Shadowplay

“I will not kill you today, Kayyin,” she said at last. “No matter how you plague me. Go away.”

“It is...interesting,” he said, as if he had not heard the last part of what she said. “That name still does not seem entirely real to me, although it was how I thought of myself for centuries. But while living in the mortal lands I truly became Gil, and although in some ways I slept through those years, it is like trying to shake off a powerful dream.”

“So first you betray me, now you would renounce your people entirely?”

He smiled, doubtless because he had lured her into conversation. Even when they had been close, when he had been allowed as near to her as Yasammez allowed anyone, he had always enjoyed the sport of making her talk. No one left alive cared about such things at all. It was one of the reasons the sight of his altered, now-alien face filled her with such disquiet. “I renounce nothing, my lady, and you know it. I have been a catspaw—first yours, then the King’s —and cannot be faulted for insufficient loyalty. I did not even remember who I truly was until one moon ago. How does that make me a traitor?”

“You know. I trusted you.”

“Trusted me, you say? You are still cruel, my lady, whatever else time has done.” He smiled, but the mockery was mixed with true sorrow. “The King was wiser than you guessed. And stronger. He made me his. He sent me to live among the mortals. And it has borne fruit, has it not? For the moment, no one is dying.”

“It would only have been sunlanders dying. We had won.” “Won what? A more glorious death for all the People? The King, apparently, has other ambitions.”

“He is a fool.”

Kayyin lifted his hand. “I do not seek to arbitrate the quarrels of the highest. Even when you lifted me up, you did not lift me far enough for that.” He peered at her from the corner of his eye, perhaps wondering whether this little gibe had shamed her, but Yasammez showed him nothing but stone, cold stone. She had been old already when Kayyin’s father had fought with her against Umadi Sva’s bastard offspring, and she had held him as he died in the agony of his burns on the Shivering Plain. If it had been in her to weep at someone’s death, she would have wept then. No, she had no shame in her—not about anything to do with Kayyin, at any rate.

After a long silence, the traitor laughed. “You know, it was strange, living among the sunlanders. They are not so different from us as you might think.”

She did not honor such filth with a reply. “I have considered it a great deal in the days since I returned to you, my lady, and I think I understand a part of the King’s thinking. Perhaps he is less willing than you to destroy the mortals because he thinks that they are not entirely to blame.”

She stared at him.

“It could even be that our king, in his labyrinthine wisdom, buttressed with the voices of his ancestors—your ancestors, too, of course—has come to believe that we may have helped to bring our woeful situation upon ourselves.”

Yasammez rose from the chair in a blind rage, her aspect abruptly juddering about her, shadow-spikes flaring. Kayyin came closer to his promised death at that moment than ever before. Instead, she raised a trembling, ice-cold finger and pointed to the door.

He stood and bowed. “Yes, my lady. You need solitude, of course, and with the burdens you bear, you deserve it. I await our next conversation.”

As he walked out the room behind him came to life with flickering shadows.

The strange, glaring sun had long since set. Yasammez sat in darkness.

A soft voice bloomed inside her head. “May I speak with you, Lady?”

She gave permission.

The far door opened. The visitor glided in like a leaf carried on a stream. She was tall, almost as tall as Yasammez herself, and slender as a young willow. Her white, hooded robe seemed to move too slowly for her progress, billowing like something underwater.

“Have things changed, Aesi’uah?” Yasammez asked. The woman stopped before the chair and made a ritual obeisance of spread hands as her strange, still face lifted to Yasammez. Her pale blue eyes gleamed like sunlight through stained glass, giving the face a little animation: but for that effulgent stare she might have been an ancient statue. “Lady, things have, but only slightly. Still, I thought you should be told.”

Someone other than Yasammez, someone other than the famously imperturbable Lady Porcupine, might have sighed. Instead she only nodded.

Her chief eremite spread her arms again, this time in the posture of bringing-the-truth. Aesi’uah was of Dreamless blood, and although that blood had been diluted by her Qar heritage, she had inherited at least one trait beside her moonstone gaze from those ancient forebears: she had an extreme disinterest in lies or politic speech, which was why she had become Yasammez’ favorite of all her eremite order. “The touch of the King’s glass has made him restless.”

“Is he awakening already?”

“No, Mistress.” The face was placid but the words were not. “But he is stirring, and something is different, although I cannot say what. He is like one fevered—restless, full of unsettling dreams.”

Yasammez would have scowled at that, but she had lost the habit of showing emotion in such a naked way. “We know nothing of his dreams.”

“Just so.” Aesi’uah bowed her head. “But his sleep seems to be that sort of sleep, and what is just as important, his restlessness makes the other sleepers uneasy, too.”

She was just about to ask the chief eremite how much longer before everything ended for good and all when another voice spoke in her head, faint as a dying wind.

Where are you...do you hear me? Do you...know me?

Of course I know you, my heart. A claw of terror gripped Yasammez, but she tried to keep it from her thoughts. How could you doubt it?

Her beloved one was gone for a moment, then returned, sighing, tattered. So...cold. So dark.

Yasammez made the sign for “audience ended.” Aesi’uah did not change expression. She spread her hands, then glided out of the chamber like a phantom ship sailing beneath the moon.

Speak to me, my heart, said Yasammez. I fear...I am going soon into...that greater sleep... No. Strength is coming to you. I have sent the glass. Where is it? I fear it will never come. The thoughts were timid, simple as a child’s. To Yasammez that was the worst torment of all.

Gyir brings it, she promised. He is young and strong and his thoughts are clear. He will find his way to you in time.

But what...what if he does not...?

Do not even think it. Yasammez put every bit of strength she could behind the thought. He will come and you will be strong again. I will bring the scorched stones of the sunlanders’ cities to make you a necklace.

But even so...even so...!

Quiet, my heart. Not even the gods themselves can unmake that which is. Rest. I will stay with you until you sleep—not the greater sleep, but only the lesser. Fear not. Gyir will come.

She held on, then, to that faint wisp of thought and gave it comfort, though it fluttered against the darkness like a dying bird, by turns terrified and exhausted. The shadows flickered again in the hall, moving and stretching all through the true night as she took her aspect upon her once more, but this time they were softer—not spikes but tendrils, not the black, reaching claws of death but the fingers of soft, nurturing hands, as Lady Porcupine struggled to soothe the only living being she had ever truly loved.

The day was cold and gray, seasoned with drifts of rain, and although the doors to Effir dan-Mozan’s front room were open to the courtyard as usual, a large brazier had been lit to provide warmth. As Briony came in the merchant was bending forward—not an easy task over his rich-man’s belly—and warming his small, beringed hands at the coals.

“Ah, Briony-zisaya,” he said. “You have not left your meal too soon? I did not want