The Office of Shadow (30 page)

They were all met at the ferry by a matronly woman named Glienn, who was the Seelie ambassador's second-in-command. The jewelry guildsmen had
met their contact on the island, and they were already happily getting drunk
on the other side of the ferryboat.

Glienn was welcoming, but a bit circumspect, and exchanged only pleasantries while they were at sea. When they reached the docks on Isle Cureid,
there was a hansom cab waiting for Glienn, Silverdun, and Ironfoot. Glennet
had arranged his own transportation, and they parted with the requisite
pleasantries.

Silverdun, Ironfoot, and Glienn piled into the cab, thankful for the shelter
and warmth, and the cab moved quickly away. Isle Cureid was a pleasant
enough place despite the rain: The homes and buildings were all of brightly
painted wood, the streets of volcanic rock, silver in the rain. Everything
looked new and clean. It was certainly odd to look out onto a busy street and
see not a single woman; Silverdun was glad they weren't staying long.

The Seelie Embassy was located on a quiet side street. It was built of
imported Faerie marble, and seemed dour and out of place in the gayness of
Mag Mell. The rain, however, seemed appropriate to it. As they piled out of
the hansom, Silverdun smelled calendula and capelbells, Faerie flowers from
the garden fronting the embassy, mixing with the odor of earthworms and
horse dung.

The Seelie ambassador was a Fae gentleman named Aranquet, who
dressed in the colorful linens of Mag Mell, with his Seelie Army medals
pinned directly to the pink blouse. He welcomed them to the embassy,
smiling. Glienn passed out powerfully strong drinks that smelled of mint
and were served in cups made of tightly woven reeds.

"Welcome to Mag Mell, gentlemen!" Aranquet sang, shaking their
hands briskly. "Come, come!"

He led them to his office, which was airy and spacious, filled with furniture also woven from reeds of some kind, and satin pillows in the color of
peaches and limes. A riotously colored bird sat on a perch in a corner, its beak
tucked beneath its wing. Glienn left them, shutting the door behind her.

Once the door was closed, Aranquet's demeanor hardened. He drained
his drink and set the cup aside, his eyes on the two men in front of him.

"So," he said. "You're Paet's replacements, eh?"

"You know him?" said Silverdun. "Has he always been so charming as he
is now?"

Aranquet laughed out loud. "Ah! I can see we're going to get along
famously." He reached for his drink cup, found it empty, and scowled. "No, Paet
has never been renowned for his wit or charm. Then again, he's done things for
the Seelie that ... well, he's accomplished some astonishing things in his time
and received no credit for it. Not publicly, anyway. And never asked for any."

Aranquet tapped the cup on his desk. "Still and all, though, a bit of a
bastard."

"We were told you'd have some documents for us," said Ironfoot.

The ambassador looked sideways at Ironfoot. "You're the diplomatic one,
I take it?"

"No," said Ironfoot. "I'm just more scared of Paet than he is."

Aranquet took two sets of papers from a drawer and handed them across
the desk to Silverdun and Ironfoot. Passports and travel documents.

Silverdun looked at the passport, which was a perfect forgery as far as he
could tell. The glamour imprinted on the page looked exactly like him, but
gave his name as Hy Wezel, with an address in Blood of Arawn.

"The two of you could hardly pass as Maggos or Annwni," said Aranquet,
indicating the passport, "so we wrote you up as Unseelie Fae instead. A bit
more dangerous, perhaps, but these are quality documents. They'll hold up
to close scrutiny. If you get detained with them, however, they'll probably cut
your heads off."

Silverdun glanced at the travel documents and laughed. "Eel merchants?" he said.

"Lot of eel going back and forth between-worlds. The Annwni can't get
enough of them. The Maggo variety, I mean. Decent Fae eel they turn up
their noses at."

"I was an eel merchant once before," said Silverdun. He thought of his
trip across Faerie with Mauritane, who had tried with a total lack of success
to pass them off as eel merchants to a traveling mestine named Nafaeel and
his troupe, the Bittersweet Wayward Mestina. And the star of that show had
been Nafaeel's daughter. Faella.

Now was no time to be thinking about Faella. She'd been bad for him. She'd ruined his face. There'd been something strange about her, as well:
She'd manifested a Gift that Queen Titania had referred to as the Magic of
Change, the Thirteenth Gift. Silverdun liked to think of himself as a worldly
fellow, but he'd never heard of such a thing, and hadn't really felt like asking
his sovereign to elaborate on the subject. But his thoughts kept coming back
to Faella at the oddest moments. Seeing her face in his mind, he felt a subtle
pang, a queer sense of loss.

Aranquet sniffed. "I don't suppose it's any good asking you two the
nature of your errand in Annwn? If you were to give me some clue, I might
be able to ... assist somehow?" He looked significantly at Silverdun.

"Her Majesty's business, I'm afraid," said Ironfoot. Silverdun only
shrugged. Information was as precious a commodity in Mag Mell as it was
back home.

"Well, then," said Aranquet. "If there's nothing else, I'll need to be getting along. I've a dinner with Baron Glennet tonight, and the wife expects
me to help her browbeat the cooks."

If Annwn had ever been a pleasant place, that time had been prior to Mab's
rule. Beyond the city center of Kollws Kapytlyn, the streets of Blood of
Arawn were filthy, strewn with rotting garbage and horse dung. Beggars
lined the streets. Some played tiny harps and sang, in a distinctively nasal,
plaintive wail. Others simply sat on street corners rattling cups. Most nonofficial buildings were desperately in need of repair.

"I've been in some foul-smelling places," Silverdun told Ironfoot as they
stepped warily down the main road in the district of Kollws Vymynal. "But
there's something truly awful about the stench here. It's like despair mixed
with ... rotting fish."

"Villages on the Gnomic borders smell worse," Ironfoot said. "Like feet.
Nobody knows why."

"Never been," said Silverdun. "Never seen a Gnomic. Though I was told
by a young lady at university that they're really quite noble and deeply misunderstood."

"Put her alone in a room with one for ten minutes and she'll be telling a
different story."

The street they were on climbed steadily upward toward the summit of
the hill upon which the district was built. As they climbed, a slight breeze
blew, taking some of the smell with it, and the sun peeked out from behind
a cloud. Silverdun looked back; from here he could see most of the city. The
Unseelie flag flew limply here and there; outside the walls was a tent city
blown by the dust of the plains.

They found the address they were looking for at the end of a cul-de-sac,
a claptrap four-story building that had seen much, much better days. They
looked around, saw nothing suspicious, and went inside. As they climbed the
stairs, Silverdun took a small leather notebook from his jacket pocket.

The door of the third-floor apartment was opened by a tiny woman in a
faded linen dress who didn't look them in the eye. "What is it?" she asked in
a small voice.

"We'd like to talk to Prae Benesile, please," said Silverdun, mimicking
an Unseelie accent and trying to sound as pompous and official as possible.
He and Ironfoot had agreed to pose as bureaucrats from the Unseelie Revenue
Office. It wouldn't endear them to anyone, but the Annwni would be afraid
not to speak to them.

"Prae Benesile? He's been dead for years," said the woman.

"Ah," said Silverdun. "Well, there's a tax matter we need to discuss with
his next-of-kin then. Do you happen to know where we can find them?"

A man came to the door. He was small but muscular, wearing only
breeches. His beard was clipped short but ragged. "What's this about?" he
asked.

"They're here for your father," said the woman. "Something about the
taxes."

"Dead men can't pay taxes," spat the man. "Or do you Unseelie bastards
intend to dig him up and go through his pockets?"

"Tye!" hissed the woman, her eyes wide. "Please."

Tye Benesile examined Ironfoot and Silverdun. "Come in then," he said.
He waved them in. As Silverdun passed him he could smell the brandywine
on the man's breath.

The apartment was small, the air stifling. Tye Benesile's wife stood
looking at them, suspicion worn into her features. Benesile himself sat on a
pasteboard chair and indicated a stained sofa for Ironfoot and Silverdun. "If
it's revenue you've come for," he said, "you came to the wrong place. I'm out
of work. You should have that written in your book." He pointed at Silverdun's notebook.

"It's information we're here for, not money," said Silverdun. He took a
fountain pen from his pocket and unscrewed the top. "We'd like to know
what your father was doing when he died."

"My father?" said Tye. "My father was a scholar. He studied at a famous
university. You should have that written in your book as well."

Silverdun and Ironfoot shared a brief glance. Silverdun tried again. "Do
you happen to know if your father was working on anything of note at the
time of his death?"

Tye Benesile's eyes widened. "They said that he was killed in the riots on
the night you lot showed up, by the looters. But I always knew it was a
murder. I told them when they came; I said there was nothing here anyone
would want to loot. This was his place then, you know. All he had was his
books, and they aren't worth a copper slug."

"Do you have any idea why someone would have wanted to murder your
father?" asked Ironfoot.

"I'm going out," said Tye's wife. She had a basket over her shoulder.
"They said there might be eggs at the market today."

"Go then," said Tye, resenting the intrusion. She stamped her foot and
slammed the door behind her.

Tye Benesile pointed at his chest. "My father always said I should go to
university. He said if I worked hard I could do it, but I never wanted to. I
was young; I didn't want to do anything for my own good. Too late now,
though, right? He said the brandywine would rot my brain, and I took it as
a personal challenge."

Silverdun sighed, rolling his eyes. This was going nowhere. But Ironfoot
held up his hand. "Go on," he said to Tye. Ironfoot seemed to grow taller and
stronger when he said it. Ah. The Gift of Leadership. Interesting fellow, this
Ironfoot.

Tye responded to Ironfoot instantly, seeming to forget that Silverdun
existed. "Like I said, all he had left was those books, and I know they weren't
worth much because I tried to sell some of them after he died, and I couldn't
get anyone to even look at them. Some of them are in different languages,
even. He could read Thule Fae as well. Can you imagine that? There's but ten
or eleven in all the Known who can read the Thule Fae these days. But he
could. He was retired; you know that. He spent all of his last days up here
reading and writing."

"Did he ever speak to anyone?" said Ironfoot. "Did anyone ever come to
see him?"

"Just the one fellow," said Tye Benesile. "Another scholar. Unseelie. That
was before, of course. Before the war and all. My father didn't care for that
scholar, though. He was the wrong sort, if you know what I mean."

Silverdun leaned forward, now interested. "I'm not sure I do," said Silverdun. "What sort would that be?"

"Black Artist," Tye Benesile whispered. "That's what Father said. I never
met him. But if Father knew things that a Black Artist wanted to know, then
you can put that in your book for certain."

"What was this Black Artist's name?" said Silverdun. He supposed it was
possible that there were still Black Artists among the Unseelie, though Tye
Benesile was clearly not the most reliable witness.

Tye thought for a moment. "Father never said it. If he had, I would have
remembered, because I've got a fine memory, even now. You can't imagine
how fine it was then. But he was a Black Artist, even if you don't believe me."

"When was this?" asked Ironfoot. "How long ago?"

"That was before, I said. Before all this," he said, waving his hand
around. Silverdun assumed that by "all this," he meant the Unseelie invasion.

"How long before?"

"It was when I was still working at the mill," said Tye Benesile. "I
remember it, of course. That was three months to the day before."

"And did the Black Artist continue visiting your father until he died?"

"No. They had a falling out; something Father had that he wanted. Tried
to buy it off of him, but Father refused. Funny thing with lights in a box. So
he beat Father up and took it."

"I don't suppose you've kept any of your father's books?" said Silverdun.

"Well I couldn't sell them, could I? So I threw some away, burned some.
There are still a few left, though. The really expensive-looking ones. Figured
maybe a book dealer in Mag Mell might take an interest if I could ever find
the time to make the journey."