Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) (11 page)

We had to cross a great and deadly bridge to
gain access to the palace, as beautiful as a bridge could be, but
built by the best engineers of the ages. It could kill a man in a
dozen ways, and hold back an army; twice, it had done just that. It
had been a good defense when the kings of Heddred feared invasion
from the Ismiri, driven back only four generations ago now and
still hungry for our rich farmland and our great lodes of gold and
iron ores. Less useful, the clever bridge had been, when Arthur
marched with an army from Dalvbard, sweeping from the east and
catching the Conradines unawares.

Still, useless as it was, I shivered when
its shadow fell over me. Penekket was a city of unutterable beauty,
but the buildings rose from the streets like the bones of a
predator. I knew myself for a fool, but I thought that I could feel
it breathing, I thought that it knew itself to be lying in wait. It
was like a great mountain cat, full of claws and teeth as traps for
the unwary; a glimmer of eyes on a dark winter’s night, a flash of
teeth, a growl. It was a city for peace, but shaped unquestionably
by war.

No one else seemed to notice, or care. The
guardsmen were happy to be back near the city, laughing and jesting
with each other about the inns they would visit, a few of them
calling out their whores by name. Roine shot them furious glares,
mindful of my young ears, but I did not mind. They reminded me of
Aler, and when I listened to their conversation I found that I
relaxed, and did not think of what lay ahead.

Slowly, however, the palace turned from a
pretty child’s toy, far away, into a great jumble of buildings. In
the dusk, I saw the lamps being lit, the pretty carvings at the
windows standing out against the golden light inside. When we
passed through the gates, the guardsmen called out to their friends
on the walls, and those men lifted their pikes in a salute to the
Duke. The Duke was still a legend, and those who rode under his
standard were welcome here, we had allies in the king’s guard and
the army. That made me feel better.

It took some time to ride from the gates to
our courtyard, for the palace was not, in truth, a palace at all.
At the center of it all was a building that one might call a
palace, with pleasure gardens and marble floors and carvings on the
walls; the king lived there, and a few select members of the
Council, from old families that had been close to the throne back
when the palace was new-built. The business of the realm was
conducted in that building, itself many times the size of the
castle I had grown up in, which had once been the royal castle of
Ismir.

But generations of nobility and royalty had
come and gone, each leaving their mark with a new wing or an
elaborate chapel. Even as the royalty became more ensconced, the
nature of royalty changed. Wulfric’s line had once been content
with mead and smoky halls, caring little for anything save their
raids and their battles. That had changed with Evan I, who had been
known as the peacemaker; he had built great libraries while his
kinsmen were off waging their wars. As the royalty proceeded into
war and peace, at turns, the palaces had become places of leisure,
with great kitchens and dancing halls, and then fortresses, with
menacing walls. It was like the rings in a tree, I thought.

I was bone-weary when we all dismounted, and
I could hardly fathom the thought of unpacking our goods and
setting our rooms to rights. I wanted to be home, asleep on my
little cot, and I could have cried when I remembered that I had no
home now. We had stripped the tower room bare and another maid
slept in my cot, another healer would take their place in the
apothecary’s rooms. There was no home to go back to.

We tumbled from the wagon, and I stood close
at Roine’s side, frightened by this noisy courtyard, still a jumble
of activity even in the night. Even though it was only the
courtyard for one of the buildings that lay about the castle, it
was easily three times as large as the courtyard in Voltur, at the
Winter Castle.

I was grabbing a crate of
our things
when one of the guardsmen came
to find me. He was one of the Duke’s personal guard, a great tall
man stinking of horse and the road, and he had no sympathy to spare
for a servant of the Lady’s daughter, who would rather share a room
with her adopted mother.

“
You’re to go with the
little Lady,” he said, jerking his thumb to where Miriel stood,
accompanied by her maidservant and surrounded by liveried guards,
unloading the endless trunks of her things.

“
Surely there’s no work to
be done for the Lady Miriel tonight,” Roine said, drawing me in to
her side with an arm around my shoulders. I looked up at her,
praying with all my heart that she could save me from this man.
“I’ll send Catwin to the Lady Miriel’s rooms in the morning. She
has unpacking to do for me tonight.”

“
She’s t’come now,” the man
said, unimpressed. “Duke’s orders. She’ll sleep in the lady’s
rooms.” His large hand rested idly at his waist, by the hilt of his
dagger, and that decided matters quickly enough. He was not
threatening us; he had likely never needed to threaten anyone since
he had pinned the Duke’s sigil on his cloak. Everything about this
man showed the Duke’s power.

“
Go, then,” Roine said, in
my ear. She embraced me quickly, then took my shoulders and pushed
me away before I could bury my face in her shoulder and cry. “It’s
not so bad as that,” she said, forcedly cheerful. “I’m to give you
lessons. I’ll see you soon.”

“
I can’t leave you,” I
whispered, but the man’s hand closed around my arm and cut off the
goodbye.

“
Remember what you are,”
she whispered to me fiercely, and then I was dragged through the
crowd, hating him and hating the Duke, hating Miriel for being a
girl I needed to serve and—absurdly—hating Roine, in the very
moment after I had clung to her for comfort, for not being able to
save me from it all.

The Duke wasted no words in greeting me. His
eyes flicked over me like I was a horse in his stables. He took the
measure of my failings.

“
You’ll sleep in the Lady
Miriel’s rooms,” he said shortly. “In her chamber, to guard her.” I
saw Miriel’s eyes flare at this, but she did not say anything. “In
the morning, you will go with Temar to get fitted for clothing. I
will not have my niece accompanied by a girl who looks like a
street urchin.”

“
She is a street urchin,”
Miriel said, sulkily.

“
She is a royal servant,”
the Duke corrected her, irritated.

“
She’s a whore’s
bastard.”

“
Watch your tongue.” The
Duke did not flare up, as she had done. He did not even get angry.
He went at once cold, deadly. “
You
will behave like a Lady.” His quiet words were
more frightening than anger would have been; Miriel dropped her
eyes to the ground and said nothing until he looked away, then cast
a quick glare at me. Sure it would annoy her, I shrugged back at
her and grinned cheekily, and she clenched her teeth and looked
away.

Temar stepped around the Duke to come to my
side. “I will come to fetch you in the morning,” he said quietly,
and I looked up at him. He smiled. “Be brave, Catwin. The palace is
not so big as it seems right now.”

At this unexpected kindness, I looked down,
blinking away tears. I wanted to ask why I was to sleep in Miriel’s
room, and what the Duke expected me to be able to do to protect
her. That, and a dozen more questions swirled in my head, but
Temar’s hand rested lightly on my back as he pushed me forward,
following the small train of Miriel’s servants. At the doorway, I
looked back over my shoulder, and saw Roine through the crowd. I
raised my hand in a little wave, suddenly gripped by dread, and
after a moment she raised her hand to me as well. She seemed to be
trying not to cry.

I clenched my nails into my palm so hard
they bit into the skin, trying not to cry myself, and then I turned
and ran to follow Miriel and her servants.

Chapter 10

As good as his word, Temar came to find me
the next day. He raised his eyebrows to find me curled in an
armchair, still wearing the same clothes as the night before.

“
Why are you not in
Miriel’s room?”

“
She locked the door on
me,” I said. I winced as I stood, and stretched
carefully.

“
Well, then we’ll have to
get you lock picks,” he said, unimpressed. I raised my eyebrows,
but he was serious. “You would have needed them anyway. But Miriel
must not command you away from her side.”

“
Was it like this for you?”
I asked curiously, shoving my feet into my boots. “When you first
were chosen to serve the Duke?” I thought he would laugh and tell
me that yes, it had been this way, but it had gotten better.
Instead, his face went as blank as I had ever seen it.

“
No,” he said shortly. “It
was not.” I remembered seeing his face when he had looked at the
Duke, during our journey, and I decided to ask no more. He held
open the door for me to precede him, and then led the way through
the corridors so quickly that I had to half run to keep up with
him.

We had been in a building near the heart of
the palace, and Temar led me across the courtyard at the center,
through the corridors at the other side, and out into the sunshine,
where, instead of joining the steady stream of people moving about
in the paths between buildings, he led us on a route that made use
of the tiny alleyways. We squeezed around water barrels and hopped
over crates, and a few times Temar nudged a sleeping drunk with the
toe of his boot to wake them.

At last, we arrived at the Arena, a place I
would learn later was halfway around the palace center from the
building where we lived. Here were housed the fighting animals, the
great lions and bears, and also the wrestlers, the acrobats, the
king’s small army of entertainers. The building had dozens of
courtyards and gymnasia, and each was filled with performers,
practicing their craft. I wanted to stay and watch, but Temar kept
moving at a punishing pace, and more than once I was left
scrambling to catch up, peering down corridors to see the flick of
his black-booted feet moving out of sight.

In a large building, connected to this one
by a makeshift corridor, the Quartermaster held court. On its other
side were the barracks, so that the Quartermaster could serve the
royal servants, and all the army as well. Indeed, there seemed to
be a jumble of surly men waiting their turns to be fitted. Temar
took my hand and dragged me through the crowd to an old woman at
the side of the room.

“
Clothes for the Duke of
Voltur’s new page,” he said curtly. The lady nodded, having seen
the sigil embroidered black-on-black on Temar’s chest, and eyed me
critically.

“
Come with me,” she said
over her shoulder as she disappeared into a storage room, and Temar
pushed me after her.

The woman thrust a tunic and pants at me,
and some linen.

“
Try these on.”

“
Here?” I looked around me
at the servants who moved through the rows of shelves, but the
woman glared.

“
Don’t waste my time.
Here.”

Shivering, self conscious, I pulled off my
own tunic and then my linen, pulling the new over my head as
quickly as I could. No one looked over at me, no one cared about a
skinny child; still, I felt horribly ill at ease. I blushed as I
stripped off my pants and pulled on the new. Everything was black,
like Temar’s clothing, and too large for me. I felt like a crow
with too-big feathers.

The woman looked me over once and nodded,
then pulled my arms and legs about to check the length of
everything. She called orders over her shoulder, and a servant
disappeared to find more clothing.

“
Three sets of pants and
shirts,” she said to Temar. “One tunic. One change of linen. Your
own seamstress’ll put on the patches.” She marked something down in
the great book in front of her, and waited until the servant came
back with the stack of clothing, all tied together with
twine.

“
Where are we going now?” I
asked Temar, as we set off still deeper into the building. He shot
a glance at me.

“
To get you some
food.”

“
Thank you,” I said,
mindful of my accent. “That is kind.” Temar smiled, as I had known
he would.

“
Very prettily done,” he
said, and he sat me in the corner of the mess hall and went off to
find food for both of us, while I looked around me, wide-eyed, at
the soldiers.

“
Are we allowed to eat
here?” I asked Temar, when he came back. He smiled as he set out
the bread, and bowls of some sort of porridge. When the food was
arranged, he tapped the sigil on his chest.

“
We’re Voltur’s people.
They like us here.”

“
Because the Duke won the
war for King Henry?” I asked, and Temar nodded.

“
He’s well-regarded.” He
dropped his voice lower. “He was ennobled after that. You know
that? Yes. So, he was a commoner before. He stayed a commander
after the war, until he was made part of the King’s Council, and
the men say he was still good to them, he still listened to their
counsel and treated them well. And that battle is army legend,” he
added, shrugging. Then he blinked. “Done already?”

I nodded and flushed. I had shoveled the
food into my mouth as fast as I could, and wiped the bowl with my
bread.