The Shadow Within (42 page)
“How long do you think you were wearing it?” Trap asked quietly.
With a sigh Abramm dropped into the chair beside the table. “I don’t know. Since this morning, maybe.”
“Do you remember how you got it?”
“Someone did give it to me—I remember that. But not who and not when.” He looked up. “So it
was
deliberate.”
“You’ve known from the beginning they would be close to you, seeking to hinder or control you.”
Yes. He knew it. It was just too easy to forget it when he couldn’t see them or feel them, and he had all these human enemies to contend with. Human enemies who were, in the end, merely pawns of his real antagonists.
“Did you give Jared the orb yet?” asked Trap.
“Jared!” Abramm’s head came up in surprise. “You think it’s
him
?”
“I don’t think he’s possessed. But he’s already been used once. You haven’t given it to him, have you?”
“Not yet. I’ve been distracted. And . . . frankly I’m not sure he’ll accept it.”
And if he doesn’t, I’ll have to send him away
. He poked at the dead staffid on the table, pushing it around on the waxed surface, then sighed. “I’ll give it to him this afternoon.”
Meridon nodded, then went on to ask him what he wanted to do about the ball, seeing as it couldn’t be an accident this thing had come to him today. “Whoever did this probably knows of your sensitivity and hopes to incapacitate you enough you won’t be able to defend against Gillard’s attackers tonight.”
“Or else scare me into backing out altogether.”
Trap’s glance flicked up to his, discerning Abramm’s unspoken intention at once.
“I feel fine,” Abramm told him. “And you said it took Laramor three weeks to get sick. I’ve only been exposed a few hours and can’t have picked up more than a trace.”
“Even a trace can waken the rest.”
“But it’s not wakened, that’s the point. If it does, we’ll reconsider. But for now—plagues, Trap! Gillard’s practically delivered himself into my hands. And anyway, if I don’t attend, think what that’ll do to me politically. The peers are irked enough that I’ve canceled all their other parties. And pleading illness?” He shook his head. “It won’t do. Even if I really did feel bad, I’d have to go.”
Trap did not give up easily, either, but in the end Abramm prevailed. The ball would go on as planned, and they would trust Eidon to see them through it.
__________
Later that day, Abramm found a moment to speak to Jared alone. Having sent the other servants away, he called the boy to his desk, where, riffling through the various parchments and papers, he retrieved a gray-bound book which he offered to the boy. “Since you enjoyed the
Aerie
books so well, I thought you might like this.”
“
Blue Mountain!
” Jared’s eyes went wide and he took the volume reverently. “This is the one you told me about, isn’t it? Thank you, Your Majesty!”
As he had promised that first night, Abramm had found the sequel to
Alain’s Aerie
and presented it to the boy. Jared had taken it wide eyed and pale faced, struggling to get out a thank-you. But the next day he had appeared at his duty post with his brown locks cropped close in obvious imitation of Abramm’s own, and from then on Abramm had become increasingly aware of how the boy hung upon his words and hovered about him in hopes of performing some service, his admiration and deference bordering on worship. He was counting on the depth of that regard to serve them both now.
Already starting to open the book, the boy remembered himself and dropped it to his side. “Will that be all, sir?”
“No. I have something else, as well. Something a little more important.” Fighting a twinge of guilt at having so shamelessly maneuvered the boy into a position of gratitude, he extracted a small leather pouch from his pocket and gave it over.
Inside was the Star of Life Abramm had instructed Trap to have set into a chain, its light blazing brightly across the boy’s palm.
Jared looked up at him. “What is this, sir?”
“What does it look like?”
“A white pebble on a chain.”
A
white
pebble? Well, that’s encouraging
.
The boy’s brows were drawn together in obvious perplexity as he dangled the orb before him. “Is it a gift for my mum?” His tone said he would find an affirmative to be completely incomprehensible.
“No, Jared. It is for you, if you agree to take it. It will protect you from the staffid. And other things. You should wear it under your tunic, and never take it off.”
Jared lifted the orb with his free hand to examine it more closely. “What sort of other things, sir? Feyna?”
“Those. And lost old men who bid you do things you don’t remember doing.”
Jared’s face fell, and he looked at the floor, so intensely and immediately shamed by the memory, Abramm regretted having to bring it up again.
The evening of his return from Graymeer’s, Abramm had asked the boy about the queue of hair he’d been sent to burn with Abramm’s reeking Dorsaddi robes. Jared swore he had burned both and that, even though he’d had to go all the way to the kitchen to find a fire on that warm afternoon, no one had delayed him nor questioned him on his way. Indeed the only person who even spoke to him was an old underservant who’d strayed above his station and gotten lost.
Quietly indignant at the very idea he might have given such a creature the queue of royal hair, Jared had also admitted to having no clear recollection of casting it into the fire, either. When Abramm had gently explained that he believed the boy had been put under Command, Jared was horrified.
“I told you that wasn’t your fault,” Abramm said now. “So don’t you go studying your feet again.”
Slowly the brown head came up.
Abramm gestured toward the orb on its chain. “This will help protect you from him and others of his kind.”
Jared’s eyes darted toward it. But still he did not put it on and, after a long moment, asked quietly, “Is it a Terstan thing, sir?”
“It is.”
“And will it put a shield on me?”
“I told you, Jared, the shield only comes to those who desire it and freely choose to accept it.”
“Do I have to wear it?”
“No.” He hesitated to say this next, but knew that he must. “However, if you would rather not, I must find you another assignment. I cannot afford to have one so close to me who is not protected.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” He squared his jaw and drew a deep breath, then shook open the chain and dropped it over his head, threading the orb underneath his white shirt.
His eyes came up to meet those of his king, his look one of a proud determination to serve no matter the cost, a look that sent a chill racing up Abramm’s back and put a lump in his throat.
Oh, my Lord Eidon, if only I can
be worthy of his regard
.
“Thank you,” he said to the boy. “That will be all.”
“Oh, come, Gwynne,” said Lady Jenevieve Harrady. “The king only chose Lady Madeleine to keep the field open. You can’t imagine he’d really be interested in
her
.”
Lady Gwynne Worslen, whom Simon had escorted to the ball this night, sniffed and waved her lace hankie. “I’m not saying
that,
only that he could’ve picked a Kiriathan lass by lot if he doesn’t want to choose a favorite yet. It
is
the Autumn Suite after all. The honor should go to Kiriath not Chesedh.”
Gwynne, thick-waisted, white-wigged, and wrinkled with age, was ten years a widow, and old school, like Simon. She had never trusted the Chesedhans and never would. They stood near their assigned places at the head of the wide King’s Court stairway, surrounded by the highest lords and ladies of the land. A gauntlet roped off in red velvet led to the king’s apartments, from which Abramm would shortly emerge to start the procession for this year’s Grand Ball of the Harvest. In the court below, a chamber orchestra provided music composed by Roemert, the strains of his Seventh Concerto underlying the rumble of conversation while servants mingled amidst the nobles, bearing trays of appetizers and glasses of watered white wine.
“Ladies, ladies,” said Harrady, standing to Gwynne’s left. “You’re forgetting how handsomely the Second Daughter has paid him for this privilege.”
“Aye,” Gillard agreed, resplendent in a doublet of cloth of gold. He glanced down at the buxom Lady Amelia, hanging on his arm. “What’s it been now, four times in the last week already?” He grinned salaciously at the others. “If our formerly celibate king is not careful, we’ll end up with a Chesedhan bastard on our hands. Which will be a lot worse than a few turns about the dance floor.”
Gwynne sniffed again. “I cannot believe he could be enamored of her. She is so plain and so . . . forward. As well as being Chesedhan.”
“He’s been a slave so long,” said Gillard, “he probably needs a forward woman.”
As the others laughed at his joke, Simon managed to keep the scowl off his face and plucked a bite-sized rusk mounded with scarlet roe from a silver tray as a servant bore it past. Popping the morsel into his mouth, he turned his attention to the vast court at the bottom of the stair where the lesser nobility and wealthy freemen had gathered in a sea of silk and feathers and sparkling jewels. There were wigs galore, and walking sticks, and the hideous and silly-looking pear-bottomed breeches—but among them were sprinkled an increasing number who had taken their cue from the new king and dispensed with the frippery to echo his more conservative tastes.
Simon detested gossip in all its forms but especially that which he knew to be untrue. Since the day that stick Prittleman had burst uninvited into the king’s private chambers and had been banned from the palace indefinitely, he had enthusiastically revenged himself by spinning out ugly accusations, one of which was that he’d surprised the king in bed with Lady Madeleine that morning. Gossipmongers had seized upon the tale and run with it. It had not helped matters that Abramm had taken to retiring at seven-thirty most evenings, refusing to receive visitors for any reason. Simon had asked him bluntly yesterday morning whether they need worry about any half-Chesedhan offspring, and Abramm had heatedly denied having any such relationship with Lady Madeleine, declaring that she would never consent to such a thing, and nor would he, that Prittleman was a pox-mouthed liar, and that he would thank Simon not to contribute further to that vicious rumor. It had taken him a while to regain his composure, after which he apologized for his harsh words and his own unfair accusation.
Now, listening to Gillard and the others joke about it, Simon wanted to walk away, or at least offer a word in Abramm’s defense. But his relationship with Gillard was strained enough these days, and he wouldn’t make it worse over something so petty as the vulgar gossip of the court. Especially since more than half the nobles on this balcony were saying the same things.
Realizing after his conversation with Laramor that Gillard needed to hear other opinions besides those of a fanatical border lord, and that Simon was doing the boy no favors by shutting him out, he had forced himself to pay a visit to the crown prince three days ago. It had been a prickly encounter, very similar to the one he’d had with Laramor. Hurt and bitter, Gillard had accused Simon of having been bought off and refused to believe that Abramm was committed to the plan he’d proposed—that he was even capable of being so, in fact. The king’s sole purpose in all this, he’d claimed, was to ruin and humiliate Gillard himself. Simon had bitten his tongue before the conversation had gotten out of hand, striving to convince Gillard as gently as he could that Simon had not abandoned him, that he did
not
care more about Abramm than he did Gillard, and that his sole consideration was the good of Kiriath. He wasn’t sure how much of it got through, but at least by the end Gillard had stopped arguing and begun to listen sulkily. And had invited Simon to attend the pre-ball party he had hosted at Harrady’s estate the other night, an affair Simon had attended primarily to prove he was neither ignoring nor avoiding Gillard, nor had he “gone over” to Abramm. When he left, he thought he’d been moderately successful.
Tonight he was no longer sure. Gillard had been tense and cool toward him from the moment he’d arrived, unable to speak without mocking or criticizing his brother. Just now he and his companions had launched yet another round of ridicule for Lady Madeleine’s preposterous song about the Esurhite slave-turned-gladiator/hero, the one so obviously modeled upon Abramm. Mawkishly fawning, disgustingly overdone, and a sheer flight of fantasy they’d dubbed it. If the kraggin tale had strained credibility, this one burst all bounds of reason, so outrageous it was laughable. And while Lady Amelia contended that writing it had been part of Lady Madeleine’s payment for the privilege of dancing in the Autumn Suite, Gillard argued that the
king
had paid
her
to create it. “He needs to capitalize on the kraggin thing, after all. Keep his hero status going.”
“Especially after that fiasco at Graymeer’s,” added Harrady. “Though I can’t imagine who he thought would believe it.”
“Frankly he would have done better with Graymeer’s,” Gillard said, “although I have to say that the Pretender title’s certainly appropriate.”
A commotion at the far end of the gallery cut into their laughter, and conversation echoed into silence as Blackwell emerged from the royal apartments, list in hand. Simon grabbed another roe-piled rusk and ate it as the ordering of the procession began. By the time the King’s Court clock had finished striking eight, the nobles were all in their spots and a herald exited the King’s Suite to proclaim Abramm’s advent. The orchestra burst into fanfare as first came the royal attendants, then Abramm himself, clad in a clean-lined, close-fitting doublet of deep blue brocade, stitched with thin, vertical lines of gold. As usual, his only concessions to the glory of his position were the golden circlet on his brow, the five gold chains of his kingly rank looped across his chest, and a trimming of diamonds on his deep-blue satin cloak. He’d also consented to replace his worn rapier scabbard with a finely tooled, gold-chased sheath more in keeping with his status. And he’d clearly won the rumored tussle over the long cloak with train that Raynen had instigated as part of royal formal wear—Abramm’s dark cloak fell no farther than his hips.