Branded

by Clare London

  Darius backed out of the room respectfully. As he turned to go down the corridor and back to the barracks, he glanced my way. For a second he looked confused. Then he shrugged, smiled with the same insouciance as before, and left.

  “I WILL have a History written about me,” Seleste announced, a self-satisfied smile on her beautiful face. “That’s the way of it, I believe. The Royal Library is full of huge volumes that are of no use except to prop the doors open. All the dry, sad old tales of past Queens and Ladies of historical note. I can’t understand my sister Nerisa’s tolerance of such a boring place, though making her Mistress of it has kept her out of my way. She was never one of my more interesting siblings—even her display at the battle was pathetically finished almost as soon as it started. But it’s time to have a History written about Aza City as I have made it. A History about me. A tale of my glorious battle and the golden promise of my reign ahead.”

  Seleste had dismissed her Ladies and settled herself at her desk. She was on her second glass of wine, and the color had returned to her cheeks. As far as I knew, she’d never stepped foot inside the Royal Library—a particularly dull and dusty building—but I could tell when she was warming to an idea. “You’ll arrange that for me, Maen. Find someone suitably qualified to copy my words into print.”

  Or the words she’d wish to have penned, I thought wryly. I doubted Seleste would make time to sit with one of the scribes while they carefully scratched out the shapes of words they’d learned by rote from previous historical publications. Maybe I could find one who had the intelligence to be able to read and write by his own efforts.

  “I’m to be herald now?” I grimaced. “The one who unfurls the scroll and announces the illustrious royal lineage and the news of this week’s royal itinerary?”

  “No, not that. Just my facilitator, a job you do far better.” She smiled more warmly, and it was good to see. For many months now, there’d been little time between us for laughter. I’d blamed it on the all-consuming preparation for the battle, although there were other things that brought tension. After all, how could there ever be true relaxation between us? We were Queen and soldier, Mistress and servant. The history between us hung in the air like the heavy incense from the Household of Devotions’ midnight service. It was there, every day of our lives together, wherever they might overlap.

  “It’s an important role for you.” Seleste was talking again, but for a moment my attention had wandered. “Facilitator is an apt name for it, perhaps. You will, of course, be both grateful and enthusiastic to serve your Queen in whatever way she chooses.” Her announcement was very obviously an order, not discussion.

  She looked up and must have caught my startled expression. “Have you been listening to me?” she said, frowning. “I’m not talking about the History, that’s just a chore I wish you to arrange for me. My real need for you is as my agent. An infiltrator… an emissary. Whatever you wish to call it, for I can’t offer you a badge of office or one of those scrolls you mentioned. The terms of the job remain between the two of us, and only the two of us.”

  I was astonished. Did I understand her to say I’d be a spy? “I don’t think….” I paused, trying to find the appropriately respectful words. I was glad we were alone; glad I didn’t have the usual background of uncomfortable, disapproving Ladies shifting awkwardly in their soft, silk gowns. They weren’t used to men answering back to their Mistress, let alone their Queen, and let alone a…

  A man like me.

  “It’s not something I know, Mistress. I don’t think I’d satisfy you in that role. I know nothing of espionage or what you require from the Household in the matter of… information. I’d be better suited to serve you as a soldier, even the lowest rank. I can tolerate that.”

  “How charmingly naive,” she said dryly. “That I should be interested in what you can tolerate.” When I flushed, she laughed softly. “Maen, you’ll satisfy me in whatever role I choose for you. You’re too modest, and ingenuously so. You have skills and sense that extend far beyond soldiering, and you have knowledge of the Household that no one else does. You can go where no other man can. You can pass among people who’d hide if you were an official soldier of my Guard.”

  “They despise me.” I wasn’t looking for her pity, nor anyone’s, but she should know how I was treated.

  Seleste raised her eyebrows. “Exactly. And so they won’t fear your authority. You can listen to them, hear their worries and their woes, and maybe… their plots.”

  I frowned.

  Her gaze was suddenly piercing, her dark brown eyes stern. “Your Queen needs protection and reassurance. I have enemies, Maen. I’m not so foolish as to ignore the fact that people might wish me harm. But I need to know whether they’re a serious threat, and where the hostility might breed. Inside the city, or from outside.”

  “You mean the Exiles.”

  They had to be mentioned, although she was often reluctant to talk about them with me. Men and women who lived outside the city and its laws, outcasts, degenerates, and traitors—but also people who had chosen to join that band, seeking another way of life. My life had irreversibly changed since my abduction, and had remained so. I’d ceased my Devotions at that time; I’d learned of a society where men were not merely soldiers or submissive lovers; and I’d found emotions and behavior inside myself that had been both shocking and thrilling.

  And ultimately devastating.

  “They remain one of our most serious threats.” Seleste was watching me carefully. “There’s always been the rumor that the Exiles have spies within the city.”

  “Their attacks are certainly more confident now.” I’d sought news of these skirmishes with eagerness, ever since I came to her Household. What had been a band of ill-assorted, disgruntled misfits was becoming a far more cohesive, well-organized community of guerrilla fighters. “They seek supplies and support, living outside the city. They seek recognition—”

  “What they seek is to corrupt everything we do,” she snapped. “They seek to undermine, threaten, and destroy the order we have in the city. They’re jealous of the good life they themselves scorned—the life they cut themselves off from.”

  I was silent. Maybe she saw that as a challenge, for she became angrier.

  “They’re no part of Aza City, nor will they ever be! Your job is to find out what I need to keep them out, to return the trouble to them that they bring to me.”

  I met her eyes, dark and cold, with my own gaze.

  She moistened her lips and ignored my silence. “As for their spies, I have no compassion for those who ally themselves with the city’s enemies. Find out who they might be and report solely to me. I expect you to understand the importance of that. To know where your duty lies.”

  I knew that already, I thought, as I bowed and saluted.

  Far too well.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’D BEEN to the Library before, for all soldiers were offered continuing education during their training as Bronzemen, but I didn’t think I’d ever appreciated the size of it. It was a building on its own on the west side of the Royal Household, with a small office area at its entrance and then rack upon rack of papers and bound books, stacked and bundled together over four chaotic floors. The Library wasn’t used solely for books, but also for any documents and all the paraphernalia that accompanied the administration of the city. There were boxes of ceremonial ribbons and cups and discarded gifts from other Households: bottles and urns, some empty, some half-filled with dried matter or stagnant, unidentifiable potions; seals and official stamps; and even some trunks of clothing, full to the brim with the long pale gray tunics that the scribes wore, and other servants’ outfits.

  Nerisa, one of Seleste’s defeated sisters, was in charge of the facility. She was so unlike Seleste that the barracks often made crude jokes about who’d given his seed for her. She appeared to have none of the nobility or bearing of a royal daughter. She was dowdy, plain, and very introverted, characteristics that
had left her with poor Household staff and few decent soldiers. I heard she’d never outbid any Mistress at the Choosing for the best of the new Bronzemen, so she’d only ever bought the runts of the military litter. Those who’d worked in her Household also led me to believe she showed aimless judgment in her choice of staff, so she had few Ladies to attend to her. Other Households found her frustrating to do business with, and often bypassed her entirely, and she was overlooked within the city as a result. Her attendance at the battle had been very minor; her few good soldiers were defeated at the first stage. No one seemed bothered. Seleste had given her a royal position after the battle but made sure it was one that kept her far from public duties.

  When I first arrived to look around the Library, Nerisa had avoided my gaze as much as possible—including my salute to her as a Mistress—and passed me to the care of one of her secretaries. She’d then hurried back to her quarters, accompanied by a Silver Captain as her Guard. I’d heard the Lady Nerisa merited no more protection than a single soldier, and she enjoyed little more in her evenings than the pages of her own Library’s books. Like other soldiers before me, I thought this was by far the best place for her.

  This was my second visit, and I’d been unchallenged both times.

  Today, I wandered through the Library for another hour, but none of the scribes impressed me as being up to the task of coping with Seleste’s Grand History. The ground floor held desks for scribes to work at, and the Royal Household had a reasonable staff of them, but they were a quiet, dull-looking group. During my visits I’d questioned a few of them, just engaging them in general conversation about what they’d worked on in the past, but they stared back at me like shocked, fearful hares. Their replies had been monosyllabic, barely whispered. I don’t know what I’d expected. Most of them had obviously been drawn from the Remainder population, for none looked fit enough to have sought a military position, nor confident enough to have had responsibility elsewhere in the Household. They sat and transcribed the old Histories time and again, with the occasional break to pen current documents or light-hearted picture books for the Ladies’ entertainment.

  I stood in the middle of the room, ignoring the all-pervasive dust that tickled at the end of my nose, and gazed up at a sealed square trapdoor in the ceiling.

  “What’s on the upper levels?” I asked one of the more likely looking scribes, though the only thing really in his favor was that he looked awake. They had no reason to defer to me, even if I’d been dressed as a soldier, but their timid nature made it easy to persuade them. They obviously assumed I had their Mistress’s full permission to be there and to command them.

  “The older Histories,” the scribe replied. His speech was hesitant, and I think he was unsure whether to add an automatic “sir.” “No one bothers to go up there, unless we need additional research for a current volume, or we need to refer to the older illumination styles. We send the assistant boy up there occasionally.”

  I glanced around at the pale, bent heads of the scribes. There didn’t seem to be anyone who fit that description here. “I want to go up there,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why. “Where’s the ladder?”

  There was a moment of confusion while they looked for it, but then they rolled it over for me, a tall steep arrangement of rungs that they obviously used to reach the higher shelves on their own floor. It just reached to the bottom of the trapdoor, and I climbed it carefully, concerned in case my much heavier weight broke through the thin wood. A couple of them watched me with openmouthed curiosity, until a discreet cough from elsewhere in the room had them scurrying back to their posts. I wondered what joy there might be in working in such a place, but it wasn’t my place to question. I had to push a couple of times at the door to get it to move, and a shower of cobwebs fell on my head as I did, but then it was easy enough to slide it along the floor of the upper room and pull myself up after it.

  I was met with more of the same: more high shelves, more books, more pale parchments, and soft, musty air. A white sheen of dust covered everything, and I reckoned it even colored the skins of those who worked among it. I kept my mouth shut, hoping to avoid too much coughing. It definitely wasn’t my choice for a place of leisure, but I supposed it held interest for some people.

  Something moved at the corner of my sight. My head snapped around, but I couldn’t see anything specific. Was that why I’d wanted to come up? Had I heard or seen something that caught my interest? I saw scattered rats’ droppings in the corner of the room and wondered briefly about my interest. Rats and mice didn’t worry me, but it concerned me they might be destructive up here. Maybe I ought to report it to the Mistress.

  Then something moved again. This time I heard a soft, grunted expletive, and a pile of papers went tumbling down from one of the far shelving towers. I tensed, but then smiled to myself. The curse had been a Remainder one—mild and childish compared to the rich, rude imagination of the barracks. I didn’t think I was at risk from a soldier’s attack up here. “Come out,” I called firmly. “I’ve seen you, so there’s no point in hiding.”

  There was another scuffle, and a young man came inching his way out on his hands and knees from beneath a pile of spilled books. He looked up at me and glared. Maybe I’d been expecting something more timid, something apologetic, but it didn’t look like I was going to get it. It was as if I were the trespasser here. He looked younger than the scribes below, though older than a Bronzeman would be when he first joined the Household, someplace between a youth and a young man, and a thin, wiry one at that. His eyes glinted in the poor light, and his hair was the color of dull, harvested grain, heavy locks of it falling forward over his forehead.

  He moved into a cleared space in front of me and sat back on his heels. He was wearing one of the gray scribe robes, though it looked very grubby and was so overlarge on him that he’d tightened it around his waist with some string. “So,” he said, looking me up and down. He had a very clear voice, and it sounded surprisingly belligerent. He shook his head, covering us both with a fine mist—a lot of the straw hair color was just dust. “Whose soldier are you?” He drew in a deep breath and his thin chest rose up alarmingly. “You’re not one of Mistress Nerisa’s. Not that she’s got many left now, just that dour, silent, ‘no jokes on pain of bloody death’ Captain Tabot, and all he does is watch her to make sure she doesn’t fly the city and plot against the Queen, or whyever it is they think he needs to be so close to her, for the man’s on her heels most days, closer than her sandals.”

  He drew another breath, but I interrupted before he could continue. “Who are you? What are you doing up here?”

  He stared at me as if I were a madman. “I live here. I work here. What are you doing?”

  I started to laugh, then bit it off. “I don’t have to answer to you, boy. Are you the assistant who works here, fetching stuff? Why are you hiding up here?”

  For the first time, he looked abashed. “Look, he’s gone. He ran off, if you must know, right after the battle when things were in chaos and nobody kept watch. It’s typical—they probably haven’t even noticed it yet down there. They live in some strange world of their own, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the ink hasn’t addled their brains, or maybe it’s this dust, gets into places in your skin where you didn’t even know you had creases. So yes, I fetch them stuff sometimes, but they never look me in the face, and I think they find me interchangeable with him, and I will admit it’s been a fair trade for me, because I need the place to sleep. So if you want something, just let me know. I can find you anything here. I know my way around better than any of them—”

  “Stop!” His rapid talk was astonishing, and the brashness startling in such a youth. “You sleep up here? What does your Mistress say about that?”

  He stared at me again, and flushed. “Mistress Nerisa doesn’t know I’m here. I mean, she’s not my Mistress—Mistress Flora was my Mistress. I was one of her office clerks, but when the battle ended and the whole of her Household was either
being disbanded or sold off to the others, I….”

  “You ran off as well.”

  He nodded. “They’d have sent me back to the Remainder School and probably some job down the sewers or in the grain silos.” He glanced down at himself ruefully. “I have the build. I’m too skinny for soldiering, too old for the looms, but just the right build to go up and down steps, cleaning inside tunnels and pipes—”

  “But now you’re here.” I broke in again. My voice sounded harsh and his eyes widened.

  “If you’re coming to take me away, just get on with it.” He frowned fiercely at me. Did he think I didn’t recognize his gabbling speech as a cover for his fear? “A couple of months in the Detention Quarters for abandoning my Household, I know that’s to come, and maybe I won’t do so badly down there. I mean, a cell floor is as good a place to sleep as any and I can hide well when I have to, I can keep my head down. Or maybe someone’ll take me as a catamite and protect me from the worst of those creatures from the House of Armament who run the place nowadays, because I’ve heard about the things they do, just to keep themselves amused. Years of hardly any prisoners, they’re expected to go wild with delight at a selection of fresh meat, if you know what I mean, and it’s not like there aren’t plenty of us to fulfill that role since the battle. I’ve heard enough to know there’s little future for the defeated. Just look at everyone in the Mistress’s old Household in such a panic, and the new Queen, well, she’s such a mortal terror, they all say so.”