Dragon’s Empire – 5. Society of Shadows

I had to stop by the tailor’s shop, which was late special for the king’s successor. I ordered dresses for Rose there, and promised that I’d come pick them up some night. It was a strange order for a prince who was considered unmarried. The proprietor understood me in his own way and, just in case, introduced me to some pretty girls who were seamstresses. Who wouldn’t want their daughter or niece to be a minion? The dragon inside me laughed angrily, but I myself felt only embarrassed, and now I did not come for my things until nightfall, when the whole staff of workers was already asleep. The lamp in the window behind the curtains let me know that the owner himself was still awake.

I took the parcel and the motley hatbox, explained that I was in a hurry to see the lady, and was glad when the door closed behind me. At least the only person in all Viniena could confirm that I had a mistress waiting for me at night, and not a demon to whom I had sold my soul.

I should have hurried back to Rose, but I glanced at the moon, which had already moved in the sky to the left over the spires of the city, and remembered another scene from the play, the Marquise asking something about birth, youth, dawn, and the dragon in the form of a cavalier mysteriously answering and revealing my past in the words:

In Camille’s opinion, Sabrina could not believe such a frank confession. What could she think of an attractive young man but a pretender who had decided to play the demon for some reason? I could still hear her answer from Rose’s lips:

I shook my head, as if I were trying to clear my mind. I should hurry home, not read someone else’s poetry. Before Rose had opened my eyes to the fact that the author was talented I had found the play to be a very offensive piece of writing.

Feeling someone’s light breath on the back of my neck, I turned around. The figure leaning against the wall of the tailor’s shop seemed so familiar that I didn’t even wonder who it was.

«Since when do you dress up in dresses?» someone asked me with a sneer, though no one’s lips moved, and the words sounded as if only I could hear them. Even if a passerby had been around right now, he wouldn’t have heard anything.

«They’re for a girl,» I answered aloud, not thinking that if the observer hadn’t really asked me anything, he might find my words strange.

«Are they for a girl?» It was either an echo or a chuckle. «Do you mean to tell me that some girl who lives with you can live long enough to try it all on?»

The words came out, and again it was unclear whether they were spoken aloud or only intruded into my consciousness.

«Come!» I commanded, not out loud, but mentally, so that no living creature could resist the order, but the figure did not emerge from the darkness, but instead dove deeper into it and disappeared around the corner of the house.

I could see no one in the murky alley, but I was somehow certain that someone was beckoning me to follow. It was awkward to run after someone with the boxes in my hands, so I put them by the base of some building, figuring I’d come back for them later. Even if someone were to pass by, they would not notice the rolls of dresses or the motley hat-cards. Outsiders could not see what no longer belonged to their world, but to me, just as passersby could not see the house I had bought in Lara, though they knew it was not torn down, but stood somewhere nearby in tantalizing proximity to them.

Who to follow if I could hear no footsteps or anyone’s panting breaths and exhalations nearby, and they must have been, considering that someone was running away from me with the speed of an arrow fired. No one’s footprints could have been left on the uneven paving stones, but I was walking like a treaded path. If I had called someone after me, even my soles would have left a deep trail of fire on the cobblestones. No one might have called me this time. Maybe it was just a faint premonition of danger, the kind that sometimes arises only in clairvoyants, somewhere in the strong, wired net of various dragon instincts.

I didn’t have to choose my direction; my feet led me to the square, to the very spot where I’d picked up Sylvia’s dead head. Was it dead? The clear and obvious question in my brain would have alarmed anyone. What if, even severed from her body, it was still alive, and when I took it out of the cambric wrap that replaced the shroud, her dead lips would move slightly to warn me of something.

There was only one tarred torch burning in the square, a tiny orange with a red core, visible from afar. There was a foul, stinking smoke from the flame, but it was beyond anyone’s sense of smell, for there was nothing around, and the torch itself seemed to be hanging in the air above the scaffold, without a stand or holder. Was the square empty? No, it only seemed so. The human eye could not distinguish what I saw, a mass of dark, graceful silhouettes exquisitely draped in black velvet and moiré. There were only shadows, indistinguishable in the darkness. Only the light at the center of the pandemonium of shadows was discernible, and the blessed night sheltered everyone else, even the torch-bearer who had brazenly climbed onto the platform. Night was their favorite time.

At first I watched them, leaning against the facade of the palace, with its dark windows overlooking the square. In contrast to them the dapper green tones of my clothes and the bright emerald folds of my cloak in pleasant contrast to the gold of my hair immediately attracted attention even at a distance, but I remained long unnoticed by any of the society of shadows. They were too engrossed in what the torch-bearer, Charlo, was saying to them. Or rather, he wasn’t speaking at full voice, but addressing the crowd in a hissing, almost inaudible to the human ear, but I could hear him and his companions all right.

«Why are we slow?» Charlo gestured for the crowd’s attention to his greasy, gypsy-black hair, and its curly tips parted against the stand-up collar, framing his narrow face in some unearthly black flame. The abyss in his deep-set eyes was even blacker than the night. «What should we wait for? Why hide from every retired soldier who passes by, why sit in back alleys, waiting for the smallest guard to march past. Why should we fear the King’s Guards or the cantoned cavalry, their guns, their swords, his majesty’s signed arrest warrants? We are an army ourselves. Why should we hide? We could have ruled this city long ago. Our lord says his teachings are the only right ones, he has revealed his secrets to us and we are now his favorites because we believed him and followed him, and he puts all dissenters at our disposal.»

Charlo tried to flaunt his education and eloquence and wanted to look like an orator, but instead he resembled a hissing viper who had grown bold enough to try to climb up the hill instead of crawling over rocks and sand.

I was surprised that most of the assembled audience listened to him with interest, and if their pale, porcelain faces were not so impassive one might even say with participation.

«Up to now we’ve only lived by catching people in night alleys. They had neither revolvers nor the support of the law to defend against us,» Charlo continued, out of breath. «Somehow their knives, sharpened to piss off the wandering strangers, didn’t frighten us. Good thing there was a war recently, and we had a goodly profit in the pockets of deserters and marauders we caught. Then we had only the midnight robbers at our disposal. Look, instead of seizing Viniena at our complete disposal, we are cleansing its quarters of criminals. We have no other means of subsistence than what we have extracted from the robbers’ purses. And if we only plunder at night one of these magnificent rich palaces, which contain more trinkets than the owners need, we will be hunted down by the very guarding companies from which we have so cleverly hidden so far. It can’t go on like this forever, can it?»

«Of course it can’t,» hissed a woman I recognized as Priscilla from the crowd. Her barely audible exclamation in the crowd of shadows was deafeningly loud. No one but the woman had dared to raise her voice to interrupt Charlo’s speech.

«What do you suggest we do?» Royce, always brash after her statement, immediately stepped forward.

«I told you,» Charlo straightened up. «No more delays, no more excuses. I think the hour is at hand. The chime is about to strike, but there are worse noises to rouse the most watchful of watchmen before the chime strikes. Let us do what we set out to do! It’s today or never!

Charlo pointed defiantly with his hand, clutching the shaft of the torch, toward the king’s palace. The triumphant cry, accompanied by that simple but eloquent gesture, resounded ominously through the night. But even if the sleeping townspeople heard something, it seemed to them to be no more than the long cry of a hoopoe or a cormorant, which on the coast foretold trouble to sailors, but who knows how it had come to be here in the town square.

«Go to the palace! You’ve gone quite mad,» Klovis, less impulsive but more judicious, folded his arms across his chest and rested his shoulder on the railing of the wooden staircase that led to the palace. A sneer flashed in his calm aquamarine eyes. Or rather, his eyes were different colors, one entirely aquamarine and the other three-quarters blue. I could see it even from this distance. Different colored eyes are a sure sign of someone who promises to be a capable sorcerer.

«That pretty girl was right to declare you insane,» Klovis grinned at the corners of his lips. Light and nimble, he could turn on anyone who contradicted him. «Our charming Shadow Infanta is not, as you told us, a pretty little thing, but… not only clever, but wise and perceptive. She was the first one to notice that you were mad, and we weren’t sure whether to believe her or not.»

«You’re just captivated by her doll face,» Charlo said impertinently, stepping back just in case there was enough distance between him and Klovis to make a run for it. «We don’t need a lover here. We should be thinking of our future, of prosperity, of success, not correcting grammatical errors in your love canzonets. Better get out of here while you’re still in one piece, there’s no room in our ranks for the cowardly and the cowardly. Cowards sooner or later become traitors. We don’t need such a nuisance. Go serenade the dragon’s mistress under her window. You could have been one of the lords of the world with us, but instead you prefer to be her servant. Get out of here! Go to your sweetheart and pray that her protector doesn’t scald your face with his fiery breath.»

«Shut up!» Klovis gritted through his teeth. The taunts had hit their mark. He was so angry that he tore the lapels of his cloak with his nails. The silk lapels on the sleeves were now nothing but scraps, but Klovis somehow decided it was better than leaving one tattered carcass from his recalcitrant counterpart.

«Eye for an eye,» Sharlo grinned evilly. «That pretty girl really hurt your feelings.»

I was going to get even with him for calling Rose a dragon’s minion, but I wasn’t sure what he would say. It was curious, to learn of the enemy’s secret plans from his own lips.

Without the mediation of spies, I could learn far more than they would have told me. Charlo persuaded the crowd with such zeal and such fervor. He had no idea that the dragon was watching him, not through a keyhole, but standing nearby, in plain sight and not even trying to hide around a corner. And still I was still a creature who had entered this world through a narrow tunnel not used by humans, connecting two worlds. I continued to feel like a spy, peeking at the gathering in the square and all of humanity in general from the tiny keyhole in the door that separates one world from the other.

«I won’t listen to an honest girl being insulted,» Klovis shook the invisible debris from his coat, turned on his heels and was about to leave, but Charlo’s menacing shout stopped him.

«Don’t you dare say anything to our illustrious Monseigneur Dragon, or the prince will rip out your tongue.»

Clovis turned and clenched his fists so that his knuckles whitened. He would have liked to challenge him to a duel or even a scuffle, but he knew that he could easily avoid the challenge by claiming that he was now a republican and had no intention of tolerating aristocratic habits, and that a fist fight would have been a distant prospect. Could anyone compare to him in running speed?

«What could you possibly have learned from a downtrodden noble family except prayers, swordsmanship, and philosophy?» Charlo grinned mockingly. «You prefer words to toil, slowness to lightning speed. You value long hours of leisure more than the swift path to glory and advantage. We cannot be lazy like you. Why did we come to the square under the cover of night, when everyone is asleep and there is no one to hinder us. This is the most direct path to the palace. We will come silently, swiftly and unexpectedly. No one will be able to resist us. Have you not sneaked up behind the dark ones we’ve robbed and disarmed them? You yourself acted like a thief in the night, and now you’re trying to play the moralist.»

«And you suggest that we storm the palace without even getting an order from the prince to do so. It’s better to wait for the lord’s command than to act on our own. At least that way we can count on his support. Where is he now? From which roof is he watching us and laughing at our foolishness? We will die, and he will find other, even more servile and subservient followers.»

«You’re talking nonsense,» Charlo protested firmly.

«I have every right to be, since I’ve already been banished, I’ve got to do something to establish my sullied reputation as a pariah so you won’t have any regrets about me.»

Klovis looked either questioningly or mockingly around the half circle of black figures, which had swung open to make way for him, and then turned again to Charlo.

«At least extinguish the torch so none of the sentries will notice the flame creeping up the path to the front door. We all prefer the ascetic way of life, dressed in black, like the monks, but they only wear cassocks and tonsils, and we hide from every passerby dressed in uniform. If you’re such an ardent ascetic, Charlo, you shouldn’t feel the lack of comfort because there’s no fire nearby. The moonlight is enough for shadow. You used to be the quickest to sneak off to the sewer grates if there was a cart rattling close by carrying convicts to their execution. Now you’ve suddenly grown bolder, offering to go to the King’s palace. Well, go!»

«That’s not all I suggest,» Sharlo said with a wry squint as if he were trying to establish some sort of rapport with himself. «Isn’t the second part of the plan appealing to you?»

«You try that, and even if they don’t drag you down to the palace door, you’ve signed your own death warrant.»

Klovis thought for a moment, as if he did not know how to express his fears accurately.

«You see,» he tried to explain. «It’s not just your life that’s at stake here. It’s a case of you and your instigator taking the lives of all your followers. It’s not enough to slit the throat of Viniena’s lord, you want willingly to become entangled with a man from whom others, the most dangerous and vicious, will flee at a moment’s notice. Believe me, you’re looking for an enemy who has killed people far greater than you for fun. You can’t beat him.

«I’m not asking you to fight him,» Charlo protested angrily. «To fight him would be a suicide. You’re not the only one with the foresight to see that. I’m trying to make it clear that if he comes to the old man’s rescue, we can steal from him, quietly, without being seen by him as missing any of the treasure. What would be garbage to him would be useful to us.»

«He may already know all about your plans,» Klovis assured him.

«How could he?» – Reluctantly, as if he were a mischievous sort of ruffian, Charlo snapped back. «Who could have warned him? Had His Majesty sent him the dispatch? He knows nothing of our plans. No one knows.»

«He knows everything,» Klovis tried his best to convince the intruders of his rightness, trying to create an atmosphere of fear in the square with his serious tone as opposed to the playful jokes of the instigator. Indeed, a chill ran down the skin of some. It was immediately clear that Klovis knew what he was talking about. His unwavering self-confidence elevated him above the others. It didn’t even matter that he was standing below the platform and that Charlo was preaching from the podium like a pulpit.

«Remember, he has all-seeing eyes. There is not a rebellious or even harmless thought in our heads that escapes him. He has the highest power with him, and behind us only is the arrogance and rebellious ramblings of someone who has apparently lost his mind.»

«That means you’re on his side,» Charlo snapped.

«I don’t even know his name. All I know is that he is more powerful than all of us.»

«What does his name mean to you? I don’t care if it’s Mr. Lucifer. Doesn’t a corrupt little soul care who he gets his bounty from? He may have already bought your vote, but not mine. We don’t care what power he has, as long as he has a treasure left unattended somewhere in the snow. He has cellars full of gold…»

«But he’s got a breath of fire,» Klovis protested, his tone fair enough. He seemed the most judicious of the group.

«You wouldn’t want your skin to burn as if you’d been in an oven, would you? There’s no such thing as a shadow with burnt scars.»

«Don’t listen to him,» Charlo said to the crowd.. «He’s only trying to delay our march to the Palace even for a moment. It’s because I’m foresighted that I’m taking you there first, and then to the gold mines. Apart from the king, there is no one to warn our handsome villain. Even if any of the courtiers could warn him of the danger, they wouldn’t lift a finger, because everyone is afraid of him. No one would save someone who later would certainly want to take the life of his own savior. We will be rich, and the prince will be pleased with us. Lock that fool up in a cellar somewhere, so he won’t bother us,» he pointed with the torch at Klovis.

«Lock him in a storeroom or a quarry or, better yet, drown him under a bridge. You can see he’s a dragon s fan. Anyone who colludes with the demon ends up dead in a noose, and he won’t think to help his pals. He treats everyone like an enemy.»

«You’re wrong, Charlo, I never quarrel first, but if anyone tries to quarrel with me, my anger will be terrible,» I said it mentally, so that only Charlo himself could hear, and he did. The torch fell out of his hand, went over the wooden board of the platform, and went out on the stones of the sidewalk. I didn’t want to see the flaming fire, so I let the torch fly away and go out instead of lighting the wooden beams, supported it with my invisible power, so to speak, and extinguished it at a distance.

Klovis did not hear my words, but, guided by some inner instinct, he turned around.

«Monseigneur,» he lowered his head with a guilty look, as if trying to explain, «I will accept your anger if it falls on me, but I am no longer with them.» The unnatural black curls lay on his forehead and covered his eyes, but I could make out the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. He was some five or six centuries younger than me, and he, too, was in his early twenties, like me the last day of my human life, but he looked older than me, probably because he had already been dejected and suffering the vicissitudes of life in his younger years.

Charlo’s mouth fell open in surprise, but he couldn’t say anything. He only noticed me now, and finally realized that he’d miscalculated.

«What is the matter with you? Have you become unwell?» I asked mockingly, and walked to the scaffold with quick, brisk steps. Charlo was already numb with fear, and I was more confident than ever. «You wanted to go as far as my cellars and were not afraid of the hardships of the long journey, and when I myself came to you to listen to the petitions you were timid and no longer remember what you wanted to ask. Even girls are never so shy, but perhaps your shyness is due only to your deference to a dragon so great and famous?»

I spoke with dignity, but I moved lightly, nimbly, like an errand boy or a fox that had spotted a hare, but the crowd of shadows parted before me like before a very distinguished person. Some shuddered away from me, others stood dumbfounded. There was indeed an air of awe or fear all around.

I jumped swiftly to the platform, disregarding the ladder, easily getting off the ground and overcoming the height-a jaguar’s leap. Only a carnivore would act so coldly and calculatingly. I stood beside Charlo, letting him pull back, but blocking the path to the ladder, without which he couldn’t get down. Jumping from the height of the platform would have been an unacceptable risk for him, and he didn’t want to twist his ankle or break a bone. And my flexibility and invulnerability were just a little lacking by him.

«All right, shut up,» I said mercifully. «You don’t have to be a wizard to read everything in your eyes. Did you want gold?»

I snapped my fingers and a heavy, iron-clad chest appeared on the platform at Charlo’s feet. The wooden boards and beams sagged beneath its weight. The lid was flung open, and those present were dazzled by the glitter of the piles of gold coins.

«Are they real?» Priscilla flew up the steps to the platform like a butterfly, stooped in front of the chest, and raked the coins with her palms as if they were gold sand.

«I suppose I could use a little variety?» It was again a quick flick of my unnaturally long fingers, and on top of the gold an invisible hand sprinkled a guest of gems. Some of it crumbled, but just as Priscilla was about to pick it up and feel it, it crumbled to rainbow-colored dust under her fingers. The walls of the chest began to blur and eventually dissolved into a puddle of wet sand, which instantly vanished as though nothing had happened. The coins still rattled in different directions, but they did not remain a golden rain for long. It looked like a kind of optical illusion. In the first moment they were rounds of gold, but in the second they were sizzling embers. Charlo was afraid to touch the treasure as if it had been plagued by plague, and now he was glad of it. Priscilla realized she’d been tricked and pouted resentfully, but was too shy to say anything.

«You wanted to fight me?» I suggested, drew a sharpened stiletto from my inside pocket, and handed it to Charlo.

«You’re insane,» Charlo shrugged back. He could no longer keep up his show of unconcern. Well, I was disgusted with his impertinence to begin with. He was behaving like a normal human being for once, not ingratiating himself or trying to show he was above them all. The mask was torn off, and beneath it, instead of a shadow, just a fearful wretch who feared for the safety of his hide.

«I’m sane,» I countered calmly. «But you are sane or not. How can a healthy person observe such hallucinations as the ones you’ve just experienced? Can people who are even remotely sane see these things in their dream?»

I showed him what I’d shown many people, cutting my clear, pale skin with the blade, striking a vein, and dipping my fingers into the wound to leave a few blood droplets on it. Of course, the cut healed on its own, but it seemed to the audience that the scar had smoothed over my skin as soon as the moonlight touched it. A common belief, the moonlight touched the body and the restless spirit returned to it. I’d read enough scary books to know that, except that the moon cycle had nothing to do with my invulnerability. I glanced at my renewed skin, wiped the blood from my fingers with the handkerchief I’d left in my pocket, and, with a chuckle that would have scared the hell out of any demon, said Charlo:

«If you were in your right mind, you wouldn’t have seen anything like that.»

I jumped off the stage just as easily, and then added more kindly:

«I was only trying to persuade you that gold can only be obtained from a lord you serve faithfully, not by robbery. Do not think that I am a conjurer and that the chest is only a trick. If you had ever been to a circus, you’d know that people can’t perform such a trick. Think hard about what you saw. In the meantime, I advise everyone to go home.»

«Yes, I’m going,» Klovis threw off the short black cloak from his shoulders and aptly tossed it at Charlo’s feet. «I’ve had enough of the blackness.»