Shadowplay: Act One, Scene Three
There’s no welcoming jingle to usher her into the shop, and it’s dim enough that for a moment Keshena thinks perhaps the place is closed, or she’s mistaken its purpose - perhaps it’s not a leather-goods store, but a leather-goods warehouse with poor security. She weaves between racks of armor and tack, and finds a living creature manning the counter, an aging fellow who is altogether startled to be taking terse orders of hunting and sparring gear from a doddering old woman. He’s even more surprised when she writes the symbol Lin showed her on his order form, and he’s forced to knock eighty percent off the price. The symbol means “Kumani,” and it’s the only one of the Kumani signs that everyone in Lion’s Reach can read.
He has what she wants in stock, fortunately, although he first guides her to the racks dyed a uniform slate grey, the color of all those drab novices strewn about the library. She gives him a dark look and turns away, toward a similar ensemble in black.
“I’m not specifically required to wear grey, I hope,” she’d said to Lin this morning.
“No, no. I never do. You wear whatever you like; if you get good enough at illusions, you could go out naked and nobody would know it!”
“...Have you done that?”
“No, but it does sound fun, doesn’t it?”
Keshena represses a smile as she concludes her dealing with the leatherworker, including the surrender of a handful of coins Lin gave her to get herself equipped. “Save me hearing about it later, please, just put on something to keep Ishin from impaling you. His depth perception isn’t that good.” Keshena isn’t particularly concerned that Ishin will do her harm, but she’s ready to shed her traveling face and put on something with more range of motion. Aye, let’s show Lin what we can do.
The barracks isn’t a good dressing room. No privacy at all. But she hasn’t seen a worthy hiding-spot in the Citadel either, and she’s been looking. Nowhere that a clever Kumani or a dumb Engineer might not stumble in, all innocence, and catch her undressed. Better that she not have to leave the guildhall anyway. Taking her new leather gear along with the heavy case she’s been knocking against her knees since Capria, she trudges down into the dark catacombs again.
She wastes a few minutes exploring the official buildings at the west end of the lake. As Lin predicted, she finds no official people in residence, though she spots plaques assigning rooms to the “Speaker,” “Index,” “Inquirer,” and, at the end of a long upstairs hallway featuring the world’s largest portrait collection of people with knives who take themselves too seriously, “Champion.” All the doors are locked, but she does try them all. Always try doors. It’s an ideological perspective as well as practical advice. How can you know the limits of your environment unless you constantly test them?
All privacy lives behind locked doors in this house, it seems. One rule for the lions, another for the sheep, eh? Keshena curls her lip as she exits the building. Lin has that much right: there’s something in common between the folks running the city now and those who nearly ran it into the ground. It’s something about pride.
Her feet take her toward the water and the edge of the shelf. By the time she starts paying any real attention to where she’s going - woolgathering, dammit - she has to mind her footing well to avoid slipping on the wet stone and sliding straight into the black. And there it is, like a great eye she can’t look away from. That great void.
The voices that bid her “jump” are mundane, more so than most of the voices in her head. She knows everyone hears those little demons. The demons she brought with her to this place have a different tone, and different suggestions. She seems to hear them less and see the most when she’s staring into nothingness like this. It’s a trick she can pull anywhere. There’s nothingness to be found in everything, for one who’s seen it before.
She knows that her eyes are taking in more than she consciously notes when, at length, she perceives that the flow of the water has an irregular jog, a place where it swirls and eddies a little with nothing to prompt it. Sitting at the edge, she unties Madame’s ruined shoes, revealing small, pale feet, callused under the toes but otherwise unmarked by her centuries. She lets the torn shoes slip from her hands into the river, and they tumble on the surface for a few moments before falling over the edge into nothingness. Then, glancing around to check that she’s unobserved, she cracks open her leather case and tucks her purchases from the morning into it, pressing them down and straining at the latches to make it all fit - just for a minute, just a minute. Then she stands, finding the rough stone bed of the little river only about eight inches down. The current pulls her toward the edge, but she turns her eyes firmly away from it, ignoring its blandishments to focus on the peculiarity in the waterflow. Two steps brings her level with it, and then she nearly tumbles forward - roll right off the edge, fall forever probably - NO! - and her foot hits another roughened stone surface another few inches down. Squinting through the water, she can vaguely see her leg cut off at the calf. Wiggling her toes, she takes another experimental step, and the other foot finds the hidden stair as well.
As she steps down, the river soaks her rags and coat, but though she feels it flowing past her feet still, making the footing unsteady, there’s no sign that the bulk of the water is being diverted downward. When she’s stepped down enough to bring her chest level with the water, and feels no rushing around her hands and body beneath the illusory floor, she takes a deep breath and ducks.
She’s crouching in darkness, but after a brief moment submerged, and a moment of cold terror at the thought of her costume dissolving, she can breathe again. No one can see her here. It doesn’t matter that she can feel the cosmetics running down her face and staining her clothes. It’s utterly dark. Keshena reaches out with both hands, and finds the wall no more than a foot away on either side. Water runs continuously over unworked stone, comes to the rough stairs beneath her feet and continues down. She gingerly slides her feet forward, and moves down the stairs at first like a child, sitting on one as she finds her footing on the next.
Six or seven stairs down, she catches the faintest light - a line just vaguely more grey than the black. When her feet get near it, she finds a landing a few feet square, and the turn of the staircase. The water around her flows on, toward the line of light, and then disappears - there’s a gap in the stone level with the floor to let it out. Must open on the cliffside, she thinks, laying one hand on the stone and imagining the emptiness on the other side, mere inches away.
The staircase from then on is dry, and easier to navigate, the stairs growing larger and the walls moving away from her as she descends. She begins to feel a new kind of fear, fear of the blind space opening around her, in which anything could lurk. The voices in her head are gibbering, murmuring, demanding she go back, but she carries on, letting Madame’s focus on the moment carry her down. Nothing closed behind us. We can go back. But right now we go on.
Clutching her case against her chest, she descends for a minute or two until a step that expects another startles her by hitting the floor instead, sending a painful shock up her leg. She pauses, then experimentally tries curling her hands the way Lin did, wondering if the illusions require even a little bit of light to work. Or maybe she’s doing it wrong. Either way, nothing manifests, and she’s forced to crouch, set down the case, and extract her tinderbox. Fumbling blind, she brushes aside the tinder and striker and finds instead a small collection of lucifer matches, carefully wrapped in cloth. Three silvers apiece, mumbles someone in her head, but she puts it out of her mind and strikes one against the rough stone. An explosion of sparks pours over her hand and sleeve, and she hisses but raises the burning match high to see what she can see in its brief light.
It’s a cavern, then, not as large as the one above, but longer than she can see, and strewn with objects. The walls are decorated with weapons and armor, most of it ancient, older than her from the styles, and the way forward is a maze of boxes and tables covered in more relics. Treasures that glitter, dust-covered books and bolts of cloth, It is a storehouse of trophies from a hundred wars, a thousand robberies and assassinations, the plunder of nations piled around her in the dark.
The match burns down as she stares and memorizes what she sees, until it scorches her fingertips and she throws it to the ground. It’s too hazardous to carry on without a better light, and it won’t serve her for a changing room, not if she has to douse her head every time she comes in, but she catalogues the things she’s seen as she carefully climbs the stairs again, wondering if Lin knows about this hidden trove.
Back in the empty barracks, she strips her wet rags and sets them aside, mentally replacing the things that are too damaged to use with slightly less damaged remnants of other costumes. Madame wears everyone’s cast-offs. When she’s stripped, she looks a real fright, she knows - cosmetics running down in brown and grey streaks from her face, the time-worn, wrinkled mug of the ancient stopping at the neck and giving way to the fragile form beneath, the bare body of a twenty-five year old girl who died two hundred years ago. The sight of herself uncovered is more horrible even than the thought of being interrupted like this, and she hurries to don the clothes and armor she bought this morning.
The touch of clean, well-made clothing is comforting, as is the weight of the armor. She feels her muscles stretching and loosening, freeing themselves from the restraint of an old woman’s posture. She jumps to her feet, just to feel her thighs ache with the force of it, and does a few vigorous squats, swinging her arms and turning her wrists. She hasn’t used her muscles in decades, decades of being a rich man’s plaything and believing it would keep her safe.
Didn’t really believe that, did we?
No. But we tried.
Opening the case on her bunk, she sits by it and builds the mercenary Den Roth’s tanned skin in layers of paint and powder. She lays down scars made of thin cloth and wax, and layers cosmetics over them to make them seamless. Pushing back the lid of the case reveals a silvered panel, not exactly a mirror but it’ll do, into which she peers as she dabs at her face and adjusts her wig, finger-combing Den Roth’s ruddy curls. The centerpiece is a long shred of cloth attached to a small wooden bit that fits under her lip, pulling it into a perpetual sneer. With the help of the pots and pouches in her case, it becomes a disfiguring scar that splits the left side of her face from temple to lip, a wound that should have killed her. When it’s in place, and blended in, Keshena Den Roth stares back at her from the warped silver surface. Then the torn mouth splits, and she bares her teeth in a ferocious grin. Hello, coward.
She’s stepping into the knee-length boots Den Roth favors when she’s interrupted. The boots have hidden lifts that make her several inches taller than most of Keshena’s faces, but they don’t begin to approach the height of the woman who enters the barracks now, ducking her head to miss the doorframe. She can’t stand upright anywhere in the room, but hunches her enormous shoulders until she can sit on a bunk, and hails Keshena with a raised hand that could palm Keshena’s head.
“Afternoon, sister. B’lieve we haven’t met? Brynn. ‘Prentice to Ishin.”
It takes Keshena a moment to dredge up Den Roth’s gravelly voice. She covers it by shaking Brynn’s hand, which swallows her own. “Keshena Den Roth. Villi’s apprentice, or prisoner, depending on how you look at it.”
Brynn laughs. “Aye, that sounds about right. Welcome! Good to see another novice who looks ready for a fight. You gonna spar with Ishin today?”
Keshena nods. “I was about to head over there. I don’t expect I’ll win, but -”
“Nah, probably not, but that’s okay, y’learn more from losing. What’s your weapon?” Brynn rises and begins to shuck her armor, replacing it with grey livery she pulls between her feet from under her bunk. Keshena turns her eyes away, but the giantess evidences no modesty whatsoever.
“Longsword. Two, if I can get them, or a short blade.”
“That’s a knight’s style; you train with the Blackguards?”
“The Ashen, actually.”
Brynn gives her a lopsided grin. “That’s funny. We got a couple ex-knights right now. Ser Kang was Ashen too. Guess their new guildmaster is making some enemies!”
Keshena shrugs. “Maybe. I was never part of the guild, just trained with their men during the Quiet War.”
Brynn’s grin fades. “Ah… that was an ugly business. Long time ago too. A real long time.”
Keshena nods, watching her face to see how this revelation will be received, but Brynn appears unconcerned, merely looking Keshena over with the same measuring eye with which she might examine a weapon. “You’re in good shape for an immortal.”
Laughing, Keshena moves toward the door. “Wait until you see me fight before you say that.”
Taking that as an invitation, Brynn jumps up - with some care for her head - and follows her out to the ring. When they arrive, they find Ishin watching a novice test a new blade, the formerly deserted arena now lined with Kumani come to see if anyone will liven up the afternoon by getting stabbed. Lin isn’t among them.
Keshena feels their eyes on her, measuring her. Some want to fight you, some want to fuck you… either way, to get inside you. Some parts of her feel it as a violation, a demand, shrinking from their lust as if it will warp her body instantly into one they’d like better. Some parts of her bloom under any kind of regard, kind or cruel, and fear only their indifference.
“Reminds me of when I was an actress. I mean, I’d rather they look than not look, I guess, but do they have to look like that?” she says to Brynn, half in jest, and catches the giantess giving her a sympathetic look as she takes up a post at the fence.
“That’s not bein’ an actress, that’s bein’ a woman,” Brynn answers. She stares down at the grey-clad young man leaning nearby, who is staring at Keshena’s leather-wrapped torso, and he rapidly straightens up to focus his attention on the ring. Looking along the line of spectators, Keshena sees a bare handful of women, most of them dressed in the grey livery as if it will protect them from the same leering scrutiny. Picking up on her frown, Brynn says, “It’s better once you get out of novicehood. Most of the Hand are women. And most of these will wash out before they get much further.” She raises her voice to make sure the targets of her scorn hear her assessment of their prospects, and though there are a lot of surly faces squinting down the line at her, none of them dares say a word.
Keshena grins up at her. “Tell us what you really think.”
Brynn rolls her eyes. “What’re they gonna do, slit my throat? They’d need a stepladder.”
“Hard to sneak around with one of those.”
Chuckling, Brynn nods and taps her temple.
“All right, where’s Keshena? Front and center!”
Keshena watches Ishin scan the fenceline and pass right over her, looking for Madame’s wrinkles. She waits a theatrically appropriate few seconds and then steps into the ring, throwing curls back from a younger woman’s face. “Keshena Den Roth, at your service,” she says.
Ishin frowns suspiciously at her for a long moment. “All right, then,” he says quietly. “Guess there is a little more to you. Like to show it to me?” He draws a dagger and points at the weapon racks, where Keshena selects a pair of well-worn practice swords. Hefting them, she finds them ill-balanced but serviceable. As she turns back toward Ishin, a restrained sound comes from the crowd, and then she has to duck as Ishin’s arm nearly catches her by the throat.
She stumbles aside and scrambles away from the wall. “Oh, I see how it is here!” she snaps. Ishin’s grin doesn’t fade as he advances with deadly speed and no evident intention of adhering to formal dueling protocols. The dirk in his left hand is paired with a whip, nothing that has ever touched the hide of a beast, but a short, slightly stiff length of braided leather, spiked at both the tip and the grip. He brings it forward as he comes at her, and Keshena retreats toward the center of the ring to give herself room. She parries a few swings of his blade, and then the whip leaves her field of view to hit the back of her neck with a blinding snap of pain. The old man grabs both ends and jerks her forward, bringing his dirk up to her unprotected side. It’s a half inch from her armpit when he stops and lets her go with a little shove. “Slow. You want more scars, girl?”
Den Roth grins and squares off. “Yes.”
“You and Lin are a pair, ain’tcha.” He scoffs. “Plannin’ to lose an eye next?” He lunges again, the whip making a low sound as it spins over his head. It strikes her wrist, just incidentally, and feels like she’s been cut to the bone, but when she looks, there’s no blood. Twisting aside, she ducks the next swing of his blade and slashes at his leg. Though she pulls the blow a moment before it would make contact, Ishin jerks into her and her sword glances off his cuisse. She’s too close for him to swing the whip fluidly, though, and she catches his ankle with hers and brings her other sword over as he stumbles. They both fall to the ground, but she meant to, and a roll brings her back to her feet again fast enough to step on his whip and pin it to the sawdust. She strikes aside the dagger that comes up to slash at her ankle, and aims her sword at his neck.
“Was it you who took her eye, then?” she asks. There’s some chatter and laughter among the spectators, who seem pleased to see their weaponsmaster on his back. Ishin doesn’t look put out - he lightly pushes her blade away and holds out a hand for her to help him up.
“If I’d a use for her eyes, I’d’ve taken both,” he says, grunting and dusting off his backside. “She came that way. Not bad, there. Looks like you studied with a knight, eh?”
“Ashen, during the last war in Shiel.”
“You’re good at keeping track of both your hands, I’ll say that for you. Better’n most. Hear that, Kalkas? How many hands you got, eh? Show ‘em to me!”
A novice at the fenceline raises both his hands without much raising his head, avoiding the laughing eyes of his fellows around him. Ishin makes a show of counting with his dirk. “One, and… two. Good! Don’t lose ‘em.”
As he’s distracted, Keshena moves forward as quietly as she knows how, a foot behind him ready to trip him as she strikes. Then his whip snaps back and wraps around her arm. Ishin turns left, driving an elbow into her gut, and then yanks on the whip, sending her sword spinning into the dust at her feet. When she bends to reach for it, a heavy fist hits the top of her spine and lays her flat on her face.
“Thought you were a soldier! Don’ show me your neck, girl, or I’ll take away yer neck privileges!” His boot comes down on her fingers, covering the hilt of her weapon, and she freezes.
“Y’know why Lin lost that eye?” His tone is conversational. Keshena grits her teeth on an answer far too flippant to address to someone with a knife, and he continues. “I don’ know the man who took it, mind, so I’m just goin’ off of what I’ve seen since she’s been with us. Lin lets what she wants blind her t’everything that stands in the way, like you just did. It’s why she’ll be Champion, like as not - seein’ the destination and damn the cost is the kind of blindness people call ‘leadership potential.’ But you’ll find the cost always gets paid one way or another.”
“I was a mercenary; I know plenty about the cost of leaders’ decisions,” she growls. Ishin’s foot isn’t as heavy when he’s talking, and her fingers loosen on the hilt of her sword as she slowly pushes off the ground and gets her knees under her.
“Aye, you’n me both. Lot of things you can see real clearly from the underside, eh? Not so easy to see from the top.”
“What else do you see from where you are?” Keshena mutters.
“I see a hired sword who wants to be a spy, and I’m gonna be honest with you - I don’t see it happenin’.”
“See this?” she growls, and jerks her hand out from under his boot to grab the back of his knee. Her shoulder crashes into his crotch as he falls forward and she rises. Ishin goes down, and down comes her blade after him, stabbing into the ground a half-inch from his leather codpiece. Before it sinks more than a few inches, though, it skids off the stone underneath the sawdust, and her weight following it snaps the practice sword in half. The tip bounces off Ishin’s leathers, the hilt remains in her hand, vibrating gently, and Keshena stares at it, nonplussed at the sudden cheers from the spectating novices.
“Dammit, girl! That’s another sword I gotta forge!”
Turning over the intact sword in her left hand, Keshena offers the old man another hand off the floor. “Shouldn’t take you long. At least I hope you didn’t spend too much time on these, because they’re terrible.” Another shout of laughter from their audience, which Ishin takes with grumbling grace.
“Ain’t a real blacksmith anyway; y’all should be grateful I letcha break my blades instead of buyin’ yer own!” Aiming his dirk at her, he adds, “Good enough show for now. Next time we’ll try with the dirk and whip, see if you can learn our way as well. You oughta be able to fight with whatever comes to hand. Now pick up those bits an’ throw ‘em back by the wall there, I’ll clear ‘em up later.”
As Keshena clears away the marks of their skirmish, Ishin calls out names and the novices pour into the arena, selecting weapons and pairing off. “Come with me, girl,” he says to Keshena. “Got somethin’ t’explain to you.” He leads her out of the ring, and as the sounds of sparring begin behind them, he continues, “I’ll give you the name of the smith we use, and you can get some decent weaponry once we’ve done a little training and you’ve decided what you want to stick with long-term.”
A blue-green glow rises around them as Ishin leads her through the verges of the mushroom garden and up the steps of the black stone folly. A smoke-clouded tapestry covers the open archway, and keeps in the heat from a large brazier in the middle of the room. Cushions and chairs are scattered around it, and the place feels comfortable, almost unnaturally so - there’s a feeling of stillness and security here that Keshena can almost touch, so that stepping through the doorway is like passing through the skin of a bubble. It’s much hotter than the eternal chilly stasis of the cave, and she instantly begins to sweat in the warmth.
Ishin strips off his dusty gloves. “This’s the Retreat. Y’ever come in here?”
“Not till now.”
He takes some care that the tapestry falls back to cover the doorway completely, then throws his gloves down on a table and offers his callused palms to the brazier. “Well, you’re welcome to. Place is yours. I mean novices especially - they put it up so there’d be a warm place to gather down here.”
Keshena nods. “It’s… nice.”
The old man rolls his eyes. “Nice, she says. Like I brought her here t’admire the upholstery. It’s more’n nice, girl, it’s safe. Safest place you’ll ever be.” Seeing her skeptical look, he demands, “Up in the Basilica, say, how safe are you?”
Rubbing her arms and cataloguing her new bruises, Keshena frowns. “Relatively, I suppose. The Kumani are around. Nobody’s going to knife people in corners unless it’s us?”
“Fair enough. Same down here, then? Safe as houses?”
“Safe from everybody but you,” Keshena grins.
Ishin aims a finger at her. “That’s my point. One of ‘em. The Kumani can find you, always. We’re always watchin’ you. That might come as a comfort someday. But we’re not the only ones.” His finger tilts until it points at the arched ceiling.
Keshena’s eyes follow his finger, but finding nothing there, return to look for clarification on his face.
“Put it this way. When you speak in the Retreat, nobody can hear you who isn’ right here with you. Nobody. Not even a god.”
She looks around the little lounge with new interest. “Don’t you all have your own god? Why should you want to hide from Him?”
Ishin gives her a slow, wry smile. “You never know, do you? Fact is, the Kumani protect the city, that’s our charge. We do it with Nieran’s magic because He gave it to us, and we’re practical folk, besides bein’ polite - we don’t turn down gifts. But if it comes to protecting this place with whips and pitchforks and kitchen knives, we can do that again, an’ we will. A wise man don’t depend too much on the gods’ generosity.” He squints at her. “You’re Called, aye? Takes one to know one. Whose?”
She shakes her head. “No one’s,” she says for what feels like the hundredth time in two days.
Ishin is the first person to not look surprised. Nor does he give her pity. “Ah. That’s a rare and lonely destiny you’ve stumbled into,” he murmurs, and Keshena is moved to laugh.
“Aye, isn’t it? At least here they don’t treat the Called like lepers.”
“Eh, there are a couple bastards around, but no, like I say, Northmen are practical. We know the use of an immortal, even one with questionable loyalties. And I don’t see any point in despising somebody the gods have picked out for special punishment. Seems like you got all the trouble you need already.”
Keshena laughs again. “You don’t like the gods much, I take it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Ishin groans as he stretches, his joints popping like the fire before him. It looks as though he was Called somewhere around seventy years old, and hasn’t been permitted to accrue any more wrinkles in the time since. As he takes a seat on a chaise and brings out a pipe, he says, “I would say that I have a perfectly reasonable wariness of anybody I can’t stab in the kidney. Our Father does right by this guild, an’ He’s done right by me, else I wouldn’ be here now. But I don’t expect my plans will always align with His, necessarily, and I don’t expect Him to extend me any more kindness than He’s given already, keepin’ me from the Halls. Even that, He did for His own reasons. That’s the thing you gotta remember. Gods - shit, all of us - do what they do for their own reasons. If it turns out good for you, you might think it’s because they wanted to help you, but ultimately, helpin’ you will always be reason number two. Because reason number one is about them an’ what they want.”
“That’s a pretty cynical way to look at your guildmates,” Keshena says. At Ishin’s look, she adds, “I didn’t say I disagree. But you have to trust somebody, at some point.”
“Sure! I trust people; I trust every goddamn one of ‘em. I trust ‘em to take care of themselves, like I would, an’ to fight for their own lives, like I would, an’ to chase their own happiness, like I would. Trust isn’t about not havin’ any doubts, girl. It’s about makin’ sure you got doubts about reasons, not about actions. You can depend on someone without ever really understanding their reasons for bein’ there, so long as you give them a personal stake in what you’re doin’. And that’s why you can’t ever trust the gods, not really. You can’t give Them anything They want. They’ll use you for Their own ends, and when They’re done, They’ll cut you loose, an’ it’ll be your own damnfool fault if you built your whole life around Them.”
Keshena digests this for a bit as Ishin packs his pipe and tongs a coal out of the brazier to light it. The smoke that clouds around his head smells sharp, like pines, and rises straight up, untroubled by air currents. When he’s got the thing properly glowing, Ishin takes a deep drag off it and speaks with his voice constricted by the smoke in his lungs, “You don’ have to agree with me, doesn’t matter. The point is, if you need to talk quiet with someone, do it here. Kumani can’t go unseen here, or eavesdrop from outside, an’ neither can anyone else. Time might come when you’ll be glad the only person spyin’ on you is me.”
“Who else would bother?”
“Lin, for a start, if she weren’ poorly. Know she’s keepin’ an eye on you more’n she needs to.”
“How is she poorly? She was fine yesterday.”
“Got in a fight with a wolf late last night, what I hear.”
Keshena’s face shows more than she means to at this, and Ishin leers at her. “Gonna rush off an’ take care of her? Go on, then. Said all I’ve got to say. Tell her she’s got one week of bein’ lazy before I come and tan the side of her the wolf didn’ get.”
