The Shadows

THREE

In the most sacred hall of the s’Hisbe’s Grand Palace, s’Ex stood on the far side of a door that had no knob, no handle, hardly any seam to distinguish the panel from the wall it was set into.

On the far side, he could hear the infant crying, and the sound, that plaintive entreaty for help, aid, succor, went into his ears and through to his soul. His hand shook as he put it to the cool expanse. His daughter. His offspring. The only one he would probably ever have.

The infant was not alone in the ceremonial room. There was the high priest, AnsLai; the Chief Astrologer; and the Tretary, a position charged with witnessing and recording events such as this.

The baby had been wrapped in a pure white blanket of woven wool by the nursemaid before being taken in there and left behind with those three males.

To cry for a father who would not come to save her.

s’Ex’s heart pounded so violently the whites of his eyes registered the rhythmic pressure. He had not expected this reaction, but mayhap this precise fervor was why he had not been allowed to touch the child—or be alone with her. Ever since the Queen had given birth to her approximately six hours ago, he had been permitted to view her twice: once after she had been cleaned, and just now, as she had been rendered into that white marble room that had no windows and only one door . . . that locked from the inside.

The second of her birth had determined this, demanded this. That was what custom dictated. The stars had aligned in such a way that his daughter was not to be the heir to the throne, and thus she had to be . . .

Get in there! his heart screamed. Stop this, stop this before—

Silence.

Suddenly there was silence.

A sound like that of a wounded animal vibrated up his throat and out of his mouth, and s’Ex curled a fist, banging it into that door so hard, fissures formed in a star pattern, radiating outward from the point of impact.

Distraught and deadly, he knew he must needs retreat before he did something as unthinkable as what had just been done. Tripping over his black robing, he wheeled around and stumbled down the corridor. He was dimly aware of banging into the walls, his momentum bouncing him left and right, his shoulders slamming into the more slick white marble.

For some reason, he thought of a night many years before, at least two decades ago, when he had waited by the exit for TrezLath, the Anointed One, to come down and attempt to escape. Now he was doing what that male had done then.

Escaping.

Whilst in fact not freeing himself at all.

Unlike Trez, who had not been allowed to leave the palace, s’Ex, as the Queen’s executioner, was permitted to. He was also the one who was responsible for monitoring all comings and goings.

There would be no delays for him.

And that would save lives this night.

That silence, that horrible, resonant silence, cannibalized his mind as he wound through the maze of halls, nearing the very exit Trez had sought. That male, too, had been condemned, the position of the stars the moment he was born more dispositive than nature or nurture.

Those constellations, so distant, so unknown at the time of birth and unknowable in maturity, determined everything. Your status. Your work. Your worth.

And his daughter, like Trez, had been born to a portent that had been a death sentence.

Nine months they had awaited her birth, society coming to a kind of standstill with the Queen pregnant. Such fanfare, as there had been only one other pregnancy in the two centuries of the current monarch’s reign—and that had yielded the Princess. Of course, the fact that the current conception had been by the Queen’s executioner had been far less momentous and never publicly acknowledged. Better that it had been an aristocrat. A second cousin of royal blood. A male marked as significant by his birthing charts.

Or even better, some kind of immaculate miracle.

Alas, no. The sire had been he who had started as a servant and gained trust, access, and, much later, the sacred act of sex. But that was all largely insignificant in their matriarchal tradition; the male was as always a secondary afterthought. The result—the infant—and the mother were the most important.

There had been a chance, when the child had come out, that as a female, she might surpass the current heir to the throne, depending on the stars.

Although that would have resulted in another death, as there could be only one heir to the throne—the sitting Princess would have had to be ritually killed.

All had waited for news. With the time and date properly recorded, the Chief Astrologer had retreated to his observatory and completed his measuring of the night sky . . .

s’Ex had learned the fate of his infant before the general population, but after the courtiers: The birth would not be announced. The Queen would reaffirm her current daughter. All would continue as it had been.

And that was that, the personal tragedy for him buried under court protocol and reverence for royalty and long-standing astrological traditions.

He’d known all along that this was a possibility. But either through arrogance or ignorance, he had discounted the terrible reality.

This terrible reality.

When he finally burst out into the night, he drew breaths that he released in puffs. He had never expected an intersection between his personal history and this star-determining system that ruled everything.

Rather stupid of him, really.

Bracing his hands on his knees, he bent over and vomited into the cropped, dying grass.

The expulsion seemed to clear his head a little, to the point where he almost wanted to do it again. He needed to do something, anything . . . he couldn’t go back into the palace—he was liable to kill the first Shadow he came to just to cleanse the pain.

His rescue, such as it was, came from duty. With this event, there was official business to be conducted, which, in his role as enforcer, he was required to discharge.

It was quite a while before he could calm his mind and emotions sufficiently to dematerialize, and when he was able to scatter his molecules, he proceeded out of the walls of the Territory with a strange sense of commiseration.

He was quite certain that the Queen was feeling nothing at this moment. As a result of that star chart, the innocent life that had been cut short had been devalued to the point of worthlessness, in spite of the fact that what had been born had come out of that royal womb.

The alignment of stars was more significant than the alignment of DNA.

That was the way it had always been. Would forever be.

In spite of the fact that it was but September, as he traveled toward downtown Caldwell, it was the coldest night he had e’er known.