Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) (9 page)

“
I don’t need anything,”
she said, with an attempt at her mother’s crisp tone. Instead of
sharply, it came out of her quietly; there was resignation, there
was the shadow of dignity. I blinked, unsure what to say, and she
turned a face to me that was white as snow. “Get out,” she said
more clearly. “And never again enter my presence without my express
permission.”

I hesitated a moment, and then bowed and
left the little room. It was an empty show, not for anyone’s
benefit other than her own. Miriel would be a fool to think I could
do anything other than obey her uncle’s wishes, and it came to me
that I did not think that she was a fool. She was a little
philosopher in the making, and she had not wanted to come to
Penekket to be a pretty decoration at the court. But when forced,
she had not stamped her foot and thrown a temper tantrum; she had
locked her emotions away and now watched the world through narrowed
eyes. I had the curious thought that she seemed to be biding her
time.

It was uncharacteristic for the child I
knew, so much the spoiled, favored child, so much the brat. I could
not understand it. I went back to the tent Roine and I shared, and
though I lay down to sleep on the hard ground, curled against
Roine’s warmth, I lay awake for a long time, staring out into the
dark.

Just before I fell asleep,
I suddenly remembered Temar’s words to Roine, all those months
ago:
Fate will pull her where it
wills.
--I waited for the comfort that the
priests had always said came from knowing one’s place in life. Fate
was guiding me, I thought sleepily.

It was not comforting in the slightest.

The journey passed in a blur, strangely, one
part dazed wonder and one part growing unease. On the Duke’s
orders, I often rode close to Miriel. I was to train myself to
follow her instinctively, so that I was always at her right
shoulder, should she need me. I bit my tongue on the question of
why Miriel should ever need me. I hated the Lady with all my heart,
but had to admit that her questions had been justified. Why pluck a
serving girl out of the dirt, train her to read and write, and then
set her to be a maid for a young noblewoman on her way to the royal
court? It was ridiculous.

And so my service was an empty gesture, with
confusion on my part and disdain on Miriel’s. I had never been a
ladies’ maid, and even if I had any knowledge of how to behave,
there was not anything for me to fetch, or anyone to whom to send a
message. There was little I could give in the way of service, and
when Miriel did want for something, she would look around herself
for her maidservant rather than ask for my help. She was unable to
countermand the Duke’s orders that I serve her, and so she did her
best to pretend that she could not see me. She took every
opportunity to demonstrate that her uncle could command my presence
at her side, but he could not forge a bond between us like he had
with Temar.

It gave me a childish pleasure to know that
my presence annoyed her, but the journey was long, and the novelty
of my spite wore off quickly. Worse, the Duke had ordered that I
learn to ride, so that I could accompany Miriel when the court
hunted, or when we traveled. I had to be close, always, not shut
away in a cart like a servant. So I had been given a horse, one the
guardsmen assured the Duke was docile, but with enough spirit to
terrify me, who preferred to have my feet on the ground.

Riding was more exhausting than anything
else I had ever done; I rode only a few hours a day, and yet I
ached more and more as the days passed. The skin of my legs was
raw, and sitting up straight was an agony. Worse, Miriel rode with
the same easy grace with which she did everything else. She sat in
the saddle like a princess, like an elfin huntress, and if she had
not been pretending not to see me, she would gladly have mocked my
incompetence. It was the schoolroom all over again, and I hated
it.

I was glad for the times when I was able to
rein my horse back and ride with Temar, for the Duke wanted me to
waste no time in my training. He did not bother to explain this to
me himself, leaving that task to Temar, who told me gravely and
formally that he would teach me tumbling and fighting techniques
when we reached the palace. I was left to puzzle out on my own why
I should need to know that.

In the meantime, confined to horses, he
taught me the things a good courtier should know: mainly, to be
able to name every face I saw and not to trust anyone. There was a
litany of names and lineages and secrets to learn, but I did not
mind—I found that I missed learning, and Temar was as good as a
library, an endless source of information on anything I could think
of to ask. The afternoon sessions were structured, but he made a
point to ride with me for an hour or so each morning before I was
summoned to wait on Miriel, and answered my chattered questions
with his easy grace.

Temar was strict as a governess—a thought
that made me giggle to myself—in his insistence that I carry myself
well, and speak clearly when I talked with him. He demanded
absolutely that I take my learning seriously, and between my love
of learning and my child’s worship of him, it was an easy burden to
do what he asked.

He used the journey to test my knowledge of
the great families and the structure of power in the country. I had
learned, and learned well, the knowledge held in the library at
Voltur, but I learned that this was old information, a basis and
nothing more. The more recent history I knew only vaguely, and
Temar hastened to give me a more thorough grounding.

I learned that Henry, the Boy King’s father,
had never been intended for the throne. He had been thrust onto the
throne when William died in battle, and he had been a poor ruler,
with no head for intrigue. I learned that his Dowager Queen, Isra,
had turned to faith in her grief, and went nowhere but that she had
the Head Priest at her side. She was a competent ruler, and
determined that her son should recover from his constant illness so
that the throne should not fall into the hands of the Conradines
once more, as the heir at present was Wilhelm, Conradine and Warden
both.

I had known but little of the throne until a
few months ago. I had not had any concept of rival houses, or
warring factions. I knew that the throne passed by lineage, and so
I had known that the ruling house had once been Conradine, and was
now Warden, but had not known how this had come to be. When Temar
described it, blandly, I knew better than to say that it did not
sound righteous, but instead sneaky.

It was my first moment as a courtier,
realizing that the truth of the thing was entirely unwelcome. I
listened to the story of how Arthur had married his brother to the
Kleist family and, with their support, swept westward across the
plains to cut the Conradines down in their beautiful city. He had
taken the throne for himself and claimed divine guidance, and if
the gods had resented his use of their name, they had kept silent
about it. The country—faced with only the women of the Conradine
line left alive on the one hand, and a man commanding two armies on
the other—had shifted its allegiance with scarcely a murmur of
complaint.

Indeed, the constant power struggle of the
court had continued unabated. The nobles who had positioned
themselves the most aggressively for the favor of the Conradines
now courted the favor of Arthur’s family, House Warden. Marriages
were made for new alliances, obscure houses who had been friends to
Arthur’s line grew to prominence: d’Orleans, de la Marque, Cessor,
Staithe.

Now I knew the history behind the marriages
I had memorized from the Duke’s history books. It was dizzying; I
had memorized the lineages well enough, but once Temar began to
tell me the details about each player, and ask me to guess at their
motivations and their actions, I could barely keep it all in my
head. This, he would not tolerate.

“
There is nothing more
important, Catwin,” he said to me seriously on the first day.
“Believe me when I tell you this. It is well enough to protect
Miriel from an assassin’s blade when the blow falls, but better by
far to know where trouble may lurk and avoid it from the start, and
advise her on her own interests. You must know who those women are
who were born to be her rivals, and warn her of them.”

“
She would never take my
advice,” I said, sulky, and Temar looked over at Miriel
thoughtfully. He watched her almost as much as the Duke did; they
both looked at Miriel as if they could wear away her very flesh
with their thoughts, and see into her soul.

“
Whether she wishes to take
your advice or not, it is your duty to be there to give it,” Temar
said finally. “Whether she wishes to have you at your side to
protect her, it is your duty to be there if she should need you. Do
you understand?”

“
No!” I burst out,
surprising even myself. “I
don’t
understand! Why me? What am I to do? No one will
tell me why I am here, and anyway, why should I be with Miriel if
she hates me, and I hate her?”

Temar did not try to argue with me. He rode
with one hand on the reins, one hand on his hip, gazing out at the
countryside while he waited for my outburst to die away. I had a
moment before he looked back at me and I gazed at his profile,
noticing that for all the ease he pretended, his jaw was tight and
his left hand gripped the reins tightly.

“
It is your duty,” he said
simply, when he looked back at me. “There is no escaping it,
Catwin.”

Why me
? The question trembled on my lips, and I knew that Temar saw
it, but I did not have the courage to voice it, and he did not
answer it. Instead, almost without volition, he looked over at the
Duke. Temar, the man who would later teach me to betray no emotion,
to be impassive always, stared after the Duke with a look of such
hatred that I was taken aback.

I could have pretended not to notice; Temar,
absorbed in his emotions, would not have thought to look at me. I
could have looked out at the fields and pretended... But I was
curious, and so I stood and waited for him to turn and see me.

He did not startle when he saw me watching
him; such reactions had been trained out of him long ago. He did
not look concerned, or frustrated at what I had seen. He looked at
me as if he would manage me. That was when I understood: none of us
mattered that much to Temar. Only the Duke.

Temar only waited for me to speak.

"You hate him," I said finally,
uncomprehending.

"Yes," Temar said simply. He did not even
try to lie.

"Why stay?" I asked, going to the main
point. "Why protect him? If you hate him? You could kill him in a
moment and be gone before anyone knew."

"On the day you understand why," he said
sadly, "you will become a Shadow."

I did not say anything. I could not think
what he might mean. To understand his hatred was to become a
Shadow—well, I had no reason to think that I would ever understand
Temar. This was clearly one of the mysteries of grown-ups. I
resolved to find some way to ask Roine about it.

“
Now,” he resumed, as if I
had not spoken at all. “There are layers to history. Older events
sink down, as if through running water to the bed of a river,
moving little.”

“
They’ve already happened,”
I muttered, still sulky. “They don’t move at all.”

“
Oh, you think you know
everything now?” Temar raised an eyebrow, neither un-amused by my
sulkiness, nor particularly charmed by it. “What if a noble were to
die, a noble who might have become the Lord Admiral of the northern
fleets, and a decade later, a serving man confessed on his deathbed
that the man died not of a fever, but of poison? What
then?”

I only stared at him, struck by this idea,
and he took the opportunity to resume.

“
Other events move above
them, changed and shifted by the groundwork. These are the rapids
at the surface of the river itself, swirling and moving quickly,
able to shift direction at a moment’s notice. This is why you must
know modern history as well as ancient history: the older events
lie deep, shaping the course of the river, but a river may be
disturbed and shift its course quickly, the currents may change
without warning to the unwary.” He looked at me for a moment, as I
thought about this, and cleared his throat so that I would remember
to sit up straight and keep my eyes forward on the road. He
watched, and he waited for my eyes to fix on something
ahead.

“
Tell me about the
Conradines,” he said at random, when he knew my attention had been
caught by a flock of birds. Temar liked to do this, startle me and
see if I could remember my knowledge.

“
The bloodline of the
Wulfrics,” I said promptly. This was a gentle question, however, a
way to pay homage to the older history I had studied, and I smiled
at him to thank him for the kindness. “Their line continues in
Wilhelm, who is Gerald’s son by Anne, and she is the king’s aunt.
Gerald was the sole surviving male heir of the Conradine line, but
by Wulfric III’s younger brother Wilfred, so he would not be of the
main line. Arthur had all of them killed.” I tried to think of
anything else I might know about their more recent history. “They
were taken from their family seat after the war,” I volunteered.
“They all live in the city now.”

Temar nodded, he knew I had no further
knowledge. “Gerald is the Duke of Everry now,” he said. “Everry is
a new title. You knew that? No? Everry has no history, it has no
land. The Conradine line remains loyal, but it has no tenants to
arm, no rents with which to pay mercenaries, no keeps in which to
wait out a siege. King Arthur was superstitious, but he was clever.
He dared not end a royal line entirely, but he bound it to his own
and he stripped it of the ability to make war. Now Anne and her son
are noble, but they have little to call their own.”