Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) (13 page)

Roine told me that the prince was a brave
warrior, that the woodcutter needed to feed his family, that it
made the story better—and finally, exasperated, that no one could
know why and that children who asked too many questions attracted
the notice of mountain sprites. That shut me up, but I thought
privately to myself that with so many omens and prophecies to warn
them off, heroes were really awfully stupid to go wandering into
dark caves.

By my second morning in the palace, I no
longer wondered why the heroes in stories disregarded warnings. I
wondered, instead, if they felt the same way I did: that the world
had gone horribly, completely wrong and the only way open to them
was to keep walking forwards. As if it was a dream and my mind was
crying out for me to stop walking, but my body kept moving of its
own volition—reaching out to the forbidden door, wandering down
into the crypts.

The world was so
topsy-turvy that there was nothing I could point to and say to
myself,
this. This is wrong.
It had begun when Temar had told me of my
purpose, and with every passing moment, my life seemed stranger and
stranger. I was reminded of the serving girl who had been plucked
out of her life and given a beautiful gown to go to the ball; I
wondered if she felt as out of place as I did.

So I did what no self-respecting hero would
do: I ran away.

“
Did he say why?” Roine
asked me. She was kneeling on the floor of her new set of rooms,
surrounded by crates of jars and packets of oilcloth. She was not
to be one of the palace healers, for there were many of those
already, but the Duke had ruled that she would put her talents to
work as our own healer.

I had thought that was odd, but Temar had
explained to me—before I ran away—that it was quite normal for a
noble family to have its own healer. Every faction had its enemies,
he explained, rich enemies who could easily bribe a healer to slip
something extra into a tincture, or who could be paid to do nothing
more than look the other way and pretend to help while someone died
of a curable disease.

Nothing of the sort had
ever been known to happen, he assured me, but no one could ever be
sure. There was always the chance. I believed him—more, I knew from
his carefully casual tone that I was certain that such a
thing
had
happened, and that I was fairly sure it had been Temar who
had done it. And that I, too, might be expected to do such a thing
someday.

I shivered at the thought and pulled my
knees up to my chest. He would be looking for me now, for my
lessons with him. I should be in Miriel’s rooms, only I had crept
away to see Roine. As an act of defiance, I thought that it was
fairly safe: I could always claim that I had gotten mixed up and
thought I should be studying with Roine today, and anyway, it would
not be difficult for Temar to find me here.

But in the meantime, I
would not have to look into his smiling face and know him for a
killer. I would not have to wonder what magic trick he would do,
like the evil sorcerers in fairy stories, to turn me into an
assassin. I had never even been able to slaughter the animals at
home. I had been good at scaring off the mountain cats who stalked
our meager herds, but I had never hit one with an arrow; I had
never wanted to. I had been raised by a
healer
, I thought desperately to
myself—I could not kill anyone.

I realized that Roine was staring at me,
waiting for an answer.

“
No. He didn’t say,” I said
tonelessly. The Duke had declared, mysteriously, that Miriel was to
have her own rooms. She was not to sleep in the maidens’ chambers,
as any girl of the great families could do, and she was not to have
a small privy chamber in the Duke’s spacious apartments. She was to
have her own set of rooms, to herself, with a maidservant. No other
family kept their daughter in such fine estate, not even Guy de la
Marque, the guardian of the King. Miriel’s seclusion was not
improper, nor was it in violation of any of the unspoken rules that
governed the Court—still, no one had ever done such a thing before,
save the Princess Anne, in her childhood.

“
Maybe he didn’t want
anyone to know about me,” I ventured.

Roine snorted. “A man like the Duke knows
better than to try to keep secrets like that in the palace,” she
said drily. “No, this is something everyone can see, but no one
could guess. There’s more to this than a whim—the Duke never does
anything without a reason.” She lined up a set of jars on a shelf,
turning each one carefully so that the label faced outwards. “So.
What has you looking so peculiar?”

Still thinking about Miriel and the Duke’s
plans, I was going to shrug my shoulders and make some excuse. Then
Roine’s question set off a set of realizations, and a wave of
anger.

“
You tell me,” I said,
leaning forward to her. At last I understood her arguments with
Temar. “You knew, didn’t you?”

Roine did not pretend to misunderstand me.
She tilted her head to the side. “Not exactly,” she said. “But I
knew it was no business I’d want you involved in. No one serves the
Duke without getting shit on their hands.” I widened my eyes at her
words. Roine had never used foul language in my presence. But Roine
had been strange since she learned that we would be coming to the
palace. Now she shrugged. Her voice was not angry; it was as if
bitterness had been worn away by time.

My own bitterness was still fresh. “He uses
us to do his dirty work, then.”

To my surprise, Roine was startled into
laughter—she gave a great crow of it and shook her head at my
sullen face. “Oh, no,” she said, amused. “He’s not afraid to do his
own. He’s done a great deal of dirty work in service to the crown.
How do you think he got his title? But there are places he can’t
go, jobs he can’t do. That’s why he has me, and Temar. That’s why
he chose you.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “And I still don’t
know exactly what it is you’re to do, so you might as well tell
me.”

I bit my lip. “I’m to be
like Temar,” I said. “I’ll be a spy and a guard like him. And…” the
word
assassin
stuck in my throat, but Roine knew what I meant. I guessed
from her stillness that she had known, she had guessed. She had
only been waiting to hear it, and hoping all the while that she was
wrong.

“
Will you?” she asked me,
and I felt tears come to my eyes at once. It was the worst question
she could have asked, for it laid bare how powerless I was now. I
had liked it better, I thought, when I was the orphan girl no one
noticed, and no one cared about. Aler had been right when he said
it was best to escape the notice of nobles.

“
I don’t have any choice,”
I said. “You know that.”

She shook her head. “The Duke’s not the only
powerful man in the world,” she advised me. “You always have a
choice in your allies.”

A knock sounded at the door and I jumped,
terrified to be listening to such words when anyone could be
listening. What if the Duke heard of this? I looked, wide-eyed, to
the door as it opened and Temar slid into the room.

“
Ah, here you are, Catwin,”
he said easily. “The Duke has summoned you and Miriel.” He held
open the door with a smile, as if he had not just caught me out at
trying to avoid him, as if he was not the most dangerous person
that I knew, and I slid down from my perch on one of the big tables
and followed him from the room, with only a glance over my shoulder
at Roine. I did not beg her to say she needed me, and that I must
stay—I no longer expected Roine to be able to shield me from the
Duke.

Roine, for her part, nodded
to Temar and gave a little wave to me. She sat amongst her herbs
and her bandages, and she smiled blandly, as if she had not just
been telling me to defy the most powerful man I knew. I wondered if
Temar knew of these thoughts Roine had. It did not occur to me to
wonder, yet, what thoughts she had that
I
did not know.

Temar said nothing as we trotted through the
hallways, back to Miriel’s rooms. He pretended that nothing had
occurred, and I, for my part, trotted along in increasingly
distraught silence, until I could stand it no longer.

“
I don’t want to do my
lessons,” I blurted out. As soon as the words were out of my mouth,
I would have had them back. If I had never said them, I thought, I
would have been able to deny those thoughts later. But Temar only
nodded, and stopped at a crossing point in the
corridors.

“
Which way?” he asked me,
testing my knowledge. He did not care in the least what I had said.
My wishes were as trivial to him as the color of Miriel’s gown, and
he would train me whether I wished it or not. I expected to feel
the wave of panic that had accompanied my realization that I was
stuck here. All I felt was sadness.

“
That way,” I said,
pointing to my left, and he nodded. We fell into the flow of
people, moving towards Miriel’s rooms, and he looked over at
me.

“
You know,” he said, his
tone still easy and conversational, “there’s an awful lot to learn.
Have you ever heard about the royal library, Catwin?” He laughed
when he saw that he had my full attention. “They say there are
books there that exist nowhere else in the world. There are
histories of countries that no longer exist. You could learn
anything you wished. Of course, you’d be killed if you set foot in
there yourself,” he added, as if it were an afterthought, and I
gave a pout at the ploy he had used. He smiled, equally amused that
it had worked, and pleased that I had seen it.

He let me walk in silence. As much as I
tried to think about my reasons for wanting to run away, about
knives and sneaking about spying, my thoughts kept drifting back to
the Royal Library. Why had I not thought of this before? I had a
feeling that it would make the small room of books at the Winter
Castle seem like nothing, just as the palace dwarfed the place
where I had grown up. There would be more books here than I could
hope to read in a lifetime, and Temar knew without having to ask
that I wanted nothing more than to dash off to the library this
moment.

Sensing that I was off my guard, Temar spoke
quietly.

“
There’s more to this than
the part you fear, Catwin. I cannot shield you from it forever, but
it will not be the whole of your life, I promise you that. I can
promise you, also, that if you learn all that I teach you, you will
live a life less violent than you think.” In front of Miriel’s
door, he turned to face me, seriously. “Be careful,” he advised me.
“Your fate is bound with Miriel’s now, and you cannot hope to
escape that. You have no idea what defiance could cost
you.”

Roine’s words had filled me with
frustration. Foolishly, I thought that she could not possibly
understand what it was to be singled out by the Duke. Also
foolishly, I did not think to question why Temar might disagree
with her. I did not wonder why he whispered to me so gravely that I
should avoid the Duke’s enmity. His words echoed my own fears so
closely that they dropped into my mind without disturbing the
peace. I only looked down and nodded, and went into the room ahead
of him.

Miriel was still being settled into her
rooms, and it was a chaos of color and scent and glittering things.
Trunks of clothing lay open, petticoats frothing out of one trunk,
underskirts gleaming in another, and yet more trunks filled with
gowns of brocades and velvets and silks. Colors abounded, and the
air was heady with the smell of lavender sachets. At the center of
it all, in her element, was Miriel.

She shone. The spiteful brat I had first
known had been replaced by the girl who rode in silent misery
through the countryside, and that girl in turn had been eclipsed
entirely by this other Miriel. This one sparkled. Her gown of deep
pink accentuated her creamy skin, her maid had brushed her hair
until each curl gleamed.

Miriel stood in the middle of the room,
hands clasped together excitedly as she directed the women to put
some gowns here, others in another room. Some of unspeakable worth
she waved away as if bored. She had a smile on her full lips, she
was reveling in this.

She scowled when she turned and saw us.

“
Ah, the crows,” she said
disdainfully, and I remembered that I was dressed all in black. I
had caught a glimpse of myself in her mirror earlier that day, and
I had thought myself striking. My skin was pale against the black
linen and leather, and my hair—freshly washed, I had never been so
clean in my life—was the color of dark honey. But I was nothing to
her.

Temar bowed, and a sideways glance at me
prompted me to echo his gesture; I had been pleased to learn that,
although I was to wear my hair long and braided like a girl, I
would not be confined to skirts, and would not be expected to
behave like a young lady. Temar had given me a brief overview of
bows, and I saw that he watched mine out of the corner of his eye.
His face was impassive as he said,

“
My Lady, his grace the
Duke requests your presence.” I saw her consider a refusal.
Whatever her mother had told her, Miriel was not keen to obey the
Duke. I saw, in the brief flicker of her lashes, that Miriel was
considering how her refusal would go.

“
Of course,” she said,
inclining her head as regally as if she had been born and bred a
princess, and not brought up alone in the country, far from the
graces of the Palace. She moved across the room as if she was
floating, and when she smiled at me, she was as sweet as poison.
“You will stay here and help the ladies unpack,” she
said.