Shadow Dances

Set in the realm of The Ravens

Disclaimer: Yes, I am aware that the summary is from the song Blurry by Puddle of Mudd. I am not a member of the band, nor am I the writer of the song. However, since it is what inspired the story, I felt it deserved to be in the summary.

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Everyone loves someone at some point in their life. Even that guy who’s always swearing at everyone else for no reason whatsoever, the one who threatens to smash your face in for rolling your eyes, even he’s loved someone. It might just have been when he was a little kid and loved his mom, or his dad, or his older brother. Maybe it was his grandmother or another relative. Even just an animal, although I don’t think you should really be able to say ‘just’ about an animal. Their love is unrequited, they love you for everything you are and accept you, just because you’re you.

Lots of people are lucky enough to love lots of people. They love their parents, even though they argue with them, they love their siblings, even though they threaten to kill them seven times over for stealing their clothing or toys, they love their girlfriend or their boyfriend, they love their friends. Some people don’t love anymore. It’s a sad thing, because you can tell why. They had their love shoved back at them one time too many and never got to see that there were people who cared about them.

There’s always one person out there, that one person that you give your heart to without even wondering what they might do to it. That one person who you would follow to the end of the world, just because you love them. You don’t have to be in love with them, either. You just love them. They’re like part of you, so much a part of you that you’d rather die than know you had to hurt them. It can be anyone. Your brother, your sister. Your parents. A friend. An idol. A kid. Does it matter who? The fact that they exist is all that really matters.

Isn’t it?

I guess that’s just for you to decide for yourself.

I definitely know where I stand.

It had always been Rachel and me. Rachel and her older brother. Rachel and Madden. We had parents, of course, but they were more an unpleasant memory than anything real for Rachel. When she was younger, and she’d have nightmares about their fights, I’d hold her. I might only have been ten when we ran off, but I was willing to do anything for her. That was the reason we ran off. Not because I was scared of what my father might do to me, but because I was worried about what he would do to Rachel. That was where I got the courage to ask the merchants if they needed apprentices from. Because I couldn’t stand the idea of Rachel living out on the streets because of me.

I wasn’t brave or anything. I never was, probably never will be. It was always Rachel that kept me going.

And you know, I was always willing to accept that it was only because or Rachel that I was able to do these things. She was my sister, and I loved her more than life itself. It didn’t matter how brave I was, or how brave I wasn’t.

I don’t think I was the only one who ever loved Rachel. Maybe my parents didn’t, but they don’t count for anything. They would have hurt her, so they don’t count. I do know that Master Keilith, the wheat merchant who’d accepted me as an apprentice, was at least fond of her. Mistress Laean, his weaver’s guild wife, definitely liked her. Friends seemed to swarm to Rachel like bugs to a light, all of them loyal to a fault and completely dedicated. Even those who didn’t like each other were polite around Rachel.

I’d always been a bit of an outsider. I had a few friends of my own, but they all understood where they stood in relation to Rachel. They all knew Rachel, though, so I think they also knew why I loved her so much. I didn’t get to see them too much, though. They were Court and I was a merchant’s apprentice.

I should probably explain the concept of Court before you get thrown off. By Court, I don’t mean that they were nobles in the court of the King of Ayinchirr. They belonged to the Shadow Courts, the groups of thieves who all answered to one Shadow Walker, their leader. Detinal told me that at one point the Shadow Courts had actually been part of the King – or Queen’s – official court, but that had stopped a long time ago. Centuries, at the least. Maybe even longer.

I didn’t spend much time listening to Det talking about the Shadow Courts. I was busy enough proving that I was a worthy apprentice, even though I was just learning to read and write and figure. It wasn’t that Keilith kept demanding proof, it was just that I was certain that the second I began to slack off he would jump on the excuse to throw the pair of us out of his house. Would he really have done that? I doubt it. But I was young and scared for my beloved sister.

That was my world. Study numbers and letters in the mornings, help Master Keilith in the afternoons and, on some days, take Rachel out to play with her friends and get the chance to talk with my friends from the Shadow Courts. It was fairly secure, even if I was worried that one misstep would land us out on the street, permanently with my Court friends. Now, it wasn’t that they had a bad life; it was just that I wanted better for us. Fine, I’ll be honest. I couldn’t care less where I lived, so long as there was good food and shelter. But for Rachel, I wanted better.

So maybe you can understand just how I felt the day my world fell apart.

It wasn’t a completely normal day. I’d had an argument – a small one, mind – with Rachel the other day about the times at which she could and could not go out with her friends. Maybe I’m a bit overprotective, but I still don’t think that a bunch of twelve-year-old girls should be running around in lower Tal Eishan after nightfall. It’s a dangerous enough place during the day. I didn’t want to lose my sister to something that could be avoided. Anyways, I had lost the argument. I usually did. So she went out and I decided to find something to make it up to her with.

Master Keilith had a friend who sold jewelry. I got a small allowance as his apprentice, but it wasn’t enough to afford anything impressive. Still, he sold beaded bracelets of coloured glass that Rachel and her friends were so fond of. I could get two or three of them with my savings; one for now and the others for festivals. I ended up buying two. One was a pattern in pale blue and yellow. The second had no pattern. Some of the beads were a deep forest green, the others a rich autumn brown, and yet others had a base of one colour and tendrils of the other. That one would definitely be for a festival, I’d decided.

As I walked home, something felt a bit off. The sky didn’t seem quite as bright, as though the still-visible sun had gone behind a cloud, the warm summer day a bit cool. I didn’t like it at all, so I hunched my shoulders and shoved my way through the traffic. Suddenly I really wanted to get back home. Hopefully Rachel would be calmer when she reached home.

She didn’t arrive that afternoon. She didn’t arrive in time for supper, or during supper. By that point, I was worried, but Mistress Laean didn’t show a trace of concern. I guessed that meant that she had received a message about Rachel staying over at a friend’s house for supper, perhaps even for the night. She never said anything to me about it, though. So I went to sleep and drove it from my mind, knowing that I would just seem overprotective and a bit foolish if I were to ask about her.

I woke up early that morning, in that strange grey pre-dawn light that you can almost read in. I dressed, feeling that same sensation from the morning before. A bit of hope entered my heart. She might have arrived late the night before, after I’d gone to sleep. I decided to look in on her. I wasn’t going to talk, wasn’t going to bring up the argument of the night before or even touch her hair. I just wanted to see her head on the bed, wanted to see that familiar face that I loved so much.

I was beginning to push on her door when there was a sharp knocking at the front door. It rang through the rest of the house, awakening the rest of the household. I bit my lip. Seeing Rachel would have to wait. This sounded important.

The servant who watched the door was opening it even as the Master and Mistress ran down the stairs, their crumpled clothing suggesting that they’d thrown on the first thing that came to hand. There were two people at the door, a man and woman in the dress of the City Guard. They didn’t have the bored, casual expressions that I’d normally seen on them, but they also didn’t have the disproving, annoyed expression they wore when they chased after my Court friends. They seemed… hollowed, as though they had been up all day and night.

“Is this the residence of Master Keilith?” the woman asked.

“Yes. What may I do for you?” my Master replied politely, even though he’d been awoken before the sun was up. I had to admire his composure at that moment, even though I was thinking about the closed door upstairs.

“You have two apprentices living in your house? One in your trade, the other studying under your wife?”

“That is correct.”

“We need you to come down to the guardroom, Master Keilith.”

He hesitated a moment. “May I at least get a coat?”

“Yes, Master. This won’t take very long.”

Confusion swept over my fifteen-year-old mind. What was going on? What would only take a few minutes that they needed my Master down in the guardroom for? Had he been stealing? Not paying taxes? But then Mistress Laean would have seemed much more concerned. She wore a bit of a frown, but upon seeing me awake and dressed, she decided that I needed some breakfast. After that she wouldn’t let me leave the dining room, inviting me to play a game of Queen and Shadows.

It was a fairly old game, with roots in the Shadow Courts. The basic concept was to box in the opponent’s Queen while keeping your own fairly protected. There were some rather tricky rules, though, like how for a great enough sacrifice of your own units you can replace one enemy piece with your own. And then each of the three kinds of pieces have different ways of moving. The game was enough to distract me from my thoughts of the Guards and Rachel. Besides, she was probably still at a friend’s house. Why would she have bothered to try to return home, given how late it must have been?

When Master Keilith entered the dining room to sit down heavily, a mixture of sorrow and shock on his face, my mind stopped blocking what I had subconsciously known the whole time. The board with its pieces seemed to blur and spin as I shook my head.

No. No! No no no No NO NO!

“Madden,” my Master began in a voice heavy with grief. “Your sister –”

I jumped up from my seat. “NO! It’s not true! It’s not Rachel! It’s someone else! It has to be! It can’t be Rachel!” They stared at me. “They have to be wrong! Please, tell me they’re wrong!” I begged.

He shook his head sadly. “It’s true, Madden. I’m so sorry…”

But I wasn’t listening any more. Rachel was gone. Completely, irrevocably gone. It was my fault. It had to be my fault. I’d lost the argument. If I’d won the argument, Rachel would have stayed home and she would be safe now. She was gone. My fault. I couldn’t protect her, and she’d died. What kind of a brother was I?

I bolted out of the room, not thinking or wanting to think. I needed to get out of there, where people were waiting to talk about how my sister had died, who were going to remind me and drive knives into my heart. I looked around the street that I had somehow ended up in; my frantic, searching eyes making me seem like some sort of a thief. But the streets were still fairly empty, empty enough for one heartbroken boy to run his sorrow out.

I ran and ran and ran, ignoring the people who cursed and jumped out of my way, barely registering the obstacles that I dodged around. The only things that existed were my feet hitting the road and my sorrow.

Rachel…

Someone was in front of me again – I changed my course to avoid hitting him, but he moved with me so that I ran into him. My force and speed knocked us to the ground, and the other boy wrestled me under him. After a moment I recognized him as Det, the young thief’s thin face sharp with concern.

“What’s goin’ on, Madden?” he demanded, voice rough. “Nanda saw you runnin’ down th’ streets, but you wouldn’ stop t’explain why you were a-runnin’. Did you finally decide t’ become a thief?”

I stared at him. How could he not know? But no, the guards had only recently come to ask Master Keilith to identify Rachel’s body. “Rachel is dead,” I whispered, fighting against tears.

“What?” He shook his head. “Did I hear you a-right? Rachel? Dead?”

I nodded and bit the inside to my cheek to keep from crying. “The g-guards c-came to ask Keilith to identify her this morning…” I couldn’t help it. I burst into tears, right there on the ground.

Det got off and pulled me upright enough to be sitting, and then put an arm around my shoulders, hugging me close. “Sh, sh, it’ll be a-right,” he murmured. “Jest cry it out, Madden. We’re here for you. Don’t you worry. We’ll always be here for you.”

We sat there for at least an hour, ignoring the stares of those who walked by. Their thoughts were clear enough from their expressions – Why was a boy dressed in the clothing of a merchant’s apprentice crying in the streets? And why was a child of the streets keeping watch over him. I’m not sure if it was only the tears that made it seem so, but I think that I saw a knife flash out once or twice when someone came too close to us.

“She’s gone,” I finally whispered, my voice hoarse and broken from crying. “She’s gone, and it’s all my fault.”

“No.” Det gave my shoulders a firm shake. “It ain’t your fault, Madden. Whoe’er killed your sister is t’ blame, an’ no one else. She’d be the first t’ tell you that.” He stood and offered me a hand up. “I’ll walk you ‘ome. You’re still teary enough that you might miss summat important.”

I felt… battered. Like I’d tried to knock down a stone wall by flinging myself at it again and again. There was a hollow place inside of me, cold and empty. I followed Det anyways, exhausted from crying but not willing to admit it. The stairs to the front door were a bit awkward, though I didn’t tell Det.

“Thanks,” I said as I pushed the door open.

He still looked worried. “If’n you need anyone t’ talk t’, Madden, you know where t’ find me.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

His expression was doubtful. “Goodbye, Madden.”

Master Keilith and Mistress Laean were standing just inside the door. Their concerned expressions mirrored Det’s so closely that I looked over my shoulder to see if he was still there. The thief was gone. I turned back to face them. “My apologies. I shouldn’t have run off without telling you where I was going. I won’t do it again.”

“Would you like to talk about it?” Mistress Laean asked gently.

“No. No thank you.” I walked up the stairs to my left and to my room, feeling brittle and alone.

That was a feeling that would linger throughout the next three years of my life. Distant and withdrawn, I rarely spoke unless I had to. Det and most of my Court friends understood that, and were willing to simply sit with me or fill the silence with tales of the city. The Master and Mistress didn’t mention it, tolerating the boundaries that I had drawn up the day my sister died.

I still don’t know just how she died. I refused to talk about her after that, refused to listen to anything about her. That didn’t mean I didn’t still think about her. She haunted my dreams, filling me with guilt. No matter whatDet had said, I still felt that I should have been there to protect her. She was – had been – my sister, after all.

One day, about three years after the day I discovered that Rachel was dead, I was returning from delivering a package of papers from Master Keilith. I walked in stony silence, my fingers curled around the bracelet in my pocket. It was the second of the pair I had bought that fateful day, the patternless one. The blue-and-yellow one had been given away, to who I don’t remember. I’d meant to give away the second one, but I couldn’t. I needed to keep something of Rachel close to me.

Tal Eishan, especially in the lower reaches, is not a friendly place. Though it is the capital of Ayinchirr, the guards are no better at catching thieves and cutthroats. The Shadow Courts are quiet enough; they rarely kill anyone and never gang up on people. There are those who don’t belong to the Courts, however, and I’d be willing to bet that it was one of those groups that had killed my sister.

There was a muffled cry to my left. I ignored it, figuring that the non-Court gangs were fighting once more. It didn’t affect me, wouldn’t affect me unless I ended up in the middle of one of them. But I still looked down the alleyway to make sure they weren’t about to come boiling out on top of me. There were three men fighting, but not with each other. There was something – someone – in front of them, something that their bodies blocked from my line of site. Then one doubled over, likely from a knee in the stomach or groin, and I saw their target.

The girl couldn’t have been more than ten, with dark hair and eyes. She fought like a cat, all claws and teeth, but she couldn’t hold them off forever. The man stood once more and she was cut off from my line of sight, but her face stayed in my mind. So young. So vulnerable.

Like Rachel…

That was it. Making as little noise as possible, I launched myself at the back of the nearest man. I had a small knife, intended for nothing more than self-defense, but I knew how to use it well. Det had taught me, after all. It stabbed the back of his left arm, cutting through the flesh and veins. With a roar of rage he spun around to attack me. I stabbed again, noting with a bit of amusement that he had no weapon. Well, he was big enough not to need one.

Footsteps beside me warned me that another man was coming – I spun and raked the blade at him even as his cut my forearm. He dodged and jumped back, but the narrow alley wall made contact with his head. I engaged the first man again, not caring about the dull ache that had grown up in my arm. The girl… I had no idea what she was doing. She was alive, and that was what mattered. To my mind, she wasn’t some unknown girl. She was Rachel, and I was defending my sister like I should have.

There was a brilliant flash of light and a soft thud told me that the third man had been somehow disabled. My enemy, upon seeing that he was alone, backed away, then turned and fled, cursing as the wound on his arm leaked blood. There was another flash, and he stumbled, but managed to keep going.

“Are you alright?” I asked breathlessly, praying that the girl wasn’t too badly hurt. “Are you bleeding?”

Blue black eyes regarded me for a moment. Her face had a small bruise on the cheekbone, but that was all that I could see. Then she reached out and touched my arm. “You’re bleeding. Right here.”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Can I take you anywhere? Home?” If she had a home. Maybe she didn’t. If she didn’t, maybe I could ask Master Keilith to take her in.

“I was going to visit a friend of mine.” She frowned and looked at the wound on my arm. “That's not very good. I hope that there's a healer nearby.” Then, with a bit of a frown, she began wrapping my arm with a scarf she pulled from her pocket. Why she had a scarf in the summer was beyond me, though.

“There! That’ll hold until you can get to an Earth Mage,” she declared happily. “You can help me find Star now,” she added generously.

“Of course.” I took her hand and began leading her over the two comatose men.

“You didn’t bow,” she noted.

“Bow? Was I supposed to?”

She shrugged. “I’m not really sure. Father makes a big fuss when people don’t bow, but I don’t care. Mother doesn’t really say anything about it either way. So I guess it’s alright for you not to bow.”

“I’m glad that you approve,” I teased gently. “What’s your name, anyways?”

“Aderi. What’s yours?”

I barely heard the question. Aderi was not a common name. Especially not after the King decided to name his daughter Aderi. That meant that she would be a mage, and a powerful one at that. “Princess Aderi?”

Something old and wise touched her dark eyes for an eyeblink. “Yes, Princess.” She waited a moment, then added, impatiently, “You still haven’t told me your name.”

“I’m Madden. No title,” I added with a wary smile.

She laughed. “I like you. Do you know Star too?”

“Maybe. Is Star a he or a she?”

“Well, a he. His full name is Starshade, and he’s Court!”

I stared at her. A member of the royal family knew about the Shadow Courts. And I knew who Starshade was, certainly. That was the name Detinal had taken on when he’d become a full member of the Courts, just after Rachel died.

“Ah… Yes, I do know Star. I haven’t seen him for a while, but I’m sure that we can find him pretty fast.”

It didn’t take us very long to find Det. He’d been worried when Aderi hadn’t shown up on time and had been searching for on his own. He hugged her with some relief and then grinned at me.

“Madden! So you’ve a-met our charmin’ lady.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You know who she is?”

He nodded even as he brought us back to the house in which much of his Court spent time. “She’s Aderi. But she’s also th’ girl who’s been a part of my Court for th’ last moon, an’ we love her dearly.”

The girl had already started up a game of tag with some of the younger members of the Court, running up and down the stairs. I smiled as a watched her. So young, with so much potential. Just like Rachel. Except she wasn’t Rachel. I was willing to accept that. I wouldn’t make her into Rachel, not even in my mind. That wouldn’t be fair to Aderi, and it wouldn’t be fair to my sister’s memory.

But I could, and would, love her like a sister.

There’s always one person out there who manages to capture your heart.

I’d just been lucky enough to find two.