try, short stuff.”

  The kick came faster than Marsh had expected, but she twisted enough that it only grazed her ribs. It was a pity she was too busy trying to avoid the foot to remember to grab it. She backed up, hoping for a bit of distance—and someone seized her from behind, pulling her arms back.

  Well, fine! She hadn’t grown up in a waystation to be bullied by every traveler’s kid that came through. Marsh used the person at her back as a brace, lashing out with both feet as her first opponent closed and then trying to drop to her knees and pull the person behind her over her shoulders.

  It didn’t work. He was too big and had too good a hold, and her knees didn’t hit the ground.

  “Shadow’s Heart,” she muttered as the grip on her arms tightened and she was pulled hard up against an armored chest.

  Why did caravan guards have to be so Shadows-cursed big?

  And why did they always have to work together?

  She tried for another kick as her platinum-haired opponent closed, but the woman knocked it aside. Well, this was going to be painful. Marsh tried again to twist out of the hands pinning her upper arms and then lashed back with one foot, trying to connect with a knee. She found a shin…covered by a hardened leather boot.

  “Putain!”

  The man holding her laughed, but Marsh didn’t have time to reply before the woman drove a fist into her gut. Marsh tried to block with her forearms but didn’t have enough range of motion to bring them down in time. She really hoped Tamlin could get Aisha out of the eatery before these guys beat her senseless. Actually, she really hoped he’d gotten his sister out of here before the fight had gotten this far. This wasn’t the sort of thing kids should be seeing.

  No such luck, as it turned out.

  Marsh grunted as the second blow hit home. She wanted to double up but couldn’t, and her mind drifted. She remembered wondering if the shadows could shield her from the shadow mages, and wished they would shield her now because she couldn’t afford to be laid up for the weeks a serious beating would take to heal.

  Trying to twist away from the next blow, she pulled her legs up in an attempt to protect herself. Somewhere outside the private world of hurt she was in, someone was shouting. Marsh wondered, if she pulled enough threads of shadow together, would they cushion the next blow? It was better than waiting for it to land.

  What would a shadow shield look like?

  The world slowed down as the fist crawled toward her, then darkness flickered before Marsh’s eyes. Great, now she was going to black out. It would be interesting to see just how many additional bruises she would have when she woke up.

  To her surprise, that wasn’t what happened.

  The blow never landed, and the shouting faded. The hands holding her arms loosened their grip and pushed her toward the female guard, who was now trying to pull her hand out of an oval disc of shadow.

  Where had that come from?

  Around her, the silence grew into a pervasive hush. Marsh let her feet carry her forward to where she could lean on a table. All she wanted to do was be violently and spectacularly sick, but she couldn’t. That was a surefire way to get kicked out of the eatery, and she’d promised the children breakfast. Instead, she concentrated on getting her breath back and keeping the kaffee and pastry she’d eaten at the farm down.

  She barely noticed when Aisha came to stand on one side of her, both small hands wrapped around one end of a rolling pin. Tamlin moved to her other side, also holding something between him and the guards around them. The small fierce growl coming from behind her legs was all too familiar, and it succeeded in pulling her out of her discomfort long enough to register that she was still standing in the middle of a crowd of caravan guards—and that they were all staring at her but not moving a single step nearer.

  Marsh raised her head and realized there was something different about the way they were looking at her. Now there was fear mixed with their expressions of anger and dislike. She looked at the children standing on either side
of her and noticed they were standing with their backs to her. Tamlin held a skillet in a two-handed grip, and Aisha waved the rolling pin. Behind her, Scruffknuckle’s growl was undiminished.

  “What…” she began, making herself straighten and take a good look around the eatery.

  The first thing she registered was that there was still shadow surrounding the female guard’s hand, which, of course, was when the door to the eatery opened.

  “You might want to dispel that.”

  Marsh turned toward the voice, wondering what new trouble she’d gotten herself into—and recoiled from the figure coming through the door, her hand going to the hilt of her sword. In a flash, the puppy and two children had interposed themselves between them. That was going to make things awkward.

  “Tamlin, move!”

  The boy shook his head, his attention not wavering from the shadow mage who’d just stepped into the eatery.

  “Aisha!”

  “Nuh-uh!”

  Before she could say his name, the puppy growled, but whether it was because the shadow mage had taken another step toward them or in defiance, Marsh couldn’t tell.

  “You want to call your army off?”

  Someone snickered.

  “I promise I’m not going to hurt anyone. I just came for breakfast.”

  That struck a chord.

  “Yeah, so did I,” Marsh told him, letting go of her sword and reaching out to lay a hand on each of the children’s shoulders. “Come on, guys. I don’t think he’s one of the bad shadow mages.”

  When neither of them moved, she tried again.

  “He’s probably one of the ones your parents wanted you to meet, Tams. Remember? We had to go find him after breakfast.”

  That got a reaction from both of them.

  Aisha looked at her brother, and Tamlin lowered the frying pan. The shadow mage shifted his gaze from Marchant to the boy as though assessing him.

  “Sorry,” Tams said, but Marsh couldn’t work out whether he was apologizing to her or the newly-arrived mage.

  The boy looked up at her before pointing past her to where the female caravan guard was still trying to extract her fist.

  “I’d leave her there if I were you,” he said and walked past the woman to the couple standing behind the counter. His sister followed in his wake. “Thanks for the loan.”

  He held out the skillet, but they just stared at him. Finally, he sighed and put it on the counter.

  “I borrowed it,” he told them, “when you weren’t looking.”

  “And I dis,” Aisha said, waving the rolling pin.

  She stood on her tip-toes, trying to push the rolling pin onto the counter. Tamlin took it from her, setting it carefully inside the pan. Marsh looked at the mage and held out her hand.

  “Marchant,” she said, and the mage smiled, accepting it.

  He has a very cute smile, Marsh thought, and blushed. Fortunately, the mage didn’t seem to notice it as he pulled her close and kissed her on both cheeks by way of greeting. Marsh froze.

  “Roeglin.” He paused, then said, “Over breakfast, you can tell me why your first option was a sword. For now, you really need to bust Lennie’s hand out of there.”

  “Lennie?”

  “Me.” The guard sounded like she was choking down the urge to shout.

  Marsh studied the way the shadow had bonded around the woman’s fist.

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  The woman tried to jerk her hand free of the shadow ball.

  “Don’t…play…games. With. Me.”

  Marsh hoped her face showed the uncertainty she felt.

  “No, I really don’t.”

  “You just unthink it,” the mage told her. “Unweave the threads. You wove the shield. You can unweave it.”

  “I can?”

  Lennie wasn’t impressed.

  “You’d better.”

  Or she’d do what? Marchant wondered but didn’t say it. For now, it was good enough that Lennie wasn’t trying to beat the stuffing out of her, and she wanted to keep it that way, at least for a little while longer.

  “What if I can’t?”

  Lennie made a sound that was a blend of frustration and outrage. She jerked her hand as hard as she could, trying to free it from the slowly turning ball of shadow.

  “I’ll help you.”

  Roeglin came and stood beside her and Lennie stilled, glaring at the pair of them. The look on her face made Marsh wonder if she really wanted to cut the woman loose.

  “Now, remember, all you have to do is feel the threads and ask them to let go.”

  He glanced at the caravan guards gathered around them.

  “You just have to ask. The shadows will listen.”

  She just had to ask.

  Like when she asked the threads to show her where the raiders were or to show her who was moving on the other side of the cavern? Just like that, only both those times she’d had her eyes closed and hadn’t been focused on anything, let alone a single fist that was about to connect. When she’d wanted to shield herself from Lennie’s next blow, she had focused.

  Marsh took a deep breath and held it. Letting it out slowly, she concentrated on the cluster of shadow threads balled around Lennie’s hand. They had woven themselves into something tangible; Marsh had never seen the like. She reached out to touch the ball and Lennie flinched.

  Big brave fighter, my ass, Marsh thought.

  “Screw you!”

  Marsh realized she had spoken out loud.

  “Merde. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  The woman’s lips curved into a short, sharp smile that was gone seconds later.

  “Sure you did. You just didn’t mean to say it out loud. Now get on with it.”

  “Right.”

  Marsh bent to her task, focusing on the threads. At first, she tried to gently tease them apart, but the threads wouldn’t answer the fingers of her mind.

  “Come on,” she said, stroking her hands over the ball. “Thank you for protecting me, but please let her go. Please….”

  As she said it, she thought about how Lennie’s hand had looked without the ball of shadow around it. The image of the guard’s fist coming toward her made her hesitate, but she reminded herself that the blow was no longer coming and she was no longer under threat.

  “You have done what I asked, and done it well,” she told the shadow, stroking her hand over it like it was a kitten or Scruffknuckle in a rare moment of stillness. “Thank you.”

  It happened between one stroke and the next. One minute the shadow threads curled under her fingers, arching into her touch, and the next they were gone, dissipating like mist in a sudden breeze. It left Marsh staring and Lennie looking at her, clearly contemplating whether to throw another punch. Roeglin preempted that by wrapping an arm around Marsh’s shoulders.

  “Come on,” he said. “You owe me pancakes. The boy even gave them the right skillet.”

  As he ran his mouth, he pulled Marsh past Lennie, putting his body between them—which, in hindsight, was probably braver than he needed to be. Instead of stopping at a table, the mage waltzed past the counter to the serving door, and then he pushed right through it.

  “We’re eating in the kitchen today, Marc,” he said, his tone not brooking any argument as he gave the dining room a meaningful glance. “Don’t want to upset your usual customers. Come on, kids. Bring the pup.”

  That got a reaction from the woman behind the counter.

  “No dogs in the kitchen.”

  Roeglin didn’t pause.

  “Not a dog,” he retorted. “Krypthund. Whole different beastie.”

  Beastie? Like, seriously?

  Apparently so.

  “Come on, you two. Bring your beastie before the cook changes her mind.”

  The cook plucked the skillet from the countertop, hefting it as though she were contemplating using it on Roeglin’s head as she followed him into the kitchen. Tamlin and Aisha followed cautiously behind, and
Scruffknuckle bounced after them, yapping defiantly at the closest caravan guard.

  Roeglin didn’t stop moving until he’d guided Marsh to a table in a corner of the kitchen.

  “C’mere, pup,” he said, letting go of her and plonking himself down in a chair that put him between Marsh and the rest of the world. “Hurry up before she brains you with that skillet.”

  He snapped his fingers, and Scruffknuckle tilted his head toward him. Marsh’s eyes widened as a piece of jerky appeared in his hand, and Scruffknuckle was lost. The pup bounced over to the mage and tried to snatch the treat from his fingers, but Roeglin tucked it out of bite range and fixed him with a stern glare, snaring Scruff’s gaze as he did so.

  For an instant, Roeglin’s eyes flared green. Scruffknuckle sat, then stretched out beside Roeglin’s chair.

  “There’s a good boy,” Roeglin said, handing the pup the jerky. “Now, be a good pup and stay there. And you, young lady,” he continued, addressing Aisha. “Come and sit down. You’re safe now.”

  For a moment, Marchant thought Aisha was going to refuse. She watched as the girl stood her ground, resisting the draw of Tamlin’s hand on her shoulder as she regarded the mage with serious eyes.

  “Bad mens comed in de dark.”

  Roeglin didn’t laugh. He returned the child’s look and nodded.

  “Are you going to help us stop them?”

  Marsh opened her mouth to protest and caught Tamlin’s hasty shake of the head, so she sat still and said nothing. Aisha continued studying Roeglin.

  “I can talk with rocks.”

  “You can?” Roeglin sounded genuinely surprised. “And do they talk back?”

  Aisha gave him a solid nod and took a tentative step forward. Roeglin patted the seat next to his.

  “That might be a useful skill,” he said. “You are not too little to sit at this table.”

  As if that was what she had been waiting to hear, Aisha walked quickly to the table. When she reached it, however, she didn’t take the seat next to Roeglin. She sat on the floor next to the puppy, burying her hands in his fur as he rolled over to lean against her.

  “I sit here,” the little girl said, looking up at the mage. “You talk to Tams.”