Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (9 page)

He took a deep breath and bounded down the remaining twelve stairs, appearing in front of the great stone arches like a man ready for battle. Then he hurried through the Great Chamber, startling maids already at work cleaning the furniture and scrubbing the ornate stone inlays. His stepmother, in her short reign, had decreed that everything in the palace remain clean—too many servants were idle—and the decree had lasted beyond her.

Once he got to the Hall, he slowed down. This was one of his favorite rooms, and not only because the great state dinners were held there. It was long and wide and had arched ceilings because it connected two towers and had no floor above it. The arched windows matched the ceiling in design, some of the few windows in the palace to have precious glass. His grandfather had installed them to impress visitors, even though the greatest visitors Nicholas had ever seen were mayors from Nye when he was a boy.

He liked the majesty of the room, but more than that, he liked its history. Swords hung from the inner wall, so many he couldn’t count them, in styles as old as recorded history. None were ceremonial. Most had nicks and cuts from prolonged use. Some were almost as short as the dirk the swordmaster sometimes carried, and Nicholas’s grandfather had once explained that those swords had been for dueling almost four hundred years before.

Nicholas’s favorite sword, though, had been his great-great-grandfather’s in the Peasant Uprising. Blood still blackened the tip. Legend had it that his great-great-grandfather had stabbed the man who’d crippled him before passing out on the field. Sometimes Nicholas thought he carried the soul of his grandfather’s grandfather. No one in his immediate family enjoyed the idea of fighting quite so much. In fact, Nicholas’s father had been opposed to his work with the sword until he’d realized that Nicholas would learn nothing if he could not pursue his own interest.

The sun was thin through the mottled glass. The Hall wasn’t as enjoyable as usual because beauty awaited outdoors.

Nicholas scurried past the buttery, where he heard men swearing over the churns, and the pantry, where he heard servants laughing as they broke their own fasts. He stopped at the kitchen, and the heat from the great fireplaces and huge stoves made sweat instantly run down his face. Shortly after Nicholas had been born, his father had remodeled the kitchen at the chefs request, adding a high ceiling and ventilation in the roof, but even that did not stop the heat from being overwhelming.

The bakers were making bread in the brick-lined ovens, and the room smelled of smoke and yeast. The chef was scolding an assistant about the quality of the eggs picked for the King’s breakfast, while the butler inspected the milk brought by the dairymen. With the roar of the flames, the thump of the bread on the top of the ovens, and the shouted conversations, no one noticed Nicholas when he arrived.

He smiled as he stood. He had missed this, the constant daily drama. It was the servants’ duty to make sure none of it reached the upper regions of the palace, but that meant his life was led in too much tranquility. He was too young to be tranquil, too young to recite the verses of the Words Written and Unwritten foisted on him by overweight Auds, too young to sit, as his father did, and listen to the complaints from region after region about this year’s harvest or last year’s wool.

Nicholas sneaked inside, slipped past the butler, and stopped by the ovens, reaching for the steaming bread on top. The senior baker slapped his hand so hard that Nicholas pulled it away.

“Is it fingers ye be wanting to lose, boy?” the baker snapped before realizing whom he was speaking to. He stepped back, bit his lower lip, and bowed his head. Sweat dripped off his nose. “‘Tis sorry I am, Highness. I dinna think ‘twould be you.”

Nicholas laughed. “This morning I am just a yeoman seeking out a simple breakfast.”

“Nay,” the baker said. “If ye were a yeoman, I’d be tossing ye out on yer behind. Now, get yerself into the pantry with the others, and I’ll be bringing yer bread.”

“All right,” Nicholas said. The conversations around him had stopped. The chef had crossed his arms over his chest, as if he didn’t approve of Nicholas’s presence either. “But I don’t want much. I would hate to overeat on a morning like this.”

He hurried out of the kitchen and back into the pantry. The room smelled like bread and was cool compared with the kitchen. Fresh-baked bread loaves already graced the shelves, and the King’s cutlery stood in its holders on the wall. A dozen servants remained, sitting on stools around a makeshift wooden table littered with crumbs and cracked cups filled with water. They were laughing, a sound that cut off when Nicholas entered. His chamberlain was inside, and he stepped forward, face red and eyes filled with fear.

“I dinna know ye’d be up, milord,” he said. “Ye usually sleep another hour or more.”

“How can anyone sleep with the sun back?” Nicholas said. He ruffled his chamberlain’s short-cut brown hair. “I would’ve thought you’d have been outside, enjoying the first light we’ve had in days.”

The chamberlain shrugged, clearly relieved that he wouldn’t be chastised for not knowing his master’s wishes. “‘Twas certain I was that I’d be there with ye not long after ye rose,” he said.

Nicholas laughed. His chamberlain knew him well. The man was supposed to serve Nicholas in his chamber only, but Nicholas would never have countenanced a man spending such a beautiful day indoors.

“Well, make room,” he said, grabbing a stool and shoving it close to the table, “and pretend I’m one of you. I’m going to break fast, then spend the rest of the day in the sun. And if I were King instead of my father, I’d let all of you do the same.”

The servants cheered and raised their water mugs high over his head in a toast. He wished, just once, they’d clap him on the back as they would each other, but that degree of familiarity would be nearly impossible for them. He was lucky to gain this much.

The baker came up behind him and put several fresh-cut pieces of bread before him. The butler had added some precious cheese, and the chef had cut one of last year’s apples on the side. The food was much more than Nicholas wanted, but he waited until the baker left to pass the extra pieces around.

Then he ate quickly. The bread was hot and doughy, steam rising from the center. The cheese was so perfectly aged that it crumbled beneath his fingers. Its sharpness contrasted with the sweetness of the apple, which was still hard and firm from spending the winter in the cellar.

The others ate their portions greedily. They usually got the leftovers, not the freshly made bread. He wondered how it would feel to eat his breakfast in the room where the fresh bread was stored and not be allowed to taste any. He loved the little luxuries of his life.

While he ate, the conversation flowed around him, mostly full of kitchen gossip—which yeoman was courting what maid. He listened eagerly, even though he didn’t know half the names, feeling on the very fringe of a society that he barely understood. No one spoke directly to him, and if he asked a question, the silence afterward lasted a moment too long, as if they were trying to decide who would answer him. Finally the chamberlain would, probably because it was his place to deal with Nicholas. After a while Nicholas stopped asking questions.

When he finished, he got up and excused himself, thanking them all for their hospitality. They laughed with him and thanked him for sharing, but he could see the relief in their eyes that he was leaving. For the rest of the day he would be the topic of conversation in the servants’ quarters, while they wondered as to the purpose of his visit and speculated as to the nature of his character.

He went back through the kitchen, waving at the chef and the butler as he passed. With the back of his hand he wiped the sweat off his face and smiled to himself. He left through the open back door, kicking aside the bones the kind-hearted chef had left for the dogs.

Outside, the air was still cool with a touch of damp. But he could feel the heat of the morning was not long away. The sun felt good on his bare arms. There were lots of voices in the breeze, odd cries and shouts he hadn’t heard before. But, then, he had never been in the yard this early before.

The cats were sitting outside the dairy barns, grooming themselves after their morning treat of fresh milk. One of the grooms had a mare by the leg, and he was examining her hoof in the brightness of the sun. The cobblestones were still wet, and mud from too many boots had been squelched on top of them. The surface would be slick for his workout, but he could handle slick. He relished a challenge that would allow him to push his own limits.

He went to the swordmaster’s rooms at the very edge of the servants’ quarters. Nicholas knocked on the door, a sharp report over the palace’s early-morning sounds. The door opened, and Stephen stood in front of him, looking sleepy and old in the early-morning light.

“The sun is out,” Nicholas said. “I thought we shouldn’t wait another moment.”

“Boys,” Stephen said. He scratched his tousled graying hair and then rubbed the silver bristles on his chin. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

He closed the door without letting Nicholas inside.

Nicholas paced outside the door, staring up at the sky as if he were afraid the sun would go away. But the sky was a perfect blue without any clouds at all. If it weren’t for the standing water, the mud, and the wet stones, he would not have believed that the rains had drenched Blue Isle in the dry season.

The shouts in the streets grew louder, and he thought he heard a woman cry in pain. Nicholas frowned. He glanced at the high stone wall as though he could see through it. Sometimes the sounds were too close, as if the peasants could get inside with no effort at all. He was raised with stories of the Peasant Uprising, of the day they had stormed the wall, and only his great-great-grandfather’s quick thinking and a chefs vat of oil had saved the palace from being overrun. As a little boy, Nicholas used to enact that battle all by himself, standing on the flat part of the kitchen roof and pouring cups of water down the side of the wall. A manservant had finally stopped him when he’d seen how perilously close Nicholas was to falling into the newly built open ceiling.

Then he heard the pounding of horse’s hooves, and he moved away from Stephen’s door so that he could see the wooden side gate. The guards signaled down from the towers, and the men double-teamed to pull the ropes so that the gate would go up. Two horses, ridden by Danites with red trim on their hems, marking them as having come from the Tabernacle, came inside. The men let the gate drop behind them as if they were infected by the wild expressions on the Danites’ faces.

“We need to see the King!” the rotund Danite said. His voice carried all over the yard.

Nicholas ran forward, his date with Stephen forgotten. One of the guards was speaking to the Danites in a lower tone. The horses were covered with sweat, and one of them reared when Nicholas approached. The Danite struggled to keep hold, but it was a guard who grabbed the reins and calmed the horse.

“On what business do you need to see the King?” Nicholas demanded.

The Danite looked at him, then bowed as best he could on the horse. “We come from the Tabernacle, Highness. The Rocaan saw ships in the harbor this morning, strange ships that arrived in the rain. There are strangers all over the city, and as we rode here, we heard screams in the streets. A woman ran from the alley not far from this place, her clothing in tatters, shouting that she had seen the devil.” The Danite’s words were clipped. His face was red, and he looked as exhausted as his horse. The Tabernacle was on the other side of the river from the palace.

“We shall go to my father at once,” Nicholas said. He stood as tall as he could, adopting the tone his father used for business. “Guard, send someone ahead. Tell my father we will meet him in his audience chamber, and tell him the matter is urgent. You,” he said to the groom standing to the side, “take the horses. See that they’re well taken care of.”

His heart was pounding in his chest, and he was trembling with excitement, but he tried not to show it. Something was happening in Jahn this morning, something that had scared the Rocaan and put terror in the hearts of these Danites.

The guard ran ahead. The Danites dismounted, and Nicholas led them through the door that took them to the inner court instead of through the kitchen. “Why didn’t the Rocaan come himself?” Nicholas asked.

“He wanted to,” the tall Danite said, “but the Elders thought it would be too dangerous.”