Worldsoul

Seventeen

Mercy had returned to her own quarter, with a promise to return. Shadow, left alone, spent the morning in a quiet, boiling rage that she tried to channel into restoring the damaged laboratory. It was mid-afternoon when some semblance of order had been attained, and her fury had abated a little. She was not surprised when the soft knock on the door came. She had been expecting it.

Before she opened the door, she reset the wards with a gesture of her hand and they burned a dull red around the frame. Someone was standing on the step: a woman in green.

“Yes?” Shadow said.

The woman bowed her head. She handed over a parchment scroll, tied with a black ribbon.

“Who has this come from? Is it the Shah?” Shadow demanded. The woman looked up and Shadow recognised the blind eyes: it was the mute serving maid from the Has el Zindeh. She bowed her head again and melted into the dimness of the stairwell, leaving Shadow clutching the scroll.

Some time later, she perched on the windowsill of the laboratory, looking out across the desert. The scroll sat beside her and she was tempted to fling it into the sands, let it be swallowed by nothingness and shift. But Shadow knew this was childish. It would accomplish nothing; the obligation set by the Shah would still remain. Had she not taken the vows that she had, Shadow would have simply ignored it, but by the initiatory terms of her training, she could not. She even wondered whether the Shah had summoned the disir himself. The timing did not add up, but the Shah had diviners, and more than that, understood people, damn him. Coercion and threats would have made Shadow dig her heels in: this, however, was a far greater compulsion.

She picked up the scroll again and studied the contents. She was required, most politely, to present herself at the Has on the following morning, with a range of tools. The Shah would, he said, leave those to her discretion. There was no attempt to bluster, or to suggest that Shadow herself might call his bluff by not appearing. That still left the issue of the disir. Shadow and Mercy had talked long into the night, but had been unable to come up with an explanation as to why Shadow, in particular, had been attacked. Was it connected with the Shah, or not? Had it been purely random? Whatever the case, two things seemed clear: the Shah had been keeping an eye on her, and the disir was now engaged. Shadow had wounded it, and it was somewhere in the Eastern Quarter. Shadow had no doubts that it would be back.

On the following morning, after a troubled night, Shadow walked to the Has. She kept the veil as thick as possible, feeling secure behind its magic, but she knew that this was illusory only, no real solution. The ones who wanted her would find her, and Shadow disliked feeling exposed.

The door was opened by the same old woman as before. She gave Shadow a knowing glance. “Nice to see you back.”

“Thank you,” Shadow said sourly. “Where am I to go, please?”

She was led up a narrow staircase. The Shah stood in a room high in the Has, a turret with fretworked windows that were shuttered against the sun, looking out over the courtyard garden and letting in diamonds and squares of dappled, pleated light. The Shah stood in mingled bright and shade, reminding her uneasily of her own sun-and-moon knife. The floor was tiled in white and blue.

“Good morning,” the Shah said, placidly. “I’m pleased that you could come.”

“I do not see the need to fence,” Shadow said. “We both know what I feel.”

“Yes. And although you will not believe this, you have my apologies. I dislike extreme measures. I take them only when they are necessary.”

“You are right. I do not believe.”

“Nonetheless.” The Shah’s voice remained mild. “I imagine that, under the circumstances, you are eager to start work.”

Shadow did not trust herself to speak. She walked past him to a window, hearing the heavy cream robes that he wore rustle against the tiles as he turned.

“I will have the ifrit brought up,” the Shah said. “Here in the heights, overlooking all, it is closer to the air and fire which is its element, and it will prove more compliant.”

“I would have thought that miring it in water and earth would have been a more sensible solution.”

“No. A curious paradox. Using its own elements against it has proved more helpful. Please don’t think that we have not tried.”

“I do not want to reinvent the wheel.”

“Of course not.”

She looked out over the quarter as the Shah clapped his hands and spoke into the air. The turret was higher than it had appeared: she could see the curving dome of the Medina and then the jumbled buildings of the Quarter beyond. There was the wall, her own windows mercifully not visible from this angle. There was the apartment in which Mariam Shenudah lived. Shadow blinked into the morning sun as the sounds of something heavy being carried up the stairs drew louder.