The Lady of the Storm - 2 (27 page)

Cecily tried to look bewildered. “What do you mean, uncover you? You just appeared out of the mist.”

The lad lowered his head and scowled. “Ye know, Lucy. We can stand about all night pretendin’ to be stupid. Or ye can just decide to trust me.”

“Why should I?”

He twisted his foot in a crack on the stone floor. “Why do ye think Lord Longhurst employs me? Because of me sister? Lud, ’tis the other way around. I keep me ears open and tell him what I hear, and he keeps me sister happy.”

“I see.”

“No, ye don’t. If the elven lord knew of me spying—if Owen Fletcher realized what I know of him—ha, if Lord Longhurst hisself knew what I suspect him to be a part of…”

Cecily frowned. Did Lord Longhurst realize how much the child had discovered? Should she tell him? But obviously the lord trusted the lad, or he wouldn’t allow Jimson to become so privy to his life.

A sound behind her made her turn, place her eye to the peephole in the wall of the passage, to behold a room decorated with thousands of seashells. They created mosaics on the walls, the floors, around several fountains. General Fletcher entered his bedchamber, swaying with drunkenness, the slave girl within his arms appearing just as foxed. He staggered to his bed, pulling the girl down with him, smothering her with kisses while she giggled.

A movement at the far end of the room drew Cecily’s gaze, and she watched the water from a large decorative pond surrounded by statues of sharks displaying their teeth. The water suddenly rose into the air and swirled to form a sphere of translucent liquid. The slave girl’s gaze snapped back to the general, who had lifted her in his arms and approached his magical creation.

“I will bring you pleasure like none you have ever experienced before,” he boasted.

The girl smiled at him coyly, pressed her hand against the bulge of his breeches. “I have no doubts, my dear general. I can feel—”

Her screech cut off the rest of her sentence as the general tossed her into the ball of water. It swallowed her with a thick, sucking sound.

Cecily shivered at the similarity between the way Fletcher used his magic on the girl, and the way she had used it to love Giles. And the complete utter perversion of it. Whereas she had used the currents and flow to bring Giles pleasure, Fletcher used it for his own twisted satisfaction.

The water was so clear she could see every detail of the girl’s struggle. Invisible currents tore at her clothing, ripping it from her body until she floated within the ball surrounded by naught but her thick white hair. She struggled to gain the surface, to break through the barrier of the water, but it thwarted her every effort with mad whorls of movement. Her eyes grew wild with the need to breathe, the effort to prevent herself from taking the breath that would drown her.

General Fletcher smiled as he watched her struggles, slowly removing his own clothing until he stood as naked as the girl. He had a wickedly beautiful body.

He strode toward the suspended sphere of water. “They never last long enough,” he murmured.

His hands moved with elegant precision, and the girl rocked in time with his forceful motions, her legs spreading, her mouth open in a scream of pain…

Fletcher dove in with her.

Small hands covered Cecily’s eyes. A low voice whispered in her ear. “’Tis not something a lady should see. Come away, Lucy.”

And Cecily allowed the boy to lead her down the passageway, until he turned and looked up at her. “Hush, now,” he murmured.

She stifled the odd sound that she had not realized she’d been making. Wiped away the tears she had not known she’d been crying.

And decided to trust the boy.

They had reached a branching of the passageway, and a small beam of weak sunlight and a slow trickle of water through a crack in the outer wall slanted across their path. Morning already. And she had to fit Lady Longhurst today, and start on the sacque dress designed for such a delicate silk she feared it would take hours to stitch the pleats evenly.

Cecily collapsed on the floor, suppressing a sneeze as her petticoat and skirts puffed up dust despite the humidity in the air. Jimson crouched closely beside her.

“I have a map of the palace’s secret passages,” she said.

The boy nodded, eyes wide.

“But I can’t seem to find one leading to my fath—the elven lord’s private chamber.”

“Ye don’t want to find it, lady.”

“Do you know if there is one?”

He shook his head. “I’m not barmy enough to go near his rooms. No one does, ’cept mebbe that dragon of his.”

“Kalah? Is the chamber that large, then? How would the beast manage it?”

Jimson scratched his head. “Big doors?”

Despite herself, Cecily smiled. She had yet to see the blue dragon. Should she approach the beast for help? But Mor’ded of Firehame had said he couldn’t be sure Kalah would aid her, and the thought of approaching the monster and actually speaking to it…

Ah, how she wished she’d never left her little village. To tread such dangerous paths… to see such evil that existed in the world. To have her heart broken…

But then, she would never have known Giles’s love.

And the image of a small cottage near the sea suddenly seemed like an isolated place. A lonely life.

Cecily straightened her spine. “Then I will have to find the passage myself, Jimson. Or devise another way into the Imperial Lord’s chamber. It’s very important that I find one.”

“I know I shall regret asking ye this, but, lady, why the hell do ye want to sneak into his rooms?”

Cecily swallowed a reprimand at the lad’s choice of words. The wisdom in his blue-green eyes bespoke a knowledge of the world beyond his years. She couldn’t imagine what he’d seen and heard, living in this foul place. She thought of the poor slave girl and shuddered.

“I’m going to steal…” Cecily paused. She might be making a mistake. But it would take her years to explore all of the passages within the palace walls and she could not bear the thought of living here that long. She needed his help. She would trust her instincts. “The scepter.”

He snorted a laugh. Not quite the reaction she had expected. “Ah, fiddle, yer as mad as Fletcher.”

“The general? What do you mean?”

“He talks about it to his water demons all the time.”

“Water demons?”

“The nymphs who visit him in his pool. The Imperial Lord created them with his magic, and now they pop up everywhere throughout the palace. ’Tis all the water, ye see.”

Cecily nodded, pretending that she did, although she had never spoken to one before, despite her affinity to water. Perhaps they preferred the company of men. “What does Fletcher tell them?”

“Oh, fer a time he blathered that he could wrest the scepter from the Imperial Lord and rule the world.” Jimson gave her a wry smile. “Then I’m guessin’ he tried to touch the thing, cause he quit talkin’ about it fer a time and twitched whenever he saw the scepter.”

Cecily frowned. That did not bode well for her. But she knew she held more power than General Fletcher, she
sensed
it somehow. And at least the scepter had not annihilated the general for touching it. Perhaps she might be able to try to accomplish her task without losing her life.

But either way, she had resigned herself to the consequences.

“But lately…” started Jimson.

Cecily leaned forward. Obviously the lad wasn’t used to divulging his information to anyone other than Lord Longhurst. Despite her own leap of faith in the boy, he still didn’t quite seem to trust her. “Yes?”

Jimson scrunched up his face. “Does Lord Longhurst know what yer planning?”

Cecily had yet to find a time when she could speak with the lord alone, and besides, she had doubted the wisdom of a frank discussion with him. “I’m not sure. Sometimes it’s best not to know everything. That way, if something should go wrong—”

“Ah, don’t fret yerself over his lordship. Should he or his lady be in danger, I’ll hide us all with me mist and spirit them outta the palace without anyone being the wiser.”

“Except the elven lord.”

He shrugged. “I ’spect he’ll be too busy to pay us much mind.”

“You shall help me, then?”

“I didn’t say…” Jimson rocked back on his heels. “I’ll have to ask his lordship if it will be all right for me to help ye. If he thinks it’s best, aye, I’ll find ye a way into the monster’s den.”

The boy rose to his feet and Cecily quickly did the same, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder when he started to walk away. “Jimson, please. What had Fletcher started talking about lately?”

The boy trembled beneath her touch. Surely he wasn’t frightened of her? But no, he turned and gave her a crooked grin, allowing her hand to stay on his shoulder.

“The general started down a different path of mad talk a few months ago. He said as how the Imperial Lord sensed someone with strong magic… someone who shoulda’ been sent to Elfhame years ago. And then that someone disappeared.”

Cecily held her breath. The blood in her veins actually seemed to stop flowing. “Did they know who that person might be?”

“Nay. The Imperial Lord decided it was only a bit of wild magic. But the general, he went on about finding the half-breed as if he really existed, and using him to defeat the elven lord. Stupid, eh? For why would anyone who holds the scepter need Fletcher anyway? He may have the magic of a champion but he sure don’t have the good sense to go with it.”

Cecily dropped her hand from his shoulder. Jimson sighed and started down the passageway and she followed a bit blindly, wondering if she could turn this new information to her advantage… or if she should flee the palace immediately.

When they entered the dressing room and closed the wooden panel behind them, Cecily could hear Lady Longhurst’s sweet voice calling out for Ellen. Cecily glanced down at Jimson, but he’d already disappeared in a cloud of mist, and so she went to answer the lady’s summons.

“Oh, Lucy,” said Lady Longhurst. “There you are! I don’t know where everyone has gone off to this morning.” Then she lowered her voice. “Although I have my suspicions.”

Cecily’s stomach flipped. She did not want this kind, vacuous soul involved with the business of the Rebellion. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she murmured.

“That Ellen. She’s in love, don’t you know?”

Cecily shook her head.

Lady Longhurst placed a hand over her heart. “I told her that handsome stableboy would just use her then cast her aside, but it appears she did not listen to me.”

“It is… difficult to deny one’s heart, my lady. Despite the risk of being hurt.”

“La, I suppose you are right. There was once this soldier—well now, never mind that. You shall just have to go and fetch her, Lucy, despite the impropriety of it. I shan’t be able to leave the room until she fixes my hair, and I have a most urgent meeting with Lady Sherwood.”

Cecily frowned. She had taken the steward’s advice and avoided the public rooms and castle grounds. She had ventured into the realm of the nobility only once, when the lady had forgotten her fan and Cecily knew that Lady Longhurst—being Lady Longhurst—would be distraught without it, and Ellen was nowhere to be found.

The girl had probably snuck off to be with her lover. Cecily tried not to be envious.

Cecily had managed to catch the lady just before she entered the blue withdrawing room off the main hall, and handed her the fan without Lady Longhurst even quite realizing it. She’d quickly retraced her steps but had felt the gaze of someone upon her, and turned to face the lascivious blue eyes of General Owen Fletcher.

Cecily had picked up her skirts and fled, resolving never to go beyond the bounds of the servants’ areas again.

“Perhaps you should send Jimson to fetch her,” suggested Cecily.

“Good heavens, and let the young man know of his sister’s wantonness?” Lady Longhurst shook her rather tousled-looking head. “No, my dear. This calls for the delicate touch of another woman. Go to the eastern stables, the smaller one, mind. I daresay you will find Ellen in the hayloft, sleeping off a night of passion.” She tittered. “It’s not the first time she’s been late. Let’s hope it shall not be the last.”

Lady Longhurst was a romantic. Cecily should have known.

The mirror near the door of their chambers reflected a few cobwebs in her hair, so Cecily quickly tidied herself before she left the rooms, then snatched up a hooded cloak despite the warm day. She used the servants’ entrance to reach the palace grounds, and stood for a moment within the herb garden, trying to visualize the mental map she had memorized.

Straight ahead would be the main stables. To the right, the smaller one.

Cecily pulled the hood of the cloak farther down her head to hide within the shadows, painfully reminding her of Giles. Her breath hitched but she started to walk confidently forward, choosing a path that took her a bit closer to the practice grounds, where the soldiers displayed their sword work, and gave a wider berth to the pavilions that had been spread on the lawn for an outdoor gathering of the nobility.

A strong breeze blew across the land, and Cecily clutched her hood to prevent it from flying off her head, peeking around the edges of it to stare at the wonder about her. Clusters of crystal boulders littered the grounds, waterfalls tumbling and frothing over them to pool in flower-sheltered glades. Mud hampered the fighters in the practice arena; a layer of water glistened just beneath the grass where the nobles gathered, a makeshift platform protecting silk skirts and damask shoes from damage.