Shadow's End (Light & Shadow) (6 page)

“Please,” I whispered. The word was out before I could stop myself, and the men stared at me. “Please, just let me tell the messenger that I am well. We need not tell her anything else. I can tell her that any lie you wish, but please let me tell her that I am safe. That I have not been kidnapped, or killed.” The men wavered, and I saw their indecision. “Please, this is a woman who has been my protector, all my life. She saved me when I was a baby, she saved my mother, and she raised me herself. She took me in without a word of complaint. Please?”

It was Jeram, to my surprise, who broke first. “You swear she is a sympathizer?” I smiled weakly, still afraid.

“Yes, she’s been talking of the excesses of nobles and the inequalities of government since I was a little child. I just didn’t know what any of it meant until I was older.” The men looked at each other, and at last nodded.

“Go get the messenger,” the Merchant said to one of his guards, and the man went out into the hall. The Merchant looked back at me. “He said if you were here, he must see you to know that it was you. Then he would go.”

“He’ll bear no messages from you,” Jeram said. “Risky enough that she knows you’re here.” I swallowed down my anger
and nodded, reminding myself that it was Jeram’s caution that had kept court spies away from us for so long.

“Thank you.” I waited as the Guards pushed the door back open and dragged in a young man, barely a boy, really, that I recognized as one of the Palace pages. He looked at me uncertainly.

“It’s me,” I said.

“She said you had a mark,” he said, “on your right arm.”

“I do.” I pushed my sleeve up to show the scar I had gotten. I remembered it well enough: a hot iron, four years old, howling at the top of my lungs for Roine. The boy only nodded, wide-eyed, and, with a nod to Jeram and the Merchant, I pushed past him and went to go find Miriel. I could feel relief coursing through my veins, but also a new urgency—there had been a message, a proclamation. The attention of the Council had returned. We must move quickly, or we would be caught here.

Chapter 6

From that day on, Miriel was more driven than I had ever seen her. She did not dwell on her memories of betrayal, but devoted herself entirely to her work. At Court, I had seen her stay awake long into the night, struggling to keep sleep at bay as she studied theology, cards, poetry, dancing, even laughing—anything to remain the best, the wittiest, the most charming and learned. In those days, she would fall into a sleep as deep as death itself, exhausted by her constant charade.

I watched her carefully for signs of the exhaustion that had consumed her in her days at Court, but n
ow, as she spent her days shaping the future of Heddred, she hardly slept at all. She was still working each night when I fell into bed, and she woke before I did in the mornings, and shook me awake as the sun peeked over the horizon. When she had approached her betrothal with Garad she had been fearful, drained by the need to weave a fantastical illusion, but as she worked on the treaty she seemed driven by something quite beyond herself. Her eyes were shadowed, but her shoulders were unbowed, and she never failed to greet me with a smile. Her belief, that I had once wanted to shelter as a tiny spark, had become a roaring flame.

As I watched her belief guide her, I found that I began to believe, myself. It was not the burning sense of injustice that drove Jeram and his men, or the intellectual passion
in which Miriel reveled. It was quieter, softer: first, the sense I had found at the start, that I at last had the chance to do something that might be truly Good. Then, later, I started to believe that this was what I needed, to heal myself from the darkness of the Court.

I had always understoo
d Miriel’s belief, and known that she was right: nobles were no better at heart than the common-born. It was riches and books that separated the two, and no more, and I believed Jeram when he said that a commoner with an education might have as fine a mind as a noble. I had simply never been driven to right those wrongs; now, I believed that I could, and, strangely, that I wanted to do so.

I did not tell Miriel, but m
ost of all, I believed in the rebellion because it gave a purpose to the alliance she and I had made. When we had sworn loyalty to each other, we had been bound by nothing more than a common set of enemies, our fear, and worst of all, our hopes for vengeance. This was something greater entirely—she was leading the nation to a new age, and I was guarding her, so that she might be what she was fated to be. And if that belief made me question, uncomfortably, what my own fate might be, I was too busy to spend much time wondering over that.

And
even if we were both fearful, we never had a need to admit the true reason. Fear of prophecies, of lost love, was nothing to those who worked in the shadow of the scaffold. We watched, always, for the distress signal that troops were on the march, heading for the rebel stronghold—alerted, at last, to the arming of the common people. They had established an impressive network of signals, this shadowy rebellion. There were beacons and messenger birds, tradesmen and wandering priests; they dealt in whispers, and spread hope to the despairing, and caution to the boastful.

For weeks, there was nothing—so long that we began to relax, thinking that perhaps the King’s offer had come to nothing. No city-bred newcomers had arrived in the town, and even Jeram had lost the grim look in his eyes. T
hen a rider arrived at a dead gallop, gasping that he was only hours ahead of a Royal Messenger. He fell out of the saddle and was carried to the Merchant’s study as Jeram was summoned from the smithy, and we crowded around the messenger as he sipped some water and rasped out his tale: the raids on the border had escalated until the King, Gods protect him, had sent a large contingent west and fortified the Winter Castle. And that must have been Kasimir’s plan, for once the Royal Army was ensconced in the mountains, the Ismiri had rushed south, over the foothills that lay in the north of the Bone Wastes, and now they swept across the southern farmland, towards Penekket itself.

The messenger told us that as he had left the city, the King was withdrawing his family and the Council into Penekket Fortress, and his father was preparing the Royal Army to march westward, and meet the Ismiri forces head on. We gaped at this news, all of us, unable to take it in, and Miriel and I exchanged an anguished glance.
We had hoped night and day, and I knew she had prayed, that Voltur would be safe; now it was, but we could take no joy in when we knew that there were other citizens bearing the brunt of the attack.

“We have to help them,” Miriel said, breaking the silence.
I nodded, but the Merchant and Jeram looked at her, aghast.

“No,” Jeram said at once. “This is not our war.”

“Of course it is.” Miriel shook her head in confusion. “This is an invasion—the farmers whose fields are being burned, the shepherdesses whose flocks are being slaughtered, those are our brothers and sisters. We must help the Army to stand against Kasimir.” She was incredulous. Eloquent and passionate, Miriel had never had trouble persuading others to join her cause; even I, cautious to a fault, had agreed from the start. But Jeram would have none of it.

“Join the Army
?” He stared at her as if she had gone mad.

“You would not have to join it,” I offered. “Your men are trained, now, to disrupt a march. They can break the Ismiri supply chains, spoil rations, set horses free. We could have them pick off soldiers as they march—anything could give the Royal Army the advantage that tips the balance.”

“I’m not risking them for this,” he said flatly. “What have they done, that they should pay for the sins of the nobles?”

“It’s not just the nobles—“ Miriel began, but the Merchant cut her off.

“My Lady, I must agree with Jeram.” His tone was regretful, and he held up a hand to stop her protests. “You are a kind girl,” he said, “with a gentle heart. A caring, woman’s heart.” Miriel’s eyes flashed at this, but the man did not notice. “It is bitter to leave the farmers to stand alone against the Ismiri, yes. But we must safeguard our own men.”

“For
what?” Miriel cried. “What greater cause could there be than this?”

“
I must give them a fighting chance against the Royal Army.” Jeram leaned against the hearth and crossed his arms. “Let those soldiers deplete their strength against Dusan’s forces—then we may be in a position to meet them in open battle.”

“No,” Miriel said, bewildered. “Those men are not your enemies
now.”

“They could be. We will not fight them if we do not have to do so—but neither will we aid them.” He spoke as if she was a fool, as if her worry was weakness, and I felt my own anger awaken. This was not an echo of Miriel’s passion, it was the burning coil of resentment that had gone unspoken for so many weeks, here in the heart of the rebellion.

“You’re leaving your countrymen to die.” My pulse was roaring in my ears. “Families. Children. We could move quickly enough to save some of them. You would be the saviors of the nation, the Council would be beholden to you.”

“The Lords would never give us that credit.” Jeram’s face twisted. “They’d hang us as soon as look at us, and savor the peace we earned for them while we rotted in our graves.”

“Wilhelm—“ Miriel began heatedly, but she was cut off.

“Wilhelm is a King. A
King
. He is a Warlord. He is no friend to the people—and you, My Lady—“ Jeram broke off, breathing hard, and continued in a voice that reminded me eerily of the Duke. “
You
must decide whether it is the rebellion you support, or the nobles. We’ll waste no time on traitors.”

“Perhaps it would be better if we discussed this in the morning.” The Merchant was between them, placatory, but Miriel pushed past him.

“No,” she said tightly. “We end this now.”

“You don’t want that,” Jeram warned, and the Merchant put up his hands just as I reached for the dagger in my boot.

“In the morning,” he repeated. “We will make decisions in the morning. My Lady, I believe you and your servant should retire for the night. Aron will escort you.” I cast Miriel a look, but there was nothing to be done—aside from bolting, we had no choice. Reluctant to break the only outside alliance we had left, we followed his man up to our rooms, and my cheeks burned to see his smirk at our misfortune. As he closed the door behind us, I saw him smile, and my blood ran cold. I knew that smile. That was a killer’s smile.

The key turned in the lock, and I looked over to Miriel, who stood frozen with fear. She had seen his smile. She knew it as well. It was Kasimir’s smile, Gerald Conradine’s smile. It was the smile Guy de la Marque had worn during the few short weeks that Miriel was a Queen-in-waiting.
It was a smile that promised us that death stalked us, and that it would wait for its moment.

“They’re going to kill us,” Miriel said
, panic rising in her voice. I did not want to spark her fear by agreeing, but I did not have the words to contradict her. Instead, I went to the window and peered out. Men were patrolling around the house, and as I watched, a detachment of the men I had been training took up position, practicing their sword work as they faced the house. From his vantage point atop one of the nearby statue pedestals, Jeram waved and gave me a mocking bow, and I slammed the shutters closed.

I went hot, and then cold.
Think, think
. The Merchant would forbid Jeram to kill us, he would assure Jeram that we could be trusted. Jeram would, in time, agree. He knew that his men were better trained now than they would be without me. He even knew, deep down, that Miriel’s treaty offered them a better chance of survival than their suicidal siege plan—surely, he must know that. But what of the others? What of later, when Miriel’s fight with Jeram was reported to the men at the tavern? Who might decide that they were better without the noble then?

And so,
we should be ready to escape in an instant. Silently, I pointed to my spare suit, and then to Miriel. Her eyes widened, but she did not argue. She had run away in a gown before, gasping as the ribs of a corset bit into her, holding her skirts out of her way; she put no stock in vanity now. She pulled the suit on and rolled up the pants and the sleeves, looking delicate and striking, her black hair gleaming darker, truer even than my black suit, her skin standing out, creamy.

There was nothing for us to do, and so when Aron arrived to bring us our dinner, Miriel was already in bed, the covers pulled over her shoulders and her dark curls spread across her pillow. I saw Aron’s eyes flick around the room, resting on her briefly, before he shoved the food into my hands and slammed the door once again.

I wanted to laugh, or cry. Giving two imprisoned girls food. The Merchant would not know what had happened to us before, he would have no way of knowing that poisoned food had been sent to us—and that that one incident had been the what bound us together as allies. In truth, I doubted that The Merchant would ever poison us. He was a soft man, softer than he believed Miriel to be—he could not wield a knife or order a young woman’s death. Still, I laid the tray on the table, the food untouched, and went to bed myself.

It was past midnight w
hen the key turned in the lock, and I felt no rush of fear, only a calm acceptance that I had been right. I reached up, silently, and wrapped my hand around the haft of the dagger I had laid by my pillow. The door opened with barely a whisper of sound, and the figure slipped inside, shadowy. Aron. My eyes were accustomed to the dark, and I knew his walk; I had watched him out of the corner of my eye since the first day we had lived in this house.

I did not hesitate—only flipped the blade into my fingers, sat up, and threw. He gave a choked cry, and I heard Miriel wake, saw her scramble towards the window. I gestured to
her not to jump. I did not know if she saw, and I had no time to check; I was hurtling across the room to Aron’s side, wrapping my hand around the dagger where it protruded from his chest, my other arm across his windpipe.

“Who sent you? Who sent you to kill us?”

“Not—both.” His teeth were stained with blood, but he was laughing. “Just you.”

“What?”

“They said—necessary.” He gave a shudder of pain.

“Who? Who said it?” He looked over at me and smiled, terribly, and then he wrapped his fingers over mine and jerked the d
agger out of his chest. His blood flowed out over my fingers, and his head lolled back.

“Catwin!”
Miriel was at my side, her fingers twining in mine, an arm around my waist. “Catwin, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Did you hear him?” I demanded. I
could feel shock setting in: I felt that I was floating. I could feel her arm around me and nothing else. Then reality slammed down, and Miriel’s fingers and my own were slippery with blood. I held a dead man in my lap, his weight was pressing down on me. I could smell copper and death. I shoved the body off my lap, pushed away from Miriel, and was sick on the floor.

“Catwin?” Miriel reached out for my shoulder.

“That doesn’t—“ My stomach twisted, and I gasped and spit up bile. “It doesn’t get any easier.” I saw Miriel look over her shoulder at the man on the ground, then back to me. She clasped my shoulder and knelt by my side, heedless of the mess.

“Are you okay?” Her face was very c
lose, her eyes worried. “Catwin?”