Shadow Baron by Davinia Evans

Author:Davinia Evans [EVANS, DAVINIA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2023-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

Siyon absolutely wasn’t panicking.

He’d just been threatened, and maybe nearly abducted, by some mysterious, eldritch, possibly immortal, possibly murderous crime baron who was rumoured to be able to appear anywhere, any time.

All right, maybe he was panicking a little.

Of course, there was nothing he could do about it. No defense he could mount. No lock that he could charm up capable of keeping Midnight out. Possibly he’d somehow banished Midnight, up in the hills, but Siyon had no idea how, and certainly no certainty that he could do it again.

So he might as well ignore the whole thing and keep going.

Siyon wasn’t sure if his little ritual, marking the city’s boundaries, had actually worked. Everything more or less felt the same. He’d thought perhaps the seething emanations had settled down, but the next day they’d felt just as tumultuous, if not more so.

But the Mundane energy came more readily to hand. He barely had to focus at all, or to reach. Even if Siyon had felt more than a little nervous, the first time he’d pulled up a handful of burnished power. But Midnight hadn’t leapt out of the nearest shadow again, and Siyon had managed to twist his power into a looping, twisting, continuous nullification sigil.

He’d dropped it straight into Olenka’s badge, the whole silver candle momentarily gleaming like bronze. She’d glared at it like a grumpy hawk, turned it over in her hands, huffed and polished it, even tested her teeth against the thing. When she finally admitted it seemed good, she produced another half dozen badges for him to charm as further tests.

Admittedly, Siyon was far less worried about Midnight in the middle of the inquisitors’ wing of the Palace of Justice. Though rationally, he didn’t think Midnight—whatever and whoever he was—particularly cared about the petty laws of modern-day Bezim.

Alone in his apartment was another matter. Siyon was supposed to be settling down and figuring out how he could check whether his marked city boundary worked to repel extraplanar delvers. There had to be a better way than waiting to see if anyone else showed up.

Instead, Siyon kept twitching at every sound—and there were a lot from the street, where the snooty azatani teahouse on the corner was taking delivery of a load of mixed spices to start preparing its Salt Night special blends. Shadows kept lurking in the corner of his vision, no matter how many more alchemical lanterns he shook into full brightness.

Siyon’s mouth opened for the fourth time, words on the tip of his tongue to ask Laxmi to stay close. To keep him safe.

Fortunately, she seemed to have decided that teasing him about being so twitchy was the best entertainment she was likely to find tonight. She lay spread out on the ceiling like she was floating on the sea, hair billowing like ink around her horned head.

So Siyon asked instead: “Do you know what happened to the last Power of the Mundane?”

“Rude,” Laxmi crooned, smirking like he’d done something cheeky. “How old do you think I am?”

Fair point.

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