The Step Before the Step

The landing’s shadows shifted before anyone moved.

Sella stayed with her palms on the stone and watched the people, not their dark shapes. Brannoc stood by his shield. Tassa faced the door. Iven had both hands at his throat. No one changed position.

Their shadows did.

Brannoc’s stretched arm lowered. Iven’s bent head rose. Tassa’s shadow turned toward Sella, though the light on the landing had not changed. Then it took one step toward the blue threshold.

Sella felt the old urge to call Tassa’s name. She swallowed it. A name could be an answer, an invitation, an assignment. She had enough of those.

Instead, she nudged the dagger with the side of her boot. It scraped across the stone. The sound arrived at once, in her own room, and then again from the landing, where Tassa’s shadow had reached the threshold.

Tassa herself remained where she was.

Sella bent to pick up the dagger. Its point had stopped at the edge of her shadow. The blade cast a thin dark line, but the shadow stretched away from the steel toward the door, opposite the angle of the light. She set the dagger down crosswise over it.

On the landing, Tassa’s shadow paused.

Sella pressed one finger to the dagger’s spine. “If that’s you,” she said, “you’re going to have to do better than look like you’re being helpful.”

The shadow took another step. The dark line beneath the dagger tightened, as if something had pulled it. The blade slid half an inch across the floor and tapped Sella’s knuckle.

She snatched her hand back. The dagger stayed where it had stopped. Nothing beyond the door had touched it. She could see that much. She could also feel the small sting where the metal had struck her.

Tassa’s shadow had affected something on Sella’s side. That was not the same as Tassa doing it.

Sella picked up the dagger and held it by the hilt. She turned the blade toward the door, away from the shadow line. The shadow followed, bending under the steel as if the dagger were hanging above it instead of resting in her hand.

“Fine,” she muttered. “I’ll keep the knife. You keep the ominous mime.”

Tassa’s shadow stopped at the blue threshold. Its head turned toward the landing’s far wall. The real Tassa shifted her weight, just a little. The shadows moved first again: hers slid toward the wall, while Brannoc’s drew back from the shield.

Then Brannoc moved. He reached for his shield and set one hand on its rim.

The sound of the shield touching stone arrived before his hand did.