Chapter 183. Peregrine Hook (Patreon)

The Chancellor's leave-taking was as polished as his arrival had been.

They saw him off from the front steps, the whole council ranged along the gravel in the late light, the black-and-silver carriage waiting with its pegasi stamping and the General standing ready beside the door. It had the shape of a state occasion, which was what it was, to be fair.

"I'm told Arkhos is at its best this time of year." He drew on his gloves and looked out over the rooftops going gold beyond the wall. "The festivals. The light on the water. I'd have liked to see a little of it." He had a small, regretful turn of the mouth. "But the work doesn't keep itself, more's the pity. Another time."

"We'd be honored to host you properly, Chancellor." Gaius had gone to the flat courtesy of high office. "Whenever the Empire can spare you."

"You're gracious, Archmage." Mephtilem took his hand, and the two held it a moment longer than the gesture needed, goodwill performed for an audience that counted. He released it and turned to the council ranged along the steps. "And to the rest of you — my thanks, and my regard. The Empire is well aware of its good fortune in you."

Bows and murmured courtesies answered him as the Archmage gave a nod to Magnus, which the General returned. 

Magnus had spoken barely three words the whole visit and did not improve on the figure now; he only inclined his head to the assembled magi, every inch the soldier, and stepped up into the carriage.

Still sulking about the handshake, most likely. He'd started it, though, so he could hardly complain how it ended. Big boy. He'd manage.

The Chancellor followed him in. The door shut, the pegasi gathered under them, and the carriage lifted off the gravel and into the gold. For a moment they were a shape against the sky. Then they were over the wall and gone, and the matter, officially, was closed.

What stayed behind on the gravel was the council, the long shadows of evening, and ten more that did not lengthen with the rest.

Gaius let out a breath, and some of the formality went out of him with it.

"That's the end of it. Home, all of you. We'll speak at the proper council and not before."

The thanks that came back were more felt than spoken. The magi started to break apart, down the steps and out along the paths, and behind each one a Shadow detached from the row and went after them, matching the stride of their charge, holding an even distance, simply there. It was a strange thing to watch. Nine of the most powerful people in the Empire walking home at dusk, each trailed by a quiet stranger who would not be shaken.

"Magus Sylla."

Adom turned. Gaius had not moved off toward the steps with the rest.

"A word, if you'd indulge an old man." He looked out across the grounds, where the hedges ran dark against the last of the light. "I find I'd like to walk the gardens before the day's gone. They're good at this hour. Will you come?"

"Of course."

They went down toward the paths together, and one Shadow went with them. Adom's. The Archmage had none — Gaius sat too high to be saddled with a watcher, and the throne had known better than to try.

Adom took a proper look at his shadow for the first time. She'd been at his shoulder since the chamber and he'd barely clocked her. A woman of middling height, blond hair drawn back plain, a face arranged to give up nothing. She moved the way the others did, drawing no notice, her eyes never on him, always on the ground around him.

"You have a name?" he asked.

"Peregrine." She didn't look over when she said it. Then, as if she'd rather not have added it: "Peregrine Hook."

Adom put out his hand.

"Nice to meet you, Peregrine. I'm Adom." He put on a friendly smile. "Adom Sylla."

She looked at the hand. For a moment that was all she did, as if working out what it was for. Then she took it, one firm shake, and let go.

"I know," she said.

"I know you know." The smile stayed where it was. "I was being polite."

Up ahead, Gaius had drifted on without them, and now half-turned on the path. "Magus Sylla. While we're young."

"Coming!" Adom set off after him, then looked back at the woman fixed to his shoulder. "Let's go, Peregrine."

*****

The Magisterium gardens put Xerkes's to shame, and Adom thought so every time he came down to them.

They ran on for acres behind the towers, a soft green labyrinth that shuffled its own hedges often enough that no two walks came out the same. The people who'd built it had been able to afford some whimsy. The air carried a different scent each day — today, cut grass and orange peel — and a magus owed the favor could put in for tomorrow to smell of rain, or pine, or warm bread.

There were ponds that doubled the sky. There were trees that bore impossible fruit: one dark chocolate, another small iced cakes by late afternoon. 

Near the middle, under a low stone arch, a well drew up not water but tea — or coffee, or hot chocolate, whatever the week had been set to — steaming and free to anyone who dipped a cup.

Adom had drawn from it once. It was fine. It was the kind of fine that served a tired clerk on a cold morning and asked nothing further of itself, and he'd gone back to his own blends and left it alone since.

That was the point of the place, really. It wasn't built to be precious. The Magisterium gave its people three hours of rest against five of work, and this was where the hours usually went: officers dozing under the trees, apprentices reading flat on their backs in the grass, whole afternoons spent at nothing in weather that never ran too hot or too cold. Gaius had judged that the most powerful institution in the Empire would work the better for letting its people be human in the middle of the day, and he hadn't been wrong.

Adom and Gaius walked in without hurrying, the gravel giving over to turf, Peregrine a quiet pace behind. For a while the Archmage said nothing, only breathing the orange-and-grass air and watching the light fail through the hedges.

Then, with no lead-up at all, he said it.

"The Northking is dead."

Adom stopped in his tracks.

"What?"

Then he remembered, and turned. Peregrine had halted when he did, a few paces back, watching him with the face she'd worn since the chamber. She gave him nothing.

Gaius followed the look. "Your Shadow doesn't carry private words back to anyone. We can speak." He started walking again, and Adom fell in beside him. "I tell you because the man was ours, and the catch was yours. You brought him to our cells yourself. You've a right to know how it ended."

"When?"

"This morning." Gaius kept his eyes on the path. "The terms gave us a year with him before he passed to the capital, into the Emperor's own hands. We meant to use it. There was a great deal locked in that skull — Farmus's plans, the prototype, the names behind both — and we went at his mind for it, week upon week."

"And?"

"Four times in that year, someone came to take him out of our cells, and four times we caught them before they reached him. " 

He paused a little, observing a family of ducks passing by, then they started walking again. 

"All of them were soldiers, trained and disciplined, and each time we sat one down to ask who had sent him, the man chose death over the answer. By his own hand, too, before a word of use ever left him. It happened everytime."

"...And the Northking?"

"He died this morning, after we finally reached the truth of him. Past the last of his walls, into the part that cannot lie." 

Gaius's voice stayed level. "And the instant we were in, he died. A spell had been laid in him long before he ever came to us, set to trip the moment his mind was breached. Every day we dug, we carried him closer to it, and never knew." 

Adom let it turn over in him, and decided the next part would not be spoken aloud.

He let a thread of mana slip loose and laid it against the old man beside him, too fine for any ear to catch. Gaius's stride never broke.

I am using my druidic abilities, please forgive the intrusion, sir. 

Gaius gave no sign at all. His gaze stayed forward, his pace even, and he walked on through the failing light as if nothing had passed between them. His answer came back the way Adom's had gone out, with no sound to it.

Ah, he said. I feared you would not think of this. Keep talking and act confused about who is behind the Northking’s death. 

"God." Adom let the word out aloud, and made it sound shaken. He even stopped on the path a moment, as if he needed it. "Who does that? Farmus? Tidying away their own, so we couldn't wring him dry?"

"We do not know yet." Gaius answered.

His other answer came underneath, with no sound to it. You are thinking of the Emperor.

I'm thinking of the man who stands behind him, Adom said, keeping his face busy with the puzzle. The Chancellor.

I name no one. But weigh it. A spell that lies in a man's skull and springs on the very day we reach the truth? Farmus could empty its treasury and not buy that. No one buys their way this deep into my Magisterium.

"It has to be Farmus," Adom said. "They knew what he carried. Easier to lose him than let us pry it loose."

"That's where I've personally come to as well." Gaius gave a slow nod as they walked. "A hard people. They don't leave loose ends lying about."

The other half of him spoke under that. Castle White. When can you do it?

Adom kept his eyes on the ducks working the near pond, his face still busy with Farmus. I'd have to ask Valiant. He's holding every thread of it; the approaches, the rotations, the timing. I won't know what's possible till he tells me.

"Vicious of them, if it's true."

"It's the trade they're in." Gaius watched a leaf come down off one of the cake-trees. Then ask him. You have my leave to move the moment you see fit; and I'll be plain, sooner is worth more than later now. After today the ground only sours, because I think the emperor is also preparing something against the Magiterium.

"You'd think they'd have tried to break him out. Not kill him."

"They tried." Gaius turned a hand over, rueful. "Four times. Got nowhere each time."

Adom's glance went to the woman a few paces back, once, and came away. That's the trouble. Not with her on me. She's awake every hour and she misses nothing; getting clear of her long enough to do the thing is half the work.

They walked a while in ordinary silence. Then: The changelings are still in the city.

…Oh? Adom had the rest before Gaius reached for it.

That could do it, he sent back. Aloud he blew out a breath and shook his head at the wickedness of Farmus. Bad, bad Farmus.  I'll get to Valiant tonight.

Good man.

At the garden's edge, where the path forked back toward the towers, Gaius stopped.

"Far enough for these old knees." He put a hand on Adom's shoulder. "Go home, Magus. Rest. You've earned a quiet evening."

"You too, sir."

"Mm. We'll speak soon."

He went up the path into the last of the light, and then it was the two of them.

Adom turned the matter over while he looked at her. He couldn't send her off and couldn't lay a hand on her, which left the slow road: he'd have to learn her. 

A man stuck with a watcher for the foreseeable future ought to know what kind he'd got; where she bent, if she bent, what lived under all that starch. And a Shadow he was on easy terms with might, given time, ride a looser rein than one he treated like the enemy she was.

Friends, then. Or near enough to be useful.

"Well." He fell into step with her, smiling. "This is a properly awkward silence, isn't it?"

"It does not trouble me, my lord." Even as ever. "But please, be at ease around me."

Adom looked at her. The formality sat on her like plate armor: every word fitted, every syllable set in its place.

"Do you always talk like—" He caught himself. "Not a complaint. Just curious."

"I was years in training to speak efficiently, my lord. The manner serves the purpose." She paused, as if considering something. "Would you prefer I had more personality?"

His eyebrows went up. "You can do that on command?"

"My charge is your safety and your comfort. If a warmer manner served either, I would produce one."

Okay… damn, she was a weird one.

He gave her his best disarming grin and went looking for a crack in the veneer. "So what you're telling me is, you're good enough at the job to be bad at it, if it cheers me up?"

"If that is how my lord prefers to hear it."

The grin found nothing to hold to. She only looked back at him, in no hurry at all to learn what he'd try next.

Adom let the angle go. "Right. I'm hungry. Are you hungry?"

"I keep set eating hours, my lord."

"Which are?"

"Fourteen hundred, for seven minutes. Nineteen hundred, for four."

Military time. His father still used it, years gone from the knights and never shook the habit."...What do you eat that takes four minutes?"

She reached into her coat and brought out a small wrapped block, flat and grey-brown, the size of her palm. Adom placed it on sight. 

It was Waybread — the siege ration off the Great Famine two centuries back, alchemically packed to keep a soldier upright a full day on one bar. It had saved thousands of lives. It was also, by every account he'd ever read, genuinely vile.

"That can't be the whole of it."

"I drink water as well, my lord."

Adom looked at her and for the first time genuinely pitied her. So he decided he couldn't leave it there.

"Come on. We're getting real food."

"That isn't necessary, my lord. I'm adequately—"

"It would make me feel a great deal safer," Adom said, "if you would. You're my protector. A protector ought to be well-fed and content, so she can protect properly. Stands to reason."

The logic was garbage and they both knew it. But she'd been built to take his safety as something near an order, however crooked the road there, and he watched her run up against that and stop.

A moment. Then: "As you wish, my lord."

Near enough to victory. "Great. You like meat pies?"

*****

Old Mary's small stall sat a few streets down: a window counter, a scatter of tables on the cobbles. The young man behind it lit up at the sight of Adom, clouded half a second at the sight of Peregrine, then came back grinning twice as hard. He talked the whole time he wrapped the pies, all of it pitched at her, and got "I do not mind anything served to me" and "Yes" for his trouble, and slid a free duck pie onto the stack that had nothing to do with the house and everything to do with the way he kept looking at her. Peregrine gave no sign she'd been admired.

They took a table outside. Adom pushed the krawler pie across — he'd caught her flicker at the word earlier, and filed it — and kept the beef.

"Eat. Not for my safety. Just eat it."

She picked it up and bit in, and Adom watched her do it, curious now. After that flicker at the word earlier, he wanted to see whether meat pie could pull anything out of her. 

To his greatest disappointment, it couldn't. She just chewed, swallowed, and her face stayed exactly where it had been.

"...So?" He leaned in anyway. "Best meat pie in the city, am I right?"

"I have not had all the meat pies in the city. But this one is good. Thank you, my lord."

Adom sat back. "...Right."

He ate his own and watched the street, letting himself reckon properly with what he was up against.

He'd had the shape of it in the council. A Shadow belonged to the throne and to nothing else; every lever he could pull — the Magisterium, the Knights, plain rank — ran wide of her. Raised in the dark this past decade, drilled past where most people break, and a mage on top of it, which was the part he disliked. A soldier he could lose in a crowd. A mage trained to keep one man in view would feel his mana move before he'd half-woven the spell to use it.

Which made getting to Valiant tonight a real problem. So he went at it sideways.

"You're quick, I'd guess. Shadows are meant to be."

"Speed and endurance are foundational, my lord."

"Faster than a horse?"

"Over a short distance." 

"Huh. Impressive."

"Thank you my lord."

And they kept eating. 

While at it, Adom saw, across the street, a knot of children tearing past shrieking. There was a boy clipping a girl on the arm and bolting, and she went after him at a flat run, then the pack scattered into the dusk.

They were playing Tag.

Adom watched them go, and the whole thing assembled itself.

"Hey, let me ask you something." He set his cup down. "If there was a real threat, a crowd, and the two of us split up; could you keep me in sight? Could you catch me, if I ran in distress?"

"Yes, my lord." She said flatly.

"I'd like to believe that. But I've no way to know it, and I'd sleep easier if I did." The grin came up. "So. Let’s play a game. Tag, all across Arkhos. Twenty minutes. You catch me, or you don't."

She went still. "...My lord, I don't think—"

"Everything's allowed. Magic, all of it, no limits! Show me what a Shadow really is. Because if you can't run down one mage on a quiet night, you're no use to me on a bad one, and I'd have to ask the Chancellor for a better. I'd hate that." 

Her jaw tightened just so, then she came back to normal. But there it was. It seemed she had pride. 

"Are you telling me you can't catch me?" Adom pressed.

"I did not say that, my lord."

"Then catch me." He tilted his head, all innocence, every degree of it chosen. "Unless I'm too quick for you?"

Her eyes came up and held his, and something competitive and wholly awake looked back out of them; the first thing in her he'd have called alive.

"...I will catch you, my lord."

"Twenty minutes, starting now.." Adom stood, and tapped her once on the shoulder. "Starting now. Tag!"

And he was gone.