Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) (31 page)

The only countries that remained now to send
envoys were Aphra, to the far southwest, stubbornly clinging to
their independence on the rocky shores, and the scattered tribes of
the Bone Wastes, whose land was too harsh and too poor to be worth
conquering. Mavlon, to the southeast, claimed its independence, but
did not even take up arms. In the north, the Shifting Isles kept to
themselves, some said—and others said that only a fool believed
that the Shifting Isles existed at all.

It had been a very long time since the
diplomatic building had been full, and as fewer and fewer of the
rooms were used, the place had gradually been shuttered. Now,
however, it was a bustle of servants, dusting and airing a large
set of rooms that faced towards the King’s forest. The envoy would
have a pleasant view, but no sense of the city.

I held a door open for a group of men
carrying a carved table, smiled at their grunts of thanks, and
followed them into the rooms. As I had expected, no one paid me the
slightest attention, and I was able to walk through each room,
peering up at the ceilings and into corners. I looked out each of
the windows and marked their place on the walls, and tried to
memorize the layout of the apartments.

At last I found what I was looking for: the
bedchamber, with a lone serving girl airing the wardrobes out and
clearing them of spiders. I rapped on the door of the chamber and
she startled, gasping in fear and then—as she recognized me for a
girl—staring at me suspiciously.

“
What d’you want?” she
asked me.

“
You’re to do laundry for
his lordship, then?” I asked, pitching my voice into the strongest
city accent I could manage. “Start fires for him, clean his rooms?”
Her face was closed.

“
Aye. What’s it to
you?”

A piece of silver appeared in my fingers. “I
want to know anything interesting that you see,” I said easily.
“Ladies in his rooms, visitors late at night, any scraps of paper
you find in his clothes.”

“
And if I do?” It was a
poor bluff, given how hungrily she stared at the coin.

“
More.” I turned the coin
so that it glinted in the light, and then tossed it to her. “A
piece for each bit of information. A piece to know who else asks
you, and a chance to match what they offer.” I held out my hand,
palm up. “Give it back, then, if you won’t do it.”

“
I will!” She snatched her
hand back against her torso. “How do I find you?”

“
You know Roine?” She
nodded. “You can find me in her rooms, often enough, and if not,
tell her where I can find you.” She nodded again. “And there’s
another piece of silver in it for you if you can find out the names
of others who serve him,” I said. “Hostlers, cooks. But you must be
discreet.”

“
I will be.” She said it
almost scornfully, and I realized that it must be no new thing for
a royal servant to be bribed for information.

“
I’ll leave you to your
work, then.” I swept a bow and left, heading for the
chapels.

When I returned, a few silver pieces
lighter, Miriel was already dressing for dinner. Lately, she had
been dressing in pale greens and muted reds, the only pale colors
that suited her complexion, and every day she was especially
careful with her appearance.

“
What are you planning
for?” I asked, suspicious.

“
He’s going to seek me
out,” Miriel said, as if it were the most self-evident thing in the
world. “I must be prepared.”

“
Seek you out how?” I was
nervous.

“
Not like that. But he’s
going to make some excuse to come find me, and propriety dictates
that he could only ever do that in public. When else could it be,
but at dinner or after?” I nodded at her logic, and began to change
into my more formal clothing.

“
What were you doing with
my money, then?” Miriel asked, as soon as her maidservant was out
of the room. Neither of us ever spoke of the matter, but we both
knew that the woman was in the pay of the Duke. She was kind and
considerate to Miriel, but how could such a woman ever keep a
secret when faced with his wrath? And so, Miriel and I never
burdened her with knowledge she would rather not have torn out of
her.

“
Making a spy’s web,” I
said softly. “We have a serving girl in the envoy’s chambers now,
who will report to us of his doings, and we have a chorister in the
Queen’s chapel.”

Miriel turned from her preparations to look
at me. “Why did you do that?”

“
Temar has one, but he
wouldn’t teach me how to make one myself. You know your uncle
doesn’t tell us everything. But we could learn it ourselves.” I
tried to tailor it to her own interests; I could not admit to
forming a spy network out of contrariness. But I saw the habitual
flash of irritation in her eyes.

”
Yes. But it’s a bad plan.”
She pointed a hairpin at me. “Temar’s going to catch you,” she
predicted.

“
He’s not going to catch
me,” I said, with more certainty than I felt.

“
Then you’ll tell him,” she
suggested, with a sideways glance. There was both taunt and
bitterness in her look.

“
Why would I ever do
that?”

“
You don’t need to play
games with me,” she said coldly. “I know you would choose him over
me in a moment.”

She was still angry that I had not agreed
with her about the rebellion, that I had not accepted her peace
offering of a secret between us: the book, the discussion of
philosophy, the clandestine trips to the library. I could have
acknowledged that, or turned away. It would have been better to do
so, and I meant to just that.

I wanted to say,
I would not betray you to
Temar
. I could have said,
Haven’t I already lied to him for you?
I might have tried to explain how little I
trusted him, how horrified I was at the things he taught me. I
could have told her that even as I believed him to have a good
heart, I saw that there was something that was twisted in
him.

But what I said was, “Have you ever given me
a reason to be loyal to you?”

Any growing trust between us was severed in
a moment. What I had said was true, she could hear it in my voice.
What she could not know, as she went pale at my words, was that I
was loyal. Without any cause greater than pity and shared torment,
and a few moments of dark humor, I was loyal to her before the
Duke, before Temar, before Roine. I would have been loyal to Miriel
before the King.

I wished immediately that I could take the
words back, but there was no doing so. She turned back to her
mirror, and I saw the face that her enemies would see: pitiless,
cold. There was no crack in the mask. Miriel had retreated from me
completely.

Chapter 26

A few nights later, Miriel’s predictions
came true. The maidens had withdrawn after dinner, and someone had
called for music. The girls had gathered around, and one pair
circled each other: Miriel, and Marie de la Marque. They curtsied
and began the dance, their smiles perfectly sweet, Miriel as
deferential as always to the golden girl, the girl who was still
the tenuous favorite of the maidens’ chambers. Both girls danced
prettily, their feet moving faster than thought.

I watched from my post near the door. Each
night I came to the room a few moments after the maidens had
arrived and stood at the wall, silent, for the remainder of the
evening. There were a few stairs down into the room itself, and
from here I could watch all of the girls without having to circle
the room.

I had thought the Duke’s plan for me insane,
thinking that to give Miriel a bodyguard would be so noteworthy as
to be ridiculous, and so I had been surprised that no one seemed to
pay me the slightest attention. There were always servants about,
and the girls were accustomed to being watched. Only a few of them
had noticed me at all, in all the time I had spent in the maidens’
rooms, and once they saw that I was a girl, they disregarded my
presence entirely. No one came close enough to pick out the
black-on-black insignia I wore, and Miriel never looked over at
me.

After the months of training, it had been
dizzying to watch the room not only by my own instincts, but also
with Temar’s training. As I watched the smiles, the veiled insults,
the few genuine peals of laughter, I saw present and future: the
directions of the young ladies’ parents and their own little groups
and friendships. The next generation of nobility, with all of their
squabbles over land and trade rights, were growing up here. It was
a strange thought, to think that someday the bitterest rivalries I
saw before me could be settled with soldiers and arrests.

Tonight, just as the music was rising in
speed, the two girls matching each other exactly, there was a stir
at the door. My hand dropped to my side, open, ready to pull the
dagger from my boot, but the men who entered were the Royal Guard,
and with them came the King and the Dowager queen.

There were muted exclamations from the young
women, and the musicians clattered to a halt, rising to bow
hastily. The girls were sinking into their curtsies, and in the
sudden absence of conversation, there was only the rustling of a
dozen dresses. Marie de la Marque looked up at the King and the
Dowager Queen with a confident smile, and at her side, Miriel
looked, resolutely, down at her feet.

“
You may rise.” The King’s
voice was at once amused and awed. He could see the currents of
behavior, the yearning of each girl to catch his attention, and yet
he was unnerved by the stir he had created. He was, I thought, more
like a woman than a man—afraid of the power he held over the
opposite sex.

“
Good evening, maidens.”
The Queen’s voice was commanding, and I thought that she was trying
to awe the girls. It must be galling, I thought, to see girls so
young and know that one day, one of them would take her place on
the throne.

“
Good evening, your Grace,”
came the chorus, girls stumbling over their words. A few exchanged
covert glances.

“
Pray, do not let us
disturb you,” the King said. “Please. Go on.” Deliberately, he
looked away from the two girls standing at the center of the
circle, to say something to his mother, and she clapped to the
musicians to begin playing once more. Even then, as Miriel and
Marie de la Marque began their dance again, he did not look back.
He bowed over the hand of Elizabeth Cessor, a tiny girl with hair
so fair it was almost white, and he spoke a few words to her, and
then he circled around the edge of the crowd, his mother at his
side.

I watched them carefully, conscious of his
guards at my side. They would not take kindly to me circling the
room near him, I thought, and so I might not be able to hear his
whispered comments. I must glean as much as I could from his
expression, and hers.

I saw that his mother was watching where he
looked. She would take notice of which girls he singled out, I
thought, and what he said to each of them. I wondered if she would
think to notice where he did not look, for there was only one place
in the room that his gaze never touched. He looked briefly at
Marie, as she danced away from the center of the room, but his gaze
slid away as she moved back towards Miriel.

Did he know that his mother would disapprove
of Miriel, I wondered, or did he only suspect as much? For certain,
she looked around her as though she wished every one of the pretty,
youthful faces would disappear. I did not think that any woman the
King chose would be beloved of the Dowager Queen.

At last the dance ended, and at the shouted
congratulations, he turned and smiled absently, clapping. As was
customary, he stepped forward to offer his own compliments, and I
stiffened at his ready smile for Marie de la Marque.

“
Very pretty, my Lady,” he
said, and he bowed over her hand; I noted the familiar smile
between cousins. Marie was radiating satisfaction, smug in her
triumph at being singled out. Her smile died as Garad turned to
Miriel; at his side, smiling coolly, Isra went still.

“
Ah, Lady Miriel.” He bowed
over her hand as well, and though he stepped back at once to his
mother’s side, I saw his eyes meet Miriel’s for one moment. “Shall
we return to the banquet?” he asked his mother, and she
nodded.

“
I bid you good night,” he
said to the assembled maidens, and they curtsied as one. As he left
the room, however, he saw me. I saw him recognize me, and take note
of my face, and he gave the faintest nod of his head to me. I dared
do nothing more than bow my head in return, afraid of attracting
his mother’s attention, but she swept past me without a word, her
face mask-like. It took no training to see her displeasure—her son
had spoken to all of the high-born ladies, yes, and then he had
shown familiarity for the Celys girl, the niece of the upstart Duke
of Voltur.

Garad might think highly of his
subtlety—indeed, he had said only three words, spent barely a
moment focused on Miriel—but it had been enough to alert his
mother, and indeed, enough to alert the maidens. In the center of
the room, the whispers were rising. How did the King know Miriel’s
name? She had been at court only a year, he had barely seen her.
But he knew her. He had looked at her. The girls crowded around
Miriel, and I saw the self-conscious turn of her head, heard the
falsely uncertain laugh. At the center of the crowd, I saw Marie de
la Marque watching this, and I knew that her father would know of
the King’s words by the end of the night.