Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) (21 page)

I was terrified, and, I found—to my
surprise—I was furious. . Of all the women in the world to serve, I
was certain that my luck had led me to the very worst. She was
willful, uncaring, heedless of danger, and worst of all, she was
the favored tool of the most terrifying man I knew. Any misstep she
made would be the end of both of us, if the news made it to the
Duke.

“
Catwin, you will tell me
what that was about.” Miriel was trying to be dignified. She did
not expect me to reach up and grab her by the collar of the dress,
dragging her close.

“
You idiot,” I said through
clenched teeth. “You didn’t recognize him, did you?”

“
Who?” Miriel pushed me
away.

“
Miriel…” I could feel a
hysterical laugh welling up in my chest. “That was the
King
.”

Chapter 17

I waited for the summons for two days, sick
to my stomach with fear. I said nothing to Temar, I said nothing to
Donnett—who had asked angrily why I was wool-gathering during my
lessons—and I said nothing even to Roine. There was no one that I
could trust with this. I did not even say another word to Miriel,
and neither did she say anything to me. Whatever camaraderie we
might have gained from our escapade had been lost in our determined
silence.

Finally, I knew what Temar had meant when he
said that a Shadow must know more than hand-to-hand combat. Here
was a problem that could not be solved with a quick, quiet strike.
Only with logic, with a careful play by Miriel, could this
situation be brought round to our favor. And we were truly on our
own. I could not ask Temar’s help, for admitting that we had defied
the Duke would be as good as asking to be killed.

It would have been terrifying enough if I
had been sure that we had ruined everything, but what made things
so much more confusing was my growing belief that perhaps all was
not lost. Every time I thought that, I disbelieved it. I turned the
information over and over in my head in the way that Temar had
taught me, trying first to name and discard each of my
preconceptions about the situation, and then remembering each facet
of Miriel’s discussion with the King in as much detail as I could.
Each time, I came once more to the same baffling conclusion.

In fact, when I let my mind wander through
the problem, I wondered if perhaps the meeting had been a stroke of
luck. For one thing, we alone now knew that the King might ever be
watching, dressed as a servant. That was a piece of information
that any number of spies would have paid highly for. Miriel alone
knew to watch her tongue at the maidens’ table as if the King
himself was listening.

And anyone could have seen that the King had
seemed quite charmed by Miriel. He had found her trick
delightful—not least of all, I thought, because he was employing
the same trick himself. Of all the charming, beautiful women of the
court, Miriel would now stand out, for her beauty shone even
through rags and dirt. Miriel did not need jewels in order to
glitter.

He knew now that she was kind, for he was
shrewd enough to know that while I had recognized him, she had not.
She had not belittled him, whom she thought a servant, she had
apologized for her own clumsiness and smiled at him. For a man who
was used to sycophantic service, that could be a powerful draw.

I thought of how she might have played him
at their first meeting if she had been forewarned, and I thought it
lucky that she had not known. She would have been reserved and
dignified, as she was with everyone who thought themselves her
betters. She certainly would not have turned that dazzling smile on
him. For sure, Miriel had shown herself to be adept at navigating
the court, but I thought that this meeting had been better even
than she could have engineered.

And, for the first time, I could stop
worrying over her liking for Wilhelm; she had seemed charmed by the
King, just as he had been charmed by her. She had thought that
flirting with him would be a chore, but if she had taken a true
liking to him, perhaps she would never have the urge to go against
her uncle’s will. When they worked in concert, they could be
formidable indeed—and I would be spared the Duke’s angry questions
as to why she was mooning after another boy.

Further, what other young lady could claim
to have had a private audience with the King? Not simply a few
moments of his attention—although most would have gambled anything
for a chance even at that—but a conversation completely in private,
without the watchful eyes of his mother and his guardian. It was
likely that Miriel had secured a place in his heart that, if she
was careful, would not be lost to another woman. It was, strangely,
an auspicious beginning.

I did not think, even for a moment, that the
Duke would see things the same way. The Duke had his own plans for
Miriel and the King, he would have calculated what he thought was
the best way to introduce the two of them. He had lost control of
his sister, and had vowed not to make the same mistake with Miriel;
he played a more refined game, for greater stakes, and he chose
every move deliberately. His choice to bring Miriel to court now
had been deliberate, his choice to keep her in her own rooms had
been deliberate, and from her continued avoidance of the favored
girls, I knew that he approved of that tactic.

He played a long game, and he had planned
every step of it; he would not appreciate improvisation, even were
it to be successful. The Duke had his own plans to make Miriel a
focus, irresistible, of unimpeachable reputation, practically
unattainable. When I thought on what he might do to the two of us
if he found out what had happened, I had nearly been sick with
fear. I walked now like a girl who knew that she was marked for
death.

He would summon me to
explain her absence from dinner, I knew that, and it would be
imperative that I did not betray that anything—
anything
—had happened beyond the
broken heel and the changing of her gown. My expression could not
flicker, and my posture must be easy. There must be no tremor in my
voice. Where the Duke went, sharp-eyed and sharp-eared, there was
also Temar, and he had taught me everything I knew about
deception.

The one saving grace, I thought, was that
the Duke had absolutely no reason to suspect that Miriel might have
met the King. He might suspect that she had gone to meet another
man, he might suspect that she had wearied of this endless game she
played, but there was no reason that the thought of her running
into the king, dressed in a servant’s clothes, should ever occur to
him. Even if I slipped, they might never suspect the truth.

I spent so much of my days waiting that,
when the summons arrived at last, all I could wonder was why it had
taken so long, and why I had been called alone. I tormented myself
with hope on the too-short walk to the Duke’s rooms. Perhaps the
Duke did not find a broken heel to be sufficient reason for
concern. He had much on his mind, after all. He might not care in
the slightest. Perhaps something else entirely had happened,
something that boded ill for Miriel. Was I at last to learn of a
true threat on her life? Or—I gulped—Donnett or Temar had
complained about how distracted I had been during my lessons, and
the Duke was going to yell at me to remember my duty. I left Miriel
with her governess and hurried along the hallways, slipping down
side corridors and padding up back staircases, trying to tell
myself that the summons had nothing at all to do with our dinner
excursion.

Temar met me at the door, his eyes full of
worry, but his face as impassive as I had ever seen it. I realized,
when I stepped into that silent room, that it was not Miriel’s
enemies who were the problem for her, and it was not my own
inattentiveness that was the problem for me. I slowed, not wanting
to face the Duke, but Temar ushered me forward with a hand in the
small of my back. He was not going to let me slip away, no matter
what I was in for. He nodded for me to open the door to the Duke’s
study, and followed me inside.

The room was dark but for one candle on the
Duke’s desk. His work had been pushed aside, and the Duke had gone
to the window and pushed the heavy winter drapes aside. He was
standing, silhouetted faintly against the night sky, and looking
out at the plains to the west. I wondered if he was homesick. Then
he turned to me, his eyes glittering black in the darkness, and I
forgot such irrelevant thoughts.

“
My niece has taken strange
ideas into her head,” he said carefully. His nostrils were flared,
his voice measured in the way it was only when he was upset, when
he was holding back the anger that would burn away anything in its
path. He looked to me for an answer, and so, despite my feeling
that any answer was a trap for me, I was bidden to
speak.

“
Yes, my Lord?” His eyes
narrowed, and I suppressed a sigh of irritation. Why did he bid me
speak, if he would only be upset?

“
Do not think to play the
innocent with me,” he warned.

“
I do not, my Lord,” I
answered honestly. “I know not of what you speak.” Indeed, I did
not. Strange ideas? I knew that I looked confused, and this should
have soothed him. But, for the first time I could remember, he did
not look at me as though I were his vassal, a girl he could terrify
into the truth. He looked at me as if I were a woman grown, a
person who might hold her own secrets, a person who might lie to
him for her own gain. Under his gaze, I found myself unsure which
was the truth. I started to turn my head to look for Temar, for
comfort, and then checked myself before I gave the Duke that key to
me.

And, I thought with a pang, I could not
consider myself on the same side as Temar if there were secrets
between us. I had hidden something from him, and Gods willing, it
would never come to light. That it was my choice to hide all this
did not make it easier to bear.

“
My niece has
become…unbiddable.” The Duke’s mouth curled in distaste. All at
once, I saw the resemblance between him and the Lady, my one-time
mistress. I had thought it strange, all these years, that she
should look so soft and beautiful and he look so hard and
weathered. But when his face twisted in anger, the anger of one
whose plans have been thwarted unexpectedly, I saw the kinship.
They had the same thin mouth, and the same hard blue eyes. Life had
not been easy for the Celys family.

Again, the Duke waited for me to speak, but
I said nothing. I did not know the rules of this game, and I was
not going to speak until I could see where the traps might lie.
And, I reasoned with a flash of humor, if I was a woman with
secrets, then I should behave like one. There was a long pause
while the Duke stared at me, and I stared back. Between us, Temar
watched this defiance with an expression that said I had gone
mad.

“
You understand, do you
not, that a child is bound to obey her legal guardian?” The Duke
was unamused. He drummed his fingers on the table as he waited for
me to speak.

“
I do, my Lord.”

“
And I am Miriel’s legal
guardian.”

“
Yes, my Lord.”

“
Did Miriel tell you what
transpired yesterday?”

“
No, my Lord.” I forced the
words out from between cold lips. Miriel had been quiet last night,
studying a religious text instead of dancing or singing. I had
known that something was wrong, but when I had asked—her maid being
out of the room—she had only looked at me coldly and said that she
was well, as if I was a presumptuous fool to ask.

“
I heard a tale that my
niece was missing at dinner two nights ago,” the Duke said. I
opened my mouth, unsure if I should speak, but he did not want a
response. “When I asked her why she had been gone…she lied to
me.”

In those last words, I finally understood.
The Duke had always considered Miriel suspect; she was his sister’s
daughter. Even if I did not understand why the Duke hated his
sister, even if I did not know what it was she had done to lose his
trust and inspire his disdain, I knew the vague shape of what had
transpired; he mistrusted anyone associated with her. The Duke had
separated her from her mother at a vulnerable time, knowing that
Miriel would be unsure of herself as she approached marriage. He
had thought that he might find her, if not reliable, at the very
least biddable. He had thought that he could frighten her into
disregarding her own whims.

It had never occurred to him that she would
purposefully betray him: stray, and then have the will to lie to
him about it. He had never thought that she would be clever enough,
strong-willed enough, to make her own plans. She was not a flawed,
weak-willed girl who followed her desires without a thought—it
turned out that Miriel was a girl with her own ends. In the Duke’s
anger, there was the hint of some softer emotion, as if the Duke
had reached for his sword in battle and found it broken. He was
vulnerable; he was unarmed, he was betrayed. But Miriel was not an
object, to be re-forged, she was a human who now had a streak of
disloyalty, and a streak of independence. And the Duke knew how
very difficult those would be to eradicate.

This could be my only chance to persuade the
Duke that he had been mistaken. I barely had time to think before I
launched into one of the stories I had practiced. I could only hope
that I had learned what Temar had taught me, well enough to fool
even him. I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.

“
I don’t know why she would
lie to you, my Lord.” The Duke had been looking down at his desk;
now he looked up and I had to fight to keep my face in its same
puzzled expression. “Her heel broke on the way to dinner.”
Simplicity. Breathe slowly. Ignore the narrowing eyes. Don’t think
of Temar watching. “When we were there, one of the girls said they
should dance after. So Miriel had me accompany her back to change
her clothes. We missed them going to the maids’ rooms, but we met
up with them there.” I shrugged again. “I know you would not want
her to miss dinner, my Lord. Perhaps she was worried that you would
be upset? She took a very long time to choose a new
gown.”