Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) (22 page)

“
Why a new gown?” The
question was sharp, he hoped to catch me unawares.

“
She said her old gown did
not match the new slippers, my Lord,” I said limpidly. We stared at
each other, and I saw that he was doubting himself at last. I
struggled to keep my expression clear: free of evasion, free of
triumph.

“
Catwin.” Temar’s voice was
unexpected. I looked over to him. “You want to protect Miriel,
don’t you?”

“
I do.” It was the only
answer I could make. The unexpected question had brought the truth
bubbling up. How could I possibly explain that when she tossed her
head at me and told me I was nothing, when she looked at me as if I
were a willing participant in the Duke’s plans, when she made no
thanks for my service, I wanted nothing more than to leave her to
her own life and let her protect herself?

But I would not see her
dead. How could I let that happen? And so:
I do
. And worry about where Temar
would take this. I had not practiced for his questions.

“
We can only protect her if
we know where she is,” Temar said. “You’re sure you’re not lying,
Catwin? The Duke would not be upset, he would be glad to know that
Miriel had been safe. You’re sure it happened just as you
said?”

All I was sure of was that the Duke had no
idea what had happened. I clung to that.

“
I’m sure.” I shook my head
as if at a loss. “Why…? Why are you worried? I was with her the
whole time, she listens when you say to be safe, she would never
have gone back unescorted. Sir, I really am doing very well at my
lessons—”

“
Do you have any idea how
many would gladly see my heir with her throat slit?” the Duke
demanded harshly. I felt my eyes widen. “Do you?”

“
I know—“ I broke off. “I
know that your family has enemies, my Lord.”

“
Don’t be dense.” He stared
at me. “If ever she wants to leave the hall again, she is to wait
until she can inform me of her attentions, and I will see to it
that she is guarded.” I stared at him, not sure what to say. He was
having me trained as her bodyguard, I was to wait on her at dinner.
If he truly thought that I would be useless against an attacker, he
would have us accompanied by guards. He would, certainly, not be
trusting me with the protection of her life. So he must know that I
would take this new order either as a lack of confidence in my
ability, or as an indication that he did not trust me or his
niece.

I was not quite stupid enough to voice those
thoughts. I bowed.

“
I will tell her so, my
Lord.”

“
I have no use for an heir
who will not do as she is told,” he told me, his eyes glittering.
“Tell her that, too. You can go.”

I left, almost giddy with relief, and walked
back to my rooms with the sense that I had only barely escaped the
fall of the axe. There, at her curious look, I dutifully told
Miriel of the Duke’s words. I had wanted to blunt them somehow, but
at her cold-eyed demand as to why I had run off when she might have
needed me, I only repeated them word for word. She might have been
carved from marble for all she reacted; she hardly seemed to hear
the words.

“
You can go,” she said, and
she turned her attention back to her book.

I stared for a moment at her beautiful
profile and tried to find the words to tell her that I had not
gladly been the bearer of this message. I wanted to tell her that I
had lied for her and the Duke was at least less sure of her
rebellion; she was no longer his outright enemy. I had meant to
tell her that I did not think she had done poorly with the
king.

It was a small thing, a few words to give a
girl who was terribly alone a small piece of comfort. I warred with
myself. She was being cold because she was in pain, and she did not
know that I had protected her from the Duke.

She looked up again. “Why are you still
here?” she asked coldly. “I told you to go. Do I need to be even
clearer? Are you a complete simpleton?”

I sketched the shallowest of bows, and then
I turned and left her to her studies.

The next morning, Temar sent a scrawled
message that he would see me after lunch. I was to study with
Donnett in the morning, instead. I made my way out of the building
and into the faint chill of a fall morning, hunching my shoulders
and squinting up at the morning light. I thought that the warren of
buildings was a cruelty. In a proper building, I would travel from
place to place inside, but in this palace, every place was
separate: our sleeping quarters, the palace proper, the armory.
Every time, I stared up at the sky and wished that I could grow
wings and fly away.

To my surprise, the Armory did not have the
usual sullen quiet of a morning—soldiers battling hangovers, men
coming in from their watch. There were so many soldiers moving
through the place that it took me fully ten minutes to make my way
from the door to the staircase into the cellars.

“
Yer late,” Donnett
grunted.

“
It’s chaos up there.” I
pointed. “What’s going on?”

“
Ye haven’t heard? With
that fancy lad training ye, and him working fer the
Duke?”

“
Donnett. What is
it?”

But before he had a chance to answer, I
turned and dashed back up the stairs, poking my head around the
door and watching the crush of men as they funneled into the armory
to be outfitted. There on armbands, on boots, on tunics, was my
answer. If I had not been so determined to get to the cellar, I
would have seen it at once.

“
Just so,” Donnett said,
when I went back down the stairs and he saw my incredulous face.
“Guy de la Marque says it’ll be war within a year, and he’s brought
his wife’s men to start drilling. Marched ‘em in without telling
anybody, and here they are. A whole army of his own—so what d’you
make of that, lad?”

Chapter 18

We waited, all of us, for the axe to fall.
In the Duke’s household, the fear of de la Marque was overlaid with
the echoes of Miriel’s struggle with the Duke. I practiced my
sparring and waited in silent misery, torn between my liege lord
and my sullen mistress. She practiced her dancing and waited in icy
silence. Donnett grumbled, and Roine said nothing. The Duke went
around with a face like thunder, Temar trailing worriedly behind
him.

The court was terrified into silence. Even
de la Marque’s supporters on the council had been unnerved to wake
one morning and find an army camped outside the city walls. What
could such a display of power mean, from a man who was already the
power behind the throne?

Those who still supported de la Marque
pointed out, reasonably, that if the man had wished to overthrow
the king, he could easily have done so before now. And it was a
poor time to make such a move unless he truly believed it to be
necessary— the unrest in the Norstrung Provinces meant that, by
rights, de la Marque should have left his men where they were, in
the event that the rebellion spread; that would be protecting his
interests. Surely, it was said, de la Marque spoke honestly when he
said that he had brought his forces to defend the realm. Perhaps he
knew of a threat that none else did.

Others asked, just as reasonably, if the
King had commanded this. It was always possible, of course: new to
council meetings after his illness, and fearing war, the Boy King
had ordered his forces displayed, as a young boy might build a wall
on a little pretend fort. He was still before his majority, but
perhaps he might have commanded it, and de la Marque acceded.

I thought of the young man with the grey
eyes and the quick mind, and guessed that he was smarter than to do
such a thing. But even those who asked the question suspected that
the answer was no—why would the King order such a thing, knowing
that it was to provoke the Ismiri? If he did, why would the council
not block it? They would be justified. And if he had done so, why
did no one else on the council know of it?

No, the only answer was that this was Guy de
la Marque, acting in concert with his wife. And then the question
was, was this a political misstep, or was it a public warning to
House Conradine, or was it something more—was it the groundwork for
a coup? The man had overstepped the bounds of a good courtier, but
why?

No one knew, and the fear of power that
swirls in every court took hold. No one would question openly
whether the protector of the throne, the King’s guardian himself,
was a traitor. There was a conspiracy of silence, where all thought
it and none said it, and people began to convince themselves that
they did not speak up, not because they were cowards, but because
it was too ridiculous a thought to voice.

Those who did not think so could only wait.
The Duke and Gerald Conradine scrupulously avoided meeting each
other’s eyes in public, for it was clear that their stars were
rising in opposition to de la Marque’s, and equally clear that the
man with the large army would not take kindly to that fact. In
spite of his own worry, Temar took me aside one day and told me to
watch the court carefully, and learn from de la Marque’s
techniques; for the Duke’s Shadow, even this was a learning
opportunity.

And then the truth came out: the rebellion
had grown violent. Henri Nilson, brother to the Earl of Mavol, had
been ambushed, kidnapped, and hung in the Earl’s own cathedral. At
the Earl’s plea, a detachment of de la Marque’s men had been sent
to the Norstrung Provinces at once. The rest had been sent to the
city, to join with the King’s forces and then march south. Too
risky, de la Marque claimed, to march any significant portion of
the Royal Army south, and leave Penekket unprotected. It invited
trouble from the Ismiri.

All true. Every fact, every rationale, could
be checked and picked over. And yet, one could not help but notice
that Guy de la Marque had acted not only without consulting the
King, but also without consulting the Council. One could not help
but notice that it would have been simpler to leave his men where
they were, and march them due south if a summons was sent by the
King; to march troops west was to provoke the Ismiri. Most of all,
one could not help but notice that Guy de la Marque was the only
noble with a strong army at his command. It was an open show of
power, calculated to remind the Council that Guy de la Marque was
the power behind the throne not only by right of law, but by right
of strength.

Guy de la Marque and his royal-bred wife,
however, had failed to consider the King’s intelligence, and his
growing stubbornness. They had neglected to consider that the King
might have his own opinions on de la Marque’s display of power, and
on the future of Heddred itself. And so the King seized the
opportunity to teach his Council a lesson. I learned of the
incident through a puzzle that Temar had set me.

“
You’re going to tell me
about the war,” he said one day, when I arrived for my lessons. He
pointed to a chair in the center of the room.

“
Which war?” I asked, as I
sat.

“
The war that’s
coming.”

“
It might not be war,” I
said, watching him for the gleam of knowledge. Instead, he was
thoughtful. This was a strange test of my knowledge, if he did not
know the answers.

“
Oh, I don’t think there’s
any avoiding it now,” Temar said, shaking his head. He paced around
me. “Too much unresolved. Bad feeling and betrayal in Ismir. In
Heddred, a land of plenty and a sickly young King. The only one
between him and the end of the Warden line is a man with Conradine
blood, and the man with the largest army in the kingdom stands to
lose his power when the King comes of age. So what do you think of
that, my little shadow in training?”

“
The King is getting
better,” I said.

He looked at me sharply. “That’s not what
they say in the halls.”

I narrowly stopped myself from swallowing,
one of the signs of deception. Temar was right. They said in the
halls that this was just like all the other times, the declarations
of the King’s health and then the inevitable decline back into
illness. But the man I had seen in the hallway was recovering,
sprightly and energetic. Death did not hang over him. I tried the
first lie that came to mind.

“
I thought he had stayed
well longer this time.” I shrugged. Temar gave me a look that said
he did not believe me, but returned to his query. He stabbed his
finger in the air.

“
Tell me what happens with
the war. Tell me who’s involved, how it begins—how it ends.” I sat
in silence for a few moments, turning the problem over in my head.
Temar was one of the few people who would sit quietly while I
thought. He liked me to take my time and answer
carefully.

“
It all hinges on what de
la Marque wants,” I said finally. “And what he can persuade the
King to do.”

“
The King is fourteen,”
Temar reminded me. He was watching me closely, and the conversation
was veering close to secrets. I worked to make myself
shrug.

“
Doesn’t that just mean he
thinks he knows everything?” Temar chuckled, and I tried not to
look too relieved. I pressed on, before the silence could grow.
“Look, the King has been sitting in on Council meetings. He would
have to be blind not to notice that the court fears de la Marque
now. Don’t you think?”

“
I might,” Temar said
silkily. “You tell me.”