Shirley Meier & S. M. Sterling- FM 5 - Shadow's Son

Shadow’s Son

Fifth Millenium, Book 5

Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein

Acknowledgments

Our first inclination is to thank each other, but we’re all getting paid for this, so ...

For critical help and support, thanks to the rest of the Bunch of Seven, who at the time were: Janet

Stirling, Louise Hypher, Mandy Slater and Julie Czerneda. Also to Dave Edmund and Dave Kirby.

For letting us stay at the cottage in Muskoka, again: Margaret Layton and Dave Kirby.

For inspiration: Way Lem (who recently moved to Muskoka), Fred Foreman (who helped pioneer

Muskoka), A. Pajitnov and V. Gerasimov (the creators of Tetris), Mike Oldfield, and the usual host of

others.

For helping perfect strangers at the mere mention of the name Fred Foreman, in the spirit of

Muskoka: Gail Dempsey.

And a particularly large second thank you to Janet Stirling, for doing the dishes and putting up with

three oversensitive, compulsive/obsessive, cranky, caffeine-gulping writers instead of the usual one.

Book I: Summons

I

The address was written with an Arkan pen, leaving none of the sputters and blots a quill would

leave. Megan Whitlock picked up the sealed envelope from the pile on her lap-desk. News I’ve waited

for? No, probably more of the usual pieces of glass and luxury items have risen again, with the

Arkan-Yeoli war drawn out so much longer than anyone expected ...”—the usual information that came

across the desk of the proprietor of a great merchant house.

She put the packet down, stretched, and strolled to the gallery that overlooked the atrium, its roof of

glass and translucent agate letting in soft winter light, and leaned over the heavy oak railing. Megan was

short, even for a Zak, a race shorter on average by a good head and a half than most others, with pale

skin, a thin, faded white horizontal scar across the top of one cheek and the side of her nose. Her

mid-calf-long hair was black with an ice-white streak at one temple, woven into elaborate braids which

held the long mass neatly away from the heart-shaped face and out of her black eyes. The fingers of her

hands tapped the honey-colored wood, her gray steel claws making a clicking sound.

She’d been working all day; time for a break. Below, Shkai’ra sword-danced, the drill that began

with the Nine Cuts; beginning slow, her movements flowing into each other with a delicate grace

incongruous in a woman her size. She was near six feet, in Zak measure 178 schentiam, a good two

heads taller than most Zak. Her copper-blond hair was tied back in Kommanza warrior braids, bouncing

on muscular shoulders slicked with sweat. The hawklike features too were unusual in F’talezon; now they

wore a look of introspection, lips parted in a slight smile.

I married a woman from across the Lannic, Megan thought, smiling to herself as she breathed in

the sweet cinnamon-scented oil burning in the lamps that hung from the iron strapping of the roof. I’m

used to how she looks, but I’m still not used to her being my wife; or Rilla; or Shyll being my

husband either.

Nearby Sova, now fourteen and already considerably taller than Megan, tumbled with the puppies on

the flagstones, giggling, ash-blond hair pulling loose of its braids. Full-grown, the girl would be as tall as

Shkai’ra, and not less muscular if the Kommanza had her way; now she was all feet and hands and

tangled limbs, her breasts finally rounded. The pups, Dee and Dah, were bigger than the girl now, though

not full-grown; greathounds not only outsized common dogs by double, but grew faster in their first

months.

Megan had never expected to adopt a Thane, one of her people’s oldest enemies; but then not much

in her quest up the River Brezhan a year and a half before, to regain the Slaf Hikarme from Habiku

Smoothtongue, had gone as expected. Even the ending, not quite: in her rage at what he’d done to so

many of her old shipmates, not to mention her, she’d planned to put him in a cage welded shut, and hang

it up in this very atrium. That hadn’t worked out. But every now and then, pacing in the gallery, she

would imagine it was there, the room echoing with his screams, or perhaps mad laughter, instead of

Sova’s carefree noise, and know it would have been for the worse. For one thing, it would have made

the house unfit for raising children.

Back to work. She ground a fist into the small of her back as she straightened; this sedentary life was

making her stiff. Only a bit more, she promised herself as she went back to the packet on her desk.

Examined closer, the writing seemed familiar. She broke the seal.

To MEGAN called Whitlock, Slaf Hikarme (House of the Sleeping Dragon), F’talezon.

Third Iron-Cycle, Tenth Day, Year of the Lead Cat.

My investigations regarding your expatriate son LIXAND, heretofore futile for the year that I have

undertaken your contract, have suddenly borne substantial fruit. It seems very likely he is in Arko the City

Itself. An agent of mine discovered a dancing boy owned by the AITZAS Family TEMONEN, of

Fidelity Street, who fits his description perfectly: blond, black-eyed, small of build, about ten years old.

Probing revealed that RASAS, as he is called there, was bought at the age of two in the slave-market of

Arko, which matches well with the time he was abducted from you.

By all indications, he is healthy and well-fed, being prized as a lead performer in NUNINI-BAS

TEMONEN’s troupe of dancing boys. I made the utmost attempt to purchase him, but was refused

absolutely; it seems he is also a favorite of the Lord.

I await your instructions.

Hoping you find this information of great value, I am your faithful agent,

TIRPAS ORREN, fessas

Avenue Aven

Arko, the City Itself.

She read it three or four times, her hands shaking, pulse pounding in her ears, barely believing. After

eight years, she knew where her son was. After eight years wondering, then this last year, when it had

finally become possible, feverishly searching through a network of spies hired in every major city in the

Empire of Arko, there was a house and a city to pin him to, circumstances to imagine, a setting to make

his life seem real to her. A place to track him to, to find him, to buy or steal or carve him free of ... no,

not buy. She’d stated clearly from the start, the maximum price Tirpas was authorized to offer: all she

had, short of destituting the family. That was rather a lot. Tirpas had obviously offered that and been

turned down. How rich is this fish-gutted bastard, that my son isn’t worth that amount? Or how ...

besotted ...

Steal or carve, then. She’d considered going into the Empire personally before, despite the

risk—foreigners were accorded no right to freedom there, and slave-catchers knew it—but had decided

against. A hireling who knew the ropes in Arko and didn’t need to run and hide had been a better bet,

for such a needle-in-a-hay-stack search.

But now the search was done. She ran back down the stairs, and called into the atrium. “Shkai’ra!

How soon can you be ready to leave on a long trip?”

The Kommanza lowered her sword, wiped one forearm across her face. “Two days, traveling light.

Where to? Business or pleasure?”

Rilla, Megan’s second wife and cousin, came down the steps with a basket of flower bulbs over her

arm. She was taller than Megan by almost a hand-width, mink brown hair trimmed short and sharp

around her face, giving her an elfin look, making her dark amber eyes seem much bigger. “Dark Lord,

Sova,” she said. “We’ll have to buy a warehouse of tunics; if you want to play with the dogs, wear an old

one! Go change, now!”

Sova thumped on the ribs of the puppy who held her down, making a bang like a drum. “I want to

hear about this trip.”

“Arko,” Megan said. “Business. Is Shyll home yet? I want to talk to everyone about this.”

Rilla put the basket down. “No, he’ll be back for the evening meal. Do you mean business in Arko,

Meg? Nobody does that who isn’t Arkan.”

“My agent’s found Lixand.”

Rilla froze, silent, then nodded.

Megan turned away up the stairs, the soft sigh of the door closing cutting off a question of Sova’s,

and walked back to her office. The setting sun shone red through the west window, touching the rim of

the city over the Lake Quarter. She would come out when Shyll came home, she decided. She shuffled

the papers with one hand, staring at the words without reading them, looking at the bloody light from the

setting sun on her fingers, remembering.

Lixand, my son. She’d borne him at fourteen, on the old Zingas Brezhani, River Lady, docked in

Bjornholm. I swore you’d be my son, with nothing of him in you. Baby, born in blood and pain, I

nearly gave my life for you. Too big for me, you were, my firstborn, ensuring you would be my last

. Soft blond hair under her fingers as he nursed, eyes that were blue like his at first, because he was an

Arkan, but then turned dark like hers, thank Koru, blinking sleepily ...

Sarngeld, the captain, her owner. Atzathratzas was his real name, or part of it, every Arkan tacks

on all the formal-sounding titles he can dig up—but no Zak could pronounce all those consonants.

Solas, warrior caste. Nursing, she’d had too much of a woman’s rounded shape to interest him.

Ex-Arkan, ex-soldier. May your soul freeze and burn at once in Halya.

My son. The day you were weaned, how you were weaned ... He’d been two, both running and

speaking, knew already to avoid the captain. He was on deck, dealing with another Arkan, in their

clipped, snobbish tongue, hands hidden in gloves. The baby heard his tread before she did, looking away

from the wood and string rattle she was dangling for him. She gathered him into her arms and stood up,

big toddler though he was.

Sarngeld’s face was twisted in a frozen sort of smile she couldn’t read. “Come, girl.” I couldn’t fight

him anymore: for your sake, my son. You were his hold on me. The wooden slave-links locked

around her wrists, the chains, to the staple in the floor of the cabin, which he hadn’t used for a year ...

Lixand had screamed a baby’s bird-high shriek as Sarngeld tried to pull him from her

chained-together arms. The black crash in her head as he hit her, the only way to make her let go. My

son. You couldn’t know what he would do.

“Sarngeld, master, leave me my baby, please don’t drown him. Please, he’s your son, don’t kill him.

Please, he’s only a baby. Don’t, please, master.” She begged in a way she had never begged before.

She’d never willingly called him master, got down on her knees, on her face. My son. I would have

done anything.

“Kill the brat?” He laughed at her. “He’s worth money!”

Maybe I knew what all that would mean, for the years ahead. She’d screamed and lunged to the

end of her chain. All she could do was tear her fingers bloody on the wooden links, maddened, and

scream her child’s name as his father carried him on deck. To the other Arkan, just before the ship cast

off for the day. “Lixaaaaaaand!” If she screamed it enough, maybe he would remember it.

Later that night, Katrana the healer had stolen his keys, freed Megan, got her knives. I killed him,

and took the ship. But that was too late to get you back. You were gone, into the Empire, where I

couldn’t go, sold Dark Lord knows where to Dark Lord knows whom. Eight years ago.

The family sat down for dinner, in the atrium near the fountain, with candles floating over the flocks of

eye-sized jewelfish. The big lamp overhead threw shadows from the plants over the tables and cushions.

Gar-soup with dumplings, ’maranth bread, roast beef, vegetables and hot sauce, cloudberry tart ...

Megan pushed her food around her plate with her eating-pick. I’d have killed for this much food,

when I was eleven and on the street. Shkai’ra was working on seconds, and another stein; she had

been out on the estate with Hotblood yesterday. How she could stand riding a cross between a horse

and a wolverine, that would sooner tear your head off than take a lick of salt from your hand, Megan had

never understood. She herself had a bad enough time with ponies.

Shyll was picking at his food, too. Another Zak in the House of the Sleeping Dragon, first husband:

an open-faced man with green eyes, wheat-blond hair cut shoulder length, but a build too slight and wiry

for anyone to mistake him for a Thane. I seem to have a taste for blonds, despite my past.

Rilla stared, lost in thought, as she nursed little Ness, two iron-cycles old now; the baby’s eyes were

closed as she suckled. They were still baby-blue but with hazel flecks, more and more like her father

Shyll’s every day. Your mother loves you, as my parents did me before they died, Megan thought.

Soft hair in the crook of her arm, she remembered, hungry lips tugging impatiently at a swollen breast; the

milky smell of a clean baby. Love, Lixand-mi, love ... She tore her mind away from that, looked down

at the cold food on her plate, cleared her throat.

Shkai’ra finished her beer and wiped the foam off her lips with the back of a hand. “Well,” she said;

she spoke good Zak now, but with a rough accent she would probably never lose. “We’d best settle

who’s going, shouldn’t we?” She looked sideways at Rilla and smiled a little crookedly. “Damn, I’d been

looking forward to having one myself. Well, needs must when the demons drive; sooner started, sooner

finished.”

Dammit, Megan thought, I should be used to her saying what I’m thinking by now. We’ve been

together long enough. “Rilla isn’t going anywhere for now,” Megan said. “Not with Ness on her arm.”

Her cousin looked up from the baby and nodded, the thought unspoken: I could have another, or three

more, if I liked. You’ll only ever have one. “Nor Shyll either.”

“Wait a moment—”

“No, husband. Our family has a business to maintain. Can Rilla carry that alone, as well as the baby?

Or would you have Shkai’ra look after the books?”

There was a general shudder around the table at that. Shkai’ra snorted and reached for another

wedge of pie. “Better I’m at your back, Megan, or you’d come home to find us all sold off to pay the

debts.”

“What about me?” Sova; her pale brows, long enough almost to join in the middle, were even. She’d

had two years of Shkai’ra’s rigorous war-training now; at thirteen, she’d been blooded, against minions

of Habiku on the river.

“No,” said Megan. “You’re well into this year’s school and you’re not wasting time gallivanting about

with us.”

“Wasting time? I thought khyd-hird,”—she nodded her head towards Shkai’ra—“would want me to

squire.”

“Ia,” said the Kommanza. “It’d be good practice for her.”

“No.” Megan cut the air with her down-turned hand. Play us off against each other, will you, girl?

“Sova isn’t going to be away from school for the length of time it will take to find Lixand.” To the

Thane-girl: “I want to give you all the opportunity you can to learn more than how to sneak and kill.

You’re staying here and that’s final.”

Shkai’ra tilted her head on one side and visibly restrained herself from speaking. We’ll talk later,

Megan thought. Sova dug back into her dinner, face unchanged. Showing no sign of what she wants to

do, go or stay. I love her but she makes me angry sometimes. I suppose all children would at that

age. I wasn’t a child then; I never had time to be. Yet was I ever such a stranger to those who

loved me, as she is to us sometimes?

“It’s damn risky,” said Shyll.

“It’ll be less so now than ever before, love. Look how the Arkans are getting cut up in Yeola-e.

They’ve spread themselves so thin that patrols will be fewer, borders more weakly guarded; it’ll be

easier to move, and hide.”

“From the news,” said Shkai’ra, “the Yeolis were on their last legs only five months ago. How have

they won back so far?”

Ivahn, the Benaiat of Saekrberk, had told of this in his letters to Megan. It was useful to have for a

friend the one who was as close to a head of state as the freeport of Brahvniki could have; he knew

everything in the known world.

“They apparently have a king who’s hot. He came back out of captivity last summer, made alliances

in the nick of time: Laka, Tor Ench, Hyerne, the Pirate Isles—he had friends all over, it seems. Even the

Schvait black-shirts hired on their regiments. The way the Arkans broke the Compact and took Haiu

Menshir was the last straw for many people. You know the World’s Compact—everyone leaves the

island alone, since it supplies the world with healers? It doesn’t have an official name, actually, it’s an

unwritten law that’s been followed for centuries, but people have started calling it that.”

“Yes,” Shkai’ra said, drawing it out into a thoughtful hiss. “When I was younger I had no qualms

about attacking pacifists. I think I’ve learned somewhat since then.” Her pale brows furrowed. Trained in

command as well as combat at home, and having wandered as a mercenary for six years, she had a feel

for such things. “That’s all the eastern powers turned against Arko, the Srian war still going on, the

Kurkanians and the Roskati in revolt; and the tribes northwest of the Empire will start to move over the

borders at the first chance. I’d be surprised if no one else invaded.” She shook her head. “Stupid of

Arko, like a peasant in a chicken coop trying to grab all the eggs at once. Opportunity, one way or the

other. Quickly in, grab the child, quickly out. The quicker the better; my wanderlust is well and truly

burned out.”

Shyll stood, leaving half his meal untouched, and began pacing the flagstone path beside the fountain.

Megan stood up and followed him, knowing what his silence meant. The two had been having more

trouble in bed lately, more sudden pullings-away, breathless apologies, tears in the dark. Always my fear

, she thought wearily, from what happened when I was a child. Growing worse as I try harder to

fight it; worse, not better. Will it ever end? Under the rose tree, she put her hands on his face, keeping

the steel of her claws well clear.

“Shyll, I’m not running away from you. I love you.” She swallowed, dryly, struggling to say the

difficult things, to be honest. “Sometimes I love you too much. I try too much, too fast.” He held her as if

she were made of spun glass, then turned away and went on pacing. His greathound Inu tried to heel

without stepping on too many things until Rilla sent him back to his corner with the bitch Grey and her

puppies.

“Promise me one thing,” Shyll said softly. “That you’ll both come back.”

“I’ll do what’s necessary.”

He stopped pacing and drew his hand through his blond hair. Rilla came over and hugged Megan in

one arm, the other cradling the baby. Shyll forced a smile.

“... pretty damn good when she’s got her growth, Megan. She’d learn war-craft much faster

practicing.” Shkai’ra’s voice wasn’t raised, but carried clearly through the door to the corridor, where

Sova was passing on the way to her room. The Thane-girl slowed, put up a hand to steady Fishhook,

who lay across her shoulders purring, and pushed the wing-cat’s buzzing nose out of her ear.

“I don’t want to put her in the way of sharp steel again until she’s of an age to choose.” Megan’s

higher voice. “Two years is not too long to wait, and I’m sure there will be fights around here then if she

wants them. She needs to learn other things that you don’t on raids; you want her to end up knowing

how to do nothing but creep around in the dark and bash heads?”

“Of course not, what do you think? You usually handle the bookish stuff, though, and you’re going to

be gone anyway ...” A pause came, that made Sova worry about getting caught listening. The carpet was

soft under her feet, like home used to be, but decorated in the severe Zak style rather than Thanish

bright. I miss the blue or red walls sometimes, she thought, stepping forward; then she stopped again

as Shkai’ra’s voice continued. “Kh’eeredo, you’re treading somewhat on her honor as a warrior.”

A whisper of pacing feet: Megan, she could tell by the short steps. “No, I’m not. She has the zight of

the house and her own behind her and all the pride and honor someone with her potential has. She’ll be a

warrior when she’s of age, two years from now. Were you one at fourteen?”

“When I came back from my test I was considered one.”

“Well,” Megan said tartly, “I am hardly going to let you give her a knife and a rope and kick her out

in the middle of winter—”

“Well, Zoweitzum on that!” Shkai’ra broke in.

“She’s my daughter-of-choice and I don’t want to see her get her brains spattered on an Arkan

warhammer by mischance or mistake.”

A sigh. Sova could almost see the shrug. “Right. Right. It’s your part of parenting. So she stays here,

safe in school.”

“It’s because I love her, akribhan. Books and stability are what I think she needs—especially after

what happened.”

“Now, don’t start that again—”

“All right, love. But dragging her all over the Midworld is a hurt I don’t want to add to the others.

The tea water must be boiling now.”

Their footsteps faded into the kitchen. Fishhook mewed and launched off Sova’s shoulder, gliding

down the hall in front of her, to thump, a bit of orange fluff, in front of her chamber door. The girl

followed slowly.

There was a stuffed bear, Sova thought. His brown fur was worn mostly off on his rump, one of

his bead eyes was missing. Franc said I chewed it off when I was a baby, but I think he was lying

just to annoy me ... well, I guess I might have. Babies do that sort of thing. Yesterday little Ness

had eaten a sow-bug, before anyone could stop her. Yesterday, just after Zhymata Megan and

Khyd-hird Shkai’ra had left to seek Lixand.

Sova felt her blade whip through the air with easy ripping speed, saw her wrists, thickened with long

daily practice, and a little veined, like khyd-hird’s or a man’s. To do as smooth a cut in sparring as I

can going through the First Nine Cuts; that’s the hard part. When she looked in the mirror now, she

saw cheekbones and a sharp chin where before there had once been round baby-fat. I’m becoming a

woman. Those lumps on her chest, they were no longer pretenses, but breasts, proper breasts, shaped

like a woman’s. One day she had noticed her hips and legs were no longer the slightly-fleshed

stick-bones of childhood, but flared and curved, as she’d imagined when trying to see herself grown-up

in her old mother’s big mirror.

But her arms and shoulders had bulges that had never been part of the mirror-picture; the arms and

shoulders of a teenage boy, it seemed to her, somehow glued onto the trunk of a maiden.

The bear’s name was Dof. Mooti wanted to throw him away. “My daughter shouldn’t have

such ragged old things! We’ll get you a new bear.” And they did, but he wasn’t Dof. I hid him, and

brought him out to cuddle when she wasn’t looking.

“Keep your mind on what you’re doing, girl!” Shyll called, watching her with the eyes he had in the

back of his head, while he went through his own drill. While khyd-hird was gone, he’d taken over her

war-training. “Are you going to daydream while you’re in a fight? Then you mustn’t now.”

She allowed herself one last stray thought, before narrowing her concentration to the one steely path.

I wonder what happened to him, when the mob went through the house? Just an old stuffed bear,

not worth anything, no one would want him—burned.

Once I was naked, in front of a crowd of Zak ... No, don’t think about that, she told herself.

Nothing undoes the past. But somehow, if she woke in the dead of night before dawn—why do I wake

then? I never used to—she couldn’t make her thoughts go where she wanted them to, or not go where

she didn’t. Sometimes it came because she was half-dreaming, making things happen that weren’t only

horrible but strange; sometimes when she was fully awake, she couldn’t control her thoughts, as if the

dark of night leeched away her power over her own mind.

I won’t remember. The day, blindingly sunny, the cold wind full of the smells of harbor, and sea

beyond. The crowd that had gathered, having heard the news on the street or in inns; they all hate us.

That was usual, but today it was unusually naked on the small Zak faces. Fater, Mooti, Francosz, her, the

servants, all wore their festival best on the draped dais. Fatted cattle; in hindsight it looked that way.

She’d been twelve. All she had heard was that the Zak woman with the steel claws was a witch and

an enemy, with no great regard for the life of anyone in her way; the other woman a plain savage. They’d

race her father’s proxies, three Schvait, the stakes—a bond, did that mean the witch and the barbarian

would be her father’s slaves, if they lost? In the house; she didn’t think that was a good idea. She didn’t

like them, never wanted to see them again. Their stake was “a favor”. She thought that meant some kind

of errand.

Then came the barbarian’s bow-shot, the gull with the arrow through it falling at their feet, her mother

fainting ... All anyone ever said was that her head sounded hollow when it hit the dais. Always

laughing. No one ever asked whether she was hurt.

She couldn’t see most of the race, only knew by the hungry whooping of the crowd that her father’s

proxies had lost. Then Francosz was chasing the clown—Piatr, she’d find out his name was,

later—around the dais with a knife, feeling somehow that he was somehow the source of all their

troubles. The witch had hexed Franc, then turned him to stone until the judge called her off. But Franc

had been right, it seemed; for as her “favor” the witch asked only the clown. A friend of hers. He was

bewitching us, too.

I guess we go home now, she had thought then.

But instead the barbarian woman seized Francosz and her by the wrist. “That doubles my price,”

she’d said, when Fater had called her what she was: barbarian. Else she wouldn’t have taken me.

Maybe. She’s never really insulted when people call her that; it was just an excuse. That face, so

haughty, carved like stone in smug cruelty as if it could know no other expression, the harsh voice, deep

for a woman’s, the guttural accent; and the smell, that no woman should have, no human should have,

like an unwashed arm-pit, or worse.

I threw myself at Fater’s feet. But there was nothing he could do; if he’d clung she’d have torn

me out of his arms, and taken pleasure in doing it; worse for his zight, what was left of it. He was

proud to the end. She began to understand, when she saw the barbarian woman grab Franc’s hair, and

draw her knife. The witch stopped it, leaving him only slightly shorn, and said something about an

apprenticeship; but then the Zak turned her back, and in the barbarian’s face, and her word, “Strip!”, she

saw the truth.

She’s claiming us. We’re her slaves. She owns us. Yet even as the truth sank in, a good part of her

could not believe this was happening at all. It’s all a dream, a make-believe; Fater will rescue us and

we’ll go home. A leer on the big woman’s face, the look, her mother had taught her, that only a doxy, a

whore, gets. Naked, the wind touching her all over, the eyes of the crowd, laughing, hating, while she put

one tiny hand over the place between her legs and the other forearm over her nipples, not yet grown into

breasts, as if that really hid anything, Zak eyes seeing her as she truly was and pointing, laughing, seeing

the tears she felt spill hot over her cheeks, and laughing harder.

She a learned enough trade-Zak to understand the barbarian’s mocking words. He’s not my type

and you’re too young. But the eyes said different, running up and down her, contemptuously measuring,

like the hands of buyers in the slave-market. I’m too young, she would think later. She wants to save

me for sometime in the future. No. No, this isn’t happening. Fater ... Then the blows began, on both

of them, hand and belt and foot.

“The best you’re likely to get is scutwork somewhere.” Choices; they were saying something about

choices. That was the Zak’s doing, it turned out; she’d had words with the barbarian.”Stay with us, and

you’ll have a berth and enough to eat ...” The Zak had said they weren’t slaves, that their answers

weren’t final, but hadn’t asked again. In the meantime, they had to do whatever either woman said, and

got beaten more than the household slaves.

The next weeks she remembered as a blur, of pain and exhaustion and shame, shame over and over

again, more shame than she’d ever thought she could bear. She had to say sorry and ask forgiveness of

Piatr, but no one ever said sorry to her, no matter what they did. Ugly, ill-mannered, weak, ignorant ...

They’d made Franc and her do their slave chores for them, hit them if they didn’t want to, or when they

didn’t know how because they were highborn, hit them for that ... She remembered Shkai’ra asking,

exasperated, “Don’t you have any will to survive?” just as she’d been thinking she’d be happier dead.

Even when I started to get stronger, even when she praised me, she always took it back by saying

someone of her race two years younger could slice me to skunkbait or something like that.

Trying to make me useful, she said. As if I was worth nothing before. The image had stayed,

since someone on the ship had spoken off-hand of her being forged into steel: her on an anvil, Shkai’ra

over her with the hammer. No one ever asked the steel what shape it wants to be. It’s made to be

used.

“I’m remembering again,” she said aloud in the dark, to no one. She felt her own tears, and began the

deep breathing to soothe them, a trick that Shkai’ra had taught her, which had, like everything Shkai’ra

had taught her, been ground into her instincts by endless repetition, and showed up whether she wanted

them to or not, like traitors. “I shouldn’t remember. It doesn’t do anything but hurt.”

Then, being a child, she’d taken it all as part of life, however much the pain, knowing no other

choice. Like everyone else on the ship, seeing what fates Megan’s friends had suffered at the hands of

Habiku Smoothtongue, she’d got drawn into the feud up the river, even fought, risked her life for it, when

Francosz had been in danger. He had given his, and been buried as a warrior—though not with more

honor, Sova had not failed to notice, than Shkai’ra’s cat. Grief had been black as Fehuund; like any

brother and sister they’d had their spats, but he’d been all the family she had left. Without him she was

alone.

At the end of it, Sova had accepted her and Megan, along with Rilla and Shyll, as her parents by

adoption. Her blood-parents were dead or gone, run out of Brahvniki; she’d heard the mob cry, after the

race, “To Schotter’s house! Bring torches!” She’d also been dimly aware adoption gave her certain

protections, at least on paper. I didn’t even know it in words then, she thought, in the dark. I was a

child. It had been instinct to cling to her only shelter, to not want to know what they’d do if she refused

what they asked. What would they have done?, she wondered. No one respectable in F’talezon or

Brahvniki would have adopted me or taken me for an apprentice. An orphanage, maybe, getting

trained how to do scutwork. Or they’d, have kept me on as a servant. Or just thrown me on the

street.

She’d learned quickly not to complain; never to complain. Never to be anything but happy here,

whatever they did. Never to be difficult in any but an innocent child’s way, that they’d expect, in a

spoiled child’s way, that they could laugh at. When Shkai’ra hadn’t been busy training her to cut off her

tongue at the roots, as the Thanish saying went—“Oh, you evil adoptive parents, if you loved me you’d

let me do what I want,” she’d laugh, mocking, reducing it to that—Sova had trained herself, whenever

her feelings weren’t the grateful foundling’s.

Now she was fourteen and a warrior, if a warrior was one who’d been in a real fight; she had begun

to see it all with an adult’s eyes. They were attached to her now; she knew that. Megan, the wicked

witch, had never wanted to consider them slaves and was genuinely loving. Shkai’ra loved her in her own

odd way, even if only because she’d been molded into one Shkai’ra could love by Shkai’ra herself.

Whatever else the world might call her, no one could ever say she, Sova, blood daughter of zight-less

Schotter Valders’sen, adopted daughter of the Slaf Hikarme, didn’t know where her bread was

buttered. But only a child need worry about that.

II

Matthas Bennas, fessas, resident of Brahvniki, he signed.

Spy, he didn’t.

The paper was an invoice for sheet rubber from Karoseth, his home town, southwest of the City

Itself, on the coast. Yeolis called the sea the Miyatara, Zak called it the Mitvald, both meaning Midworld.

Arkans called it the Arkan Sea.

The rubber was only processed in Karoseth, actually, the raw material coming from further south.

Matthas had not seen his birthplace for a decade, having lived here in Brahvniki; for a moment the

memory came sharp. Marble and granite and pink brick, climbing in terraces from the city wall and the

tarry mast-forest of the harbor. Orange groves outside the walls, fields of lavender, warm sun on the blue

mountains rising northwards.

The servants had opened the windows again. Brahvnikians, he thought. Arctic seals. It was typical

spring weather in the Brezhan delta; raw, damp and chill, to an Arkan. He went to the windows and

latched them closed.

The panes were thick triangles of inferior local glass set in wood, appropriate for a merchant of his

standing. They looked down from the third story of a tall narrow house of half-timbering, above a narrow

cobbled street that smelled of fish and garbage and the river not far away. Rain started, beating at the

glass, streaking his vision like tears.

He went to the door and quickly checked the corridor either way; there was no way someone could

climb the stairs without making a loud creak, but it never hurt to be sure. He added a small shovelful of

blackrock to the tile stove, settled himself at the homely clutter of his desk and unlocked the bottom

drawer, with its secret compartment. From that he lifted a plain leather-bound account book, its pages

studded with rag bookmarks.

This was his real work: for Irefas, the Secret Service of the Arkan Empire. As far as he was

concerned, it was the best that one of his caste, fessas, artisan-professional, could get. The merchant’s

life, that so many aspire to, he thought. The money’s well and good, but the work’s so boring.

Besides, more than one heroic spy in history had been elevated to Aitzas, noble. Another nice thing: in

foreign countries there were no hair laws. His, blond like all Arkans’ but silvering at the temples, was

almost waist-long, as none but Aitzas were permitted, inside the Empire.

Item: prices. Mules and horses in the Aeniri towns upriver: up threefold since the spring herds had

come in. Tool-grade F’talezonian and Rand steel: up fivefold over the past six months. Significant

increases in the prices of woolen cloth, grain, leather, oil, medical supplies and drugs, bronze; the

armorers working overtime; the price of casual labor gone through the roof. Thirty-two ships of fifty

tuin or more have cleared the harbor already this season. The bills of lading as fictional as Marmori’s

Book of Children’s Merry Tales.

He looked at a copy his spy in the harbormaster’s office had made. A seventy-five tuin two-master

carrying braided horsehair—catapult skeins—dried fruit, neatsfoot oil—for the maintenance of

harness—cured bullhide, glassfiber, resin—shields, body armor—miscellaneous metal goods. Shipping

to Haiu Menshir. His spy had gotten a good look at the “metal goods”; spearheads, broadaxe-blades,

brass-hilted swords from Rand. And Haians, as all the world knew, were absolute pacifists, under Arkan

control. If they’re buying that, I’m the Queen of Hyerne.

Arko’s taking of Haiu Menshir made him uncomfortable, actually, as he was sure it made many

Arkans. It was also a political blunder, to his mind; no better way to turn all the world against the

Empire, he’d thought at the time. Now, plain as day, it was happening. What made it even worse was

that the takeover had taken two tries. The first time, the greatest Empire in the world, attacking a small

island populated entirely by pacifists, had been defeated. A ragtag band of sailors hiding behind bales

and crates, led by a man who may now be proving himself one of the greatest generals of his time but

then had been an accredited lunatic ... he didn’t like thinking about it.

In Yeola-e, Arko had taken all but those stubborn hedges of mountain in the north and southwest

corners of the barbarian nation. Now—how had the Pages reports put it? “Strategic withdrawals and

consolidation of our overall position.” In other words, the killer mountain boys are whipping our asses

. Last he’d heard, it was three-fifths taken back. Every major military power in the area had suddenly

allied with the Yeolis, lending them troops or attacking on their own fronts.

And the non-military powers are lending them money. How else could a country all but

conquered and broke half a year ago afford to buy all those war supplies? Or hire every cutthroat,

sellsword, pirate and bar-brawler between Kreyen and Rand; he’d noticed evenings in the Knotted

Worm had been more sedate recently. It didn’t take a god’s brains to figure out that Brahvnikian money

was involved.

The Benai is probably acting as conduit for funds. The Benai Saekrberk was considerably more

than the central abbey-temple of the Honey-Giving One—only Brahvnikians would worship a bear,

and a fat bear at that—and the closest thing Brahvniki had to a government. It was also the largest

deposit bank on this end of the Mitval—Arkan Sea, he reminded himself. Six months ago, Arko had had

a powerful enough presence in Brahvniki to gain entrance to the Benai for inspection tours. The

inspector, a military type from the Arkan embassy guard, had always come back three sheets to the wind

on the Benai’s famous distillate, cursing the Benaiat Ivahn as a senile dodderer and a crashing bore; but

at least he’d got in. Then the Yeolis had taken back the nearest seaport, Selina, and now the Benai,

politely but effectively, said no.

And Arko had done things to offend some of the most powerful private citizens of Brahvniki.

Matthas had two reasons to curse Edremmas Forin, one of the two Arkans who’d worked their way

onto the Pretroi, the Brahvnikian council of merchant princes, and also happened to be his, Matthas’s,

spy boss. How could he be so stupid as to stand up in council and spout that verse of the Thanish

goatherd song about diddling girl-children to Mikhail Farsight, considering how rich, the little

Zak bastard is, how Zak feel about kin, and how many daughters he has. The whole city had heard

about it, making Mikhail an enemy of Arko for life.

The other reason to curse Edremmas: he was dead. Not that the two were unrelated; he’d been

killed on the street, in broad daylight, by an assassin good enough to cut him almost in half. Mikhail and

all four daughters had just happened to be passing by, and the assassin had just happened to commit

suicide while in the Benai’s custody, so no one could ever prove who’d hired him. And so I have to

break in a new boss. A Mahid this time, Eforas Mahid, oh joy. Who because he got blown off

course, but mostly because of those slow-as-constipation paper-shuffling donkeys in the Marble

Palace, has taken six fikken months to get here. Not that I wasn’t running things all right, but

fessas riff-raff like me aren’t qualified to request Imperial funding. His payroll was half promises,

right now. Thank Celestialis the rubber price went up—

Matthas pulled out the latest note from his agent in the Slaf Hikarme. “Megan Whitlock and Shkai’ra

Farshot will be arriving on the rebuilt Zingas Vetri soon after the spring breakup.” Ice was still solid on

the upper Brezhan; that meant a half-month hence, halfway between equinox and summer solstice. “This

office was instructed to arrange for a draft of 1,500 silver Dragonclaws from the Benai Saekrberk to the

liquid capital account.” Not exactly tavern-wenching money—and yes, it would be wenching, for those

two.It had worried him for a while, that kinfolk of Mikhail and the like up the river in F’talezon had even

greater resources. Involvement against Arko from that quarter, if it weren’t in place already, would be

disastrous. This Whitlock was thick as thieves with all the other Zak big fish here, and was known to

have a grudge against Arko. She and her mate-in-the-ultimate-perversity Shkai’ra (who could even

conceive what two women did in bed?) were the hands-on type, adventurers. Ten-to-one they’re the

F’talezon connection, or at least part of it, or at least cognizant of it.

Their coming was an opportunity, he saw. Out-of-town merchants were less well-protected than

resident ones, and these two had a reputation for taking risks and keeping low company, even by local

standards. Knotted Worm regulars, when here. He glanced with a smile at another of the objects in his

secret drawer: a glass vial of clear liquid. How much the Empire had gained in its history, by the total

honesty this Imperator of drugs elicited. That’s what I love about this job, he thought. I don’t just

have to ferret out information. I get intrigued.

But this required aid from his superior, the Mahid.

Eforas, old boy, he thought that night, creeping by midnight to the embassy for his appointment, you

are about to have the pearls of my wisdom thrown before you.

All Mahid looked the same. It wasn’t only that they were a clan or always wore black—onyxine,

they called it, a glorified term for black—or had sworn the same oath, that of ultimate loyalty to the

Imperator of Arko, whatever he asked. They all seemed to have the same mind, too. It was like the

Press in Arko, the huge black rattling machine that spat out the Pages and other reading material: it

worked when a lever was pulled one way, didn’t work when it was pulled another way, always worked

exactly the same way and produced the same product, over and over and over. You got the impression

that if any part were jolted slightly out of line, the whole thing would come to a smoking halt.

Shirley Meier & S. M. Sterling- FM 5 - Shadow's Son

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