Shadow's End (Light & Shadow) (19 page)

Chapter 19

We passed our days in the silence of those who wait. What else, for us, beyond the treaty? And so we did not speak of anything beyond minor pleasantries, and what little gossip we could bear. We studied and sat quietly in our rooms, and gave the Duke no reason to suspect us. And I, swearing to myself that I need only bear this for a day more, two days more, a week at most, never looked over to where Temar sat, close by the Duke’
s side, always at work on the business of battle: staring at maps, planning maneuvers and formulating backup plans.

As the Ismiri army drew ever closer, the mood in the Fortress descended into muted panic. When the news of the invasion had first arrived, the courtiers had been incredulous, and then angry, and then bloodthirsty. It had been nearly twenty long years since the last war, fifteen since the last skirmishes and border raids had died away, and the Court had forgotten the horror of the last war: William’s death of camp fever, his brother Henry’s fateful accession, and only the famed Battle of Voltur to end it all. No one remembered that it was the betrayal of one man that had tipped the scales in Heddred’s favor—and after the months of border raids all through the mountains, no one would have paid any heed. It was time, they said, to end the Ismiri once and for all.

While the King and the Council had faced the horrifying reports of crops burned, towns torched, women and children put to the sword, the Court had sung ballads of bravery and written toasts to heroism and valor. It was remarkable, I thought sourly, that there was anything at all that could have lifted them from their willful ignorance, but at last, when the Ismiri army was said to be three days’ march away, reality seemed to have broken through the Court, and in its wake rushed fear.

At last, the nobles began to understand that even Penekket Fortress would not save them forever. The women and children might be hidden away inside the stone walls, made ready for a long siege, but the men, trained from childhood to wield sword and spear, and lead men to battle, would be very far away from safety. Ladies and their daughters prayed endlessly, fathers and sons and brothers were called to be outfitted, and they walked as if they were dead already.

The Duke was too occupied with his forces to be frightened; where the other men seized any time they could with their families, I knew that the Duke had already ridden out several times to rally the Heddrian Army. Whatever their spats, whatever their differences, he, and Gerald Conradine, and Guy de la Marque went to the camps each day, leaving their horses behind and walking amongst the tents. They spoke to the men, smiled, clapped soldiers on the back and promised a glorious victory march. In a court filled with fear, it was one of the few stories of courage and camaraderie, and it bemused me that it was the three men I least trusted who were offering courage and support to the men.

I heard tell that the King was pressing for peace, arguing against his own Council. Wilhelm was determined to give Kasimir a chance to turn back, leave without it coming to open battle, and the Council was equally determined that they should strike fast, leaving the Ismiri army with no time to recover from its march. The Duke, above all, was determined to outmaneuver Kasimir, and Miriel and I
were a captive audience to her uncle’s rants on the King’s stupidity.

“It’s not Dusan he’s dealing with,” the Duke had snarled. “It’s not Pavle, for the love of the Gods! Can he not see that?”

Miriel and I waited as patiently as we could, trying not to fall prey to the fear that ran rampant through the Court. The days ran long, and there was little for us to do. The maidens still had their classes in deportment, languages, music, and dancing, but Miriel, now betrothed, was no longer expected to attend, and she shut herself away gratefully. She had become quite the tragic figure of the Court—with no choice, the Duke had accepted her story of capture and escape, and Miriel’s unexpected return, sad eyes, and grave demeanor only fed to the drama of the story.

Where once she might have reveled in the attention, and wound the Court to a fever pitch with pretty demurrals and fragments of the story, now Miriel did everything she could to fade into the background. The other maidens believed that she was still recovering from her kidnapping, and Miriel did nothing to dissuade them. There was no need to tell anyone that she had lost her patience with the unending, childish game of court life;
now she had the perfect excuse to be absent.

I, to my great relief, also needed no excuses. There was no chance for lessons with Donnett, for he was with the Army; nor with Roine, who was too busy with preparations; nor with Temar, who accompanied the Duke on his endless errands
and helped him with his battle plans. I missed Donnett’s plain speech and his good humor, and was bored enough to crave a good sparring match, but I was grateful indeed that I had no need to speak to the others.

To my knowledge, the Duke had not yet noticed the new tension between his Shadows. I would have thought he would need to be blind to miss it, but between preparations, Council meetings, and marriage negotiations, he was occupied from sunup to well past sundown. He did not see that Temar and I avoided each other’s eyes, or spoke little, or went to pains to keep from brushing up against each other as we moved through the small rooms.

Just as we had never mentioned our enmity, and the coming confrontation, so we did not speak of what had transpired between us. I dreamed of his mouth, his hands, the feel of his body against mine, reliving those few moments and creating, out of my own desire, a thousand others—and then, in daylight, we hardly spoke. We looked away from each other and I hoped that he could not see where my pulse beat rapidly at my throat. When we touched, by accident, I would see him tense; but neither of us spoke of it. No, it was just as well that there was no time for lessons.

Just as the Duke was too preoccupied to notice our tension, Miriel hardly seemed to notice it, either. Every once in a while, I would see here eyes flick back and forth between us, but she could not seem to summon any anger at us. She had doubted me, once—warned me away from Temar, told me to let him alone. But as Miriel became more and more fearful about her marriage, she did n
ot waste her energy on suspecting me.

Arman Dulgurokov paid court to her with gentle gallantry. Since we had arrived back at Court, he had come to see her every day, to kiss her hand and speak a few kind words. He brought her little gifts, and his face warmed to see her smile. He left of his own accord each day, never pressing her to dance, never speaking of a date for the marriage itself. Had their marriage not been arranged for the purpose of a treasonous plot, one might have said it was very sweet, indeed.

But with Arman, often, came Isra. Isra, who watched Miriel as if she were a piece of filth, and who wasted no time with pleasantries. While Miriel and Arman spoke of pleasant nothings, Isra and the Duke spoke of the business of the marriage, and they were contentious allies at best. There might be pages of documents to be argued over yet, chilling discussions of whose troops would be moved where, and who would arrange for the assassinations of Miriel’s cousins, but each day, they drew closer to an agreement, and Miriel was becoming frightened that they would marry her off before there was a chance either to escape or to secure allies to fight against the planned coup.

Sleep and knowledge were the only escape from her fear, and with nothing to do, and nowhere to go, Miriel quickly read through every book to be had in the Fortress. After that, she took to lying on her bed and staring at the walls, trying to will herself into sleep, and more than once, I
mixed a careful dose of herbs into some wine or tea, and had her drink that, wishing that these days might pass quickly so that she could, at last, be free of her fear.

One afternoon, when at last her breathing grew deep and slow, I slipped out of her room quietly
, gathered up my courage, and asked the Duke’s permission to go see Roine. He had looked at me suspiciously, but when I offered to go in the company of one of his guards, he only sighed and waved his hand. With my own sigh that I had not tried this trick sooner, I bowed and left, wishing very much that I did have some secret errand to run. It seemed wasteful to have the Duke’s permission to travel without being followed, and not scheme even a little bit.

It was the one
thing that went right that day, for I arrived at the healers’ ward and found that Roine refused to speak with me at all. It had taken all of my courage to come here in the first place, and so, instead of slinking away, I flatly refused to leave. At last, when I appointed myself her assistant and followed her on her rounds, she turned and snapped at me, asking what it was I wanted of her.

“What do you mean,
what do I want of you
?” I asked her, frowning bitterly. “You’re my mother, and there’s to be a battle—of all times, now we should not be angry with each other.”

“What did you say?” She was staring at me, and I tried to remember my exact words.

“Not my mother, then—but you raised me. You’re my family.” She looked away at once, down, staring into her chest of medicines, and I frowned suddenly, distracted from my anger, tilting my head to the side as I studied her face. She looked up and raised her eyebrows at my expression.

“What?” she asked, warily.

“How old were you when you took me in?”

“Don’t you know better than to ask a lady how old she is?” Roine asked tartly. I smiled to see her familiar humor, but she sobered again quickly enough. “I was twenty,” she said, and I blinked in surprise. Roine could have been any age. She had just a few strands of grey in her dark brown hair, and her face, while world-weary, was not deeply lined. But twenty…it occurred to me that I had never thought of Roine as a young woman. She was too self-possessed, too sure in her beliefs to have been so young when I first knew her.

“Where were you born?” I asked her, pulling a stool over to sit next to her and drawing my knees up to my chin. I knew somehow she had not been raised in Voltur, but that was all I remembered, and there were no clues to be had by looking at her. The people of Heddred had mingled so much, on the plains, that there was no way of telling any of them apart. Roine might have come from anywhere.

“You know,” she said, with a wry smile, “I actually don’t know.”

“You don’t—how do you not know?”

“I was raised by the Church,” she said.

“I didn’t know that.” My eyes were wide with surprise.

“You never asked,” she said, with a faint smile. “Where did you think I learned to read? Or learned medicine?” I shrugged.

“Didn’t you ever ask about your parents?”

“No. It was a closed order, many of the sisters had taken vows of silence; I was on
e of the only children, and all of us were orphans—I assume. It never occurred to us to ask.”

“Well, how did you get to Voltur?”

Roine’s hands had stilled. “I can’t explain.”

“What do you mean? Why can’t you?”

“I don’t wish to speak of it,” she warned me, but I did not heed her.

“Did the Church send you?”

“Catwin, leave it.” At the sound of her voice, I recoiled, and she sighed, defeated. “My past is…not a happy one.”

“I’m sorry.” I laid my hand on her arm. “I didn’t know.” To my surprise, she m
oved her arm away from my touch, her mouth tight as she looked down at my outstretched fingers. She had gone cold.

“I would be alone,” she said simply, and I, annoyed at her sudden turn to anger, left to go without a word. But at the door, I remembered why I had come, and I turned back to her.

“Will I see you before the battle?” I asked, hopefully. She paused, and then shook her head.

“I don’t think so,” she said softly, and I knew somehow that she meant I would not see her after the battle, either. “Gods keep you, Catwin. I love you.” There was a terrible finality about her words. In her eyes, I saw the surety of her own death, and I felt as if I could not catch a breath. I ran back to her, heedless of the servants and healers I pushed out of the way, and wound my arms tight around her.
She bore it for only a moment, and then she pushed herself away from me, and I saw tears in her eyes. “Go,” she said simply. “May you be safe from harm.”

There was no gainsaying her; she turned away, and though I waited for long minutes, she never looked back. Finally,
I walked back to the Duke’s chambers in a daze. I was so preoccupied that, for a time, I hardly noticed the shouting and crying in the hallways around me. Then, as I bowed to the guards at the door, I looked around myself. There were pages running through the hallways, noblewomen in tears, men shouting. I pushed my way past the guards and into the room, raising my eyebrows at Temar, who was too preoccupied with frantic activity to pay me much heed.

Miriel, wakened from sleep, was standing groggily in the center of the room, watching as her uncle packed his ledgers and papers. Temar, who had been waiting for a stack of books, disappeared into the Duke’s bedchamber, and I could hear him packing clothing into a trunk.

“Kasimir held the horsemen for the foots oldiers to catch up. Now the army is two days out, and moving fast,” the Duke said brusquely to me. “The noblemen are to go to the encampment tomorrow, in preparation for the King’s attempt to sue for peace. You and Miriel will stay here.”

“Are we not to accompany the Queen?” I asked simply. “I had heard tell that all of the King’s family would accompany him to the camp.”