The Office of Shadow (25 page)

Things that were cut could be sewn. Faella's mother had been able to
mend a dress so that you could never tell that it had been ripped. It was just
a matter of concentration, she'd always said.

Faella concentrated on Rieger, and her mind shifted into a kind of daydream, imagining what sorts of things lay beneath a man's skin. Blood and
bone, flesh, meat. She'd never seen those things, but she assumed that he
must look rather like a side of beef inside.

Strange about healing. The body knit itself from the inside, like a torn
hem taking a needle and stitching itself up. It was mysterious and wonderful.
A kind of magic unlike the Gifts. The deeper magic of nature, which always
desired to make itself whole. And couldn't such a thing be nudged in just the
right direction? Faella had no idea how a body mended itself, but she understood desire.

"Remove your hand from the injury, miss!" came the physician's voice.
Faella opened her eyes; the physician was standing over her, scowling. Faella
looked down and saw her palm pressed against Rieger's belly, massaging it.

"You're killing him!" shouted Ada. She grabbed Faella's hand away.

The wound was gone, as Faella had known it would be.

The physician bent over and stared at Rieger, then at Faella. Rieger's
breathing was already beginning to slow.

"I don't know what kind of trickery you mestines have gotten up to, but
I don't appreciate being fooled!" the physician snapped. "Play your glamour
pranks on someone else!" She stormed out of the room, slamming the door.

When, an hour later, Rieger regained consciousness, he asked Faella what
had happened. Neither she nor Ada had an answer.

A week later, Faella was shopping in the bazaar when she saw Malik Em
out roaming the aisles with his friends in the Wolves. He laughed and
winked at the stallkeepers, taking a piece of fruit here and a silver ring there,
paying for nothing but thanking the vendors profusely in a mockery of
propriety.

The body desired to heal itself, she had discovered. But what if it didn't?
If that desire could be increased, could it be decreased as well? Removed
altogether?

Faella watched Malik Em go, lost in this thought. When she learned a
few days later that Malik Em had died of a simple ague, she shrugged. Albeit
with a grim satisfaction.

Probably just a coincidence.

No, probably not.

Faella knew desire, and no matter how much she tried to enjoy her life
as the proprietor of the Bittersweet Wayward Mestina, she knew that she
never could.

More was waiting out there. More would come to her, whether she
wanted it or not.

Someday Silverdun would return to her, she began to think. And she
wondered, if it did someday happen, would it be because she herself had
caused it?

It was something to ponder, but in the meantime there was always work
to do.

In matters of war, as in love, things rarely go as expected.

-Lord Gray, Recollections

net was waiting at the dock when the Splintered Driftwood nuzzled into its
slip, guided flawlessly by Jedron, now back in his role as Captain Ilian.
Paet had a satchel slung over one shoulder and held it close to his body. Silverdun looked over at Ironfoot. Neither of them had spoken much during the
brief trip back to the mainland. Silverdun had been lost in his thoughts, and
apparently so had Ironfoot. "Captain Ilian" hadn't spoken to either of them
at all, seeming to understand that they needed the space.

The boat touched the dock with a light thump, and one of the automata
tossed a line to Paet, who tied it. Jedron leapt from the boat onto the dock;
he and Paet regarded each other, but neither spoke.

"Come on, then," said Jedron, waving to Silverdun and Ironfoot. "We
don't have all day."

Silverdun rose and took a step forward, and stumbled. Since the night
that he'd been tossed into the pit of blackness, a night that he did not care
to remember, he'd felt uncomfortable in his own skin. Oddly, though, at the
same time he'd never felt better. Whatever they'd dunked him in appeared
to have done him some good, but still ... it was impossible to describe.
Jedron had told him that the feeling of strangeness would pass. It was all
"part of it," but he refused to say what "it" was, and Ironfoot claimed not to
know either.

Silverdun followed Ironfoot onto the dock and stood blinking. The
sounds of the seaside assailed him all at once: the shouts of the fishermen, the shushing of the wind through a hundred sails, the calls of gulls overhead. Farther up the pier, a legless man played the ocarina for passersby.

"All went well, I assume?" Paet asked Jedron.

"As well as can be expected," Jedron said. "This one," he added, jostling
Silverdun's arm, "gave me a bit of a turn, though. Someone forgot to tell me
that he'd studied potions at Nyelcu."

Paet's expression didn't change. "He didn't."

"I dropped out after a week," said Silverdun. "It wasn't for me."

Jedron glared at Paet, who shrugged. "Were they successful or weren't
they?"

"They were," said Jedron. His look said don't test me.

"Then we're finished here. Her Majesty thanks you for your service."

There was a moment of deep tension between the two. Then Jedron
laughed. "You little shit." He untied the line and then leapt with an astonishing nimbleness back on board the Splintered Driftwood.

For a while Paet stood and watched as Jedron and his crew of mechanical
sailors eased out of the marina and into open water. Silverdun and Ironfoot
watched with him. No one spoke.

Once the boat had vanished in the waves, Paet turned and looked at Silverdun. "You think you hate him now?" he said. "Wait until you've known
him as long as I have."

"Now what?" said Silverdun.

"Now you go home and get settled," said Paet. "Both of you. If your
training was anything like mine, you're exhausted beyond belief."

"True," said Ironfoot. "I can't remember ever having been so tired."

Paet opened his satchel and handed them each a sheaf of documents.
"Each of you has a new valet at home," he said.

Silverdun looked at the documents. On top was a Copyist
Guild-certified likeness of a man named Olou, whose title was given as "Special Services Officer" of the Foreign Ministry.

"Olou's a good man," said Paet, pointing at the likeness.

"What is he for?" asked Silverdun.

"He'll do all the things that an ordinary gentleman's man would do, and
a few things he wouldn't. He'll help you select the proper attire for a given assignment, clean and maintain your weapons, that sort of thing. He'll also
supervise the maid and cook. His job is to look out for you when you're at
home."

"A nice perk," said Ironfoot.

"When you get to your home, give him the sign `The master has
returned.' He will offer the countersign, `And there could not be a lovelier
day for it."'

"Seems a bit paranoid," said Silverdun. "Do you really expect a faux valet
might strangle me in my sleep?"

"Stranger things have happened," said Paet. "You've become a serious
investment of the Ministry. We like to look after our investments."

"I see."

"Oh," added Paet. "Olou told me your rooms are a shambles, and that he
expects you to take better care of your things while he's in your employ."

"It's not my fault," said Silverdun. "I had a girl, but she resigned in a dispute over wages."

"Really?" asked Paet. "Olou gave me the distinct impression that you'd
bedded her and that her husband found out about it."

"That is true," said Silverdun wistfully. "But that's not why she quit."

"I don't really need a valet," said Ironfoot. "I've been a bachelor for many
years now."

"I didn't ask if you needed one," said Paet. "But if you insist on dressing
yourself, that's your business."

Paet pulled another sheet from the sheaf in Silverdun's hand. There was
an address written on it: Blackstone House. One Several Lane.

"Be at that address tomorrow at sundown," he said. "That's where you'll
be working. Don't be late."

With that, Paet turned and walked off up the dock, leaving Silverdun
and Ironfoot to find their own ways home.

Blackstone House rose out of a walled garden overgrown with nettles, wild
roses, and moss-covered willow trees. Several Lane was just inside the north wall of the city, in a neighborhood peopled mostly by those who valued their
privacy and could afford to maintain it. Thus its secretive appearance was less
out of place than it might have been elsewhere. A bronze gate was set in the
wall just to the right of the house, its bars offering a view only of a chaotic
line of shrubbery that might once have been an orderly hedgerow.

The second story jutted out above the garden, a bleak promontory, its
dark bricks worn and vine-covered, its windows shuttered.

When Silverdun's hired cab dropped him off, just before sunset, he was
certain there was some kind of mistake. He double-checked the address with
the driver, who shrugged and whipped his horses on without a word.

This couldn't possibly be right. The headquarters of the all-powerful
Shadows was in an abandoned ghasthouse? Surely Paet was having a joke at
his expense.

It was chilly out, but Silverdun's new cloak, provided by his equally new
valet Olou, was just the thing to keep out the cold. Olou had turned out to
be a young man, probably fresh out of the army, who'd drawn a short lot
somewhere along the way. Regardless of how he'd ended up there, he tended
to his duties with panache. And Silverdun had never looked better.

Silverdun approached the gate, but before he could peer in, another carriage turned onto the road. It too stopped in front of Blackstone House, and
Ironfoot emerged from it. He examined the house with the same reservation
that Silverdun felt.

"Strange place for a government office," he said.

"Ministry of Ghosts, perhaps?" offered Silverdun.

Ironfoot smiled. "So what happens? We go in, get accosted by a few
vengeful spirits, and then Paet shows up and laughs at us while we're wetting our breeches?"

"I was thinking roughly the same thing."

"When I was in the army, they tied new recruits in burlap sacks and
rolled them down the hills in the Gnomics," said Ironfoot. "Big, tall things,
these hills. They'd have races with them."

"And how did you fare?" asked Silverdun.

"I won four out of five," said Ironfoot. "It's all in how you arch your
back."

"Universal, I suppose. In my first session of Corpus, the senior hall minister handed me a four-hundred-page stack of bills and told me I'd be voting
on them the next day, so I'd better read them all."

"How far did you get?"

"I never even glanced at them," said Silverdun. Seeing the look on Ironfoot's face, he added, "I wasn't much of a legislator."

"Do you find yourself wondering if we've made a terrible mistake?" asked
Ironfoot.

"Every day. But then, I've made a career of joining the wrong team," said
Silverdun. "One gets used to it after a while."