Read Online The Office of Shadow by Matthew Sturges - Free Book Online Page A

here. "I knew Jem-Aleth in school," he said, reminding them that
he was still in the room. "Nobody liked him then, either. The reason for the
Unseelie cold shoulder may be personal as well as political."
    "Quite the contrary," Everess said, unable to allow Silverdun to have
useful information that had not come from him. "Before last year's Battle of
Sylvan chilled our relations with our Unseelie neighbors substantially, JemAleth was quite well liked in the City of Mab. Though whether that's a com pliment to Jem-Aleth or an insult to the Unseelie, I can't say." He chuckled,
looked around for an answering chuckle, got none, and plowed ahead.
"Regardless, we've received not a whit of useful information from him in a
year. He sends his dispatch each week, filled with scraps of information culled
from publicans, maids, and would-be courtiers and sycophants, but even if
there were anything useful buried in them, we have no method of responding
to them in ... useful ways."

    Everess shot a glance at Silverdun and narrowed his eyes, smiling at Silverdun as though he were a prize pupil. "And there could not be a more
urgent time to follow up, I fear. Don't you agree, Silverdun?"
    All eyes turned to Silverdun. He flashed his trademark charming smile,
but he found Everess's look discomfiting. What was Everess getting him in to?
    "I've been indisposed, Lord Everess," he said after a long sip of wine.
"Perhaps you'd care to educate me."
    Everess sighed, annoyed.
    "You are aware, perhaps, that the Seelie Kingdom was nearly dragged
into a full-scale war with Mab last year. You were there when it happened,
after all."
    "I seem to recall, yes."
    "And you recall further that during the course of that altercation, the
Unseelie unleashed a weapon so powerful that it destroyed the entire city of
Selafae in a single blast?"
    Silverdun's smirk faded a bit. "Yes. I remember that as well. The Einswrath, I believe they call it?"
    "Yes," said Secretary Heron, scowling. "After the Chthonic god of war.
Most unseemly."
    Everess ignored her. "Then you are aware, Silverdun, that things have
changed."
    "Here we go," said Heron, her scowl widening. "Foreign Minister
Everess's stock lecture has begun in earnest."
    Now it was Silverdun's turn to ignore her. "What things, exactly, have
changed, as you see it?"
    Everess clenched his teeth, looking at Silverdun as though he were a
child. "Everything, man. The balance of power, the status of relations between our kingdom and the other nations of the world and other worlds.
The very nature of warfare itself."

    It was true, Silverdun knew. The implications of a weapon powerful
enough to level an entire city were enormous. No one, however, seemed to
agree on what those implications might be. But clearly Everess was about to
tell him.
    "Go on," Silverdun said.
    Everess reached for a glass of brandy, took a generous swallow, and
launched into what Silverdun assumed was the stock lecture to which Heron
had referred. "Certainly you can see that we have reached the end of an era, Silverdun. A cornerstone of propriety has been annihilated before our eyes. Your
compulsory army days were long after my own, but you were certainly taught
as I was: cavalry, battle mages, infantry in evenly spaced lines politely slaughtering one another on the battlefield. All those pretty tactics and stratagems,
all those brilliant battles of old, always applicable. We used them against the
Western Valley upstarts the first time they rebelled; we used them against the
Gnomics a dozen years ago, and against the Puktu barbarians in Mag Mell a
thousand years before I was born. But now all that has come to an end."
    "I understand what you're saying, Everess," said Silverdun. "But what of it?"
    "If Mab had one of those things, then she's certainly got more of them.
We can only assume that she hasn't got a flying city full of them, or we
wouldn't be having this conversation today. We'd be in an Unseelie work
camp