The Office of Shadow (51 page)

He hit back, his dagger still in hand, slashing across the Bel Zheret's
belly, drawing blood that came out black in the dim moonlight. Asp barely
seemed to notice. He shoved Silverdun to the ground and stomped on Silverdun's ribs. Silverdun tried to catch his breath, and couldn't. Spots
appeared and wavered in his eyes. He felt Asp snap his wrist, prying the
dagger out of it. Felt teeth on his throat. Felt the percussive damage of fists
on his face, in his groin. He swam toward consciousness but felt himself slipping deeper and deeper into the darkness.

He looked up and saw Ironfoot standing over Asp, holding Asp's own
knife, reaching it around to slit the Bel Zheret's throat, just as Jedron had
taught them: the certain kill.

But it was too late. Asp already had Silverdun's knife and was digging it
upward through Silverdun's belly, twisting it, angling it, plunging it into his
heart.

Ironfoot slit the Bel Zheret's throat, and it fell over Silverdun.

"Silverdun!" Ironfoot shouted. He yanked the Bel Zheret's body off of
Silverdun and hurled it at a tree. It was dead, its eyes blank, its black blood
running out onto the lawn.

Ironfoot looked back at Silverdun. He wasn't moving. His eyes were
closed. There was no breath.

Silverdun was dead.

Ironfoot heard sobs coming from the door of the villa. Sela!

He ran into the house and saw Sela, alone, on the floor of the entryway,
weeping. The other two Bel Zheret were nowhere to be seen. Sela was
holding the iron band up on her arm; he could see that the bare iron was
burning her skin, and that it was a severe effort for her to hold it on.

Ironfoot was no Master of Elements by any stretch of the imagination,
but he could manage a simple shaping.

"Give me the band," he said. "I can resilver it."

"No!" she shrieked. "You can't remove it. Can't! Can't! Not ever again!"

"Okay, okay," said Ironfoot. She was hysterical, her eyes crazy and wandering.

Ironfoot held up the Bel Zheret's long knife; its blade was of hardened
silver. He touched the knife's edge to the iron band. The band repelled it
with a force like magnetism. He had to push the blade onto the band. It dug
into Sela's arm and she shrieked, pulling away.

"Hold still, dammit!" he shouted.

"It hurts!"

"I know it hurts; if you'll hold still, I can stop it."

He channeled Elements into the silver of the dagger and pushed hard
against it, flowing it off the blade and onto the iron band. He'd never worked
with iron, and realized that he didn't know the binding that compelled it to
bond with the silver coating. He channeled Insight into the binding on the
knife and saw that it was not particularly complicated. So he simply copied
the binding from the dagger and placed something similar on the band,
wrapping it around the silver coating. The binding took hold, thankfully,
and the silver coating stuck onto the band. It was by no means pretty, but it
worked. He tossed the dagger aside, and Sela collapsed in his arms.

"Sela, what did you do to them?" he asked, bewildered.

"I showed them things as they truly are," she answered, her voice thick.
"It's okay. They're not real." She closed her eyes and slumped against him.

Ironfoot had never felt so alone in all his life.

Ironfoot didn't sleep that night; he sat watching Sela sleep, wondering
whether more Bel Zheret were on their way. He was too tired to care.

When Sela awoke it was morning. Ironfoot told her about Silverdun, and
she broke down all over again. She knelt next to his body, weeping, which
was exactly what Ironfoot felt like doing.

"We have to go," he told her after a while.

"I know," she said, gathering herself. "We have to bury Silverdun first,
though."

"No," said Ironfoot. "We're taking him with us."

"I don't think that's a good idea," she said. "He's dead; he doesn't care
where he's buried."

"That's not it," said Ironfoot. "Paet insisted that if one of us died, we
were to return the body. If the Unseelie find him"-he nodded toward the
dead Bel Zheret-"they can use the Black Art to find out everything he
knows."

"Oh," said Sela.

She stood. "I'm going to look inside the villa for some proper clothes,"
she said. "Clearly a lady lives here, or lived here." She disappeared into the
house.

Ironfoot looked down at Silverdun. "Sorry, friend," he said.

They wrapped Silverdun's body in a rug. Ironfoot fed and bridled the two
strongest-looking horses in the stable, and tied Silverdun to the back of the
saddle. He placed an inexpert glamour on the awkward bundle to make it
look like a saddle roll, but it would only pass the most cursory of inspections.

They found hard bread in the pantry of the villa and ate a sullen breakfast. On the way out of the house, Ironfoot stopped and looked down at
Timha's corpse, at his dead eyes staring blankly.

"Some help you were," he said. He patted the leather satchel that he still
wore. "But at least I got your plans, you bastard."

Something glinted in a corner. It was one of the Bel Zheret's long serrated knives. Its owner wouldn't miss it, so Ironfoot took it and put it in his
belt.

They mounted without speaking and rode away, to the south, toward the
Seelie Lands.

Elenth was one of only three Unseelie cities on the ground. There were
few places in Mab's territory that would support permanent structures, and
even those in Elenth were squat and sturdily built against the quakes in the
nearby mountains. To the south of the city they rode up the side of the valley
and found themselves in a thick forest.

"If we keep heading this direction, we'll hit the border tomorrow
evening," Ironfoot said. "Of course, I have no idea what we'll run into along
the way, since that was Virum's job."

Sela said nothing, only nodded glumly. She would be worse than useless
if there was more fighting.

The wood stretched on for miles and miles, relatively flat and not particularly thick. The going wasn't easy, but they were able to maintain a steady
walk throughout.

Near the end of the first day, Ironfoot looked ahead and saw a break in
the trees ahead. A road? Something was moving past, something huge. He
waved for Sela to stop her horse and listened. A regular rhythm. Soldiers on
the march.

Ironfoot dismounted and waved for Sela to remain where she was. She
didn't respond. He looped his reins over a nearby branch and crept toward
the road, using all the skills of silence that Jedron had taught him, which
were enhanced by his changed body. He reached the edge of the road and
crouched carefully, watching.

Company upon company of soldiers, grizzled veterans and fresh recruits
alike, were moving toward the southwest. Toward Wamarnest, the city
closest to the Seelie border, where cavalry had been drilling for months.

War was coming, and soon.

But there was a more immediate problem. The few border crossings would now be more closely guarded than ever. The Border Wall stretched
across most of the length of the border; it had been created during a long-ago
treaty, and maintained by both sides ever since. It was composed of interlocking bindings, one Seelie, one Unseelie, and was impossible to cross from
either side. Presumably Virum had known of a secret crossing, one of the
spots where the resonance from Shifting Places of the nearby Contested Lands
created soft spots in the Border Wall. These were all guarded, but from time
to time new ones cropped up. The problem was that Ironfoot had no idea
where Virum's soft spot was located.

Once the column of soldiers had passed, he returned to Sela and they continued, hurrying across the road and back into the forest. That night they
camped without a fire, eating berries and nuts and the last of the stale bread
they'd taken from the villa.

The next morning they continued their ride. They must have made good
time, because the sun was still well above the western horizon when they ran
into the Border Wall. Ironfoot dismounted and examined it. It was merely a
low stone wall, nothing particularly imposing, though runes were scattered
across its surface. He put his hand out to reach across, and met with resistance. He pushed his hand farther and the resistance grew stronger. A little
farther and the resistance became physically painful. He quickly withdrew.
There would be no crossing here.

They followed the Border Wall to the southwest, where hopefully he
could find a border crossing that wasn't too crowded. He had no idea what
he'd do when he found one, but there wasn't much of a choice. Every step
they took to the southwest, though, took them closer to the remains of
Selafae, and Sylvan beyond.

Near sunset, they came upon a group of soldiers stationed along a length
of the wall. Not particularly attentive soldiers, since they had yet to notice
the two riders approaching them, and not a true crossing, simply a soft place.
That was a lucky break. Ironfoot counted ten soldiers, however, and that was
less lucky.

Nothing to do but try to talk their way through.

"Sela," he said in a low voice. "I need your Empathy here. We're going
to have to talk our way through these men."

"I don't know," said Sela. "It hurts so badly." She clutched her arm, where
red welts from the touch of the uncovered band had burned her skin.

"You're going to have to try, dammit!" said Ironfoot. "You're a Shadow,
Sela. You have a job to do."

"I know."

"Then wake up and do what needs to be done."

She looked at him, angrily at first; then her expression hardened. "You're
right," she said. "I will be what I was made to be."

Ironfoot wasn't sure what she meant by that, but if it brought her back
to her senses, he was glad. They rode toward the soldiers.

"Who goes there!" one of them shouted.

"We have orders to cross the border," said Ironfoot. "A mission from the
City of Mab itself."

"Dismount," said the foremost soldier, who was a lieutenant, and a young
one.

"I don't have time, Lieutenant. Now get out of my way or I'll move you."

The officer stood his ground. "No one crosses the border," he said. "I have
my own orders, and I don't care what yours are."

Ironfoot looked at Sela, who was concentrating on the lieutenant. "Who
are you?" he said, looking at her.

"We're on a critical mission," she said, her voice clear and distinct.
"Surely you understand that." Ironfoot could see the tension in her gaze. The
struggle.

"I don't know," said the lieutenant, faltering.

Another of the soldiers approached. "You heard the lieutenant," he said.
"Dismount now, or we'll dismount you."

Just Ironfoot's luck; the officer didn't have his men at all well in hand. In
Ironfoot's army days he'd had a few such commanders. Smart infantrymen
knew how to manipulate them to keep themselves from getting killed.
Apparently the soldier now eyeing Ironfoot was one of these.

"We can't do that," said Sela. She was trying, but she'd been through too
much in too brief a time, and these were strong-willed, suspicious men.

"All right," said Ironfoot. He dismounted and, with deep regret, drew
the Bel Zheret's knife.

It was amazing, even to Ironfoot, how quickly he managed to kill them
all. He whirled and struck, all of his anger and frustration flowing into his
actions. All philosophy and higher thought evaporated. There was only
motion and balance and cut. Blood and bone. Shriek and hiss.

There were ten of them, and the last barely had time to draw his sword
before Ironfoot pierced his neck with the point of the Bel Zheret blade. If
Ironfoot hadn't been a complete Shadow before, he was now.

He remounted, slowly, after wiping the Bel Zheret knife on the uniform
of one of the fallen soldiers. They circled back and then took the wall at a run,
the horses' hooves clearing it easily.

They must have spoken at some point during the long night ride to the
Sylvan road, but Ironfoot couldn't remember saying anything. They stumbled on the road out of the forest at the break of dawn, and in less than two
hours they were at Sylvan, having passed column after column of Seelie soldiers heading north.