Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) (25 page)

“
I saw that Penekket would
be a place of turmoil,” she said finally, and from the faraway tone
in her voice, I knew that she did not mean just for herself and for
me. “I saw events unfolding that would cost hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of lives, and I wanted to keep you from
that.”

“
What’s going to happen?” I
asked. “What do you know?”

“
Know—as the Duke knows
things? Which man is loyal, and which can be bought?” Roine’s voice
was scornful. “I know a great deal of that, as it happens. But if
you ask what I know, as me, then: I know that fate lies heavy on
this place.” She paused, and tried to close her mouth on the words;
it was as if they were dragged from her. “And it lies heavy on
you.” Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment.

“
Fate—Gods, you and Temar
both!”

“
What?” Her eyes had
snapped open.

“
You and your talk of—“ I
clenched my hands around the mug, shook my head. “…of fate! Of
prophecies, of curses. It doesn’t make any sense. And you were
never one for that, anyway.” Temar lost no opportunity to remind me
of the prophecy at my birth, and that it had led him to pick me. He
was determined that I acknowledge the prophecy as truth, and I was
determined that he should stop talking about it, stubbornly
unwilling even to consider the possibility that it was more than
fever madness. I could not bear for Roine to tell me the same
thing.

She looked at me strangely. “I’m not one for
the priests and their church, no. Not generally. But I am faithful
to the teachings of the Gods. Catwin—there’s more to this world
than we can understand. There are forces at work that are beyond
us. Yes, there are,” she insisted, when I shook my head. “And it
does not take a sorcerer to scent change on the wind.”

“
What kind of change?” I
rubbed at my nose.

“
The nobles fight amongst
themselves, they bring us all to war. The King is weak, he cannot
control his dog pack even when he throws dukedoms and lands to
them. A fight in the south, a fight in the west. How long can
Heddred stand as it is?”

“
A fight in the south?” I
frowned. “Oh, the uprising. It’s…” I tried to remember the word
Temar had taught me.

“
Populist,” Roine supplied,
and I raised my eyebrows at her. Roine could read, but her
knowledge was that of a healer, not a court advisor. She shrugged.
“The servants speak of it—you would know as much if you were not
always watching the nobles.”

I bit my lip at the implied reproach. “The
servants are not a danger to Miriel,” I said. “Nobles are.”

“
She will die if you think
that way,” Roine advised me. “You may be blind to it, but she knows
better. She courts the servants—quick with praise and smiles,
sparing in her demands. She knows to be wary of those who cook her
food, set fires in her rooms: they hold her life in their hands.” I
stared at Roine, horrified, and she only smiled. “Every day, you
think of which nobles might kill Miriel. Is it so strange to think
that servants might have their reasons for doing so as
well?”

“
Has someone spoken of
this?” I demanded fiercely. Roine shook her head, no longer
amused.

“
No. No one would—I tell
you, Miriel is beloved of the servants. But you don’t
hear
me. I tell you
there’s change on the wind, that the people are rising up to claim
a voice in their world, and you look still to the nobles. There are
larger forces at work than their squabbles, larger even than the
war with Ismir—although that could be quite a catalyst. If you want
to think of Miriel’s safety, you had best think of the world beyond
the court.”

“
I hardly have time to keep
her safe
at
court,” I said bitterly. “You don’t understand. She and her
uncle work to the same ends, only he can’t see it, and so she has
all of his enemies and none of his goodwill. And those enemies are
more powerful than the uprising, and they’re
here
, not in the south.

“
And how could you not tell
me about the beatings?” I demanded. “You knew I was to know
everything about her.”

“
You were to know it
because you found it out for yourself,” Roine said sharply. “You
spent all day in her company and you could not even see that she
was in pain! It was to teach you a lesson. You had better wonder
what she does when she’s not in your company, if you want to
protect her.”

At least you have me to
talk to
. I had failed entirely at my
mission of being the one in whom Miriel could confide. She had
trusted me once, to help her with her plan to sneak about, and she
thought now that I had failed her. She did not know that I had lied
for her, not only to the Duke but to Temar. She would not trust me
again.

“
What is it?” Roine asked.
She was studying my face.

I sighed and sank my head into my hands. I
could have cried again.

“
It’s all wrong,” I said. I
was shaking.

“
Something has happened?”
she guessed, and I shook my head.

“
Well, yes. But I can’t
tell you.”

“
Catwin.” Roine was
smiling. “You can tell me. What is it you fear?”

“
The Duke.” I looked at
her. “He’d hurt you, too, if he knew that you knew, and you hadn’t
told him. I…” I felt tears come, and sniffed them back. “I have to
keep him from knowing. And that’s impossible.”

“
Catwin, it can’t be as bad
as that. Is this why you were crying earlier? What have you done,
then?”

“
It wasn’t
me
!” I said, fired into
truth. “It was Miriel! I just…” She waited, and I brushed tears
from my eyes angry swipes of my hand. “She said she wanted to see
the castle like I did,” I said, in a desperate whisper. Even at the
hearth, far from the door, I could not believe that Temar might not
be waiting, that there might not be a spy who could take my words
and twist them. “She said if I didn’t help her, she’d do it on her
own. She was going to take my uniform.”

“
So, you helped her.” I
nodded. “And you say the Duke doesn’t know.” I shook my head. Roine
pursed her lips. “I wondered…what was the horrible beating she got
a few weeks back, then? She would not say.”

“
He knew she was hiding
something, but he didn’t know what. He had her beaten for lying to
him.”

“
Ah. And so, then you lied
for her as well, would that be correct?”

“
Yes,” I whispered. “But I
don’t think she knows that.”

“
Tell her,” Roine said
simply. “She needs an ally. She’s more fragile than you
think.”

“
You don’t like nobles,” I
said, resentfully. “You never do. Why
her
?”

“
She’s only a young woman,”
Roine said. “Who knows what she might grow up to be?” For some
reason, the thought seemed painful to her. “Anyone would pity her
the life she has been given.” She reached out to take my hands. “I
know it’s difficult, Catwin, love—but try to be kind to her.” She
squeezed my hands. “Now, see, that wasn’t so horrible a secret, was
it? No harm done. And I won’t ever tell the Duke.”

“
There’s more,” I
admitted.

“
Oh?”

I hesitated, my hands
trapped in hers, her eyes on my face, and then the words came out
of me in a rush: “When we were out in the castle, we met the King.”
I gave a quick look at Roine. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted.
“It was okay,” I assured her. “Nothing bad happened. I think…I
think he
likes
her. And you see, that’s what the Duke
wants
. But he’d be so
angry.”

“
You met the
King
?” Roine asked, as
if she still could not believe it.

“
Yes, yes—“ I waved my hand
at her. “But the point is—“

“
How?”

I sighed, not wanting to say that the King
had been sneaking about, too. “We just did. He recognized Miriel.
He said he’d keep her secret. He was quite nice, actually,” I
added, remembering Miriel’s own words.

“
My.” Roine chewed her
lip.

“
The Duke can’t know,” I
said, suddenly afraid that she would tell him.

“
He won’t learn it from
me,” Roine assured me. “I would not tell him. Do you think the
King…”

“
Yes.” I nodded. “He did,
I’m sure of it. And she can use it to her advantage—and she will,
she’s good at that. You know that. But the Duke would never see
that. He’ll have planned out some way for them to meet.”

“
Hmm.” Roine took a sip of
tea. “Well, if you want my advice…” I nodded, and Roine took a sip
of tea, considering her words. “Tell Miriel that you lied for her.
She has to know that she has a friend. And let her play this her
way. You’re right, she has a talent for it. Your task will be to be
her shield against the Duke.”

I felt a sick sense of fear. “Keep lying for
her?”

“
You’ve done it once.
Catwin, you fear the Duke, not respect him. But I think you do
respect Miriel. She may be ambitious, but she has a kinder heart
than he does. Unless you want to serve yourself, you will need to
serve one of them, and you would do best to choose someone you
believe is good at heart.”

I looked away. She was right that I feared
the Duke, but she was wrong—I did respect him. I knew that he had
won the war with unspeakably brutal tactics, that he was ruthless
with those who defied him. I did not believe him for a moment to be
above murdering a rival.

But I had seen how he treated his tenants,
how he listened to them and fortified their walls and made sure
that the guardsmen protected them against border raids. He was not
an easy liege lord to serve, but he was fair, and I knew now from
watching the other great landowners at court that the Duke spent
more time ensuring his people’s safety than did any other great
lord of the land. A good heart, a kind heart? Perhaps not. But
fair.

Conventional wisdom told that men were
warped by power. I could see that in de la Marque, and in many men
of the council. I turned the thought over in my mind, weighing the
Duke’s character. Common-born and revered, then ennobled and hated.
He did not seem to be as greedy as the other lords, hungry for
money and lands, but his plans for Miriel showed that he had some
aim at the throne. Had power warped him? If not, what was his
aim?

It was worth thinking on.

And I did not know how power might change
Miriel. She was kind to servants now, but who could say what might
happen if she were to be queen? For certain, she was not kind to
me, nor had she ever been. She was ambitious, not as one who wants
power or money for its own sake, but as one who has been told she
deserves neither, and so sets out to gain by her wits what others
have gained by their birth. She had much to prove, did Miriel.

I recognized even then that such ambition
was a hollow thing. I had seen into Miriel’s eyes and I knew her to
be lonely. She was waiting for something, and I doubted that even
she knew what that might be. In the meantime, she honed her wits
and her beauty, and she learned to keep score, so that one day she
could reckon back her wrongs.

Roine was right: Miriel needed a friend. For
if she was left to her ambition and her intelligence…

I shuddered.

“
I won’t ask,” Roine said,
sounding amused for the first time in days. “Are you ready for your
lesson? They don’t stop just because you’ve had a hard day, you
know.”

Chapter 21

It took only two weeks for the Duke to
prepare the troops. They were armed and drilling even as the
Council prepared a sharply-worded letter to be distributed in all
the towns of the Norstrung Provinces. The violence was to cease
immediately, the letter said. Jacces was to turn himself in for
trial in the murder of Henri Nilson. If he did not, he—and any
found harboring him—would be sought out by the King’s forces. There
would be two thousand men marching south, joining the three
thousand already in the command of the Earl of Mavol, and these new
troops would be commanded by one of the most notoriously ruthless
commanders in recent history.

The court was delightedly scandalized. Their
King, their weak, sick, Boy King was willing to send his army to
keep the peace. He had taken his guardian’s advice, but not to the
advantage of his guardian. He would now be as ruthless with the
rebels as Guy de la Marque would have been. He would let the Duke
be as ruthless as he had ever been in the last war with Ismir.

And then we discovered that Jacces could be
ruthless as well.

I was in Miriel’s privy chamber, studying
apart from her, as close to rudeness as I dared. For months, we had
conducted our studies together, at the large table in the public
room. But our fight was not over; I could not forgive her words,
and she clearly still suspected me of being her uncle’s spy. When
there was a knock at the door, I did not move to answer it. If she
wanted to receive guests, let her answer her own door. When the
knock sounded once more, I heard her cross to the door and open
it.

“
Lady Miriel DeVere?” It
was a man’s voice, and one I did not recognize.