Shadowborn Read Online Free Page A

. . Stranhorne had it right. Ishmael could keep running and be nothing but a trouble and a distraction to men and women who needed to keep their minds on the true enemy—and possibly get himself mistakenly shot by one of Stranhorne’s own patrols, in this time of high tension. He could demand sanctuary, and divide Stranhorne’s family, setting the twins against their father. Or he could surrender, let Mycene take him north, and trust to the law and events proving his innocence. He had no doubt Vladimer had turned his own formidable resources to the task, though Vladimer would have troubles of his own—Sejanus extending that ducal order, for one. And, Ish thought ruefully, Vladimer has perhaps a little too much confidence in my ability to survive.
    At least if Mycene took him back to Minhorne, he would be near Vladimer and Lady Telmaine. He was worried about them both; Vladimer because he had already been ensorcelled once, and Telmaine because he and her husband had left her to guard Lord Vladimer’s back. Her strength, coupled with her inexperience, had its hazards.
    “Laurel,” Stranhorne said, after a moment. “Go downstairs; greet Lord Mycene. Settle him down if he needs settling—tell him ten minutes.”
    “Ishmael,” Lavender appealed to him.
    “There’s no point t’it,” Ishmael said, projecting calm. “I could go pelting about the countryside, but he’d likely find me within two or three days—the man’s a good soldier, a good leader, whatever else we may think of him—and I’d be two or three days more weary. This way’s safer for me.” And all of you, he thought. “It’s not as though I think I’ll get left out of th’fight somehow.”
    Laurel, passing, rested her hand on her sister’s arm and said something to her, too quietly for even Ishmael to hear. Lavender’s shoulders slumped. Laurel slipped out and closed the door behind her.
    “Did you get it all moved?” Lavender said to her father, her tone flat.
    “I think so, but I’d like you and Boris to go down and make sure that it is—and that it’s well concealed, or at least well disguised. There’s no reason for Mycene or his men to go into the cellars, and we’ll keep people on them, but I’d not put it past them to try.”
    “Nor I,” Lavender growled. She opened the door and stalked out, her younger brother trailing her.
    They listened for a moment as the footsteps receded. Stranhorne rose, took Ishmael’s glass from him, and refilled it. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” he said, passing it into Ishmael’s gloved hand. Hospitality or anethesia, Ishmael wondered.
    “Y’can’t afford to give Mycene reason to demand a search of the manor under th’archduke’s warrant,” Ishmael said, stoically. “Not with a cellar full of munitions bound for the Isles. I’m grateful you took my report in full. My sense is that whatever’s coming is coming soon, now they’ve broken into th’open in the city.”
    Stranhorne balanced his glass on his fingers, shoulder against a crammed shelf. “But what’s coming? That is the question.” He sonned Ishmael. “You know I have material collected from the period of the Curse and after.”
    “Aye,” Ishmael said. “I’d heard that. But asking after it would have been treading too close t’matters you’d asked me not to speak of.”
    “True,” Stranhorne said, soberly. “A dictate I hope not to live to regret.”
    Surprising himself as well as Stranhorne, Ishmael laughed. “In all truth, it never occurred to me t’ask. Even before m’father sent me on my road, my tutors had to nail my breeches to the chair. Heresy, in this household, but there ’tis.” He set down the glass, still half full, and said more seriously, “But I’d be glad of the dunce’s version. First of all, who might be in th’Shadowlands?”
    “I know nothing for certain,” said Stranhorne. “In the second and third century after the Curse, multiple expeditions went into the