He was in the shape he preferred when he was being expressive rather than operational: the dog form, the one he had settled into sometime in Arthur's fourth year as the shape that communicated most naturally the things he wanted to communicate, which were primarily the things that dogs communicated — presence, loyalty, the specific uncomplicated joy of being near the person they had attached to.
He was larger than a real dog by about a third. He had the general configuration of something in the working-dog family — broad chest, solid through the hindquarters, a head that was slightly too large for perfect proportion but that worked anyway because Shadow's aesthetic was its own and had never been in dialogue with realism. His coat, such as it was, was the deep lightless black of the construct itself, and it moved the way the surface of very still water moved — with a slight internal quality, a depth that suggested more going on underneath the surface than was visible.
His eyes, which were always the clearest part of him, were a warm amber that was nothing like the cold eyes of the serpent construct he had left in the Cassel estate bedroom. Those eyes had been given a purpose and only a purpose. These had been developed over seven years in the specific direction of a person they loved, and the difference was total.
Shadow came out of the barn's shadow and trotted toward Arthur at the specific pace of someone who has several things to communicate and is organizing them in order of priority.
The first communication was the greeting — the full-body enthusiasm that Shadow deployed when Arthur had been gone for longer than Shadow had been briefed to expect, the specific quality of relief-expressed-as-joy that was Shadow's version of saying: you are back and I am glad you are back and I am not going to pretend I was not watching for you because I was absolutely watching for you.
The second communication was the reproach.
Shadow sat down approximately one meter from Arthur and looked at him. Not the warm attentive look. The other look — the specific quality of attention that Arthur had learned to read, over years of their partnership, as the communication of a feeling that Shadow did not have the capacity to vocalize but was absolutely going to make clear through every other available channel. The slight forward angle of the head. The weight shifting slightly toward the front paws. The amber eyes with something in them that was not hurt exactly but was in the neighborhood of hurt, in the specific way of someone who had been given an assignment and had completed it faithfully and thoroughly and had done a very good job of it and in the process had had occasion to notice that they had not been brought along.
'I know,' Arthur said.
Shadow's ears — such as they were, the approximate locations on his head where ears would be if he had ears — angled backward slightly.
'You're right,' Arthur said. 'I should have brought one of your clones. I was — ' He stopped. Considered the honest version. 'I didn't know how the night was going to go. I didn't want to explain to a copy what I was doing while I was doing it. That was the wrong call and I know it was the wrong call.'
Shadow looked at him.
'I'm sorry,' Arthur said. 'From now on I'll bring either you or a clone on anything outside the perimeter. That's a promise.'
The ears came forward. The weight shifted back. Shadow stood, crossed the remaining meter between them, and pressed the side of his enormous shadow-head against Arthur's hip in the specific gesture that was his version of: accepted, we are fine, I am still annoyed but I love you and we are fine.
Arthur put his hand on Shadow's head. The contact was cool and slightly dense in the way of shadow-matter at rest, familiar in the way of something touched thousands of times. He scratched behind the approximate location of Shadow's ear.
'Anything happen while I was out?'
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The answer came through their connection rather than through behavior — the specific information-transfer that they had developed over years, the non-verbal channel that had started as simple emotional-state sharing and had grown, as everything between them had grown, into something considerably more precise.
What Shadow reported: nothing. The perimeter had been held. The barrier had registered no contacts. The family was asleep. The village was quiet. The road had produced two travelers, both assessed as non-threatening. The chickens had objected to something in the middle hour — Shadow conveyed the specific quality of chicken displeasure, which was its own detailed communication — but investigation had found a fox, which Shadow had redirected away from the property with the specific efficiency of someone who had been redirecting foxes from these chickens for years and had developed very good technique.
The farm was exactly as Arthur had left it. Better, actually — Shadow had done three additional perimeter checks beyond the standard rotation, and the eastern fence that needed reinforcing had been assessed and marked with a shadow-trace that Arthur would be able to use to identify the exact structural weak point when he attended to it.
'Good,' Arthur said.
He sat down in the yard with his back against the barn wall, which was something he occasionally did when he needed to transition between states — between whatever he had been doing and whatever came next. Shadow sat beside him, pressed warm and solid against his side in the specific manner of a large dog who has decided that proximity is the appropriate response to whatever the situation is.
Arthur looked at the sky. The stars performed their indifferent permanence.
He thought about the copies.
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