The Office of Shadow (59 page)

A little time turned out to be almost a full day. Ironfoot worked without
stopping, writing notes and equations, muttering to himself, shouting,
sometimes hurling things. He was so close! Everything was coming together:
the map, Hy Pezho's falsified plans, the cynosure. He now understood how
Hy Pezho had sent the Unseelie thaumaturges in circles. He'd simply
removed all reference to the Thirteenth Gift, knowing that none of them
would ever suspect its use. How could they? Almost nobody had ever heard
of it, and those who had didn't believe that it existed.

A few times, Silverdun or Sela or Paet would approach, questioning looks
in their eyes, and Ironfoot would wave them away, sometimes gruffly, sometimes angrily. He needed to be alone. It would take as long as it took.

Finally he had it. He checked and rechecked his figures. Translated the
etchings on the gold and silver plates twice, three times. Reread every word
of Prae Benesile's Chthonic history. Now that he knew what the hell Benesile
was talking about, the book was practically a reference guide. Benesile's
problem had not been that he was a lunatic; quite the contrary. He'd been so
brilliant that he'd assumed too much from his readership, hadn't bothered
explaining what to him had seemed obvious. There were no equations in the
book because Benesile had believed them to be implied.

It was as though a great weight had been removed from his shoulders.
The tension of this one problem had been pressing down on him for the
better part of a year, coloring everything he'd done and thought and said ever
since he'd returned to Queensbridge from Selafae. It had hung like a vulture
over his head the entire time he'd been a Shadow, watching him, waiting for
him, until he thought he might go insane.

And now it was over.

He called Silverdun, Sela, and Paet into the mission room.

"Do you have some news for us?" asked Silverdun. "Or have you called
us in to let us know that you have indeed gone stark, raving mad?"

"I know where Hy Pezho is getting the power for the Einswrath," he
said. "The problem I could never understand is how he was able to condense so much re into such a small space. There's no way of doing it, and no way of
binding it once it's done. And Hy Pezho must have sent the Unseelie thaumaturges who came after him into even worse fits than mine because he
included every bit of instruction on how to create the Einswrath except for
the one small bit of information that is the entire secret of his creation."

Ironfoot held up the ceramic casing of the cynosure. "This relic is old.
How old, I don't know. A thousand years? Two thousand? Ten? There's no
way of knowing, and I'm not a history buff, but I think it's safe to say that
this thing I'm holding in my hand has been in constant use for millennia."

"Doing what?" asked Silverdun.

"Taking in the re of Chthonic worshippers. Their spiritual devotion is
focused onto this during their most private holiday services, those for
believers only. In Benesile's book he describes the intensity of these rituals.
On the outside, the Chthonics may seem like a fairly lackluster bunch, but
these ceremonies are grueling affairs, lasting hours. There's a set of incantations that's said, some herbs that are burned, and it has the effect of drawing
out the essence from everyone in the room and focusing it on the cynosure."

"And then what?" asked Silverdun.

"And then it takes that essence, undifferentiates it, and sends it through
a fold."

"To where?" asked Paet. "And why?"

"I can tell you where," said Ironfoot. "The directional mapping is there,
though it'll take me a little while longer to pinpoint it.

"As to why? I haven't a clue. Perhaps the ancient Chthonics simply
wanted a way to store up massive amounts of re to do the very thing with it
that Hy Pezho did. I can't imagine what you might do with that much
energy."

"What did Hy Pezho do with it?" asked Sela.

"Well, it turns out that the Einswrath, for all of its apparent complexity,
is really quite simple. All it does is reverse the process. It creates a fold, draws
that very same undifferentiated re out, and releases it. The difference is that
this stored re is highly concentrated, and as soon as it's unfolded ..."

"Boom," said Sela.

"Exactly."

"So, knowing this," said Pact, "can you build one of your own? Can you
create a means of defending against them?"

"Not in the next four days," said Ironfoot. "I don't know exactly how Hy
Pezho pulled it off. But it doesn't matter. I think I may be able to do something just as good, if not better."

"What's that?" asked Pact.

"I can take us to wherever all that re is stored," said Ironfoot, "and
channel it all off into the ether." He paused. "There's just one problem."

"Which is?" asked Silverdun.

"In order to get there, we need someone who is able to work this undifferentiated re. Someone who has the Thirteenth Gift. And the only Fae I've
ever met that can do it is an old Arami woman out somewhere in the
Unseelie, on the other side of a massive army."

"Actually," said Silverdun. "I may know of one other. A girl I once met."

Silverdun looked at Sela, who blanched and turned away.

"Where is this girl?" asked Pact.

"In Estacana, last time I checked."

Pact sighed. "Go get her. Now."

He looked at Ironfoot. "And while we're waiting for him to return, I've
got a job for you."

The renewal of an old acquaintance is a gift both given
and received.

-Fae proverb

he suite of the chief high councilor of Blood of Arawn was quite a step
up from the magyster's office that Wenathn had held the first time Ironfoot had met him.

"Brenin Molmutius!" said Wenathn warmly, when Ironfoot was admitted
into the office. Ironfoot was known in Annwn as Brenin Dunwallo Molmutius,
the chieftain of one of the Mag Mell Isles. It required an elaborate glamour to
pass as a Mag Mellian, but so far the disguise had worked just fine.

"Thank you for seeing me on such short notice," said Ironfoot.

"Please, sit," said Wenathn. "What can I do for you?"

"That's an excellent question," said Ironfoot. "Quite a lot, really."

Ironfoot took an envelope from the hidden compartment in his satchel,
closed with the seal of Lord Everess. "Read this," he said.

Wenathn broke the seal and read the letter inside.

"I don't know about this," he said.

"You knew there would be a price for our assistance," said Ironfoot. "That
someday the bill would come due."

"But what you're asking," said Wenathn. "The repercussions."

"You've read the letter," said Ironfoot. "It's signed by Everess and carries
his impress."

Wenathn smoothed the letter on his desk and reread it. "From what I'm
told, Lord Everess's stamp may not be worth much in a few days."

"That's a chance you'll just have to take," said Ironfoot. "Though I
imagine that if word got out about the means of your rise to power, your own
stamp might not press paper soon either."

Wenathn nodded. He was no fool.

"You and I both know that there are many on your council who would
back this in an instant, especially with the full, written support of the Seelie
government."

"How long do I have to decide?" said Wenathn.

"I can stay at least until lunchtime," said Ironfoot, putting his feet up on
the chief high councilor's desk.

Faella was on stage, alone, performing the final movement of "Twine" to a
mostly empty house. The troupe had rebelled against her desire to present it
earlier in the show, and it had been relegated to the dregs of the performance,
the closing act performed after midnight, when most of the patrons had
already left for the taverns or their beds.

It was a subtle piece, to be sure, and not what the Bittersweet Wayward
Mestina was known for. Their audience wanted grand spectacles: ferocious battles,
the machinations of kings, bawdy farces. These were what paid for the theater and
the salaries of her employees and the outrageous Glamourists' Guild dues.

But "Twine" was dear to her heart, and she was determined to perform
it. For the most part she'd taken herself out of the other pieces, much to the
chagrin of the audience. The clashes of swords and noblemen and half-dressed
bodies were fine as far as they went, but as time went on, Faella couldn't help
but see them as any more than what they were: mirages, fantasies to pass the
time. "Twine" was more than that, though she couldn't say what, exactly.

The dozens of red, gold, and orange strands whirled and spun in a ferocious ballet of longing and emotion until Faella, spent, wove them together
into a bright braid of emotion and wound it around herself, where it
exploded in a shower of sparks.

She bowed to scattered applause and left the stage, sweating. It was time
for her to go.

Backstage, the mestines were removing makeup and costumes, lingering
over bottles of cheap wine, laughing. She'd never felt more remote from
them. It wasn't enough anymore. Nothing was ever enough.

She went to the theater office and went over the documents she'd prepared: assignment of title, bank slips, instructions. She was leaving the Bittersweet Wayward Mestina to the company as a whole. They would now be
a self-owned collective. It could be a disaster, but she wouldn't be here to see
it. She was moving on.

Over the past few months, her powers had only grown. She now found herself able to maneuver Elements and Motion, to work glamours of astonishing
complexity, to do things that didn't seem to match any kind of Gift at all. To be
honest, she wasn't sure what others meant by the Gifts. She'd only ever known
Glamour, and had never thought of it as "channeling" some raw element
through a thing. There was only the thought, the desire, and the deed. She'd
always assumed she didn't understand because she had no formal training.

But as her abilities increased she'd begun reading more, sneaking into
the university libraries and working her way painfully through textbooks.
She was no scholar, and little of what she read made any sense. But there was
nothing in her reading that shed any light on her strange new talents. In fact,
everything that she'd read seemed to indicate that much of what she was
doing was impossible.

She'd even gone so far as to seduce a professor of natural philosophy in
order to pick his brain on the subject, but he'd been far more interested in
her more mundane talents, and hadn't been any help at all.

And with each passing day, the certainty that she was wasting her life in
Estacana grew. That feeling that she was meant for greatness never left her.
In her most fanciful moments, she dreamed that she was destined to heal the
whole world of Faerie, just as she'd healed Rieger's knife wound.

Whatever it was she was meant to be, it wasn't the owner of a middling
mestina in Estacana. She'd already booked passage on the mail coach for the
City Emerald in the morning. The City Emerald was the center of the Seelie
Kingdom, where every decision of importance was made, and she would find
a way to insinuate herself into its movements, just as she'd found a way to do
everything else she'd ever done.