The Office of Shadow (16 page)

Silverdun sat up; at some point he'd drifted off to sleep again, but now
hunger roused him. The door was still locked, and pounding on it still produced no response from Than or Master Jedron.

This was ridiculous; the mental equivalent of the paperweight to the
head. A tactic meant to do what? Unnerve him? Test his patience? Annoy
him? If so, it was succeeding admirably.

Clearly Jedron had no intention of allowing him out of the room, so it
was going to be up to Silverdun to escape. Surely Everess and the odd,
brooding Paet hadn't gone to all this trouble only to have Silverdun starve to
death in a tower room like a doomed princess in a tale.

He began with the door. The bands around the wood and the lock were
of iron plated in silver. Silverdun's attempts to use Elements or Motion
against the door only succeeded in worsening his headache. Several painful
shoves with his shoulders proved that it couldn't be forced, and he nicked the
blade of his rapier trying amateurishly to pick the lock. If he'd had a bit of
wire he might have tried picking the lock, although he wouldn't have had
any idea how to do that given all the wire in the world.

"Damn you, Jedron!" Silverdun shouted, punching the door and immediately regretting it.

Breathe. Think. Be calm. Losing his temper wasn't going to accomplish
anything. And if Jedron was watching him through a peephole or with clairvoyance, Silverdun felt sure that his anger would only give the old man
pleasure. Clearly no one was coming to help him. He couldn't force the door. The window was of no use. He certainly couldn't spellcraft his way through
the stone of the walls or the ceiling.

There must be something in the room that might help him. If nothing
else, that stray bit of wire for him to practice his lock-picking skills with. He
knelt and looked under the bed, finding nothing. He opened the drawers of
the small bureau and felt around inside them, then pulled each drawer out
and inspected it top and bottom. He pulled the bureau out from the wall and
felt the back. He tipped it over and examined its bottom. Nothing. He took
the mirror from the wall and found that it was indeed hung on its hook by a
length of wire, but after a moment's experimentation it became clear that the
stuff was far too flimsy to be of any use at lock picking. The bed frame was
of wood, fitted with pegs, not nails.

After several minutes, Silverdun had been over every solid item in the
small room and found nothing that might help him in any way. All that was
left were the pillow and the mattress. Angrily, Silverdun stabbed at the
pillow with the tip of his sword, sending goose down flying. The sight of the
feathers floating aimlessly to the floor incensed Silverdun for some reason he
could not explain, and he began to hack furiously at the mattress with the
edge of his blade, sending clouds of down into the air. Again and again he
struck at it, ignoring the pain in his skull.

He'd nearly shredded the entire mattress when he both heard and felt his
sword strike metal. There, in the midst of the now-ruined mattress, was a
silver key. It had been hidden in the mattress. Silverdun snatched it up and
put it in the lock. It fit perfectly.

Master Jedron and Than were standing in the hallway. Jedron was
smirking.

"Took you long enough," he said.

"And what, pray tell, was the point of that exercise?" Silverdun barked.
"To teach me how to disarm bedclothes?"

"No," said Jedron. "It's to teach you to stop waiting around for other
people to tell you what to do and think for yourself for a change."

Jedron peered into Silverdun's room. A layer of goose down covered the
floor. "I hope you don't mind sleeping on wood slats," he said, smiling.
"Because that's the only mattress you're getting."

-MaTula,''The Secret City"

imha awoke in his tiny chamber freezing, with the same pit of dread
lodged in his stomach that had been there for weeks. Despite the chill,
his chest and arms were covered in perspiration. Every day now he awoke
feeling the same way. The cold, the unease, the sweat. Timha dressed quickly,
pulling on his robes and a long cloak that did something to keep the chill
out, but the robes absorbed the sweat and left him feeling a bit slimy.

It was always cold in the city. Always cold, always gray. No matter where
Timha went, the wind always seemed to find its way at him, invading his
robes, making him shiver anew, a hundred times a day. Even the fires in the
common rooms seemed to burn colder, with a sickly blue aura around them.
Timha couldn't remember the last time he'd felt warm.

He left his chamber, taking care not to look out the windows that he
passed in the hall on the way to the stair. He kept his eyes on the floor, concentrating on the millennia-old patterns in the tiles, faded and cracked, but
still clearly visible; a vision of an earlier era. Timha and his colleagues were led to believe that the city had been built even before the Rauane Envedun-e,
the Age of Purest Silver, when magic filled the world like sunlight. Well, it
was certainly old. It needn't be that old in order to impress Timha.

Timha made it to the staircase without glancing out a single window. It
was strange how they attracted the eye, despite the deep unpleasantness that
looking outside engendered. It was the sky. Timha did not need to see the sky
today. Not today when the dread was so bad that it felt as though his insides
were liquefying.

All night the intricate dance of the Project paraded before him in
dreams. He could not escape those motions; the precision and complexity of
them consumed his waking hours and his sleeping ones as well now. Not that
he slept much, or well.

Timha was still seeing those motions when he emerged in the dining hall,
glowering at the other journeyers and their apprentices. They seemed at ease,
restful, even content as they sat lingering over their breakfasts before the
stoves that were never quite hot enough. Well, why shouldn't they be content?
Each had his or her own little bit of the overall structure of the Project to contend with, and it was challenging, rewarding work for them. They knew that
their presence here meant that they were the best and most respected thaumaturges in the empire, long may it sail. They knew that when their work
here was done they would retire, wealthy and respected, to villas on the fore
moorings of the fairest cities, perhaps even the new City of Mab itself.

What they did not know was the thing that made Timha sweat at night,
that made him lightheaded and anxious nearly every moment of the day.
They were spared this knowledge because it would do no good for any of
them to know.

"Morning, Timha," said Giaco, one of the Elements experts, leader of the
group who were working on improving the outer shell. "How are things in
the heart of the beast?" Giaco and his team were close with one another; several of them had taught together at a university in one of the flag cities. They
were working on the project of their lifetimes, with access to only the best
supplies and research materials, a limitless budget, and an army of apprentices who would gladly do anything they asked. Moreover, they were doing
all this in Mab's own Secret City, one of the most hallowed locations in all of the empire. This was Mab's redoubt. This was where she had come to have
her children, where she mourned the loss of her husbands. This was where
Beozho wrote his Works. Giaco and his friends were in paradise.

Timha hated them for it.

"Things are progressing very well, thanks," said Timha primly. He sat at a
table by himself, took tea from an apprentice without looking up, and tried to
ignore the dance that twirled in his mind. The cruel irony of his position struck
him now as it often did, that he was suffering not because he was a poor worker
or because he was intellectually inferior to his fellows, but rather because he was
their better. Master Valmin had taken Timha under his wing early on, brought
him into the core team, gone over the more esoteric and taboo portions of the
Project with him. At the beginning, they had all been excited, and none more
so than Timha. It was the position of a lifetime. And while he certainly had
reservations about the use of the Black Art, Valmin had assured him that it was
for a noble cause, that evil could indeed be harnessed for good.

For the sake of the empire, Valmin had said, an encouraging smile on his
face. Think of the soldiers who gutted their enemies on the battlefield, of the
generals who sent their troops into the fray knowing that not all of them
would return. All great enterprises, Valmin had told him, have some element
of darkness at their heart. Better to name it and know it, to contain it so that
it did only the harm it was intended to do.

What Valmin had not told Timha, or perhaps had not known himself,
was that working the Black Art was not something one did lightly. It was
powerful but draining, both mentally and emotionally, and the feeling of ...
Timha could only describe it as sinfulness never left him, though Timha
believed in neither Aba nor the Chthonics, nor anything else for that matter.
The Black Art wormed its way into your bones. Its harsh workings yielded
impressive results, but each day Timha had felt as though a part of his soul
were draining away.

And that was before all the trouble had begun.

It started with a realization that Timha himself had made, reviewing an
extremely complex passage in the notes of Hy Pezho, the Project's original
creator. Timha had read the passage over and over again, trying to deduce its
meaning and finding himself unable. He'd brought it to Valmin, who had retired to his own quarters with it for most of a day. When Valmin had
emerged, it had been with a dour face. Their task was going to be much more
difficult than they had at first believed.

Valmin had been given the most prestigious portion of the work, and he
had shared it with Timha and a few select others because they had proven
themselves the best of the best in their respective fields of study. And now
they were the ones who would have their throats cut by the Bel Zheret if they
failed. The others would be sent home, perhaps with a bit of disgrace, or more
likely with no comment at all, and Valmin and Timha and a few others would
be gutted like fish and left to rot in the stinking basements of the Secret City
where the raw materials for the Black Art were kept.

Timha shuddered at the thought. The basements were the only things
that bothered him more than the sky.

Nothing was what it was supposed to be.