Shadowforged (Light & Shadow)

by Katson, Moira

  Something to believe in. I did not have anything to believe in. It had never occurred to me to find something to believe in. I did not even know how to believe in anything, beyond staying alive.

  I watched Miriel, as if I could learn the secret of it from her. After her melancholy, and her excitement, she had returned to her studies with fierce intensity. She sent me to the library for more books, and I had more than a few close scrapes with the Royal Guard, when I was weighed down with heavy volumes and could not have run fast enough to evade them. Miriel read the books voraciously, and I saw that she was beginning to write her own tract on the subject, hiding the pages behind books on the shelf. I asked her to tell me her suspicions, but in response I received only a mischievous smile, and the assurance that it was right in front of my face.

  “Is it Wilhelm, that you think is Jacces?” I asked her. “The Duke? Garad? Who?”

  “Oh, figure it out yourself,” she said. “The sooner you do, the sooner you can go spy on them.”

  When she was not writing or studying, she seemed to be learning all over again how to be the most enchanting and desirable of women. She practiced her dancing until the tapping of her shoes drove me to take my books and barricade myself in the bedroom. She practiced walking back and forth until I thought she would wear a path in the floor. She was learning to walk with the tiniest sway in her hips, and she now greeted everyone with an enchanting flicker of the eyes: down modestly, and then up through her lashes.

  She had been perfectly accomplished at being enchanting before, and so I was bemused at this new obsession. Garad seemed no less enchanted with her now, and almost every one of the maidens had taken to dressing their hair in curls, and wearing the colors that Miriel wore. I watched her, waiting for a clue, and one day I found the key to all of it.

  “Tighter,” Miriel said, over her shoulder. “In at the waist.”

  “My Lady is perfectly slim,” Anna panted. “The dress looks beautiful.”

  Miriel frowned, she put her hands flat on the front of the gown and pressed, looking down, and at last I understood. I gave a snort of laughter that I tried to turn into a cough, but it was too late. Miriel shot a glare at me and turned pink with embarrassment, and I saw her mouth turn down at the corners.

  In the past months, I had grown until I looked like a gangly colt, turning unexpectedly awkward, losing the balance I had so carefully cultivated. I felt as if I must train twice as hard just to keep the same control of my muscles. I was awkward in my own body, and I hated it—and, hating it, self-conscious, I had noticed only that Miriel, on the other hand, had stayed as perfectly tiny as she had been when we arrived before our twelfth birthdays. I had envied her the lack of strangeness. She did not need to go back to the Quartermaster, week after week, begging for new clothes and being frowned at.

  Now I saw that this was a problem for her as well. Being small was not a problem in itself—the Dowager Queen’s short stature had created somewhat of a fashion for tiny women. No, the problem was that Miriel continued to be as slim and shapeless as a child. Where the other girls were growing into new gowns, Miriel’s gowns fit as well as they ever had. The drop-waist gowns that were coming into fashion only accentuated Miriel’s lack of figure.

  It had been one thing to be the smartest of the girls when all of them were children. Then, a merry laugh and a brilliant smile would do to attract the notice of those seeking a bride for their son. “She’ll grow,” I had heard more than once, one father to another as they haggled over dowry. “And four children in as many years—her mother was fertile.” But now, as the other girls did grow, matching the awkward coltishness of the growing boys, Miriel remained small. A liability.

  So she worked without ceasing to be the most interesting, the wittiest, the most vivacious of the girls. She sparkled as never before, the graceful turn of her head and the cheerful peal of her laughter were copied not only by the other maidens, but by the Queen’s ladies. Miriel outshone Marie, who had faded into the background with her father’s disgrace, and she outshone Cintia, who had been so ignored for so long that she seemed almost to prefer to be overlooked.

  The Duke noticed, and one night he summoned me to his study alone. I went, wondering what strange trouble we had gotten into now. Had Anna heard more than we thought? I resolved to speak to Miriel about that, and to tell her to hide the philosophical treatise she was writing. If I got out of this alive, of course. I breathed deeply and tried to calm my nerves.

  “My Lord?” I asked as I entered, and I bowed deeply. I always tried to act with all the respect the Duke wished of me. I took a deep breath, and remembered one of the things I had learned from Miriel almost at once: clever prevarication was no better than a lie. A lie was a lie, and a lie required commitment. If I needed to lie in this meeting, I must do so freely, without hesitation. There would be no mincing words with the Duke so that he might look back and see that I had never truly lied. I just wished that I knew what this meeting was about, so that I might have had time to come up with a good lie first.

  The Duke looked up from his work with his customary indifference, and at his lack of rage, I felt a flood of relief so great that I thought I might lose my balance. Then I looked at his eyes again and wondered for a moment I wondered what it was that he saw when he looked at me, at anyone. It was one of the puzzles of our meetings.

  He did not tell me that he had a task for me, for both of us knew that I was only summoned when he wanted something from me. He did not ask how I fared, because he did not care, and he did not ask how Miriel fared, or if any crises had arisen. He assumed that I would tell him if anything important had happened. And so the Duke wasted no time with trivialities; in his presence, I became aware how many unnecessary words other people used.

  “You are to ensure that Miriel remains a virgin,” he said bluntly. He looked back to his work and made a mark on one of the documents he was reviewing. The conversation, such as it was, had finished. He expected me to go now.

  “My Lord…” I tried to find some way to phrase my question delicately. “Is there some specific…threat?”

  He cast an annoyed look at me, and then his eyes narrowed. “You tell me, Shadow. Is there? She takes more care with her appearance now. Is there a man? Is there a threat?” I stared at him mutely, thinking of the men who stopped to stare at Miriel in the hallways, of the priests who stole glances at her during services. I thought of the noblemen who put their sons in her way, and then wondered if they were too old for her themselves.

  I did not consider telling him the truth: that Miriel was worried that she was too small and, to be truthful, skinny as a boy. The Duke would have little sympathy for her plight, and only be angry to find a fault with her. So I shook my head. “Nothing specific, no, my Lord.”

  “She does not encourage any man?” he pressed me, and I almost smiled. He should know that everything about Miriel spoke of desire, spoke of subtle yearning; he had ordered it to be so. Miriel could encourage a man with nothing more than a word of greeting. At the ripple of her laughter, I saw unslaked longing in men’s eyes. Every gesture was an invitation, every word was a whispered promise.

  But the Duke’s instructions to her long ago had been followed to the letter: whatever her promise, Miriel never gave anything of herself. She stood out of reach, a veritable goddess, flesh and blood and yet as unattainable as a woman made of snow and ice; she melted out of reach of a man’s fingers, and she walked so that the hem of her gown might barely brush a man’s boots.

  “No,” I said. “She does not encourage any man. Beyond the King, of course. And she never does anything improper with him,” I hastened to add. He stared at me in silence, until I felt compelled to say something more. “So I do not think there is a threat, my Lord.”

  The Duke looked as if he did not entirely believe me. “There is always a threat,” he said. “Miriel is beautiful.” If he felt anything for his niece, be it love or pride, none of it was evident in his voice. He might have been spea
king of the weather conditions for a siege. He might have been discussing a horse.

  “Even if she were not beautiful, young men delight in seduction. And there are many who would be glad to have my heir dishonored and unfit for marriage.” The look in his eye indicated that I had best be content with this explanation, but I did not bow and withdraw. I was sifting through evidence in my head.

  “How am I to ensure this?” I asked, finally.

  “With force, if necessary.” The Duke did not seem to understand the question.

  “If you have further questions, you may ask me,” Temar said smoothly. I let him draw me out of the Duke’s study, into the public room, and then I shook my head at him.

  “I don’t understand. Why would he call me here unless he suspected her, and if he suspects her, why isn’t he angry? She really hasn’t done anything,” I assured him.

  “I know,” Temar said, so blandly that I wondered what else he knew. He saw me thinking it over, and smiled a smile with a lot of teeth. “He doesn’t suspect her,” he assured me. “But the Council has made…a suggestion.”

  I raised my eyebrows and waited, and Temar smiled. I saw the anticipation in his eyes; he wanted to tell me what he had heard. He wanted to share the information he had gleaned at keyholes. Sometimes when I saw the conspiratorial gleam in his eye, things seemed as they had always been: the two of us quick to notice the same details, able to share a joke with only the flicker of an eyebrow.

  “Someone mentioned the other day that it was not uncommon for a King to have mistresses. That it was not so uncommon for a King to marry for duty, but take his pleasure where he pleased.” I closed my eyes briefly. A political marriage, and a mistress. In one feel swoop, the King would have ruined Miriel, and would himself be free to marry another daughter of the court.

  “Was it Gerald Conradine who asked?” My voice was bitter.

  “Efan of Lapland. But you’re not far off. He has…”

  “…a daughter?” I guessed, and Temar nodded. “Again, close enough. They align themselves behind the Torstenssons, even though it was the other way around long ago—before the Conradines, Efan’s family ruled a portion of land. Without the Conradines holding the West, the old allegiance is slipping away. Could be, the King would see a chance to unite the West while he faces the east.”

  “And so I am to keep Miriel from being compromised by the King, so that she remains fit for marriage.”

  “Exactly.” Temar’s eyes gleamed. “More than that—she must be beyond even his reach. Only one thing keeps a smart man from recognizing what’s to his advantage, and that’s the chase. So you keep Miriel out of his grasp.”

  Chapter 10

  Not a few nights later, I was summoned into the Duke’s presence once more. The outcome of the last meeting gave me no comfort—coupled with the Duke’s relative kindness since our attempted murder, it added up to too many odd things. I feared that this meeting would be the end of such civilized behavior. I was tempted to meet with Temar, and demand that he tell me if I was in danger, ask what the Duke suspected.

  Then I realized that my paranoia was due in part to my deception; how obvious would such a thing be the man who had taught me everything I knew about lying? And—I must face this—I no longer trusted Temar to take my side. Every time I remembered that, I wondered if it had been worth it to use up his trust in the way we had.

  So I was on my own. I used a breathing technique that Roine taught some of her patients to use when in pain, and I felt my heart stop racing quite so quickly. At the door of the Duke’s rooms, I unclenched my hands and tried to ignore the fact that my dinner seemed about to escape. Then I squared my shoulders and went in. As the door to his guards closed the doors behind me, I bit my lip.

  “Welcome, Catwin. Please, have a seat.” The Duke waved to the chair that Miriel was now permitted to use. He was smiling at me, and clearly attempting not to terrify me by doing so; that put me on edge, even as it gave me the disrespectful urge to laugh. Given how uncomfortable the Duke looked, it must have been years since he had tried to smile like this.

  Half-fearing some sort of death trap, I walked over to the chair and sat down gingerly. No blades dropped from the ceiling, no trapdoors opened below my feet, and I exhaled as softly as I could. I looked around myself. The room seemed to be empty but for the two of us, and I wondered if Temar was hiding somewhere, watching me.

  “Temar tells me that you are progressing well in your studies,” the Duke said, with a trace of his usual brusqueness.

  “Yes, my Lord.” Certainly, my dedication to my craft had been honed by my brush with death. Temar might not speak to me with kindness any longer, but I knew that I was doing well. He could not stop taking pride in his training, and when I excelled, I marked the approving gleam in his eyes; I marked, too, the flicker of apprehension when I outmatched him in sparring. There was the dark sense between the two of us now, that any fight could be to the death. I wondered if Temar’s fighting was improving even as mine did; I saw him using the techniques on me that I had used to win against him.

  He watched me. He watched me as if I could become an open adversary, and when I saw that look, I sometimes felt that I could see farther into his soul than I ever had before. At such times, I wondered who Temar was, and where he had come from. I had studied his features, but I could not match them to anyone else I saw, even at the Palace. Someday, I thought I might venture out into the city and examine the traders and travelers to see if I could find dark eyes like Temar’s, curly black hair. I could ask that person who they were and where they were from, and I could begin to unravel the puzzle of Temar. I could have a fighting chance of knowing what lay behind his eyes, and what desperation drove him to—

  The Duke’s voice called me back.

  “You are to be commended. I had my doubts that a—well, never mind.” He heaved a breath, and I had a moment of amusement; it was taking him much effort indeed to beat around the bush. “You have acquitted yourself well.”

  “Thank you, my Lord.” The assassination attempt hung, unmentioned, in the air. I could not think what he wanted to ask me.

  “I once asked you to consider your loyalties,” the Duke said to me. He steepled his fingers together and stared piercingly at me. “It has occurred to me that, although you once hid the actions you used to do so, you have always worked in my interests. My niece is safe, and her reputation is unstained. You have done well.”

  “Thank you, my Lord.” I was growing more wary with each compliment.

  “You have also prospered from my patronage, have you not?” He gestured to my fine clothes, to the well-crafted weapons I carried. I was sure, now, that he was having me watched. He was within one quick lunge, and only one man in the world knew me well enough, and moved quickly enough himself, to stop such a thing.

  It was a dizzying thought. I could kill the Duke—

  “I have prospered, my Lord,” I said, steadying myself. He smiled again and spread his hands out.

  “And so,” he said smoothly, “what profit to us being enemies?”

  “Were we enemies, my Lord?” Always, when speaking with him, some piece of bluntness rose in me to match his own. He smiled now, as he always smiled. The fact that he found my rudeness amusing was one of his most terrifying qualities.

  “I think you know,” he said. Then he must have remembered that he was trying to be nice to me. “I was…displeased…that you had hidden knowledge from me. I was not your friend. But we are practical people, we do not need to carry grudges. You will agree that there is no reason we should be at odds with one another.”

  “Yes, my Lord.” No reason, beyond the fact that Miriel planned to destroy him one day. No reason beyond the fact that I would never trust him, and I knew from Temar that the first rule of surviving was remembering that an untrustworthy person was an enemy. That list now included Temar, and the Duke.

  “You are a clever child, Catwin. You know that I can make a good friend.”

  It
came clear in a flash: he was not trying to convince me to guide Miriel’s loyalty, he was trying to lure me away from her. He knew now that Miriel had her own ambitions. Alone, her ambition was no match for him, but she had me now, and he had seen what the two of us together might do. The only way the Duke could convince himself that he had not made a terrible mistake would be to convince himself that I was loyal to him.

  Tell me the truth, Catwin—you’ve always been good at seeing people and knowing what they’re thinking, haven’t you? Temar’s voice echoed in my head.

  Following quick on the heels of the first thought came another. I was the tool that Miriel could use to achieve her own ends, and Miriel could be the Duke’s enemy. Logic dictated one thing: if I was not the Duke’s servant, I should be destroyed. One did not arm one’s enemy. The Duke was a seasoned commander, he would know this; it was by his patronage that I had learned it.

  These thoughts went through my head in a moment; there was no room for hesitation.

  “I know it, my Lord. I did not think you could forgive my error in judgment. But if you are saying that you can…” I took a moment to stroke my fingers appreciatively over the arm of the chair. Let him think that he could buy me away from Miriel with such a sop as this.

  “It is forgiven,” he assured me.

  “Thank you, my Lord.” I added, with heartfelt honesty, “I do not want to be your enemy.” Your open enemy, your declared enemy.

  “And so?” His eyes glittered. I made a private vow that one day, I would tell him that he would have had a chance to win my loyalty if he had only asked for it.

  I shrugged, as if at a loss for words. “I will be a friend to you,” I said. “Although my friendship is not…” He raised his eyebrows. “…much to brag of, for a Duke.” He laughed in careless agreement. He did not think I knew how much I was worth to him.