Branded

by Clare London

  For few seconds he shivered, and his pupils dilated. His next breath was considerably shallower. “And then maybe the things I’ve learned here might help me get a better position when I get out, but maybe not. I know I’ll be way down the list of anyone’s choices, and I’ll just have to take what’s given to me. I can only hope my new Mistress will be merciful. Will it be your Mistress too? And I know you have your duty, this isn’t personal—”

  “Tell me your name,” I interrupted with a growl.

  I didn’t know if my threatening headache was from the thick atmosphere up here or his terrified chatter.

  “Kiel,” he said, “sir.” I was right. It was a sharp-sounding, Remainder name.

  “I’m not a soldier, Kiel,” I said. “I was once but now I’m… now I’m not. I’m not here to take you away, and to be honest, you may be of more use to me here than in the Detention Quarters.” I had some sympathy with him. Flora’s Household had been ripped apart since her disappearance, and her staff and possessions had been at the mercy of any other Households assertive enough to take them.

  Kiel’s eyes got even wider. He still bore hints of the pale immaturity of childhood, but he had a very lively, inquisitive air to him that was appealing, and his manner of speech—though wearing—showed he was intelligent. “You’re not…? You mean I can stay here?” He frowned, then shook his head. “No, you’re an important man, I can see, probably you’re just playing around with me. That’s not particularly fair, is it? And just because I’m young and physically small—though to be honest, I think most people would be, compared to you—I’d still appreciate you treating me with some respect.”

  I tried not to smile. This whole meeting was increasingly bizarre. “I’m sorry, Kiel, but maybe you have a higher opinion of me than the city does. I’m a servant, the same as you. But that’s a fair enough point about treating you with respect. And if I’m honest, I may need some help in the Library, so let’s pretend I never saw you today, all right?”

  He peered at me, then stuck out his hand. I shook it, firmly and with proper gravity. “What’s your name?” he asked. “And who’s your Mistress?” It was a traditional greeting between city dwellers.

  “My name is Maen,” I said. There was no flicker of recognition in his face. “My Mistress is Seleste.” I held out my arm so that he could see the brands there—the basic mark of my birth mother’s Household, then the formal coin symbols of the Exchequer where I’d trained as a soldier. The farther mark beside them was a plain oval with the simplistic silhouette of a female figure in its center, the servant’s brand of the Royal Household. It was based on the more elegant design that had always been used by the Queen: the beautiful border of ribbons and script, the royal woman with arms outstretched, all protecting, all encompassing—everything I’d been trained to expect from the world I lived in.

  “The Queen.” Kiel’s breath hitched. “You’re in the Queen’s own Household. After what I said about her….” His eyes got even wider, if that were possible, and his mouth formed the same curse I’d heard before.

  I smiled openly then. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard similar things said about Seleste before, and I reckoned Kiel was too refreshing and unusual a companion to be punished for it. I swung my legs back over the opening. “Don’t worry about it. Good-bye for now, but I hope to see you again. Don’t get caught too soon up here.”

  He peered at me, then grinned. “They live in their own pages, sir… Maen. I’m a shadow up here, just a creak in the floorboards, a shifting of the dust. And each night I cover the trapdoor with fresh cobwebs so it looks undisturbed.” He tilted his head to one side as I started to lower myself back out onto the ladder. “But I know your name from somewhere.”

  I tensed up, waiting perhaps for a reworking of the kitchen tales, his scorn of my reputation.

  “You helped the scribes who worked on the Queen’s speech.” His voice was just a whisper now in case anyone heard him from the floor below. “They got a mark of honor the other week on your recommendation and a promise of good tenure for as long as they’re part of the Household. I know the men concerned, like rabbits really, but they were scared that being so close to the Queen and her private business would be dangerous. But now they can get back to their scribbles in peace because you intervened on their behalf.” He stared at me, his eyes still bright and assessing as he sidled back into the dusty half-light. “That was kind of you. You’re a more important man than you think, Maen.”

  I let myself down the ladder, pulling the door closed above my head. Chairs scraped on the floor below me, and for a second I thought my conversation with Kiel had been overheard and the young man discovered. But when I reached the floor and turned around, I saw the scribes were on their feet and bowing to their Mistress, Nerisa. She held her head down as usual and twisted her hands nervously against her chain of office. Beside her were soldiers—one was a solid, plain-looking Silver Captain whom I assumed was Tabot, Mistress Nerisa’s Guard, as Kiel had described, and the other was Zander. Zander exuded confidence and charisma, and he was obviously enjoying his reputation around the Household as a hero of the battle. He had the rapt attention of almost all the scribes in the room as well as both of Mistress Nerisa’s attending young Ladies. In his ear there was a second earring, a new gift from his Mistress.

  “Maen,” he said, coldly. “The Mistress wants to see you. Now.”

  “MY SISTERS,” Seleste hissed at us. She stood at her desk, her full height only a few inches below my own, her bearing at its most regal, and her purple robe clasped at her breast by a badge, with her brand stamped into its highly polished metal. “My sisters are treacherous and disloyal. I have shown them nothing but mercy and this is how they repay me!”

  The strength of her fury was a shock. I glanced at Zander. He stood at attention beside her, a couple of Silver Captains at his shoulder. “We’ve had reports of Mistress Flora,” he said to me, his voice clipped. “She’s fled the city and taken many of the royal treasures with her.”

  “Where could she go?”

  He frowned back at me, as if irritated at having to tell me his business. “We don’t know. Yet. I have men searching the surrounding hills, and she can’t have traveled far without help. There are no settlements near to us that might shelter her.”

  I looked over at Seleste, who was staring back at me. Her eyes were dark and angry. “Do you know where she might be, Maen?”

  “No, Mistress.”

  “There are Exile settlements beyond the rocks to the east,” she persisted. “And you know that. Might she have gone there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, but she didn’t accept that answer.

  “You’ll find out,” she said, gritting her teeth in an obvious attempt to control her temper. Zander moved forward, but she waved him back, her eyes still on me. “Question every member of her staff, every cursed one of them. And my sisters too, the ones still in the city. One of them must have helped her.”

  There was a shocked gasp from one of the Silver Captains. Zander’s eyes narrowed. “Mistress, he can’t question them, they’re Mistresses themselves. He’s….” He didn’t look at me, but I could see his confusion. “He’s just a servant, not even a soldier. He’s a civilian.”

  Seleste turned slowly back to face him. I knew his confidence, and I knew his strength, but for a second it seemed as if he was tempted to lean away from her anger. “You’ll go with him, Zander, every place he goes, and make sure reports reach me regularly. But I give him my full permission to talk to anyone in this city and to question them, until he finds where Flora is.”

  “And if she’s gone to the Exiles?” My voice sounded steadier than I felt.

  Seleste frowned. She glanced over her shoulder at me, but her expression was half-hidden. “You’ll tell Zander, in that case. You will not follow.”

  “If there’s a trail, for Devotions’ sake, I must be able to follow it.”

  “If there’s a trail, Zander’s men will follow,�
� she snapped. We stepped apart from the others, our faces close. The soldiers were silent, their collective breath held, their shocked gazes fixed on us.

  “You send me to fetch like a dog. Then you hold me back on a short leash,” I said. I could feel anger rising in me; it’d been brewing for a long time. “What exactly is it you want from me? Use me well, or let me free.”

  “How dare you?” she hissed. “You’ll do as I order you! I’ll not give you that kind of freedom: the freedom to leave the city, to seek for him.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I growled.

  Zander took a step forward, but for once he seemed more stunned by our argument than protective of his Queen.

  “No!” Seleste’s face twisted into viciousness by her anger. She appeared to take no heed of anyone or anything else in the room. “You think I don’t hear you at night, Maen, still talking about him in your deepest sleep, moaning his name? That I don’t see the barely veiled look in your eyes when you climax inside me, the emotional pain, the disappointment? How long do you think I’ll tolerate the way your hand reaches out in your dreams to find a lover, yet flinches back when it touches me?”

  I stared at her in horror. “I didn’t know….” The feeling—the restlessness—was something I’d brought to the Royal Household with me. I couldn’t control it, despite knowing how much it infuriated Seleste. I’d thought it would pass.

  “You’ll never see him again! How many times have I told you this?” she cried. “You think you’ll find him with the Exiles, but I know you won’t!”

  “I don’t… know anything… about that….” My voice was hoarse.

  “No, you don’t.” There was a catch to her voice, though it was still clear and strong. “But that’s always been your hope—don’t deny it. Despite my hope, that you were grateful for the fact I saved your life and would offer you so much more with me.”

  “So much more?” I gazed at her, marveling at her astonishing, furious beauty. I felt something shudder in my chest as if a great pressure broke inside me, and my voice strengthened and grew in volume. “I’ve been nothing—I’ve had nothing—since the day of that so-called salvation! You saved an empty shell, Seleste: a man no longer a man, a man with no heart or spirit worth keeping. What victory is that?”

  “Mistress?” Zander stepped forward, his sword drawn. He looked from me to his Queen, astonished at the tension and anger between us.

  “Keep back!” Seleste cried. I was startled to see tears in her eyes. “I’ve never told you, Maen, because I thought you’d accepted your life here and forgotten such madness.”

  A strange, eerie calm replaced my fury. “What have you never told me?”

  Her mouth was twisted by her most cruel expression. “Your loyalties are suspect, and I believe they always have been. But there’s no point anymore, because he’s dead.” She watched as my body tensed, my limbs stiffened. “There was an Exile attack some months ago, and the reports said it was led by a young man.”

  “A young man.”

  She took a step backward, though I wasn’t conscious of having stepped forward. “The description of your Bronzeman fitted him well. He fought unwisely, and he fell under several of our Captains.”

  “Fell….”

  “He’s dead,” she hissed. “The boy is dead.”

  My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was flat and hard. “The body?”

  She shrugged, a flicker of wariness in her eyes. “They dragged it away with them, and I allowed it, according to Zander’s wishes. But they killed him, Maen. A soldier doesn’t mistake that.”

  I turned slowly to Zander. The look in his eyes was odd, not the hostility I’d expected to see. But neither was there any fear or indecision. “He was dying, Maen,” he said. “I saw him fall. White-blond, light-skinned, a Remainder. Scars to his face.” He looked at me as if he tried to tell me things beyond the words. He’d been there when Dax and I had returned to the city after torture, all that time ago, and he knew what had been done to my Bronzeman’s face. I looked into his eyes and knew that, despite any personal disgust he felt toward me, he spoke the truth.

  “Months ago,” I said softly. I wondered how I still managed to breathe.

  Zander was speaking behind me to Seleste. “And when we find Mistress Flora?”

  Seleste’s voice was ragged. “I will not have traitors alive to threaten me and Aza City,” she said. “Kill her.”

  I knew they were all looking at me, but I wasn’t able to speak. I expected at any moment to be struck down by Zander or even by Seleste herself for my insubordination.

  “Take him away.” Seleste’s voice was distant. “I don’t want to see him again today.” A Silver Captain took my arm, and I allowed him to move me back toward the door. I thought I could hear Zander’s voice, but the words made no sense. I didn’t know if I were being taken back to my bunk or to the Detention Quarters. I didn’t care.

  I wanted to be somewhere else; I wanted to be away from here.

  I wanted to be dead too.

  Chapter Twenty

  THERE HAD been no sightings of Flora, nor any word of her whereabouts. I’d expected as much, but I went through the motions of my role, regardless. I questioned everyone I could find: all the soldiers; all the Household staff, relocated after Flora’s defeat and disappearance; then the other sisters. It took me many days, during which time I moved around the city under Zander’s Guard, either on foot or horseback, and insisted—politely, yet firmly—that people talk to me. It was an odd scenario, and I was sure many people granted me an audience purely out of curiosity. They wanted to see more of the man who was neither soldier nor lowly servant. The man who was the subject of the scandalous rumors, the man who lived despite everything. And they talked to me too. Maybe curiosity loosened the tongues of Household officers who normally had little time to give to spurious inquiries, and of servants who had no other reason to acknowledge my authority.

  During another visit to the Royal Library, Mistress Nerisa had also answered my questions, though with some reluctance. Zander had been at my back and the Silver Captain Tabot had been at hers. We made a strange group, and it wasn’t conducive to comfortable conversation. I doubted Nerisa knew anything about Flora’s disappearance, although there was something about her that made me feel awkward. I had trouble imagining how she might take sudden flight or prove to be a dangerous threat to Seleste, but she was still an odd creature, and one who had no sympathy with my questioning her on Seleste’s behalf. She wanted me gone and made little secret of the fact, her eyes rarely meeting mine or Zander’s, and her quiet tone surprisingly sharp. Tabot never left her presence all the time we talked.

  I could see what Kiel meant about the Silver Captain. He was a quiet, stolid kind of soldier who showed very little expression. He reported to a Gold Warrior other than Zander, so neither of us knew much about him. Nerisa was obviously used to being shadowed, for when we took our leave of her, she waited for Tabot to move back to her side before she returned to her chambers. The scribes who were working in the Library relaxed visibly as their Mistress left, and turned their backs on us, expecting us to follow her out. I took a quick look around first.

  “What are you looking for?” Zander followed me behind the ground floor shelving. His voice was sharp but curious too. “Do you think there’s information about Mistress Flora here?”

  I kept my gaze on the racks of books and documents around us, resisting the urge to look up at the trapdoor. I thought I heard movement up there, and once a stifled sneeze, but it may have been my imagination. “No,” I replied. “I’ve found nothing here. I’m just double checking.”

  We made our way out of the building and stopped to breathe in some fresh air. Zander coughed, his throat obviously irritated. “That place is like being down the back of an old cupboard! The stale smell of it, that impossible dust, everything so quiet, almost like the morgue, just the scratching of the pens… do you think any of those ghostly old scribes talk at all?”

&n
bsp; “Maybe some of them.” I laughed aloud, and he was startled.

  “What’s so amusing? The scribes?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “No one. We need to move on.”

  “Where to next?” He looked at me suspiciously. “Maen, if you don’t keep me informed of what you’re doing—”

  I walked away, leaving him to catch up. “There’s only one sister left to meet with. Mistress Chloe.”

  Now it was Zander’s turn to laugh, though bitterly. “And that’ll be the end of your work.” He looked dispirited, maybe worried about Seleste’s wrath if we didn’t find her wayward sister.

  “What do you mean?” I’d never met Mistress Chloe personally, though I knew she was one of the younger sisters.

  He shrugged and looked uncomfortable, though he can’t have been worried that I would report him for disrespect. “She’s young and timid and very sweet, so her soldiers tell me. She’s helped many of them with problems in the past. She wouldn’t have dared help an enemy of Seleste. No, there’ll be no information for us there.”

  “Help with soldiers’ problems?” I was confused.

  Zander glanced around to check his soldiers couldn’t overhear us. “With medical matters. With their duties for the Ladies.” His voice dropped in volume. “For Devotions’ sake, Maen, be discreet. She’s Mistress of the House of Physic, the old one having been retired to make way for a sister of the Queen. Even before the battle, Mistress Chloe was one of the senior Ladies there and very creative with men’s medications. Or so I’ve heard.”

  I smiled, and unexpectedly, he smiled back. “Yes. You understand, I see. ‘Creative’ is the word, and there’ve been more than a few soldiers gratefully regaining normal stamina after her… help. She was a reluctant contender for Queenship, and now she’s glad to be back in her Household, a happy servant of her sister the Queen. I never heard any member of her staff complain of her as a Mistress.”