Shadowborn (11 page)

“First thing is, I just went skin t’skin with one of those Shadowborn.” Laurel’s head jerked before she caught herself; Ishmael, his head turned toward Balthasar, didn’t notice. “Wasn’t meant, believe me. The thing was dying, toppled against me.” He stopped; Balthasar realized he was fighting nausea. “Foul with Shadowborn magic—”

Laurel paused in her cleaning to pass him a small towel that smelled strongly of mint, even at Balthasar’s distance. Ishmael wiped his face, inhaling deeply of the scent. “
Cursed
unpleasant,” he said with feeling.

“But informative,” Balthasar said.

“You have that way . . . of cutting to th’essence.” He paused as Laurel propped up his hand and began to bandage his arm. Her head was cocked, listening. “It was a formed mind that touched mine. Not a sane man’s, but no beast’s, either. Th’thing had once been Darkborn—I’m sure of it.”

“Ishmael,”
said Laurel in horror. “You . . . could sense that?”

“Aye, m’lady. I shouldn’t be speaking of this in front of you—”

She shook her head crisply. “Father’s prohibition might have made sense in the past, but it makes none now. We need to know what we’re fighting.” She split the bandage with a stroke of the scalpel and knotted the ties neatly around his wrist. “So, they’re . . . transforming Darkborn into Shadowborn.” Her head came up; she sonned him. “Lavender knows?”

Thinking of her twin’s lost love? Or her twin exposed on the rooftop?

“She knows. Can’t be sure on that,” Ishmael said. “Just that they’ve minds closer t’men than beasts. Though th’implications are ugly, for th’ones lost.” He rolled his head on the back of the chair. “Second thing, Hearne, is I don’t suppose y’were up on the third floor a little while ago?”

“No,” said Balthasar, uneasily.

“Thought you mightn’t have been. Trouble is, I sonned someone much like you trying t’open the door to the rooftop dance floor. He bolted just before th’servants’ door opened and a whole scourge of Shadowborn tried t’pile through. I got reinforcements just as I shot myself dry.”

“They’ve infiltrated us,” Laurel said for him. “Come in with the refugees.”

“You . . . didn’t sense anything?” Balthasar said, cautiously.

Ishmael grimaced, scar jumping. “I sensed plenty,” he said. “Was ready t’heave the whole time I was on the roof and fighting them in the hall. It wasn’t false heroism kept me in place,” he said to Laurel. “But no, I didn’t sense anything from any particular one—but if they’d any sense, they’d have been keeping clear of me.”

Stranhorne arrived with his one-armed lieutenant. The scholarly baron now had armor over his shirt and a holstered revolver at his waist. His hair was untidy and matted—with blood, by the smell. He shook his head as his daughter opened her mouth. “Not mine.” She passed him a towel, pointed him in the direction of a washing basin and jug set on the side table. “Mother,” she said, firmly, family shorthand, maybe, for
Mother would insist
or
Mother would be outraged
or
Mother would have hysterics.
Somehow, knowing the late baronelle’s daughters, he couldn’t believe it would be the last.

Laurel sketched in their conversation so far as her father scrubbed his arms and blotted the worst of the gore from his hair and leathers. Stranhorne said over his shoulder, “So, you’ve not lost it after all.”

“Aye, it seems not. Though a man with a burned tongue might still taste spices, if they’re strong enough.”

“All right.” Stranhorne turned. “We’ve fought off the first wave. And we need to take a moment to decide what else of our tactics we need to change—we obviously hadn’t thought through the implications of having Shadowborn come in force from the air. We’ve still got about four hours to sunrise. Strumheller, what’s your best guess on whether they’re liable to be active after?”

“M’best guess, Stranhorne, depends on past experience, which has shown itself a poor guide in this.”

“Take it nonetheless,” the baron ordered.

“If they were once Darkborn, then they may be bound by th’Curse as we are.”
We have the father of Tercelle’s children to falsify that hope,
Balthasar thought, but did not say. “If they come by day, then they don’t want us—don’t want us to change or t’eat or any of th’other things they could do with our flesh. And if they come by day—it galls me t’say this—we can’t fight them. We can only hope to burrow deep t’survive.”

Something in Ishmael’s face, something in Stranhorne’s, disturbed Balthasar. “And how likely is that?” Stranhorne said in a still voice.

Ishmael hesitated. His voice sounded almost studiedly impersonal; unusual for him. “We might be able t’close some of us in your lower cellars, so that it’d be more trouble t’the Shadowborn t’dig them out than they’d care to take. Predators don’t waste energy and don’t put themselves at risk. They’re in our territory, enemy territory. But we’ve never had them come at us in such force before.”

“Should we evacuate now?” Stranhorne asked. “If the message reached the Crosstracks, and the telegraph is running and the tracks are clear, a relief force should be at the Crosstracks by nightfall. They might even be there already.”

“We’d likely lose more doing that than waiting for the relief force,” Ishmael said. “Unless we can be certain there’s some they want more than others, and that they can tell us apart, if most of us went on the road, most of th’Shadowborn would follow.”

There was a silence. Then Laurel said, quietly, “There is one other option.”

Her father and mentor waited. “You know what it is,” she said, “but you won’t say it yourselves. Ishmael says they have minds like men, and we’ve certainly discovered that they will exploit our weaknesses and attack our commanders. If they’re intelligent, we might be able to negotiate with them.”

“Negotiate our surrender, you mean,” her father said, though not harshly. “Nothing we’ve met suggests it would be otherwise. They need not speak to communicate their intentions most eloquently. If I thought we’d gain anything by it, I’d swallow my gorge and negotiate, but nothing they’ve done suggests they have aught else in mind but slaughter and domination.”

“Father,” she said, carefully, “would your answer be the same if they were not using magic?”

He frowned, not at her but at the thoughts her question inspired. “Truthfully, I can’t know,” he said. “But magical or nonmagical, we can judge them by their deeds. Strumheller, in my place, would you negotiate?”

“Never,” Ishmael said, without a pause. “Maybe I’m influenced by the sense of the magic and the touch of the mind—but nothing in their deeds, as you say, suggests they recognize our right t’live in peace. Our best hope is t’bloody them; then they might listen.” He rolled his head. “Hearne, what’s your say?”

Balthasar, slightly startled at the question being referred to him, weighed it. His spirit rebelled against rejecting outright the possibility of negotiating and perhaps sparing lives on both sides. But years of torment by his brother, years of work amongst the oppressed and dispossessed of the city, and years of listening to and observing his social betters had all taught him that to many, negotiation was weakness, an invitation to further cruelties. He said, “Negotiation would only be productive if we had something they want—aside from our lives.”
As food or slaves,
he did not say; it stood implied.

“I know,” she said, quietly. “That’s my thought, too. But—” Her hand strayed to her rounded abdomen, and she did not voice what else she thought.

“As long as we can hold the manor, we stay,” her father said. “But we should lay the groundwork for a retreat, as Mycene says. I’ll get started on that. Laurel, I want you to rest. Hearne, you’d best get back to the surgery. I know we took casualties in the courtyard and on the roof. Strumheller, I’ve a request of you that will seem decidedly hypocritical, given the opinions I’ve expressed as late as last night. But we’re fighting for our lives, here. I want you to find that infiltrator—or infiltrators. If they’re Shadowborn or shape-changed or ensorcelled, you’ll be able to tell, if you come close enough.”

Close enough to touch, he meant. Close enough to read, unconsenting and perhaps unawares. Ishmael had told Telmaine that that was contrary to the code he lived by. His face stoic, Ishmael got to his feet. “I can do that.”

Aside from the leadership and the vulnerable points, the points he would expect a Shadowborn to undermine were the roof, the entrances, the armory, and the munitions. Which had him roaming from rooftop to cellars like an unquiet ghost, three of Stranhorne’s troop dogging his heels for his safekeeping. The sense of Shadowborn magic had dwindled since the attack, but not gone entirely, and when he reached the roof, he realized why—the damp night had turned to sleet and wind, making him shiver with more than cold. He found Lavender and Jeremiah Coulter at the southwest corner, supervising the lashing down of one of the three cannon underneath an improvised shelter. Coulter stroked its flank as covetously as a horse thief might a prime mare, his misspent past having included a stint as a pirate’s gunner. Ishmael cautioned, “Y’realize that thing’ll deafen everyone on the roof and below.” That he knew from painful experience. He never wanted to be near cannon fire again.

Coulter grinned. Lavender frowned through the rain dripping from her hat. “We’ll use it if we need it.”

“Give me a head start at running first,” he grumbled. “A word, if y’don’t mind.”

She let him draw her away. “This weather’s not natural,” he said, quietly.

“I don’t need you t’tell me that,” she said. “I know by the queasy expression on your face.”

He’d thought he was concealing it better than that. She smirked, reading his mind.

“Boris said you gave him the talk,” she said. “Are you about to give me the talk?”

“You don’t need that talk. This is another one. If y’hear the retreat, retreat. Y’understand?”

“We’ll have to disable the cannon. . . .”

Entirely sensible, with their enemies able to land on the roof and turn those cannon on the stairwell entrances. “If y’hear the retreat, y’won’t have much time.” Five stories down to the ground, and may the Mother of All Things—including of fiery young women with more courage than sense—guide her choice of a stair. He could imagine nothing worse than being down in the cellar with Stranhorne, knowing they must light the fuses, and knowing she was trapped above them. He still didn’t know whether Stranhorne had told her what he planned—it was time he did, for the sake of the people with her—but it was not Ishmael’s decision. “
Promise
me you’ll get your people down and clear. Spike or throw the cursed cannon off th’edge of the roof if you must, but do it fast. We’ll need you on th’ground to help with the breakout, and we don’t want you cut off.”

“I
promise
. Now you promise me, no more one-man stands.”

“Not my choice—”

“No excuse,” she said, sternly. “You told me that yourself: y’have to think ahead, leave yourself maneuvering space. Promise.”

He promised, and he meant it as sincerely, he supposed, as she did. Time and circumstance would determine whether one or both of them would be forsworn.

She leaned forward as though to kiss his lips, and at the last instant faltered and brushed his cheek instead. He could not kiss her back—it would not have been proper, even if he had been willing to intrude further on her thoughts—but he brought up his gloved hand and cupped her cheek. “Please try to stay out of trouble.”

He wanted to pull Coulter or one of the senior troopers aside and order them to make sure she did retreat, but knew she would be rightfully furious with him, instead of merely irritated, as her fleetingly sour expression attested. She wasn’t a teenage enthusiast anymore, and she deserved the same respect he would give any fighting man or woman. Maybe it was as well that he’d never had a daughter. . . . He made his circuit of the men and women with her, trying as best he could to sense any additional aura of Shadowborn over the miasma rising with the rain.
Trying too hard,
the fierce pain in his chest warned him. He had no choice but to sit down on the wet gravel and pass off the spell as momentary dizziness from his injured arm. He went down the western stair, deliberately using the busier stair so that he met as many people as possible. Imogene’s tits, he could only hope his movements were as unpredictable to any Shadowborn trying to evade him—assuming they’d even bother—as to himself.

Laurel was resting, on her father’s orders, in a curtained corner of the ballroom. Neither her father nor she had wanted her to go back to her rooms, he because he wanted to be sure of her whereabouts in a crisis, and she because she had the opportunity here to listen. She whispered her suspicions of two groups who had passed her; he promised to check them.

The baron himself was in the side gallery with several of his troop, stooped over the relief, reviewing the route and deployment for a retreat. Ishmael circled, attentive to any recoil of the men and women he passed or any perturbation of his senses, but nobody shifted more than simply yielding him room. Stranhorne stopped him as he made to withdraw. “Raining again?” he said.

“Aye. Cursed near sleet.”

By the tucked-in corner of Stranhorne’s mouth, he understood the implication. He moved with Ishmael to the doorway. “Can we expect relief by sunrise?” he said, quietly.

A sensitive question, Ishmael admitted. If they didn’t, he would not know whether the enemy had cut them off or Ishmael had failed in his duty to prepare for his own decease and the transition to his brother’s rule. He had thought he planned well, but had never imagined the transition happening in the midst of such emergency, where a speck of grit in the mechanism could produce a fatal stall. And his marred relationship with Reynard was a more than a speck. Noellene had been right: he had owed Reynard a full account, whether in person or in a letter—even though he might be certain that Reynard would believe not a word of it. But when events taught Reynard otherwise, then he would have that information.