The Office of Shadow (28 page)

"Now look here-"

"Of course not!" Paet interrupted. "Instead you give me, what, a university
professor! And a sarcastic monk! And that thing you've got locked upstairs!

"You expect me to do what I do, to work miracles, and yet it seems that
in every instance, you do everything in your power to hinder me!"

"If I may speak for a moment," said Everess coldly.

Paet ignored him. "And then, as if that weren't bad enough, you lie to
them, tell them that this will be something that it isn't. It's the first day, and
I'm fairly certain that these brilliant new Shadows you've selected for me all
want to quit."

He paused. He took the decanter on the sideboard and poured himself a
glass of whiskey.

"And I wish I could let them!"

He sat down in a chair opposite Everess and took a long drink from his
glass.

Everess cleared his throat. "Where to begin?"

He leaned forward. "First, and most importantly, did Silverdun and Ironfoot return from Whitemount successfully? Or did they not?"

"They did."

"Good. At least you're willing to admit it. Second, that university professor was a war hero in the Gnomics. He fought with valor and distinction
and was awarded the Laurel four times over for excellence in combat. He's no
mere scholar and we both know it.

"Now Silverdun. You know that Silverdun was with Mauritane on whatever bloody secret mission that Titania sent him on. He fought at the battle
of Sylvan. He's a very clever fellow, and no slouch with the Gifts, either.

"And as for that thing, as you have so gallantly put it, I have expressed to
you on more than one occasion not just how valuable she is, but how much
more valuable she may become with the proper training, which I expect you to
provide."

Sela realized they were talking about her. She was that "thing." She had
known for a long time, ever since she'd been taken from Lord Tanen and
brought to Copperine House, that she was different somehow. Perhaps even
special. She even understood why she was "valuable." She had skills: She
could read others; she could kill. All of the things that Tanen had brought
out in her; those things that she'd tried hard at Copperine House to forget.
Now these things determined her worth.

Tonight she did not want to be different. She wanted to be like anyone
else. A pretty blonde-haired girl that Silverdun might see and fall in love
with.

Not a thing.

"But there is one more piece of information that you do not have, and
which I have reserved in anticipation of this very moment."

"And what is that?" asked Paet, seething with anger. Sela did not need
to read a thread to know what Paet was thinking. This was Everess's favorite
game: to withhold a vital piece of information, hide it behind his back like a
club, and then beat you over the head with it.

"That I did not choose Silverdun, or Ironfoot, or Sela."

"No? And who did? Was it Aba's guiding hand? Regina Titania herself?"

Everess smiled. "The latter, actually."

Paet's eyes widened. "You expect me to believe that the Seelie queen
reviewed your request for personnel and personally selected these three to be Shadows? During her rest period while hearing petitions, perhaps? Or in
between drinks at a ball?"

"I can only tell you what she told me. I went to her to discuss the matter
of reopening the Office of Shadow. We spoke briefly, perhaps five minutes. At
the end of the meeting, she wrote three names down on a slip of paper and
handed it to me."

"And you are only just now telling me this?" said Paet. "Why?"

"As you are so fond of telling others, Paet, it was not necessary for you to
know."

Paet seethed.

"One last point," said Everess, pouring himself another drink. "You
accused me of lying to our recruits. Did you not just this evening admit to
doing the same thing? I fail to see why you have singled me out for opprobrium on that count."

"What I did," said Paet, "and will always do is conceal that information
which has been deemed classified. That is not quite the same as lying, unless
you'd like to spend the rest of the evening arguing the semantics of it. What
you have done is deliberately mislead them.

"Of course you fail to see the distinction. You're so comfortable with
falsehood that you can't tell the difference."

Everess's face had slowly reddened throughout Paet's brief speech. "There
is a line I suggest you do not cross, Chief Pact. I allow you to speak to me
freely, and not as the commoner you are to the nobleman that I am. But I will
only take so much abuse from you."

"Then I'll add only one more thing, nzy lord," said Paet. "If you ever keep
me in the dark about something so critical as the selection of my officers
again, there will be hell to pay."

"I'll take it under advisement," said Everess. "Now, are we quite
finished?"

Paet stood. "For now. Until the next time you find a way to be a thorn
in my side. And before you take any more umbrage, be advised that I will
speak to you any way I damn well please."

He strode away and out of Sela's vision. Her heart was racing. She tiptoed back to her room and lay down, willing herself to be calm.

She had known that Paet and Everess weren't on the best of terms, but
now it seemed as though they detested one another. She had never trusted
Everess. Did that mean she ought to trust Paet? He was difficult to read,
almost closed to her.

That reminded her of Silverdun's trick during the meeting earlier. How
had he managed to shut her out so easily? No one had ever done that to her
before. And what had he been thinking when he'd done it?

There were so many questions, so many puzzles. Just when she thought
herself an expert on Fae nature, she realized that she really knew nothing at
all.

Sleep was a long time coming.

Silverdun's body wanted sleep, but his mind wouldn't allow it. He lay in bed,
tossing and turning, the details of the meeting replaying themselves in his
head.

What had he gotten himself into? Could Everess and Paet have been
serious? Would they truly toss him back into Crete Sulace if he tried to back
out now? When Mauritane was recruiting allies to take with him on his mad
mission across Faerie at the queen's behest, he'd told Silverdun more or less
the same thing: Go with me or I will kill you. How many of Silverdun's great
life choices had been made at knifepoint?

And Sela. She was beautiful, to be sure. And alluring. There was something almost mystical about her, something mysterious and primal. But
there was also something very wrong about her, a hardness, something dark
that suggested she'd seen things that no one should see. The look in her eyes,
at the same time keen and confused, as if she were from another world
entirely.

She had gotten inside his head somehow, using the Gift of Empathy. Silverdun had experienced Empathy; the counselors at Nyelcu all had a bit of it.
But this was something different altogether. She hadn't just read his mind;
she'd somehow become one with it. When she reached into him, something
of her was there with it; they mingled somehow. And what he'd felt of her had been deep and dark, the Inland Sea at night, an endless abyss. The water
of her was pure and clear, but what swam beneath its surface chilled him.

One of the things that Mauritane had taught him during the long weeks
of their trek across the kingdom was how to guard himself from Empathy.
What a typically Mauritane skill, Silverdun realized.

Still, Sela was beautiful. He was pulled to her. He wanted her.

He began to drift off to sleep, dreaming of kissing her, but as his mind
wandered toward dreaming, her face became Faella's in his mind, and it was
Faella's name he whispered just before he lost consciousness.

The difficulty of the fool's errand is that it is typically the
fool who undertakes it.

-Master jedron

he first day of the month of Hawk dawned sunny and bright, but despite
the weather, Blackstone House was still as oppressive and imposing as it
had been on their first visit. The inside of the house was, perhaps, bleaker
than it had been then; the early-morning light that eked its way past the
heavy shutters cast a pall on the empty rooms. Silverdun climbed the stairs
and stepped into the closet in the back bedroom. He paused with his key in
the lock, hesitating the way one would before jumping into a cold pond. The
disorientation was of the kind that one never got used to.

The instant Silverdun stepped into the turn, the house came alive with
sound. Copyists and amanuenses hurried through the office carrying scrolls
and bound documents, and a pair of message sprites were brawling in one of
the corners, fighting over a scrap of pink silk fabric. In the main office, every
desk was occupied, the intelligence officers preparing briefings or translating
intercepted documents or whatever it was that they did. A few heads turned
when Silverdun entered, then went back to whatever they'd been doing. Silverdun went downstairs feeling oddly light and at ease.

Ironfoot and Paet were waiting in Paet's office, sipping tea in awkward
silence. Paet glanced with practiced accusatory subtlety at the clock on his
desk, showing ten minutes past the hour. Silverdun ignored him.

"No Sela this morning?" Silverdun asked, as innocently as possible.

"She's on another assignment," said Paet, expressionless.

"Of no concern to me, I take it?" asked Silverdun.

"Not at this time."

Silverdun sighed and sat. This was going to be the way of things. Well.
Information had a way of getting around. At court, as in politics, as in most
everything else, information was always the most precious commodity.

"I'm sending the two of you to Annwn," said Paet, handing each of them a
leather binder holding unpleasantly thick sheaves of documents. Ironfoot reached
out eagerly for his, but Silverdun wavered, experiencing again the strange,
embarrassing shame at taking orders from his social inferior. This had, of course,
become a pattern with him since his days as a prisoner at Crete Sulace, but he'd
never quite gotten used to it. If there were a medal for least respected nobleman
in all of Faerie, he'd have won it hands down. Maybe it was a good thing.
"Humility is the soul's sustenance," Estiane had told him once. Smug bastard.

Silverdun took the binder and opened it. It contained dossiers on a
number of government officials, a briefing on the political situation, the
names and addresses of friendly contacts among the populace, and a brief
mission document, written in Paet's tidy scrawl, a bit blurred by a copyist
who was either harried or incompetent.

"Obviously you can't travel directly, so we'll be sending you via Mag
Mell. The ambassador in Isle Cureid will provide you with the documentation you'll need to cross into Annwn." The Port-Auvris Lock, the gateway
connecting the Seelie Kingdom directly to Annwn, had been closed five years
earlier, during the Unseelie invasion.

"Your primary mission," said Paet, "is to make contact with several of the
local authorities in Blood of Arawn who we believe may be particularly
resistant to the current political situation. Since Mab conquered Annwn five
years ago, the populace has become more and more restless. There have been
four separate rebellions quashed by the Unseelie contingent there. All of
them minor, but there does seem to be a trend."