Chapter 41: The Shademaster
Chapter 41: The Shademaster
Harris did not sleep.
He lay on his back in the dark and stared at the ceiling and listened to the palace settle around him. Distant footsteps. Wind through the stone. The particular creak of the east corridor that happened every night at the same hour without fail.
He had lived in this palace his entire life. He knew every sound it made.
He got up before dawn.
++++
Drake was already in the stable when Harris arrived. That was the thing about Drake. He was always already there. Harris had never once beaten him to a meeting in ten years.
"I need to talk to you about the Yesmar operation," Harris said.
Drake looked at him. "What about it?"
"Shut it down."
A silence.
"My Lord," Drake said carefully. "The Yesmar route is our most productive. The volume we move through that corridor alone accounts for–"
"I know what it accounts for," Harris said. "Shut it down."
Drake was quiet for a moment. "All of it? Or just the…"
"All of it. The carts. The contacts. The holding point near Silverline. All of it." Harris looked at him steadily. "I want it done within the week."
Drake studied him with those flat, efficient eyes that never gave anything away. "May I ask why?"
"Because Josh is investigating the raids and I will not have anything traced back to this palace," Harris said. "It is a liability. We shut it down, we move the other operations further south, and we let the investigation run its course and find nothing."
Drake nodded slowly. "And the other territories?"
"Leave them for now. Just Yesmar."
"Understood, my Lord."
Harris turned to leave.
"My Lord," Drake said.
Harris stopped.
"Is there anything else driving this decision?" Drake asked. His voice was completely neutral. It always was.
Harris did not turn around. "No," he said. "It is purely strategic."
He left.
Drake watched him go.
++++
Harris sat alone in his chambers for a long time after that.
He was not a good man. He had never pretended to be. He had built something efficient and profitable and ruthless and he had told himself for years that the world was built on such things and he was simply more honest about it than most.
He had ordered raids. He had profited from suffering. He had sat at tables and signed names and told himself the distance between himself and the consequence meant something.
He knew now that it did not.
He was not shutting down Yesmar because of Josh's investigation. That was true as far as it went. But it was not the whole truth.
The whole truth was a girl with green eyes who had escaped from one of his carts and was now living in the same palace, crossing his path every other day. He had been feeling the weight of it every time he looked at her. And what made it worse was that he could not untangle his own reasons. He did not know if it was guilt driving him, the particular guilt of a man who had caused suffering and was now forced to look it in the face daily. Or if it was something else entirely. Something that had nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with the way she carried herself, the way she stood her ground, the way she had looked at him in that corridor and asked the one question he could not answer.
He pressed his hands flat on the desk and stared at them.
He was not going to tell her. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Some truths did not set people free. Some truths just destroyed things that were still standing.
What he could do was quietly take apart the machinery that had hurt her. Piece by piece. Without announcing it. Without asking for credit.
It was not redemption. He was not foolish enough to call it that.
But it was something.
++++
He was coming down the main corridor just before noon when he saw her.
Olivia was carrying a stack of folded table linens, heading toward the dining hall. She saw him at the same moment and slowed slightly out of politeness.
"My Lord," she said.
"Olivia." He stopped. "How is the cheek?"
She blinked. Then almost smiled. "It has been four days, my Lord. It is fine."
"Good."
She made to continue walking. Then she stopped.
She stood there for a moment with the linens in her arms, looking at something in the middle distance the way people looked when they were deciding something.
Then she turned to face him.
"My Lord," she said. "I wanted to ask you something. I tried before and I stopped myself." She met his eyes. "I will not stop myself this time."
Harris said nothing. He waited.
"Why did you help me?" she asked. "In the storage room. With Seraphine. You could have walked past. Most people would have." She held his gaze steadily. "Why did you not?"
Harris looked at her for a long moment.
He thought about all the answers he could give. The easy ones. The ones that were partially true and would satisfy the question without costing him anything.
He did not give any of them.
"I am not sure I am ready to answer that honestly," he said. "And you deserve an honest answer."
Olivia looked at him.
She did not push. She did not fill the silence with something easier.
She just nodded once. "Alright, my Lord," she said.
She walked away.
Harris stood in the corridor and watched her go.
++++
The message from Drake arrived that evening.
A folded note slipped under his chamber door. No name on the outside. Just the small mark in the corner that Harris recognised as Drake's.
He opened it.
Four lines. Drake never wasted words.
One of the Yesmar survivors has been speaking. A woman. She was taken in the Moon Shadow raid and escaped before Silverline. She has been speaking to people in the outer settlements about the organisation. She has a description of the cart symbol. She has a name.
The Shademaster.
It is moving. It will reach the pack within the fortnight.
Harris read it twice.
Then he folded it carefully and held it over the candle flame on his desk and watched it burn.
He sat back in his chair.
The Yesmar survivor with the description of the cart symbol and the name of the Shademaster.
A woman who had been taken in the Moon Shadow raid.
Who had escaped before Silverline.
Harris closed his eyes.
There was only one person that could be.