Shadow War: Book 3 of the Shadows Rising Trilogy (WIP Rough Draft)

35. Easy. Calm. Natural.

18th of Thira

The silence in the Agriculture Sector head office was nearly absolute. The only sound was the quiet clicking of a pendulum timekeep swinging away the seconds inside its glass dome on the desk in front of me.

That was not the only difference. Everything, every little thing inside the office building was clean, neat, and shining with polish. The uniforms were even different. Grey pants and a high-collared long-sleeved shirt for the men, and a knee-length grey skirt and long-sleeved blouse for the women, with the addition of a primly folded cap and a dainty white and grey neck scarf. There were two perfectly rectangular wooden desks arranged at exactly the middle of the two walls on either side of the main entry door. There was no sign of red denim, no hint of sweat or callouses or hard labor. The high collar and the neck scarf and the long sleeves hid tattoos, the cap hid short hair. Not even the smell of the barn was allowed to find its way into this sterilized bubble.

And all of it paled into the background. I stared, unseeing, at the delicate gears and wheels of the timekeep, lost in a tiny apartment a thousand miles away.

He was always there, in that apartment. Sometimes he was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a waddingpage novel, his liquid-silver eyes catching the light of the lantern. Sometimes he was at the hob making breakfast, with his shirtsleeves rolled up above his elbows and his denims riding low on his lean hips. I could watch him for hours like that, absorbed in the easy, graceful way he moved, the play of muscle in his arms. Sometimes he was coming in from a long day at work, and I would get to see that beautiful smile brighten his face when he saw me.

Always, I was home.

Always, there was a terrifying moment of disintegration when the present tore me out of my daydreams.

This time it was the musical chime of a bell announcing the hour.

Heart racing, I sat up in my seat and glanced quickly around the vestibule.

No one had seen me. Sanjar, the staff sergeant to the three stadhevaldens under Stadhepheravalden Offkelder, was bent over his desk, busy with paperwork, and we were the only two in the room. Stadhepheravalden Offkelder was going over the morning's dispatches in his own office, and none of the other officers had assistants.

It was shallow relief. The chair I was sitting in had been occupied by a girl from the Green sector only the day before I arrived — a girl who had been sent to the Medical Sector for some mysterious illness, and who hadn't been heard from in the two weeks since.

There were about a thousand ways my plan could go sideways, the majority of which had nothing to do with getting caught.

I swallowed. I had to stay focused. It was nearly time for the Stadhepheravalden's tea.

Moving quietly, I got to my feet and headed down the hallway to the tiny kitchen.

He liked his tea at exactly three and a half bells, and it had to be exactly the right temperature, and in exactly the right amount, on a saucer beside two tea biscuits slathered with exactly the right measure of butter and jam. The napkin had to be folded in exact thirds, and the teaspoon had to be set across the teacup at exactly ninety degrees. He also required his digestive medication, a peppermint stick, and his mustache wax.

I had made a point of learning how to do everything precisely how he liked it, and I did it with a smile on my face.

That was the easy part. The difficult part was that in spite of his peculiarities, the Stadhepheravalden seemed to be a kind man. He was not cruel in his requests, he didn't demand any improper services from his female staff, and he genuinely believed the High Councilor's great plan would bring an end to hunger and poverty. He also genuinely believed the kreighvaldens would never punish anyone unjustly and the women working in the barns had been given a better life than the one they had, but if I had met him on a street corner in Edon, I would have thought he was a distinguished middle-aged gentleman who vaguely reminded me of my father.