Shadowforged (Light & Shadow) (5 page)

When Wilhelm said, sounding pained, that it was time to go, the King kissed Miriel’s hand and lifted her down from her seat. He said something for her ears only, and her face warmed.

“I know I should wish it,” she said, and then she took a step back and curtsied formally, as she always did when she left him. At the bottom of the stairs, she cast a look over her shoulder, and blushed when she saw him watching her still. She bit her lip and turned back to climb the stairs, a vision of modesty, holding her robe closed at her neck.

“What did he say?” I asked, low-voiced, as we half-ran down the corridor to her rooms.

“That every time he lifted me to sit there, he wished he was lifting me to the throne.” Her smile was serene. She might have been speaking the most beautiful of love poetry.

“That’s…” I could not find the words.

“I believe you want to say, very promising. Yes?”

“Of course, yes. My Lady.”

The next morning, dutifully, I brought my report to the Duke.

“She speaks the truth,” Temar said, when I had finished. He had been watching me as I gave my report, while I tried to ignore his sullen presence. My temper was not improved by the feeling that they had tricked me: that they would not have known what had happened in the cellar if I had not told them. I wondered if there was any way to find out that would not end with me being beaten.

The Duke gave a grim nod at his assassin. In the early morning light, I could see his age in the shadows under his eyes, the glint of grey in his beard. He stared off into the distance with eyes as cold and black as jet.

“She is right, it is promising,” he said at length. He let his tone show that it was not quite promising enough. I, who would need to report this to Miriel, wondered just how I would convey that.

“Her words on the rebellion were passable. Tell her to remind him that such ideas are dangerous. He cannot become complacent.”

“Yes, my Lord.” I had the suicidal urge to point out that the King had always thought as much, and it had been Miriel who tried to make him think otherwise. As any liar, I was amazed that the Duke could not see my subterfuge, plain as day. I was especially nervous when he added, “Someone has told him to be lenient. Not the fools on the Council. Find out for me.” I saw my opening.

“He said that the High Priest spoke to him of it, my Lord.”

“He did?” The same question could have been asked with the lift of an eyebrow, but the Duke could not seem to believe his ears.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“What did he say exactly?” the Duke demanded, as relentless as ever in the search for knowledge of his enemies. I thought back.

“That the earliest scriptures were quite populist.” I began to frown. Something was coming together, close to the surface. I tried to keep my face straight, but the Duke had not even noticed. His snort told me what he thought of the High Priest’s theology.

“Does Isra know?”

“The King thinks not. He said that the High Priest came to see him alone.”

“Huh.” The Duke looked across the room, as if he were seeing across leagues, across decades. “Is the King pious?” I frowned, trying to think of our meetings.

“He has never spoken of the Gods in our presence. He swears by them sometimes. I don’t think so.”

“Tell Miriel not to collude with that. She is not to nag him, but she should be able to disclaim that she is devout herself.”

“Yes, my Lord.” Useless to ask him what his reasons were. “Do you have any further instructions for Miriel?”

“She is to continue to eat only what Marie eats. I will take no chances with her in the confusion of a banquet. You, however, may resume your lessons. She will be with her tutors during the day, and the other maidens. It should be safe enough. As to your lessons…” He gave me a hard look. “Tell me what you have learned so far.”

“Fighting with dagger, shortsword, shield, and spear. Tumbling, wrestling, throwing. Pressure points. Spying techniques. Basic medicines.” I paused. “Poisons.”

“Ah.”

We had never spoken of the assassination attempt. The Duke had not allowed us to speak any defense of ourselves on the night that he found me in her rooms, and he had not given us an opening to speak of it since then. But from the gleam in his eyes, I knew now that he knew of it. And, unexpectedly, anger rose up so strongly that I nearly choked with it. He might know because Temar had known the signs of it, or Anna had reported our words to him, and he might know of it because he had been the one who gave us poison, himself.

“You know of it, don’t you, my Lord?” I challenged him.

“Know of what?” I clenched my fists at the useless question. If he wanted to drag this out, well, then I would say it outright.

“Someone tried to poison her.”

“Yes. And you.” His face gave away nothing. He watched me like a basilisk, his gaze half paralyzing me with fear.

“We don’t know who,” I said, suddenly awkward. In the face of his stare, I repented of my challenge.

“Indeed. Many people had cause to do so.” He was enjoying this, I realized, and so I gave up the pretense of subtlety.

“Was it you?” He smiled. My rudeness was private, and so he found it amusing. He enjoyed blunt speech, so long as it did not reflect poorly on him.

“I, too, had cause to do so.” That was no answer, and he knew that I would see it at once. He smiled as he saw me struggling to find words. “So, think on it, Catwin—“ it was terrifying that he remembered my name “—with that clever little mind of yours. You set yourself up to be my enemy. Think on it, and decide if you wish to remain as such. I want you to go back to Miriel and tell her what we have spoken of. Bid her think on it.”

“You wouldn’t ever truly forgive me,” I said, testing.

“I am not wasteful. Think on that as well, but that thought is for you alone. You may go.”

As I walked back to Miriel’s rooms, I found myself frowning. The Duke would not say if he had tried to kill her or not, and I could not decide what I thought. Was he only trying to benefit from another’s actions, making sure that Miriel feared him? Or had he thought her too unbiddable, had he seen an opportunity be rid of her and pin the crime on one of his rivals, all in one move? Had he known that she would be used against him by his enemies, and then—when he could not even control her himself—he decided that he would no longer be bothered with her?

And why would he ask not only her, but also me, if I wished to be his enemy? I wondered if that was why Temar had glowered so; he would not forgive me, but the Duke would. Beyond my own apprehension that the Duke watched me, I found a glimmer of hope. A crack between Temar and the Duke. If only we played our cards right, Miriel and I might do well from that.

Chapter 5

The next morning, my training resumed, and I approached it with as much intensity as I could muster. The first attack had been poison, by a named enemy—more intended to frighten Miriel than to take her life. It had not even been
she who had been the true target, but instead the Duke. And the second attack, for all it had been a clear attack at Miriel herself, had been poison as well. We were targets for our own sake now, and I feared that I was not prepared. Poison was one thing, but who could say what the next attempt might be: a knife in a dark hallway? A bribed palace guardsman? I insisted that Donnett dress in his full gear, with all of his weapons, and then we sparred as close as I dared to a real fight, every clash filled with the desperate fear that if I could not do this, I could not protect Miriel and myself.

“What’s burning you?” Donnett asked when we finally broke away. He wiped sweat away from his brow. “I’ve never seen ye fight like that.”

“Something happened,” I said grimly. “I need to keep training. I need to be better.”

“Aye? What happened, then?”

I looked over at his easy, honest face and felt the first glimmer of doubt. I knew this man’s life story, I knew the names of his sister’s children and the one whore he saw in the city, always the same girl. I knew what he thought of nobles and their fights, and I knew he was loyal to the Duke. All of a sudden, that felt like nothing. I wondered what he might be hiding.

He saw it. “Someone betrayed you. And now you’re wondering who you can trust.”

“Yes,” I said shortly. To avoid meeting his eyes, I began stretching.

“I’d hope you’d know better than to think I had a part it in, lad. Think on it if you don’t believe me. You know I’m not a one for sneaking around doing nobles’ dirty work for them. You shouldn’t think I’d be workin’ with whoever it was.”

I sighed. “It could have been anyone. Not just nobles. That’s the thing.”

He did not respond at once. Instead, he joined me in stretching. We ran through the stretches he had taught me, and then he watched me run through the stretches Temar had taught me. Only when I had run out of things to do, and was sitting silently on the ground, did Donnett speak again.

“Was it the little lady, too?” I nodded silently. “And somethin’ as we’d all have known about if they’d succeeded?” I nodded again. “I thought as much. Then you’re in a pickle, little one.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Think on it,” he said. “If the little lady had died, who would’ve been the first ones everyone suspected?”

“Guy de la Marque, the Dowager Queen…maybe the rebellion, if they were clever.” I did not say the Duke, I only held up a fourth finger, and Donnett, to my surprise, nodded.

“He doesn’t like surprises, that one. And I hear she gave him one. And you would’ve been part of it.” He gave me the knowing look of a parent. “Never ye mind that now, I don’t want t’know. What ye should be doing, though, is askin’ yourself—would any of them risk everyone thinkin’ it was them? Say what you will about the King’s guardian, he’s not a dim one.”

“Well, what do you mean by that, then?” But I knew what he meant, even before he said it.

“My money says the one who betrayed you is someone you wouldn’t suspect.”

We never spoke of that again, but we began to spar harder, and for longer. Donnett no longer laughed at me and told me to hit once and run away quickly. He knew that I would not have that chance in a true fight; a lady in a tight gown and silk slippers could not run away fast.

From somewhere, I was not sure where, Donnett procured a dressmaker’s dummy, and the two of us began to spar to protect it. I started next to it, or far away, but whatever the case, it was my job to keep him from reaching it. Donnett had no clever line, as Temar did:
now you’re dead, and Miriel is dead
. Whenever he tapped the mannequin with his sword, he only looked over at me, and then raised an eyebrow. If I did not understand the maneuver he had used, he would explain it. When I did understand it, we went again.

Every day, without fail, I arrived for my lessons with Roine soaked in sweat and exhausted beyond belief. At first, she complained of it. Then, seeing that I was not going to stop, she simply allotted me the same amount of work and said only that I was expected to finish it by the next day. She did not answer my questions for help, saying that I must learn to apply myself to all of my lessons.

She was very short with me in those weeks. We spoke very little—Roine feared for me, and my stubborn insistence on staying at court had turned her fear to anger. The first time I had been allowed to see her, she had held me close, embracing me and crying, and when I had at last come for lessons, she had taken my hands in hers and begged me once again to run away.

“Do you believe me now?” She had demanded. “I told you that you would be a target, and it isn’t worth it,” she said urgently. “It isn’t, Catwin. You are only a child, and no child should need to look over her shoulder as you do.”

“I have to stay,” I had replied.  “Did you not once say that fate lay heavy on me?” It was childish, to throw her words back at her, and I was sorry when she paled at once. She had no response to that, and I added, “How could I leave Miriel now?”

Irritation had flashed across Roine’s face. “Do you think she has the slightest loyalty to you?” she demanded. “Do you think she cares at all for your welfare?”

I only shrugged; I did not want to admit that I was never sure of Miriel’s friendship. When we met in the evenings, huddled together over the table and speaking in whispers, it was to share more information than we ever had together. We planned together for our meetings with the Duke now. I always told Miriel the secrets I had learned from the servants, and she told me what her fellow maidens had said and done at lessons and at dinner.

We build up our own theories of who might be making a power play in the Council. We waited, we listened, we watched to see who spoke to whom; I told Miriel which lords were at odds with each other, and she told me which of the maidens were friends, and the gossip of the ladies. We pored over histories and lineages and found the fault lines that ran, spidery, through the court, the long-buried resentments that Miriel could one day exploit, just as her uncle did now. We made no move to upset her uncle’s plans, but every day we became less powerless, less isolated and ignorant.

And yet, sometimes it was as if those days of forced seclusion had never been. Our silent camaraderie had been as a dream: not only fleeting but forgotten. Temar’s suspicion grated on me every day, and I could not refute it, only hope to wait out his anger and the Duke’s condescension. In the constant glare of the court, Miriel was given a dozen slights and insults each day, raising her temper; and she could never let it out there. And so Miriel was as quick to criticize me as she had ever been at the start, and I was quick to rise to it.

Now she had a new theme: beauty and ladylike behavior. I was wanting in both, and she was quick to remind me of it, taunting me about my britches and my daggers, reminding me that no proper girl went about without skirts, that I would never find a husband… With others, I had always been able to shake off such words, but Miriel possessed the innate ability to find the very sorest point, to twist her words so that they slid under my skin.

Soon, I found I was hotly defending myself against her taunts, and not long after that, I started hissing back insults of my own: Miriel was too short, she’d never been good with numbers, that gown made her look sallow. I was outmatched, and I knew it, but I would not back down. Since our pact of friendship, we had been either in collusion, or at each other’s throats. We fought like stable cats, the only check on our behavior being that the Duke would punish us both if he knew.

And yet, I clung to the belief that Miriel held to our alliance, as I did. We had never openly fought before, and it was almost as if we were equals now—and the moments of cooperation could not be ignored. Sometimes I wondered if we didn’t fight so much because we were each other’s only ally, the only one to whom we could show our resentment, our fear, our anger—and our talents. To do so with anyone else would be death.

And Miriel was quick to smile at me now. She had noticed when I was injured after bad bouts with Temar or Donnett, and had once sent for a balm from Roine, presenting it with a curious half-smile, as if she were still uncertain on how to give gifts; I thought of her presents of new clothes and knives, and how she always brushed away my thanks. Miriel was kind, and she had never been taught how to be—she was learning on her own. I never knew what might be behind her eyes, I could not always see when she wore her court mask and when she did not—and often, it took her hours to lower her guard. But I liked to think that Miriel had some loyalty to me.

I could not admit any of this to Roine, there were too many secrets behind it. More, I was almost ashamed to speak of it to her, whose hard eyes showed how little she thought of Miriel’s loyalty. Only months ago, I had been the one complaining of Miriel, while Roine told me not to be so hard on her. Now, in the face of Roine’s anger, I was too embarrassed by my own change of heart to disillusion her. I only shrugged, uncomfortably aware that this was the first time I was keeping a secret from her.

“I can’t leave her,” I said simply. “You of all people know that she’s in real danger. I can’t leave her.”

Roine had pleaded with me. She had cajoled, she had begged, she had even taken me by the shoulders and shaken me, and told me not to be so stubborn. In the end, she had sunk into unhappy silence and now would barely speak to me at all. I tried to lure her out of her bad humor, but to no avail.

“Did you hear the news from Ismir?” I asked her one day.

“More noblemen puffing themselves up like cocks in a stable yard?” she asked acerbically, not looking up. I suppressed a sigh.

“Duke Kasimir says that he has proof that Heddred was behind Vaclav’s death,” I said. I cast a look over her, and saw that she was shredding leaves, her hands moving delicately. “What do you think of that?” I asked her.

“I think it changes nothing,” she responded. “Kasimir wants war, he’ll say anything to get it, and enough here want it that he’ll get it, too.”

“The King wants peace,” I said, and Roine shook her head.

“He’s only a boy. He’ll fold soon enough. The best he can do is pray.”

I said nothing. Roine’s sudden turn to faith perplexed me. She had raised me with her own strict adherence to the scriptures, but all of her scorn towards the priests and their rituals. Roine had worked to heal others, to help the poor and the sick, and disdained the church with its ornaments and jewels. She prayed in her own rooms only, saying that she preferred to revere the Gods than their priests.

And yet, since we had come to the palace, she had prayed more often, and now she sometimes said to me, “I am going to pray,” and I knew she was going to the cathedrals themselves. I had once seen her kneeling alone in one of the Palace chapels, staring up at the altar, and I had crept away so that I would not disturb her in her prayer. What she found there now, I could not say.

Temar also haunted the chapels now, but I knew what he was watching for: the High Priest, and the Dowager Queen. The Duke had viewed Isra’s reliance on the High Priest’s advice only as a key to her, until I had told him of the High Priest’s thoughts on the rebellion. The Duke was now frankly at a loss, suspicious of the Dowager Queen and her advisor, wondering if it was possible that Isra plotted to unseat her own son.

There was little chance that she would be so indiscreet, and so blasphemous, as to plot in a chapel, but Temar wished to observe the comings and goings from the High Priest’s apartments and offices. Often enough, I knew, he would leave the Duke in Council meetings and creep across the palace to the royal chapel, where he would lurk quietly in the shadows and wait for what he might see.

I knew this, because I followed him; Temar no longer told me where he spent his time when he was not training me. Before, Temar would have told me about his spying as a lesson illustration, asking me where I would hide in a given room, or from where I might observe a specific event. He shared information with me, if not entirely freely, at least as between friends. Then, I had thought shyly that perhaps he was proud to have me as his protégé, and yet I had doubted that it could be so. Temar was a master of his craft, and I was little more than a street urchin: sneaky, yes, but without the same eternal watchfulness. I was growing dangerous, but Temar had been honed until everything about him was a weapon.

I had thought that I could hardly be a credit to him, and I had always striven to overcome that. Now, I could see that he had been proud, and that he had taught me well enough for me to deceive him. The truth was bitter indeed—Temar’s pride in me had made the sting of my betrayal far worse for him. It did not matter that Temar had been lying to me on the Duke’s orders, trying to limit my training in case he should need to best me; he had not truly expected that I could deceive him, outwit him.

It was Temar who must look the Duke in the face and tell him that I had learned my sneaking and my deception from the Duke’s own Shadow, and that Temar, consummate spy that he was, had not seen to the heart of what I was hiding. It was a blow to his pride that he had misjudged my character, that he had not been able to see my deception at once—but it was more than that alone: he must also accept that I, who adored him, had lied to him without a flicker. In his anger, he could not see that I was torn apart with remorse; he thought my betrayal cold blooded.