Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

A Mother

Smoke tumbled from the chimney of the cottage and from the roof of a rundown shack at the back. Against the side of the cottage rested a lean-to of rotten planks, its floor strewn with hay that had spilled out into the muddy yard where chickens pecked at scattered corn. At the edge of a fenced enclosure, an old zel ambled lazily, chewing contentedly and swatting its tail at the late autumn flies. Beyond, in the far distance, the southern mountains rose with silver falls of water shining on their flanks, catching sunlight.

Nico’s mother bustled from the kitchen doorway. She selected a few small logs from a pile that leaned against the whitewashed wall of the cottage, then made her way quickly to the smoky shack with the dirty hems of her skirts dragging across the ground. Her red hair was tied back this morning; it shone with a deep lustre.

Ash saw her as walked up the dirt track, and stopped as though he had walked into a wall. His heart started hammering inside him.

He came up to her as she left the smoking shack, wiping her empty hands.

‘ Oh!’ Reese exclaimed and clutched her chest in fright. She relaxed as recognition came to her. She glanced behind him for Nico, and her face tightened when she failed to see him.

‘Mister Ash,’ she managed.

‘Mistress Calvone.’

He could see her taking in his ragged, unkempt condition. A tension was slowly settling upon her pretty features. ‘My son. Where is he?’

Ash’s eyes closed of their own accord, wanting to spare him from her distress. He lowered his head in shame.

‘No,’ she whispered in realization.

How could he say what needed to be said? Ash forced himself at least to meet her stare.

‘The boy…’ he began, and it took all the force of his will to continue. ‘Miss Calvone. I am sorry. He is gone.’

‘No.’ She was shaking her head, a hand clutching at her throat; her skin had flushed a vivid crimson.

Ash fumbled with the small clay vial of ashes about his neck until he held it outstretched in his hands. He saw how pitiful it looked. More pitiful even than the urn of ashes he had given to Baracha for safe keeping. But it was all he could offer her, and he had a need just then to give something of her son back to her.

‘I… I am… deeply sorry.’

Reese glared in horror at the tiny vial as though he held a stillborn foetus in his hands. In that moment, it was true self-loathing that possessed him.

She slapped the jar from his hands and it went spinning across the yard, where it struck the wall of the cottage and shattered into pieces. Reese launched herself at him, swinging her fist across his face. It was a solid blow and he swayed from it, and then her rage fully unleashed in a torrent of punches and kicks.

‘You promised!’ she screamed over and over again. ‘You promised you’d protect him!’

Ash didn’t try to stop her, not even when she blindly grabbed at a spade and laid into him with the full weight of its metal head. He fell, sprawling in the dirt with his hands raised over his face. Vaguely, he was aware of the torrent of words rushing from her mouth, words of accusation, every one of them justified, each one true.

He could barely see with the blood coursing into his eyes. He heard the shouts of a man, felt strong hands grabbing him. Ash blinked his eyes clear, saw the looming face of Los peering down at him. Reese sat on the ground amongst her piled skirts, sobbing inconsolably, slapping at the earth and wrenching handfuls free with her fingertips.

‘You’d better leave, old man,’ advised Los, his hands helping Ash to his feet.

Ash stood and swayed on the spot. He wanted to say something to her, try in some way to lighten her grief. But he knew there was nothing in all the worldhe could say that would do that. He left her in pieces, like the clay vial scattered in the dirt.

Clouds gathered overhead, darkening the autumn sky with a promise of more rain. Ash passed carts on the road laden with goods or families; individual travellers carrying packs on their backs; herds of livestock driven by dour, pipe-smoking herders. By early afternoon he crested a rise of ground and saw the Bay of Squalls and the city of Bar-Khos spread out before him.

It felt as though it had been years since he’d visited this besieged city of the Free Ports. Yet it had only been a handful of months ago when he had stopped here with the Falcon for its much-needed repairs, and encountered Nico for the first, fateful time.

A stiff sea breeze blew across the rugged edge of the coast, beyond which heaved the white-capped waters of the bay. He could see the Lansway running out into the bay, with the dark walls of the Shield shrouded in a haze of smoke, brief flashes in the midst of it that were the belches of cannon fire.

Of all the cities to be returning to, he thought. It should be Nico coming back here, with a few scars and a dozen stories to tell, not you.

Ash plodded down the busy road towards the eastern gatehouse. To his right lay the city skyport with its fluttering windsocks and sprawling warehouses. Half a dozen skyships lay berthed on the ground with their envelopes deflated, repair crews swarming around them.

As the gatehouse grew nearer, he could hear above the noise of the traffic something different now – the distant din of battle on the Shield. They could all hear it, everyone who was trying to get through the bottleneck of traffic at the open gates, where each cart was being checked by a soldier before being allowed through.

Ash was carried through the bustle without inspection into the streets within.

It began to rain as he made his way towards the heart of the city. Life seemed to be carrying on as normal beneath the distant crash of artillery fire, though the atmosphere was more tense than before, more agitated. Several times he passed someone shouting in anger with their tempers unravelling.

With money from his purse he bought a paper bowl of rice from a street vendor, and was wolfing it down even as he turned away. He walked on through the Quarter of Guilds then through the Quarter of Barbers, coming out at last into the wide thoroughfare that was the Avenue of Lies. The street was less busy than usual. People scurried by under their paper umbrellas or sheltered beneath the dripping eaves of buildings, glumly watching the covered carts that passed, carrying wounded soldiers, and dead ones.

From a small bazaar, Ash purchased an oiled longcoat and a wide-brimmed hat woven of grasses, which curved all the way down to the level of his eyes. Properly garbed against the weather, he next sought out an apothecary, for the air had grown heavy with the press of clouds, and in turn it had brought a return of his head pains. He heard the relief in his own voice as he bought a fresh supply of dulce leaves from a pair of brothers in their little shop in a narrow side street, interrupting them in the midst of a quarrel. Stepping out of the place he stuffed one of the leaves into his mouth. He tasted the bitterness of it, and chewed some more while the pain refused to diminish. Ash took four more of the leaves before his head began to lighten, not dwelling on what that might mean.

Ahead, through the mists of rain, he saw the Mount of Truth rising up above the flat roofs of the district. He turned away from the sight, heading into the alleyways of the Bardello, the little enclave of musicians and poets and artists, finally stopping outside a wooden building that leaned out badly over the cobbled street, its windows shuttered and dark. A metal bracket was fixed over the door, where a wooden sign should have been hanging, sporting the picture of a seal on a neck-chain.

Ash looked about him to make sure he was in the right street. Mystified, he tried the door and found that it was locked.

‘Hermes!’ he shouted out and pounded his fist against it.

After a moment he heard feet shuffling and the sounds of bolts being drawn back. The door tugged open, and Hermes the agent poked his head around and squinted up at him through a thick pair of spectacles.

‘Ash!’ hollered the tiny man with his eyes widening in surprise.

‘You old dog! Is it really you?’ And he opened the door further and beckoned him inside.

‘What is left of me,’ Ash replied. He stepped into the dim dusty space of an empty room, a few chairs arranged around the walls beneath sketches of the bay. Birds were squawking loudly from the neighbouring rooms. ‘What is going on here? Why are you closed for business?’

The man looked up as though he had just been struck across his face, blood flushing to his round cheeks. His eyes blinked and watered behind the glass of his spectacles. He cleared his throat, wiped a strand of curly hair from his forehead. ‘You mean… you don’t know?’

‘Know what?’

Hermes wrung his hands in some distress. Ash didn’t like how the agent was staring at him; as though Hermes was staring at the ghost of a dead man who had not yet been told he was dead.

‘Come,’ Hermes said gently – much too gently – and led Ash by the arm towards the inner door. ‘You should sit down first. Let us go and sit by the fire, shall we?’

Hermes liked birds more than people, and every room of the house seemed filled with cages of the screeching, flapping creatures. Ash sneezed more than a few times as he listened to what the agent had to tell him. His hands gripped the arms of the chair ever harder as he listened. Hermes sat opposite, in his own armchair specially crafted for his small frame, the light of the fire washing over him. Despite the heat, Ash felt chilled to the bone.

He still could barely believe it.

‘I wasn’t certain what was happening at first,’ the agent was telling him. ‘I was waiting for a batch of fresh seals to be sent, but nothing came through. No seals, no carrier birds, no letters. After a while I sent a letter to Cheem myself, through one of the usual blockade runners that we use. Still I heard nothing from Sato. That’s when I truly began to worry.’

He paused to take his spectacles off, to wipe his eyes.

Gone, Ash was thinking. All gone.

‘Last week, I finally received a letter. It was from Baracha. He told me to cease business until I heard from him further. He wrote that Sato had been attacked by the Imperials, that they had put it to the torch. Killed all they found there. Apparently he was away at the time. When he returned he found everything in ruins. That’s what he said, Ash. That’s how he put it. In ruins.’

‘Survivors?’ Ash heard his distant, impossibly calm voice ask in reply.

‘He didn’t say. I don’t think so. Osho, though… he said that that Osho had been slain in the fighting.’

Ash closed his eyes, while all around him the birds called out and rattled around in their cages.

Che, he thought. They used what he knew to find us.

For the longest of times he could not move, could not even speak.