Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) (8 page)

“
You just did,” I pointed
out, petty, and she sniffed.

“
Well, I won’t anymore.” I
just looked at her, and she raised her little pointed chin. “Get
out of my way.” And, while she waited for me to move, she added,
“And you’re not to come to Penekket. I order you to stay here.” She
spoke the words like an apprentice magician—as if she had reason to
think they might work, but no belief.

That was the key; I saw it in a flash. “Your
orders don’t matter at all,” I said, easily. I stayed in her path,
blocking her way down the corridor. “The Duke is the one who gives
the orders. You just obey them, like me.”

She bridled at that. “I do not!”

“
You’re going to Penekket,
aren’t you?” She stared at me in sullen silence, and I realized
that I had backed myself into a corner. Now I could not ask her
outright, for she would be only too happy to revel in her knowledge
while I was ignorant. Cursing myself for my own stupidity, I went
on the offensive. “And he won’t even tell you why. You’re just
following his orders, too scared to wonder what it is you’re
doing.”

“
I know what I’m doing!”
she shot back, her hands in fists. I crossed my arms and shot her a
knowing grin, and she leaned forward as if she would scratch my
eyes out. “I’m to go to Court.”

“
Everyone knows that,” I
pointed out, feigning boredom. I was surprised to see her draw
herself up, her spine ramrod straight. I was even more surprised at
the words that came out of her mouth.

“
I’m for the King,” she
announced.

I blinked at her. “You’re fourteen years
old,” I said blankly.

She rolled her eyes.
“Not
now
,” she
said. “Later. When I’m old enough, I’m going to make him fall in
love with me.” She was glowing with her own importance, but as she
tossed her head proudly, she realized what I had done. She
stiffened, drew in a breath, and then could find nothing to say.
Her glare was venomous.

“
Never speak to me again,”
she hissed. Vengeful, she formed her mouth into a smile. “My mother
will have you beaten for this.”

“
You’d never tell your
mother you told me,” I bluffed, genuinely scared. I had been the
victim of my own pride once more. Would I never learn? “Telling the
servants you’re for the King.”

She drew back from me. She could have told
her mother any lie, but it had not occurred to her yet; I could
only hope that it would not occur at all. She whirled and ran back
down the hallway, never sparing me a glance, and I watched her go.
I had learned more, but felt, somehow, as if I knew less than I had
before. I knew very little of the world, but I was certain that if
Miriel was betrothed to the King, someone would have mentioned
that. It seemed important. My head buzzing with thoughts, I went
off to find Roine and finish packing.

Leave-taking was a curious thing, a
strangely hollow thing. We left near dawn, so as to be at one of
the garrisons by nightfall. I helped Roine haul the last of our
furniture down to the servants’ quarters, and then ran out into the
courtyard to see the cavalcade of carriages. In the morning dark,
the courtyard was lit by guttering torches, casting long shadows
around the men who ran and yelled to each other, leading horses out
and checking weapons.

I had to dodge amongst them, avoiding curses
and horses hooves, to get to our cart. I stowed my pack in the cart
where I was to ride, amongst Roine’s books and herbs, and then
stole away, heedless of Roine’s call to stay close. I dashed across
the flagstone floor of the great hall, cutting down the side
hallways that would bring me quickest to our tower, and I pounded
up the stairs to it, taking them two at a time.

The tower room where I had lived with Roine
was now empty of everything I had known: the floor was swept bare,
even the hay and strewing herbs gone. The tables and shelves were
gone and stowed in the carts with Roine’s books and herbs. My
little cot had been moved down to the scullery for one of the
maids, and even the rag carpet that Roine had placed on the floor
between my bed and hers, so that we should not have to place our
bare feet on the cold floor, had been packed away.

I cast a final glance around the room, but
it no longer resembled the room in which I had been raised. It was
as if every memory of cozy winter nights, bedtime stories, and
Roine’s healing had been swept away with the dust and cobwebs. The
room might have been inhabited by my ghost, I thought; I could
almost see myself, sitting at one of the tables, lying on my cot. I
could see Roine, faintly, leaning over a mortar and pestle. But it
was as if they were people far away from me, centuries removed;
there was nothing to say that Catwin had been here only a week
gone.

I shook my head to clear it, then went back
down the winding steps without a backward glance. I did not look
around me at the corridors I walked through, nor up at the shadowed
rafters of the great hall. Even as I walked through it, the castle
was fading from my memory.

The cold mountain air swirled around my feet
and I shivered and hunched my shoulders as I came back into the
entryway, back to the chaos of the preparations. I had been
absorbed in my own thoughts, but when I reached the great doorway,
I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. I slid into a doorway
and lingered in the shadows.

Miriel and the Lady stood framed in the
light from the courtyard, the torchlight gilding Miriel’s black
curls, making the Lady’s hair gleam like liquid gold. The Lady bent
down, her hands on Miriel’s shoulders, and spoke urgently. What she
said was for Miriel’s ears alone, for there was no way to hear her
over the clamor of the courtyard; I could only see the profile of
Miriel’s solemn face.

As they stood together in the center of the
great doorway, the flow of servants back and forth from the caravan
parted around them like a rock in a stream. It seemed almost as if
no one saw them standing there at all.

I thought later that I was one of the only
ones who saw them taken from each other. It was the Duke who broke
through the stream of servants and took Miriel by the arm, issuing
a curt order to her. She looked at him for a moment as if she would
measure her will against his, but dropped her head back down and
dropped into a curtsy to her mother, her back straight.

At the moment of leaving, I saw the Lady
give a little gasp. She was speaking quickly, putting a hand out to
touch his arm, but he was insistent, and Miriel gave a little
half-hearted smile, a one-armed embrace before leaving as quietly
as a mute. She looked like Old Clara, I thought, the maid whose
mind had fled her, who stared at nothing and sometimes muttered to
herself; Miriel’s eyes were as blank, her manner as distracted. I
did not think she heard the words her uncle was saying in her ear
as he led her to a little pony.

She looked backwards only once, a long look
over her shoulder at her mother, standing alone in the great
doorway, even her slender height dwarfed, the bright blue of her
gown muted in the torchlight. Miriel gazed into her mother’s eyes,
and what they shared, I could not know; I thought of what it would
be like to leave Roine standing there as I began a journey, and my
throat closed. I put my head down as I fought through the crowd,
and did not answer Roine’s question as to where I had been.

Our cart lurched forward, and I took a last
look around me. On the wall, a lone figure in a black cloak raised
his hand, and I pushed myself up on the crates, balancing
precariously to wave back. I wondered if Aler was smiling, to think
of what he would always say to me: “Get down, little cat, you’ll
break your neck!” I was smiling, but the smile did not come out
quite right; I could feel tears running down my face as well. I
ducked as we went under the archway, and as the cart rolled away
down the hill, I sat back and looked up at the castle, like a
little toy, candles flickering against the pre-dawn blue.

On a clear day, we could have seen the
beauty of the mountains stretching away, and the plains, green and
warm; in the dark, there was nothing to see at all, and so we wound
down the mountainside without looking out, the mules stepping as
daintily as they could, the carters cursing the thin mountain
road.

The sky was growing pale as we reached the
village, and the townsfolk stopped their chores and turned out to
watch us as we rode through. They were neither friendly nor
unfriendly, but watched us like we were the fae folk from the
eastern fairy tales, not quite real, not quite of their world.

My blood chilled as I looked around at the
place. Since Roine had carried my infant self back up to the
castle, I had never returned to the village. And yet, I knew it
perfectly. The dream I had had, all those months ago, was still so
crystal clear that I could remember every moment of it. I could see
the houses I had trudged past in the storm. I looked up and saw
that the castle was the same in every detail: the placement of the
towers, the curve of the road.

Only when I had looked at every other detail
did I look to where I knew the hovel should be. And there I saw
only an enclosure with a few hens. The shack was gone; so
completely that it might never have been. Almost frantic at the
sudden difference, I looked about me at the hill people.

They were looking for Miriel and the Duke,
and while their eyes slid past me, I cast my gaze over them,
searching for eyes like mine, hair like mine. I remembered my
mother’s broad cheekbones and my father’s heavy brows. I saw
nothing; they all looked alike, those townsfolk, and what
differences there were, were obscured by years of grime. Still, I
looked and I wondered for the first time which of these men might
be my brothers, or my father, bowed now with age. I wondered if I
would see my mother, if she had lived beyond my birth; I wondered
if I would know her.

I could not say. I did not see the faces
from my dream in the crowd of village folk. I do not know if I have
brothers or sisters still living in the cold of the mountains. I do
not even know my mother’s name, and I have never been certain if
she knew mine—or if she gave me away without even naming me
herself. If I am honest with myself, I know that sometimes I doubt
my parents ever existed. Sometimes, I think I was a child made of
that swirling snow, borne of parents who faded into the mountains
like ghosts after my birth, never to be seen again.

The Duke would later name me a Shadow, and
after his naming, life itself wore me away to make his words true.
I have been a Shadow for years upon years now. And yet, I think
that if I were to trace back to the moment I started to fade away
from the world, it would not be when I began my training, or when I
first killed, or when I first spied upon my King. It would be the
moment that I looked around myself, in that cold mountain village,
and realized that I had no past, that I had come from nowhere. I
might never have been born and no one would ever have missed
me.

Chapter 8

Our first night on the road was desperately
cold. There were not enough travelers for any decent inns to remain
open on the mountain road, and so it would be two nights until we
reached the shelter of a warm hearth and real beds. Most of us,
even the Duke, were sleeping in tents, made of heavy canvas but
still drafty, but Miriel had been made a little room in the back of
one of the wagons, absurdly fashioned into a sort of house. It was
built well, with its own little door and steps up to it, and the
chamber was kept snug and warm with carpets and canvas draped
across the sides of it.

The Duke called for me and bid me to see
that Miriel was settled, and so I went at a run until I was out of
his sight, and then continued to the wagon with dragging feet. I
would never have dreamed of defying the Duke, but I did not want to
be Miriel’s servant any more than she wanted my service. I rapped
on the door, only a formality with so many guards about, and
slipped inside.

It was so warm in the wagon that I found
myself sweating at once, but Miriel looked chilled to her very
bones. She had always seemed at home in the palace, but outside its
strong walls, she was no longer a child of the mountains; her
father’s southern blood had a strong hold on her. She was pale as
death in her velvet-and-brocade dressing gown, very heavy and warm
looking, and she had a blanket draped around her shoulders as well,
but she looked desperately cold, and when she turned her head, I
saw eyes that were shadowed with fatigue.

I felt, unexpectedly, a wave of pity for
her. At least I had Roine to travel with, the closest thing to a
mother I had ever had. Miriel was not close to her uncle, I could
see that readily enough, and she did not even seem very close to
her own mother. As we had left the castle, she had walled herself
into her mind, and now she was all alone.

I forgot my pity when her face snapped into
a glare.

“
What are you doing
here?”

“
Your uncle the Duke
ordered me to see if you had everything you needed,” I said, hating
her once more, and hating the Duke, and hating that she could ask
me anything right now and I would be bidden to do my utmost to get
it for her. I saw that realization strike her as well, and for a
moment, as her lips curved into her mother’s smile, I wondered what
she would say. In that moment, she was all malice, exquisite and
poisonous.

Then her eyes roamed across the crowded
interior of the carriage, she shivered in the cold, and the fight
went out of her. Her cruelty bled away into the night, and she
looked down at her hands where they were clasped in her lap.