1618686836 (F) (6 page)

Largely speaking, abilities became more significant, primarily through being more useful, the higher up the echelons you travelled. Sha’sek did hold heredity in high regard, but not as much as the culture here in Everfell. You could be challenged for your rule in Sha’sek, without bloodshed, and overruled. This had benefits; you weren’t going to be stabbed in the back during the night for your titles and your wealth. But you did spend most of your career dancing on the double-edged blade of popularity. Many of the crowds either side would be baying for you to fall and bleed. Most politicians did fall, eventually. Very few of the families ruling in the city states now had been there for more than a decade. Powerful families generally held powerful positions, and that would always be true; the changing factor would be how long they kept those posts, and what position of power those posts represented. Quinn was essential to Sammah’s own plans and until she knew why, Sirah would not be able to like the girl, never mind trust her with the career of her man and her own future stability.

It didn’t help that Sirah didn’t know what Sammah’s ability was, either.

She had asked him, once. He had beaten her black and blue for her insolence. He had told her then, in no uncertain terms, that she was lucky to be his consort and shouldn’t ask questions beyond her station. She had asked him what her station was. He hadn’t answered her, just looked disappointed. The look of disappointment had been worse than the lash of his belt. In his eyes then there had been an emptiness—a coldness that left her knowing without a single dash of doubt that Sammah would cast her aside if she gave him so much as a vague reason to do so. She wasn’t irreplaceable. She was convenient. She had spent the rest of her life from that point on making sure he never felt the need to be disappointed with her again.

As Sirah tried to think what to say to him next—how to possibly bring him down from this tense apex without being able to use her body as her primary weapon—Quinn walked quietly through the door. She dropped her hood. Her face, like the mercenaries Sammah hired to guard her, showed no emotion. Quinn shook her head a little, eyeing Sirah as if trying to work out why she was here, in this room and in the way of a meeting with her father. Sirah shuddered at the apathy Quinn showed her. So like Sammah, even without the slightest chance of a blood tie to the man that sponsored her. Sammah placed a gentle hand on Sirah’s shoulder. Without a further word, or meeting eye contact with either of them, she left. Rejected for Quinn. Again.

6

Sammah knotted his fingers together until his knuckles turned white. He centred himself as Sirah left the room, working hard not to shout. Quinn abhorred anger. It made her dizzy. She had walked in once when Sirah was berating one of her maids, and had passed out. Sammah hadn’t allowed Sirah near to Quinn for any extended period of time since then. He tried to make himself remain neutral too, for nothing put platonic and professional interests. He had nothing to fear from Quinn’s abilities, but she was fragile right now, and he needed to keep her as healthy as possible whilst other lords were going to be in residence.

“Where have you been today?”

Quinn pursed her lips and looked slightly confused. A crease showed in between her brows. Deception wasn’t one of her strong points. For an empath, she was incredibly vulnerable, emotionally. Sammah had been delighted when he’d stumbled across her. She was so malleable. That might not have been the case if she’d been older, but there again, with the peculiar behaviours exhibited by most empaths through history, she wouldn’t have made it much further through life without his intervention. Empaths without guidance usually ended up killing themselves, either by chance or choice.

“I was questioning, like you asked. What have I done wrong?”

“It’s not that you’d done anything wrong, my child. But you were missing for a long time. We were worried about your safety. You know that the tasks you do for me are exceptional, beyond your usual work. I can’t excuse you from your tasks in the castle because of that. You’re not going to get any sleep tonight, you know.”

Quinn bit her lip and looked down, nodding her head sadly. Sammah cusped his hand around her chin, gently lifting her head so that she was forced to meet his questioning gaze. He didn’t see any guilt there. Worryingly, he did not see any fear either. But she was upset, that much was evident. She didn’t understand why he was angry with her, as she had only been following his instructions. The last time she had returned from one of her errands late, a brawl at a bar and a party in the next street had hemmed her in like a trapped fox. The vortex of emotions pulsing through the streets had forced her to remain away and hidden until the chaos subsided. That had been near dawn, and she had missed her duties in the castle. Sammah had covered for her, at the cost of his own credibility. Quinn had been beaten for that transgression. She had been eight-years-old.

Sammah dropped his hand and pulled Quinn in to an awkward hug. This hollow gesture was the only way he had of expressing to her that he felt no malice. The gesture was unrefined and he was relieved that she wouldn’t be able to sense any of his discontent or underlying ill will. He almost pushed her away to end it, shooing her out of the room and instructing her to go and report for her castle duties immediately, and therefore at least three glasses early. No sleep for Quinn tonight, guaranteed.

When his door closed he relished the silence left in his room for mere seconds. There was no time for dawdling, never a moment that deserved to be used for rest. He already derided the times he had to spend asleep, and kept these sparse, spread throughout the day. There had been a boy back in Sha’sek that could live without sleep—oh how he envied such a talent! How much more could he master if he wasn’t debilitated by the limitations of normal humankind? No matter, for now. One day he would conquer the spirits of sleep themselves. For now, Sammah settled with seating himself at his desk, rustling through various reports coming in from around the kingdom on the talented being found at each of the cities.

They weren’t always orphans, not when Sammah found them. But by the time Sammah came to save them, he would be the only option they had left in this world.

7

Ross was surprised to see her arrive so early, and pleasantly so. Quinn had been petrified at coming back late and having to answer Sammah’s questions, but she supposed one of the guards had already made it back before her and somehow gave sign that the questioning had been a success. She knew that being sent to work early was a light form of punishment, and to go against Sammah’s orders would put her in much worse trouble. A loss of sleep was neither here nor there, every so often. Those times she went to bed completely and utterly exhausted, she imagined that she almost slept like a normal person did. No nightmares. No tumultuous dreams from the minds around her seeping into her own nightmares like an unwelcome ghoul slinking into her soul.

Quinn shuddered. Almost reflexively, the chamberlain closed a nearby window, thinking her cold. His concern for her willowed out from his body, and she calmed down again. Ross, Everfell’s stalwart chamberlain, for as long as Quinn had ever known, was a pleasant man when he wanted to be. To many he was a domineering nightmare of a character, standing at well over six feet tall and perhaps almost as wide. He knew every spare inch of Everfell and he needed to, especially at times like this, when all of the lords would be converging on the city for the annual court. It was a regular affair in the Everfell calendar, and in times of tentative peace still as every bit important as the times it used to serve as a council of war. Not all the lords attended the council proper, but much other business was conducted at this time. Sometimes, if the year had been prosperous, Vance declared an unexpected tourney. Quinn always secretly wished for this. She had the run of the castle to herself when the tourney was on, able to hide in the bathing rooms completely alone, whilst the minds of many rioted far away, where she could not sense them.

Ross's voice bellowed—at his size, Quinn didn’t really think he could help it. There was no malice hidden behind those words though, so she did not flinch like the other night maids. She just stood there, watching and listening calmly.

“We have forty rooms to prepare tonight, and those lords are arriving tomorrow morning. We know from past years what to expect, so I want the rooms for the rest of Lord Shiver’s retinue to be done first. Spirits know whether or not they’ll arrive in the middle of the night again but we have to be prepared. It wasn’t a pretty sight three years ago, for those of you old enough to remember it. Mind you, I’d want to leave Sevenspells as early as I could too, and stay away for as long as possible. Lord Venn and Lord Obrenn can be done next. They come with small entourages so we can get them out of the way nice and quickly. Lord Augyr and Lord Broc can come next for the same reason. Then Lord Calvin, and finally we’ll sort Lord Erran. If he deigns to turn up on time, or at all, that is.

Quinn felt the contempt wash away as quickly as it came. Not many people in court liked Lord Erran, though Sammah had a curious affiliation with him. The men seemed to share interests, but compared to his contemporaries Erran wasn’t just a bore, he was lazy and overly needful. Ross always left Erran’s rooms until last, when his maids were tired and wanted to finish their work and go home to eat. The standards would be poor, and he would ignore all of the complaints that would be levelled his way. If you didn’t keep in Ross's good graces, then you couldn’t expect a good standard of accommodation. Shiver, who always arrived first out of all the lords, knew this, but he also liked to keep his allies on their toes as well as his enemies. He had been crucial to the war effort during the conflicts with Sha’sek. Shiver had been a young lord during those times, his father still in charge of the blighted and thankless holding of Sevenspells. Shiver had wanted to make a name for himself; had wanted to prove his worth. He had done so, not just to his father, but to the king as well. Many considered Shiver to be a fine candidate for king himself should the opportunity arise. Shiver knew this, and so did King Vance. Vance therefore kept Shiver by his side at all times when he was in Everfell. Shiver would not be able to spit without it being reported back to Vance and his aides. Tense times called for overbearing measures.

Quinn moved off, her rooms allocated. She never worked with any of the other maids. She was both curious and envious of their relationships with each other. They would spend their nights chatting away, gossiping about men in the castle, about which lords were pursuing which ladies, and which men they thought they had been able to flirt with. These women dreamed of catching the eye of a lord and being whisked away from the toil they had to face each night. It wasn’t a bad lot, being a maid in the castle. The night maids especially so, as the usual bustle during the day was minimal during the small hours of the night. But they were still maids, and they spent much of their time working fawning over the expensive dresses and intricately-cut jewellery that they would never be able to afford. It was dream made possible in their lifetimes. The Queen Eleska had been a maid herself many years ago. This fairy tale gave the other girls hope. Their talk made Quinn nauseated. Envy combined with anger at their lot in life, as well as the lies they spun each other in an escalating rivalry, combined to make Quinn overwhelmingly ill. She had worked one night with two other girls, Grainne and Yvette. The two had thought her to be odd, because she couldn’t talk to them in more than stuttering nervous outbursts. They sniggered at her and called her names behind her back. It didn’t matter how quietly they did it; Quinn knew exactly what they were feeling. Each stroke of negativity was like a dagger slicing thinly in to her skin, pulling a little part of her away with it each time. Ross had noticed this. He had pulled Quinn away and given her solitary duties. He had been worried about the wrath of Sammah, but her father and master had been pleased. Such were the delicate bonds between the masters and the workers in the halls of Everfell.

8

Quinn sat in the corner of her final room, resting her back and stretching out her aching legs. She closed her eyes and smiled as around her, she heard and felt nothing. The rare silence almost thrummed through her head, and it was delightful. She had already completed preparing all of her allocated rooms, and she was only partway through the night. Quinn silently thanked Sammah for her early start, giving her an opportunity to rest still, whether he knew it or not. Quinn groaned as her muscles quickly started tensing as the cold from the stone floor seeped through her skin. She quickly clambered to her feet and trotted over to a windowsill, deciding to take a perch overlooking the entire city instead. Everfell was at its most beautiful for her when it was at its calmest, when she could sit and watch without judgement, reprisal, or fear of what the thoughts of others might bring.

From her high vantage point in the eastern tower of the imposing grey castle, she could see the majority of the city as its sprawling mass sloped downhill towards the outer walls. Dozens of candles spaced out sporadically still twinkled defiantly against the oppressive night cover; it was cloudy and the stars and moon were all obscured. The main avenues through the city had constant torches lit for night travellers. The city never had time to really come to a stop, much like her master, and dozens of boys were employed specifically for their height and reach to be able to get to the more awkwardly placed avenue lanterns. She couldn’t make out any people on the ground, just blurred moving shapes which could have been anything at this distance. This pleased Quinn. Leaning out of the sill and craning her neck to the left, she could see the western tower, which reached higher than the one she was in and also pitched slightly forwards. She tried to identify which room was Sammah’s, and whether he was still awake. Quinn couldn’t tell—there were a surprising number of rooms with flickering lights still showing through—though she didn’t doubt that Sammah would be in one of them, toiling away until the light of dawn began to show over the horizon. That was his first sleep of the day, just after the morning break. He would rest again then just after lunch, and again in the early evening before working through the night. He was a madman for such routines and he was silently ridiculed around the court; no one would dare slander Sammah to his face. The Sha’sek baron wasn’t ignorant of what people said about them; he simply ignored them. He worked so much harder than the rest of them around here, Quinn knew that he was a man of worth and power. He would be rewarded for his intense work ethic, she knew it in her heart.