The Office of Shadow (56 page)

"We're on, Mauritane," said Silverdun. "They're waiting down the hall."

"Later," Mauritane said brusquely to the group around him.

"What's this all about?" whispered Mauritane as he and Silverdun made
their way down a long hallway toward the meeting room. "As you may have
noticed, I'm rather busy at the moment."

"Attempting to clear your schedule is what this is all about," said Si1-
verdun.

Already in the meeting room were Everess, Paet, and Glennet. Everess
and Paet were in the midst of an argument, but cut it off when Mauritane
entered the room.

"So good to see you, General Mauritane. How goes the war?"

"War only goes one way," said Mauritane.

"It's only an expression, General," said Everess. "Have a seat and let's discuss.
Chief Paet here has information that he believes is of enormous significance."

"It is of enormous significance," said Paet.

"It most certainly is," said Glennet, his hands raised. "No one's arguing
that. The question is what to do about it."

"Is anyone going to tell me what it is?" asked Mauritane, taking his seat,
glowering. "Or am I supposed to guess?"

"The Black Artist Hy Pezho has been spotted alive and well in the City
of Mab."

"I understood he was dead," said Mauritane.

"There's a lot of that going around," said Silverdun.

"What this means to you, General," said Paet, "is that if Hy Pezho is
indeed alive, then there's every chance that Mab is busily developing the Einswrath as we speak."

"I received a memorandum earlier this morning," said Mauritane, "from
you, telling me that there were no Einswrath. I've spent the entire day furiously rewriting my battle plans as a result. And now you're telling me you
were wrong?"

"We received new information," said Paet.

Mauritane breathed deeply. "If I am to wage a war, it would be extremely
helpful if the capabilities of the enemy did not change from hour to hour."

"The question to you, then, General, is this," said Everess. "Knowing
what you now know, do you still support the invasion?"

Mauritane growled. "I've already committed the troops! They're
marching now! I can't just call everyone back and tell them to forget the
whole thing!"

"Perhaps not," said Paet, "but we could merely fortify the border, rather
than launch an invasion that will force a conflict. Who knows how long it
will be before Mab crosses the border?"

"In five days' time all of my troops will be fully deployed," said Mauritane. "How long do you expect them to stand around?"

"If we attack Mab now, all of your men will die," said Paet.

Mauritane sat silently, thinking. Everess began to speak, but Mauritane
cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand, and Everess faltered into silence.
Silverdun had to admit that he genuinely loved his old companion at times.

"I agree with Paet," he finally said. "We should postpone the invasion
until we're certain. If Mab's got the Einswrath, then all of my men and women are dead. If not, we may be able to stop a war with diplomacy. As far
as I know, there has been no threat from Mab, no declaration of war."

"But she's massing troops along the border," said Glennet. "Any fool can
see-

"A fool can see many things," said Mauritane. "But we don't know what Mab
is doing. These troop movements could simply be to keep us in check, to test our
response. They could be a feint in order to draw out another enemy: the Four
Kingdoms, or a foe in another world entirely. Mab is famous for such tricks."

"It's too late for this," said Glennet. "We must invade, and we must do
it now before we find Mab standing at the gates of the Great Seelie Keep
while we're still sitting here arguing."

"I was against this invasion from the beginning," said Mauritane. "I was
against it when we only suspected that Mab still had the Einswrath, and now
I'm tempted to be certain of it.

"The only good war, Baron Glennet," he continued, "is the one that's
never fought. Everess told me so himself, when he was going about justifying
the creation of his Shadows to me. The nature of war has changed. And now
you want to go running off into the same old war?"

"It is not me you must convince," said Glennet. "Corpus has decided."

"Then make them change their minds," said Mauritane. "If we move
now, we'll be going to our deaths. Even without the Einswrath, Mab's Army
outnumbers us. And with the Annwni legions, we'll be totally overpowered.
My soldiers are the best there are, but they're still only Fae."

"I'm sorry," said Glennet. "It's too late. The decision has been made."

Paet started to raise an objection, but Everess cut him off. "You heard the
man, Chief Paet. Your job is to provide intelligence. You've done that. Now
go back to work and let General Mauritane do his job."

"All right," said Paet. "What is it you've been dying to tell me?"

They were in the mission room at Blackstone House. Sela had laid out
several documents in front of Paet, while Ironfoot and Silverdun watched.

"I'm curious to know myself," said Silverdun. He'd asked Sela to tell him what was on her mind, but she seemed to be actively pained in his presence
since his return. After their night in the Unseelie lands together and her declaration of love, coupled with his recent demise, he didn't suppose he could
blame her. Ironfoot, for his part, could barely be torn away from his studies
on the Einswrath. Both Sela and Silverdun sensed that he was on to something and didn't want to bother him.

"When we returned from our last mission," Sela began, "you asked me to
go through everything I could find to determine who it was that had given
away our plans; first in Annwn, and then in the Unseelie. I've come up with
something, but I'm not sure how definitive it is."

"Let's have it," said Paet. He was clearly having a hard time concentrating, but Silverdun knew that Paet was not a man who'd ignore important
information despite his other worries.

"I began concentrating on dispatches from Annwn, around the time that
Silverdun and Ironfoot first went there, and didn't come up with much. But
then I decided to check on anything at all that even mentioned Annwn. And
I found something peculiar."

She pushed one of the documents in front of Paet. "This is a report from
one of your informants in Mag Mell, a barmaid at a tavern on Isle Siolain. She
reported in passing a meeting between Baron Glennet and the Annwni
ambassador, the same day you arrived."

"Hm," said Paet. "That's not strikingly unusual."

"Not in itself, no," said Sela. "But at this point, I must admit that I was
desperate to find out anything at all. So I went back and checked the itinerary
Glennet filed with the Foreign Office."

"And?" said Paet.

"And there was no scheduled meeting," she said. "Glennet was supposedly there for a meeting with a mining concern."

"That's what he told us," said Silverdun. "Remember, Ironfoot? We saw
him at the locks."

"That's right," said Ironfoot. "There was no mention of a meeting with
the Annwni ambassador."

"Indeed," said Silverdun. "And the fact that he didn't mention the
meeting is strange, since-"

"Since he was well aware that you two were on your way to Annwn," said
Paet. "Glennet receives briefings on every mission on foreign soil. He always
knows where we're going, and when. It seems more than a little suspicious."

"The queen's tits," said Silverdun. "Could it have been him all this time?"

"Ah," said Sela. "But there's more. I started going through Glennet's
records at the Hall of Records."

"How in hell did you get access to a baron's records?" asked Paet. "I've
never been able to get that kind of access."

Sela smiled. "You don't have the powers of persuasion that I have, I suppose," she said. "Either the magical kind or ... the more mundane kind."

Silverdun felt a sudden blossom of affection for her. She looked up at him
and gave him an odd look. Had she felt him?

She seemed to lose her train of thought for a moment, but quickly
regained it.

"Not long after the Battle of Sylvan, Glennet began investing heavily in
the industries of war," said Sela. "He sank enormous sums of money into the
Armorers' Guild, the Smiths' Guild. The Textile Guild, too, though I wasn't
sure why."

"Uniforms," said Ironfoot. "An army needs lots of uniforms."

"So the baron wanted to get rich off of a war," said Silverdun. "That
doesn't necessarily make him our traitor."

"No," said Sela. "That doesn't. But there's more."

She pushed another stack of papers in front of Paet. "These are loan documents, filed with banks in the City Emerald, Estacana, and Mag Mell. Every
penny Glennet invested in the guilds was borrowed."

"I seem to recall rumors even when I was at court that Glennet had financial troubles," said Silverdun. "He loves his card games."

"So he found a way to get rich off of the war effort," said Ironfoot.

"But then a year went by and there was no war," said Sela. "The interest
on those loans began to mount."

"Glennet needs a war," said Silverdun. "The guilds can't pay him until
the government requisitions their supplies."

"And the government doesn't requisition supplies until there's a war."

"There's more," said Sela. "And this is fairly damning, I'm afraid. I checked with the analysts upstairs and found that Glennet has been regularly
sending spell-encrypted messages in the weekly packets to Jem-Aleth for the
past year."

"That's not uncommon, though," said Paet. "Glennet's involved in all
sorts of Foreign Ministry business. He's got plenty of legitimate reasons to
send such messages, and anything sent classified is required to go encrypted."

"Well," said Sela, "we're required to retain copies of those documents. I
decrypted one of them. One sent two days before we left for the Unseelie."

Paet looked at her, wide-eyed.

"Well, I didn't decrypt it myself," she said. "One of the analysts may
have helped a bit."

"What did the message say?" asked Paet.

"It gave explicit details of our travel plans, including our physical
descriptions, and our itinerary."

"Dammit!" said Silverdun. "Those soldiers on the transport to Preyia.
They knew exactly who they were looking for."

"The message also contained the location of our rendezvous in Preyia."

Paet leaned back. "Well. That is fairly conclusive, I think."

"But why would he come after us?" asked Ironfoot. "That's the part I still
don't understand."

Paet looked at him. "Because Everess went all over the city selling the
Shadows as the best deterrent to war that Elfkind had ever devised.

"And," added Paet, "if you were killed, then it not only stops us from
doing that very thing, but also adds yet another reason to go to war, once
your deaths are pinned on our enemies."

"And I thought Everess was a bastard," said Silverdun.

"I believe Glennet was Everess's mentor," said Paet.

Paet looked at Sela, who looked pleased with herself. "Sela, I must say
that I'm amazed at this bit of detective work," he said.

"No more than I was," she said. "I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it.
And how good I was at it."

"Simply astonishing," said Paet, looking over the documents.

"I'm glad you think so," said Sela, suddenly becoming serious. "Because
I've decided I don't want to be a Shadow anymore. I want to be an analyst."

"What?" said Paet. "Are you serious?"

"I am," said Sela, looking down. "I was raised to be something. A killer.
A monster. But I was also trained very well to use my Empathy. I understand
people, and what drives them and what they want. So I've made my decision.
I'm not going on any more missions."

"But you're a Shadow, Sela. You'll always be a Shadow."

"Call me a Shadow, then. I can work just as easily in the lien. But don't
send me out on any more missions."

She touched the band on her arm, the crude thing that Ironfoot had fashioned. "I'm never taking this off again."

She stared hard at Paet. "Never."