Dressla looked across the cold chamber. Subject 187 was lying down in a reading nook surrounded by velvet cushions, with a blanket wrapped around him. A lamp flickered above several shelves of fat ledgers. From this distance he looked comfortable, but she knew that lying down was less a choice of his and more of a necessity these days. His energy levels were low, and he often complained of the cold.
He’d been almost a full month without a shadow now.
She rose from her seat, the billowing sleeves of her pale yellow dress slipping down over her hips as she walked leisurely toward 187. As was her custom when working, the only jewels she wore were the chained nose ring and ruby-red earring, but she made up for her lack of jewelry with the finery embroidered into her dress. Gold flowers and sunbeams shone over her body, highlighting her curves as she walked. Most men would drink her in and think themselves lucky to be in her company.
Most men would bloody notice her.
She cleared her throat when she was at arm’s length from the subject, and still he ignored her.
And yet he was perfectly capable of giving her attention when he wanted something. In moments of regained energy, he’d make ridiculous requests. He wanted to see the hospital floors, or he wanted to go to the other side, where he might glimpse the desert market tents from the north windows. He wanted to see things, even if he couldn’t do anything.
He wanted . . .
“Did you want something?” the subject asked, his gaze meeting hers with contempt. The standard white tunic and gray trousers he’d been put in were creased, his long dark hair ruffled and a beard was settling in.
“You were a thief, I believe,” she said, “before you were captured.”
He smiled as though his criminal life amused him. “I was.”
“Thieves are known for being dangerous. Aren’t they as likely to stab you as rob you if it was the difference between being caught or getting away?”
The subject sat up slowly. His face didn’t betray any discernible change, but his shoulders, she noticed, tensed ever so slightly.
“Some have that opinion of thieves,” he said. “Others understand it’s a way to get by.”
“You could have applied yourself to a legal trade.”
He scoffed. “With what? I don’t have a legal name. My parents were hunted, and their parents before them. You make us criminals because you won’t ever let us just live.”
Dressla ran her fingers on the back of the chair facing him. “If I’d been born with your advantages, there wouldn’t be any limits to what I could do.”
“My advantages?” His eyes flashed. “And what would those be? I’ve been hunted all my life. My wife was taken before our daughter could even remember her, just so you could run your sick failed experiments.”
“Your wife has more blood on her hands than I do,” she said calmly. “And yes, you had advantages. If I’d been born a man like you, I would have led armies. If I’d been born with a shadow like you, I would have done as the legendary shadow wielders of the past. They stole kingdoms, not trinkets from a market stall.”
He leaned back, dismissing her as so many liked to do, and smiled. Her ideas amused him.
“You think I exaggerate? I’ve done more with shadows than in the entire history of Arbil. I understand how to extend life with them, cure diseases. Thanks to you, I’m close to—” She stopped herself. “But what’s the point of telling you any of this? You have done nothing with your life.”
“True,” he said. He rearranged the cushion as if planning to resume his nap. “There’s no point in talking to me at all.”
She eyed him carefully. “Get up,” she said. It was an order and her guards had trained him to obey her orders. Without looking at her, he stood up, and she knew he would follow her.
She made her way down the long lines of tables.
“You don’t need me here,” he said behind her. His voice was a soft murmur that seemed afraid of where she was taking him.
His fear was interesting. The experiments she’d conducted on him so far had been relatively painless. She’d taken his blood with and without his shadow attached. She’d taken partials from his shadow and examined different stimuli on it. Equitors, it was true, had been a little rough, pulling and testing his shadow’s defenses. And he had been killed a dozen times, half of which had been his own stubborn fault. But he always healed, and would always heal. That was the gift of shadow.
She let him stew a while longer as they walked, and then she called out for her new guard, Corwyn, to join them. His flame-red hair stood out among the gray lines.
Dressla stopped at the table where Subject 34 lay under the cloth. It was an old one, at least in the sense that the subject had been acquired some sixty years ago. Subject 187 wouldn’t know this subject, but he stared down at the cloth as if he could see through it and the sight caused him pain.
He eyed Corwyn nervously and turned to Dressla.
“Whoever it is,” he said, “let them rest.”
She ignored him and picked up the subject’s file. It read tragically enough. She quickly skipped over the notes of his last resurrection. Family—that was what she wanted to know. He was too young to have had a wife or children, but she saw that his mother and sister were both subjects here.
Mothers and sisters were important motivators.
“Experiments never work the first time you do them,” she said, her voice faint as she closed the file. “But an experiment I did recently, it worked brilliantly the first time. Not perfectly. Not to its full potential, but more than I could have hoped for.”
She removed the gray cloth, and a young boy lay as though peacefully asleep. He was the same age as Corwyn, but different in almost every way. This subject had dark brown skin and there was roughness over his lip and chin as though a beard had been attempting to come through. The white tunic he’d been put in had yellowed and his trousers were noticeably absent, his bare legs skinny as a small child’s.
“You don’t need me to help you with this,” said 187.
“Technically, you’re right. I don’t need you,” she said. She looked away from the boy on the table and stared across at her prize finding: The Mystery Man. It reminded her not to doubt herself.
“But I like you being around,” she said. “I like what it means that you’re awake. Every time your name is mentioned here, people say it knowing I was the one who figured out the puzzle. You help me every day by your mere presence.” Her voice hardened. “The moment I let you become like this boy, that’s the moment people begin to forget you were ever a mystery. You go back to being just another subject then. It might be decades before anyone bothers to revive you.” She glanced down. “This subject hasn’t been woken in over forty years.”
“Does he have anything good to wake up to?”
“Perhaps not, but he’ll wake up anyway because I require it.”
Corwyn had been watching them, eyeing them back and forth like they were interesting subjects to him. She stepped toward him.
“Put this on.” She held out a bracelet made of suraci metal with a clear gemstone hanging from it.
He shook his head. “I want to help with your research,” Corwyn said, “not be the research. I’m not a subject.”
Subject 187 turned sharply on Corwyn. “What do you mean, a subject? You don’t have a shadow.”
Dressla was no longer smiling. “Either do this, Corwyn, or go back down to the equitors department and find your assignments there. I have no use for you otherwise.”
The boy’s expression hardened. His face was still bruised, and his cuts were angry pink lines.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “But only if you keep me here. I’d be no good pretending to be one of them. I’m no spy.”
Dressla clasped his arm. “If you were good at being a spy,” she said, “you wouldn’t have come to me all bruised and broken; you would have told your superiors what they wanted to hear. I don’t want you to pretend. I want the shadow to be truly yours, with all of the power that entails.”
She let go of his arm, and he took the bracelet.
“Your blade?”
Corwyn’s dagger had a gilded handle and a crystalized red streak running down the middle. He handed it over, and she made a small incision in Subject 34’s arm. Before it began healing, she collected the blood in a vial and gave it to Corwyn. He poured it on the ground, where his shadow lay gray and weak below him.
The blood turned his shadow black. When she gave the blood to Prince Thelan, it gave him back strength and some of his youth, but to an already young and strong man, it could give the power to steal shadow.
It was time for the resurrection to begin. Dressla opened the suraci watch chained to the boy’s table.
A forced stillness and silence came over them as a wisp of black smoke drifted out from the watch. It clouded over the boy, pulsating above him until, suddenly, the subject let out a breath and the smoke around him vanished. Of course, Dressla knew it hadn’t really disappeared. Instead it had become part of the subject again; it was his shadow, the source of his resurrection, the source of so many things that these people—these subjects—could do.
Subject 34 sat up with the alertness of someone remembering an attack. His eyes spun around the room, taking in the imposing figures of Subject 187 and Corwyn. He shrank from the sight of them.
Yes, Dressla thought, men would have been the last to have woken Subject 34 and she could well guess what experiments were done back then.
Subject 187 moved to shield the boy.
“Use me instead,” he said.
“No,” she said calmly. “And I’ll have Corwyn put you down if you interfere.”
She didn’t quite know why it was important that this subject see what she was capable of. He’d shown himself to be ungrateful and entirely too arrogant. A man like all the others who believed she couldn’t do what she knew she could.
Dressla was in control of this situation.
She sidestepped 187. Subject 34 was gripping the edges of the table and trying to make himself as small as possible. With just a tunic to cover himself, he kept his legs flat and bowed his head down, either in shame or fear.
“If this experiment is a success,” she said softly, as though he were the only person in the room, “I can let you spend some time with your family. Your sister and mother are here, did you know that?” The boy’s breathing picked up; his fingers turned white from gripping the table so hard. “Yes, I thought you probably did. They won’t be harmed, but I can wake them. You can spend time with them. This man”—she gestured behind her—“he’s been awake for several weeks.”
The boy frowned and seemed to be processing the change of power in the scene. Dressla had offered to wake his family up. She had control over the resurrections.
Subject 187 moved away, a look of disgust on his face.
“You’re one of us?” The boy spoke up, his question aimed at 187. For a moment he seemed to be expecting the other subject to come back to his side and help him somehow, but then the room did the work for Dressla. He looked around at the other tables, at the sheer number of subjects lying on them, and the reality of the situation sank in. He was trapped there. Corwyn seemed to sense the change too and relaxed, standing back behind her.
“What do I have to do?” Subject 34 asked. This time he spoke to Dressla, although his head was still lowered.
The sun was to Dressla’s right, pouring in through a tinted glass window. The light cast her shadow, her very ordinary, slightly faded shadow off to the side. She instructed Corwyn to stand where she was and his shadow became an unbroken form across the floor.
“Stand here,” she said to the subject, and pointed at a spot where Corwyn’s shadow lay.
The two boys were a similar height, though very different in looks and figure. One stood straight and strong in a dark uniform. The other cowered in a frayed yellowed tunic and was cloaked in shadow.
“Don’t do it,” Subject 187’s voice came in an urgent whisper. “Please, whatever you’re about to do, just let this boy be.”
She ignored him. The dagger flashed in her hand and she looked down on it with a moment’s pause.
“I apologize that there isn’t a more refined way of doing this,” she said to the boy. “Shadows, unfortunately, seem to respond best to rituals. This ritual requires your death. Your family,” she lied, “are uniquely useful for my purposes. If we aren’t successful with you, we may have to try with your sister.”
The boy turned sharply to Dressla. He’d reacted stronger to the mention of his sister than he had of his upcoming death. It was as she hoped.
“Why wouldn’t it be successful? What do you need me to do?”
She put a reassuring hand on his arm. “It’s all right. Just be very still. Imagine your sister is standing in front of you and all you desire is to protect her. Now, when you feel the tug on your shadow, don’t resist. Let your shadow go. Do you think you can do that for me?”
The boy nodded slowly. He didn’t look down at the dagger. Instead his eyes glazed over as though the deed was already done and he was a standing corpse.
Corwyn bent down and laid a hand on the ground, steadying himself, a calm, quiet focus drawn across his face. Subject 34 brought his shadow out. Dark as Corwyn’s own shadow had turned, the subject’s was stronger. A pit of black that circled around his feet.
Then the tug came. The subject’s shadow was pulled toward Corwyn’s fingertips. But instead of being twisted and dragged across the ground, as Dressla had seen with her other experiments, this time the shadow ran as smooth as a river called in by the sea.
When the shadow was in Corwyn’s grip, Dressla plunged the dagger through the subject’s chest. The stained tunic blossomed in red. She dragged the blade further down, losing her footing as the subject’s legs gave out. They both stumbled, blood coating her hands and pouring down to the ground.
It has to fall in his shadow.
Her arm trembled as she pulled the dagger out and watched the subject die.
The first part was over. She hated how this experiment looked. It was more like a blood ritual than science. Yet it didn’t look like blood, but like their two shadows had expanded and were inked out over the ground.
Corwyn winced slightly from the effort as he pulled the shadow in his grasp into the suraci bracelet. It flashed and then the clear charm hanging from it started to darken, turning black.
Dressla smiled weakly. The shadow was Corwyn’s. It had worked again, but it wasn’t enough.
“Test it,” she said. It took a while before Corwyn heard her. He got to his feet and moved away from the body. Sunlight poured over his face and he drew the shadow out from the charm.
Subject 187 was several tables away from them. He’d fallen to his knees the moment Dressla had used the dagger, as though she’d stabbed him instead of the boy. His horror-struck face turned to one of disbelief as he watched Corwyn move the shadow around the room.
“Take something,” Dressla said.
Corwyn smiled. He was enjoying the feeling, she thought, and was glad for him. Then his shadow whipped over her and a quick sense of cold—of fear—spiked in her. The boy was reckless, he was a killer and she—
She let out a breath as Corwyn bent down and retrieved a flash of gold from his shadow. Her nose ring. She felt her face for where it had been.
“You look prettier without it,” he said.
Dressla laughed.
Foolish boy. Foolish men.
She came toward him and grasped his arm as she had done before. Her other hand still held the dagger.
“You’re strong. The shadow will obey you,” she said to him. “Use it and live.”
Dressla didn’t plunge the dagger in as she had done with 34. She didn’t want to risk Corwyn striking back at her. She drew the blade over his throat instead. Quick—a slash that tore his artery.
“Die and come back,” she was saying to him, but she wasn’t sure he was hearing her. Blood was draining from his neck, and his hands, his strong hands were cutting into her, pulling her down with him.
Bosma appeared as if he’d been waiting in the shadows, watching. He was between them in an instant and yanked Corwyn away from her. The boy hit the floor, and still he wasn’t dead.
If she’d explained this part of the experiment to him, would he have still done it for her? Looking at his betrayed face, she thought not. But she had to know if it was possible. If possessing a shadow meant the ability to resurrect.
Her body was strangely steady. Looking down, she saw that her beautiful yellow dress with the exquisite beading was ruined, but she found she could look around the rest of the room with some level-headedness. Subject 34’s wound had already healed. He lay dead and peaceful. She would watch and wait for Corwyn—Subject 198—to do the same.