There was Silverdun's problem in a nutshell. Insight was a Gift of the Head, and Glamour was of the Heart. Silverdun had poured all of his efforts into Glamour as a youth because he had always fancied himself an artist. Insight was a Gift for research thaumaturges and alchemists. Men who sat in chairs and pondered. Silverdun's father had pushed him toward Insight as a more noble form of study. Silverdun knew that he could have been great at Insight. As it was, he was a mediocre Glamourist at best. But at least he'd gotten what he wanted.
In the mornings were the daily drills with Jedron. They drilled with knives and the petite arbalete, a small, short-range crossbow. Silverdun learned how to kill without making a sound, how to kill painfully, how to disable without killing, all with a calculating precision that teased at his scruples more and more with each passing day.
Silverdun took his meals with Ilian, who said little, but always seemed to keep an eye on him. Than was always nearby, always ready to assist in training, or stepping in to clean something, or bringing Jedron his meals. Jedron and Than appeared to have no relationship that Silverdun could divine. They almost never spoke to one another.
Silverdun asked about the other trainee a few more times. Ilian assured him that he was around somewhere, but that Silverdun wouldn't meet him until he was ready.
Every few days, Jedron would invite Silverdun to his study for an evening drink, but these evening drinks likely as not turned into hours-long study sessions. And Jedron never ceased to be amused by his habit of unexpectedly hurling blunt objects at Silverdun's head.
Silverdun had managed to reshape what was left of his bed into a makeshift pallet, which was far from the least comfortable arrangement he'd ever had (sleeping outdoors in the dead of midwinter after a full day's ride took the prize by a long shot), but was a far cry from paradise. Most nights, though, Silverdun was so tired that by the next morning he didn't remember his head hitting the pillow, and he rarely dreamed.
"We haven't talked about swords at all," said Silverdun one day, after a long practice session of hand-to-hand fighting with Jedron. Silverdun was sweating and huffing, but Jedron wasn't even breathing heavily. Astonishing for a man of his age.
"No," said Jedron. "And we won't."
"Why not?"
"A sword is a weapon of last resort in our work. If you find yourself drawing one, then you've done something terribly wrong."
"And what if someone draws on me?"
"Throw a knife in his neck and run," said Jedron, matter-of-factly.
"That hardly seems within the bounds of propriety," said Silverdun.
"Propriety is a millstone around your neck, boy. The man with propriety is the one who dies first. The sooner you get used to that idea, the better off you'll be."
"But," began Silverdun. He paused, carefully choosing his words. Had he heard correctly? Jedron might as well have told him to get used to the idea of kicking puppies and slitting the throats of milkmaids. "If our goal is to protect the Seelie way of life, how do we achieve the goal by abandoning the very thing that makes us Seelie?"
"Your precious propriety is for the safe ones. We provide the luxury of civilized ideas like personal honor by eschewing them."
"I don't understand," said Silverdun.
Jedron pointed east, toward the City Emerald. "All those pretty Fae over there, all those civilized Fae, live in a giant cocoon spun of the silk of ignorance."
It was the most poetic Jedron had ever been, and Silverdun said so.
"Go to hell, Silverdun. I'm being serious. It is a grand thing to believe oneself safe. All of the great things of civilization are crafted by those who are free from danger. Their error-the one we are employed to hide from them, and rightly so-is their belief that they can uphold civilization by acting civilized. The reason the Shadows have existed for so long, despite the public hue and cry about their rumored existence, is that those in positions of power are continuously reminded of that error when it kicks them in the face."
"If you're so apathetic about honor and propriety and civilization," Silverdun spat, "then why bother protecting it at all? Why risk your life to protect something for which you seem to have little use?"
"Because if I don't, who else will? We are beset on all sides by ignorance and savagery, Silverdun. The bestial Gnomics to the south. Mab's legions of blind, devoted `citizens' who might as well be slaves. Or worse, really ... at least a good slave owner values the life of his investment. I may not have much use for the finer things in life, but I loathe the alternative.
"And," he said, smiling wickedly, "I love my job."
A week later, Jedron had Silverdun in his office, studying maps. Most were maps of Faerie: city maps, diagrams of the movement patterns of Unseelie cities, topographical maps. Others were of Mag Mell, the world of ten thou sand islands; Annwn, its vast lands almost unpopulated except for the one great city called Blood of Arawn; the Nymaen world, mostly water, mapped to an astonishing precision. Jedron, of course, expected him to memorize every detail of every map and quizzed him throughout the evening, hurling paperweights and books at him if he answered incorrectly. He seemed in an especially surly temper tonight. Even Ilian seemed unsettled, which Silverdun couldn't remember ever having noticed before.
Finally Jedron bid him put the maps away. He poured them brandy from the decanter and they shared a silent drink. When Silverdun finished, Ilian appeared from the shadows and escorted him to his bedroom.
In his room, Silverdun began to feel strange. He knew this feeling. At university, he'd taken a class on poisons. He'd dropped out of it after a week, and never gotten credit for it. The reason he'd dropped it was that he'd accidentally ingested a potion called iglithbi. Not a poison, exactly-it was created for recreational purposes-but in a large enough dose easily lethal. Odorless and tasteless, favored by careful thieves and rapists. If he'd been stupid enough to accidentally sip it, he'd be stupid enough to accidentally kill himself.
And now there was no question about it: He'd been drugged with iglithbi. The effect was unmistakable. But how large a dose?
Silverdun's faculties began to abandon him. He thought wildly for the composition of iglithbi, its organic ingredients and reitic bindings. And there in his mind, amazingly, was the formula; one of the few things he'd actually retained from his university days. He reached out with his Gift of Elements, searching for the binding called Elesh-elen-tereth. It was easy to locate using only the Gift, and easy to unbind. He found it, could sense its particular color of re flowing through him. He reached out and pushed it with his Gift, changing Elesh-elen-tereth into water and spiritus sylvestre.
Unfortunately, a good deal of the potion had already found its way into Silverdun's mind. He was still awake-that was something-but unsteady. The room seemed to breathe around him, the walls quavering.
Was Ilian truly a traitor? Had he done this? Or was this another of Jedron's mean-spirited tests? Jedron had drunk from the same bottle of brandy, true. But it was easily possible that Jedron possessed Elements as well.
Silverdun wanted badly to lie down and sleep. His bed, or what was left of it, suddenly seemed like the most appealing place in all Faerie.
But he wouldn't allow himself the pleasure. Jedron's demonstration on the Splintered Driftwood had affected him more deeply than he'd thought. If Than had spiked the brandy, and if Jedron didn't possess Elements, then Jedron could be dying in bed at this very moment, and Than doing whatever treachery he had planned.
But still-the bed.
Silverdun heard a scream outside the window. Or thought he did. Time and space seemed to plummet in random orbits. Silverdun stumbled to the window and looked out. All was a blur. Down below there were flickering lights, waving in the night. Torches. Fireflies. Witchlight. Embers.