The Tyranny of Shadows Read online

  “Told the young lady—of the family Jauntinus back then—told her she had caught my eye. She didn’t understand that skewering a boar, as I had, takes great strength. I took her through it blow by blow, but she wasn’t having any of it. I told her she was a pretty flower and I’d like to have her, but still she wouldn’t go for it. Then I lay my arm on her arm, and lads, under the spell of a man’s strength she was far more yielding.”

  The men roared with laughter once more, though Lady Pauloce buried her face in her hands. Gillis heard a snap; Amelia held a thick, freshly broken branch in her hands. The veins in her hands stood out, but her face was placidly calm. Gillis wondered at her outburst.

  “So I took her, steered her somewhere private, and we…”

  Lord Pauloce tore grotesquely into the pheasant with his teeth. At the same time, a deafening crash rent the night like a peal of thunder. Amelia and Gillis flinched away from the vial—the sound of Lord Pauloce’s teeth contacting the poison had amplified the sound many times over as it came out the vial. Gillis’ hearing was reduced to an oppressive, muffled ringing.

  “Why did you not account for the sounds of chewing when you made this?” Gillis spat.

  Amelia ignored him and pressed her ear once more to the vial. Even a few feet from it, Gillis could hear the churning and bubbling of Lord Pauloce’s stomach. Amelia tapped the vial and whistled with a strange cadence. It was almost a song, but the notes wandered in pitch. Gillis had the impression that she sounded like a bird-caller. Gradually, speech came to the fore, and the internal sounds of Pauloce’s gut receded.

  “We can’t risk mistakes with this oil. They won’t hear our voices coming out of his belly, for example?” Gillis said.

  “Acoustic transmission can be both ways, but for tonight I’ve set them for one way only,” Amelia said.

  “Very well.”

  They listened once more. For a long while, nothing of note transpired. The Lords continued to relate bawdy stories to one another as the halberdier guards made two more rounds of their patrol. During that time, Gillis turned his attention to Amelia in glances, while pretending to be fixated on Pauloce. She sat stiffly and with a rigid, intense concentration, like a bloodhound frozen in the moment of scenting prey. Gillis noted that many subtle expressions crossed Amelia’s face. He sensed them before he saw them, despite her forced calm. Then when he did see them—her lip curling for brief moments, her teeth or fists clenching to the point of cracking when she thought he was not watching—Gillis began to surmise that Amelia had a deep and ugly past with the Lord. Gillis dared not guess at the particulars, but if a quarter of the rumors were true … he stopped the thought there.

  It was not uncommon for Mordenari to volunteer for the writ to kill a past tormentor. The childhood of a Mordenari often is traumatic in some sense: many are freed slaves—or street orphans as was Gillis’ case. It stood to reason that the power to kill would come with a temptation to right personal wrongs. Gillis had done such in his younger days, but always with those who broke the Five Laws and deserved it. A rite of passage, you could call it, Gillis thought. A way to leave the old self behind and begin the work of protecting the other would-be innocent victims. A way to feel justice intimately, for the self, and spread that justice to all in good faith.

  Perhaps if Amelia bends the rules this once, there is no harm. To craft such a poison that lets us hear Pauloce’s suffering and death rattle from his own stomach; that surely proved it was revenge. There is no harm, he thought, because the Lord is surely a breaker of most of the Laws.

  Gillis continued to watch Amelia’s hate for Pauloce writhe below her imperfect façade of calm. It was a pure and passionate hate. He felt an upwelling of pity for the woman. Damn it if she isn’t irritating and deceitful and willful, Gillis thought, but I’ve felt before as she does now. Let Pauloce suffer, and let Amelia enjoy it. But we must not improvise with the next dose.

  “Urgent business, my Lord,” came the Prime Steward’s voice through the vial. The stooped old man spoke into Pauloce’s ear.

  Lord Pauloce grunted. “Who is it this time?”

  “Lord Bonifus, sir, regarding his daughter.”

  Lord Pauloce sighed deeply.

  “Have him in the usual chambers, bound, before I arrive. I shall finish this cup and the next before I meet with him,” Lord Pauloce said.

  Gillis looked a question at Amelia, but she only shrugged, so they listened on.

  Sloshing liquid and gulping came close to their ears as he drank. Amelia wrinkled her nose. The merriment and joking of the surrounding Lords and Ladies continued, and it was some minutes before Lord Pauloce left the table.

  Once he was lost from sight the talk and the laughter receded as well. They heard nothing but his heavy, and at times unsteady footsteps. There was a moment of silence, and then an opening door creaked.

  A man with a high-pitched but rough voice yelled at once, “Pauloce, release me! Have your guards called off, I’ll not—”

  “Hush, Bonifus, hush. You’ve come to bargain for a life. I didn’t get where I am without taking care in my deals. You’ve interrupted my drinking, so I’ll give you this advice: keep on topic. Now, before we discuss your daughter … Steward, the knife,” Pauloce said.

  “Knife? What? You’re as mad as they say! Pauloce, what are you—”

  “Quiet, or you’ll get it worse. Now, the first cut has a good reason behind it, and I’ll explain that shortly. After that first little one, though, maybe there’ll be more. Bigger, deeper ones. They’ll only be needed if you don’t behave yourself. Do you understand? No words, just nod,” Lord Pauloce said.

  There was a long pause. Then there was a sound like Lord Pauloce smacked his lips.

  “Good. You’re behaving. That tells me you care for your little one. Admirable. Now relax your arm and don’t make a fuss,” Lord Pauloce said. “Ah, you don’t like that do you? When I hold the knife close? Come now, relax or it’ll be worse for you! Between your struggling and my drinking it won’t be a very pretty cut. There we are … deep breath.”

  Lord Bonifus screamed.

  “Steward, collect some of it. You’re doing well, dear Bonifus. Now, the reason for the cut is twofold. Both are to do with my herbalist, Wilhelmina. You see, she’s no mere herbalist. She’s the reason I am who I am, and the reason you’ve come to me. I’m the Lord with the largest standing army, largest holdings, and deepest pockets in all the Veldenlands, so far as I know. My herbalist dabbles in … the taboo. You’ve heard of the Mordenari, Bonifus? The ones who come in the dark, who spy and poison, who cut down entire companies of soldiers with just daggers? ‘Flash of blue, then of red, Mordenari got yer head,’ or so the child’s rhyme goes. They are no rumor. And they don’t take kindly to what my herbalist can do, forbidden spells and the like. Wilhelmina tells me their leader—the one who changes faces—will show bright blue tattoos all over his skin if he is cut. So now we know, you are you! And here’s the second reason for the cut on your arm: she needs your blood to work the magic. Now your daughter … what ails her?” Pauloce said.

  While he talked, Amelia’s free hand gripped her thigh so hard that it reddened while her fingertips went white.

  “Fever,” Bonifus said. “She has a fever that won’t break, nothing we’ve tried makes any—”

  “Hush, hush, all will be well. My herbalist will fix it in a blink, don’t you fret. Now … what age is she?” Pauloce said. Amelia had squeezed her eyes shut every time ‘Hush’ whistled through the Lord’s teeth. A thought intruded on Gillis—she had heard Pauloce utter it before.

  “What—what age?” Bonifus said.

  “Aye, how old is the girl?” Pauloce said. Neither said anything for a time.

  “Ah! No don’t, don’t cut me please. She’s—she’s twelve! Twelve years, thirteen next spring,” Bonifus said.

  “Ah, it’s a good age,” Pauloce said with what sounded like fatherly fondness.

  “You have little ones?”

 
“No.”

  “Oh God.” Bonifus sobbed as a chair creaked. “I should never have come.”

  “You want your daughter to live, don’t you? She’ll be taken care of, and it will be done my way or not at all. Now, onto the price—”

  “Anything, I’ll pay gold—argh!”

  A slap sounded through the vial.

  “Don’t interrupt!” Pauloce snapped. “Gold I have. What I want is half your soldiers. Additionally, your daughter—when she’s well—is to be joined with my family.”

  “But you have no heirs. Surely you don’t mean … no. No!”

  “I’m saving her life. You should be grateful! Besides, I’m in need of a new wife—this one grows stale. Worry not, I can change your mind. Steward, the knife.”

  Bonifus screamed. Amelia whistled, sharp and short, and the vial was silent.

  “There is much to report,” Gillis said. “Most grievous of all is the herbalist with the Blood Magic. Pauloce is just the beginning.”

  “He is boasting,” Amelia said quickly. “Wilhelmina’s just an herbalist. I know of her. She is very clever with mundane healing, that’s all. Very clever, very old, very abrasive at times.”

  “It is strange that Pauloce knows cutting Verandert reveals him—have you seen it? Even a scratch on Verandert’s skin will make blue tattoos flare all over him for a moment. How does he know that? Where does this certainty that we Mordenari are real come from? There is much to investigate.”

  Amelia smirked. “You admit that the Hearing Oil has value?”

  “I admit that I would have appreciated it if I had been made aware before today.”

  “I only just finished it. Wasn’t sure it would work.”

  “Even so. And if there is anything else to tell me … you can. I have seen things, done things …” Gillis trailed off. He had spoken gently in the hope that Amelia may confide some detail, some inkling of her true purpose with the Hearing Oil and with Pauloce. She waved her hand and fell silent for a time. He looked at her. She won’t answer no matter the manner of my asking. She’s not ready.

  “Are you at all worried about discovery? If he cuts arms to see if a man is Verandert…” Amelia said.

  “Pauloce does not truly know how to look for us. He is a dog that barks at the shadows, when the threat is elsewhere casting them on the wall.”

  “If you’re sure. There may be more danger here than we originally guessed.”

  “Danger is life for the Mordenari,” Gillis said. It was a phrase from one of the now-missing pages in his copy of Ardent Momaenta.

  “Please don’t let yourself get caught.”

  “Is this Amelia caring for my well-being?

  “This is Amelia insisting she not be forced to save you when you inevitably imperil yourself,” she said.

  “I did not mean to accuse you of the grave sin of compassion—”

  “Shut up.”

  The two fell silent.

  Gillis shifted where he sat, and warmed his hands on his breath. I should offer support in some measure, Gillis thought. With guidance, her raw anger may be shaped by a gentle hand, like the tapping of a chisel upon marble. Her recklessness is understandable, but must not continue if she is to uphold our ways.

  “Amelia, I watched you as Pauloce spoke,” Gillis said. “I perceived … disquiet in you. I have guessed at its meaning—”

  “You’re a fool,” Amelia said.

  She swept past him and swiftly descended the oak. In moments, she was lost in the night, heading away from the Keep and toward her secret camp in the woods.

  Gillis filled his lungs several times and enjoyed the faint smell of the distant feast. He had cooked it well.

  Chapter 4

  Later that night, Gillis lay awake on his simple pallet for many long hours. The image of Beldas came to him, and in his memory there was a great exaggeration of the look of terror on his face. The distorted memory even had great fountains of blood pouring from Beldas’ wounds. The events of the killing played out slow and ethereal, as in a dream, and then became fluid and shifted into the unreal. Instead of the two struggling on the road, Beldas kneeled and Gillis stood over him, dagger in hand. Then the gruesome fantasy played over again, and then again, worsening each time. Gillis did not push the memory away or lay other thoughts atop it to smother it. You cannot cover these up, nor can you run from them, Gillis thought. You can only remember your duty calmly, face the killing with honesty. In fact, it is wrong and disrespectful to Beldas to resist such thoughts. Let me bear the image solemnly, as a kind of mourning. Others might find his thinking strange, but in this, he believed himself wiser than others.

  The thoughts themselves were one thing, but it was another matter entirely that Gillis was lacking sleep. He could not stumble in his duty now for a cause as trivial as a restless night. Best to do a slow, calming thing like shaving and hope that sleep would come.

  He ran his hands over his face, which was now covered in wiry stubble. The hair on his head was beginning to grow, too. He yawned, and then pressed his knuckles into his back until his spine cracked. It was, by Gillis’ guess, two hours before dawn. He rose from the pallet and felt his way toward the candles on his table. With the candles lit, he rubbed a light coating of oil on his head and cheeks and dragged his straight razor across the stubble with the guidance of a small hand-held mirror.

  A yell from the grounds stopped him. He listened.

  There were more yells. Guards called back and forth to one another. He crossed to his window, razor still in hand. Red-and-yellow-clad halberdiers, some holding torches, were gathered in a field beside the woods. Some of the halberdiers pointed in different directions and yelled things Gillis could not hear. A heavy frown crossed Gillis’ face. He blew out the candles and continued watching the soldiers.

  Pauloce, flanked by two torch-bearing soldiers, approached the group with his hands on his hips. More soldiers joined them, until they were thirty, and then forty strong. Gillis’ heart raced. Pauloce barked a command, and the halberdiers formed two lines. They waited for his order as he paced in front of them. He hesitated and turned a few times, as though unsure of where to go.

  Finally Pauloce stopped, and pointed into the woods toward Amelia’s camp.

  Together, the Lord and his soldiers marched into the trees and out of sight. How they knew of her, and where she was, Gillis could not guess. He crossed to the foot of his bed and rummaged among his neatly folded possessions until he found the first vial of Hearing Oil. Though he had dripped much of it onto Pauloce’s bird, there still remained a coating of Oil inside the vial. Amelia had the other vial, and the Oil certainly seemed potent enough, if the deafening chewing noises were any measure. What was it she said about the acoustic transmission? The noises flowed one way, from Pauloce’s gut to Amelia’s vial. But she said ‘for tonight.’ Does it take her whistling to work? Sudden doubt bloomed in his chest like a dark fog. He could not be confident that any warning he made into the vial in his own hands would not also be heard by Pauloce. He held the vial close to his ear. No sound at all came through it. He stowed the vial into a hidden inner pocket of his clothes, beside his dagger.

  For many tense minutes, Gillis peered out of his window, searching the darkness for any sign of returning torches. Dawn finally broke, casting the field, trees, and other buildings of Pauloce’s estate in a dim grey light. From his window, Gillis could see only the woods and some of the servants’ quarters. They were little more than huts smattered about a muddy path, now looking like mossy stumps with all their weeds and vines. To see the main keep, the barracks, and the Feast Hall, he would need to leave his room. Just as he considered leaving, a booming bell tolled in the main Keep. He had never heard that bell before.

  He opened his door and walked with controlled calm. A small crowd already trickled from the servants’ huts toward the main Keep, and Gillis followed them. There was a building commotion in the courtyard in the shadow of the great stone Keep: a mass of servants seething with whisp
ers and jostling to reach the front. Gillis approached, but could not see what was happening. He pressed into the crowd. Lord Pauloce was passionately proclaiming something to the throng. Over the whispers and jostling of the crowd, Gillis heard nothing. He spotted a kitchen hand, a youth named Phelas, and pulled him closer by the arm.

  “What’s going on, boy?” Gillis said.

  “They’ve found a spy, or something, Prime Cook Beldas,” Phelas said. “A woman. He’s saying he’ll lock her up, or maybe hang her—”

  Gillis released him, and then shoved roughly through to the front of the crowd. His breath caught. Lord Pauloce held a bloodied Amelia by the hair, presenting her to the crowd proudly like she was one of his prized pheasants. He was surrounded by a dozen halberdiers, many of them also bloodied. The Prime Steward stood beside Pauloce with his chest thrust out, surveying the crowd down his nose as if he was the Lord of all creation.

  “My guards have assisted me well in snaring this spy, despite the danger,” Lord Pauloce said, and then pointed to the belongings strewn across the ground. Many of them were vials, all smashed. “Just look at the poisons that might have been dripped into our cups, had I not been vigilant.”

  From the look of them, Gillis thought, Amelia reduced that original group by half and nearly got this lot as well. He controlled his expression, mind racing, as the Prime Steward settled his gaze on Gillis. They should have no inkling that he was in league with Amelia. And if Pauloce recognized Amelia, he showed no sign of it. Perhaps Gillis’ theory that Amelia had returned here for revenge was groundless after all.

  “What’s to be done with her, then?” Pauloce asked the crowd.

  The crowd jeered: “Hang her! Burn her! Lash her!” Pauloce threw her to the ground and drove his muddy boot into her side. Amelia cried out piteously. Again and again the Lord beat and kicked her, until streams of blood crisscrossed her face. Pauloce’s heavy, blocky face quivered with each blow, eyes bulging and lips foaming with spittle. Eventually the crowd’s jeering subsided and he turned to address them.