Page 5 of Empire of Shadows

Go.

He offered no resistance as the guards hauled him toward the doorway that would lead them out of the temple. Only as he was about to pass from that heathenish space did he look back.

Stones rasped together as the entrance to the passage slid shut and sealed with a thud. Kneeling on the ground where the opening had been, the priestess pushed a small, square block back into place against the wall.

As Salavert watched, she lifted the knife over her head—then plunged it deep into her own chest. She slumped back against the wall, her blood seeping out across the stones.

With nothing but smoke and silence at his back, Friar Vincente Salavert hitched up his tattered robes and ran.

?

One

Morning

April 7, 1898

Whitehall, London

It was just onelittle riot.

Eleanora Mallory certainly hadn’t meant for it to be a riot. She had gone to the gates of the Palace of Westminster, home of the two houses of Parliament, for a peaceful demonstration in support of women’s suffrage. The great Gothic facade of the building rose up behind her in an imposing confection of skinny windows and unnecessary spires.

Inside those walls, the fate of the nation was decided—a fate that Ellie and every other woman in England was entirely, unjustly excluded from.

Ellie had painted a sign on some nailed together slats of wood that she had liberated from an empty crate at her place of employment. It read:United Against Tyranny!

She had mulled over the exclamation point for a bit, but had decided that it was quite justified given a thousand centuries or so of systematic oppression.

The organizers of the demonstration had instructed her to hold up her sign and project deep, abiding scorn at the black-suited Members of Parliament who made their way through the gates. Ellie’s dignified bearing would shower shame upon the men walking past her—men who refused to grant her the basic human right of self-determination in matters of politics.

Not that shame had been getting the suffrage movement very far. The men in the suits seemed to lack that particular piece of the emotional spectrum.

Most of the members strolled past the protesters as though the women weren’t even there. Others busied themselves by rattling off self-important instructions to scurrying underlings.

As Ellie watched the parade of gentlemen walk into their looming building without sparing her and her fellow protesters so much as a glance, her frustration grew until she was gritting her teeth against it.

A pair of MPs with overly tight waistcoats chortled at the demonstration, nudging each other in the ribs. The woman beside Ellie lowered her sign a bit. Her shoulders pulled in as though she were slightly wilted.

Another man nearly walked into the lady beside Ellie, as his nose was pressed to the pages of his newspaper. He looked alarmed when he realized that the suffragists were there, and then sighed as though the whole thing were a bit of bother.

One of the demonstrators behind Ellie whispered softly. The muffled words were heavy with demoralization. A colleague shushed her gently.

Ellie held her back straighter. She hefted her sign higher and tried to look even more shame-provokingly dignified.

She was managing it very nicely until a pair of aristocratic bucks in flash waistcoats stopped in front of the suffragists.

“Which one of ‘em would you like to bring you your slippers tonight, Atkins?” the first asked.

“Don’t know that I’d let any of them near my slippers,” Atkins replied. “The look of them might put me off my port.”

He followed this with a theatrical shudder.

One of the ladies beside Ellie flinched as though struck. Another looked close to tears, but she held up her head in spite of it.

The simmering feeling in Ellie’s chest grew hotter… and tighter.

“Make sure you’re all home in time to put the tea on!” Atkins’ companion called out.

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