Read Online Shadows of Falling Night by S. M. Stirling - Free Book Online
Authors: S. M. Stirling
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few generations back then. They did not understand genetics, but they did marry their cousins, or worse. And the genes…reach back along the lines of descent, from future to past, protecting their own potential existence. They
want
to find each other.”
“Jesus, them and the One Ring. Ah, and the little symbol too.”
That
was a motif set into the wrought iron of the gates, a jagged gilt trident across a broken black circle representing a shattered sun. The sigil of the Order of the Black Dawn, and the Council of Shadows.
“And they say you’re stuck with your in-laws. How true,” Ellen said, tucking her hand into Adrian’s arm as he offered it with a classic crooked elbow.
The Hôtel de Brézé had been built when the French nobility abandoned the more central, medieval Marais district for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, then a greenfield suburb made newly fashionable by Louis XIV. The Revolution had come and gone; young Henri de Beauloup had reopened the townhouse when he emerged from the family’sdiscreet retirement to fight for Napoleon; indeed, that emperor had referred to his exploits in Spain as showing that at least one of his cavalry commanders
knew how to deal with rebels without false sentiment.
Goya himself had painted several of those episodes, then kept the work secret for forty years.
Eventually, a Brézé with the Victorian taste for science and statistics had made the acquaintance of an obscure monk by the name of Gregor Mendel, and suppressed his findings while he applied the cleric’s work to a breeding program that had previously relied on mere superstition and on incest practiced mainly for its own sake. Combined with the new science, even his limited command of the Power had produced startling results. His far more adept son Étienne-Maurice Brézé had celebrated his own twenty-first birthday by torturing and butchering his father, in the waning days of the nineteenth century.
Inside the main doors the host was waiting, smiling, chatting with each guest as they entered and handed hats and cloaks to the servants…or in a few cases transformed back into human form and accepted robes. One had arrived as a golden eagle, flown into a window, and was now rubbing at his forehead and cursing in some language Ellen didn’t even recognize, a brown-skinned man with heavy bold features. Behind him a great silverpoint gorilla knuckled by, deep in soundless conversation with a blade-nosed man in a black burnouse and
gutrah
headdress, who fingered a curved knife thrust through his sash as if that was his hand’s natural resting-place.
The Duc de Beauloup had been post-corporeal for over a century. The form he wore was his own, in what his own era considered the prime of life, so that he looked like a slim, swarthy, vital man of around forty. His height was average for the twenty-first century, which made him tall for a Frenchman of the nineteenth. The face was eerily similar to Adrian’s,though blunter and somehow a little coarser. His black hair fell down his back nearly to his waist, the top layer gathered in a horse-tail by a jet clasp above the loose torrent below; he wore a full robe of thick black silk that swept the floor, embroidered with black yli-silk thread down the front panel and around the neck and cuffs.
The Shadowspawn’s eyes were hot yellow pools, blank glowing fire. An attendant carried a sheathed sword, carefully keeping the hilt within reach, a gray shadow against the gilt and convolutions and worked plaster of the interior.
“Great-grandfather,” Adrian said politely, bowing to kiss the extended hand and the golden ring with the Council’s sigil.
“We have met twice in a year now, my descendant,” the head of the Council said. “There is hope for you yet. And many of your earlier attempts to kill me for the Brotherhood terrorists were truly ingenious, worthy of a Brézé, if a trifle childish and impulsive.”
And I thought
I
had a dysfunctional family!
ran through
want
to find each other.”
“Jesus, them and the One Ring. Ah, and the little symbol too.”
That
was a motif set into the wrought iron of the gates, a jagged gilt trident across a broken black circle representing a shattered sun. The sigil of the Order of the Black Dawn, and the Council of Shadows.
“And they say you’re stuck with your in-laws. How true,” Ellen said, tucking her hand into Adrian’s arm as he offered it with a classic crooked elbow.
The Hôtel de Brézé had been built when the French nobility abandoned the more central, medieval Marais district for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, then a greenfield suburb made newly fashionable by Louis XIV. The Revolution had come and gone; young Henri de Beauloup had reopened the townhouse when he emerged from the family’sdiscreet retirement to fight for Napoleon; indeed, that emperor had referred to his exploits in Spain as showing that at least one of his cavalry commanders
knew how to deal with rebels without false sentiment.
Goya himself had painted several of those episodes, then kept the work secret for forty years.
Eventually, a Brézé with the Victorian taste for science and statistics had made the acquaintance of an obscure monk by the name of Gregor Mendel, and suppressed his findings while he applied the cleric’s work to a breeding program that had previously relied on mere superstition and on incest practiced mainly for its own sake. Combined with the new science, even his limited command of the Power had produced startling results. His far more adept son Étienne-Maurice Brézé had celebrated his own twenty-first birthday by torturing and butchering his father, in the waning days of the nineteenth century.
Inside the main doors the host was waiting, smiling, chatting with each guest as they entered and handed hats and cloaks to the servants…or in a few cases transformed back into human form and accepted robes. One had arrived as a golden eagle, flown into a window, and was now rubbing at his forehead and cursing in some language Ellen didn’t even recognize, a brown-skinned man with heavy bold features. Behind him a great silverpoint gorilla knuckled by, deep in soundless conversation with a blade-nosed man in a black burnouse and
gutrah
headdress, who fingered a curved knife thrust through his sash as if that was his hand’s natural resting-place.
The Duc de Beauloup had been post-corporeal for over a century. The form he wore was his own, in what his own era considered the prime of life, so that he looked like a slim, swarthy, vital man of around forty. His height was average for the twenty-first century, which made him tall for a Frenchman of the nineteenth. The face was eerily similar to Adrian’s,though blunter and somehow a little coarser. His black hair fell down his back nearly to his waist, the top layer gathered in a horse-tail by a jet clasp above the loose torrent below; he wore a full robe of thick black silk that swept the floor, embroidered with black yli-silk thread down the front panel and around the neck and cuffs.
The Shadowspawn’s eyes were hot yellow pools, blank glowing fire. An attendant carried a sheathed sword, carefully keeping the hilt within reach, a gray shadow against the gilt and convolutions and worked plaster of the interior.
“Great-grandfather,” Adrian said politely, bowing to kiss the extended hand and the golden ring with the Council’s sigil.
“We have met twice in a year now, my descendant,” the head of the Council said. “There is hope for you yet. And many of your earlier attempts to kill me for the Brotherhood terrorists were truly ingenious, worthy of a Brézé, if a trifle childish and impulsive.”
And I thought
I
had a dysfunctional family!
ran through
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