by Dawn Peers
“Do you know where your quarters are lad?”
Eden shook his head, and tried to pay attention as Ross slurred out directions. Eventually, Eden got the gist of where he had to go. He’d figure it out. There were always staff wandering the halls of Everfell, no matter what time of night it was. He’d get in the right direction and get sober help from there. He left the hall, trying to ignore the cutting jibes from his drunken family that rang in his ears.
11
Quinn was exhausted. Ross hadn’t let her go and sleep for the rest of the night, like she had thought he would do. Grainne and Yvette had been called to serve the Sevenspell retinue, so Quinn had to pick up and complete the rooms they hadn’t managed to prepare. She had just finished laying out the rooms for Lord Erran’s men. The bed linen was set on the end of each cot. There were bowls of fruit and platters of salted beef and cheeses, as well as a selection of breads, for when they finally made it to their quarters. There were two bathing tins set up, and both had the firewood underneath them stocked. She hated filling the baths. The number of trips through the halls to get the water from the hot springs was agonising on her calves. She sat on the floor in the middle of the room, getting her breath and congratulating herself on a hard job well done, especially since she had been abandoned so Yvette and Grainne could help Ross tend to Lord Shiver. They had jumped at the chance. Of course they would. It didn’t matter if Lord Shiver was married; his sons were not, and their mistresses were well kept women. Everfell was the only city currently barren for the libidinous Lord of Sevenspells. Yvette and Grainne didn’t want to be maids all of their lives, but the only thing they were doing to elevate themselves was chasing the tails of taken men.
Quinn fondled the dirty hem of her dress. It had been white, once upon a time, but had been worn by so many other girls, trailed through so much dirt and dust, and squeezed through so many drying stones that it was now a murky anonymous grey. She wore much finer clothes when she worked for Sammah. She supposed that no one would take her other personality seriously if she looked like a beggar, much like they took to laughing when they found out she was really a girl.
Quinn stood, dusting herself down, not that it would make any difference to her overall looks in the grand scheme of things, and went to leave the room. She caught sight of herself in a mirror and stopped. It was rare she came across a mirror clear enough to show a reflection, let alone have the time to pay any attention to what she saw in it. Her life was full of toil. To stop and to think frivolously was not an activity sanctioned in the arduous hierarchy belonging to Baron Sammah. Her cheeks were full, bloated and a blotchy red, and her eyes bloodshot. That was exhaustion, she supposed, though she had worked through that barrier long ago and was processing tasks by rote now. Each duty had been done hundreds of times before; doing it without concentrating now wasn’t difficult. There were dark circles under her eyes, which made them look a dirty blue-green colour, instead of their usual azure haze that Sammah claimed to admire. Her neck was thin. She twisted her face this way and that, examining herself from different angles. She didn’t eat enough—couldn’t eat enough—for this borderline gaunt little thing she appraised critically.
As she twisted and turned, she felt an emotion tugging at the edge of her temples. That was odd. She hadn’t heard anyone around, and this felt like someone was annoyed. It was frustration, perhaps tinged with anger. She opened the door a tiny bit and peered out. There was a man wandering around in the hallway. She was about to duck back into the room, when she realised he hadn’t seen her. She thought about going to see him, seeing what was troubling him so much. From the back he looked intimidating. He was tall, almost as tall as Ross and Maertn, and had a lean build. What held her back was the sword hanging from his hip. Swords meant soldiers, and the only ones that had arrived were the men from Sevenspells. When the nobles from Sevenspells stalked around the castle, she usually had to hide herself. From Shiver, especially, though his son, Rowan, was steadily gaining the same reputation, with a streak of nastiness that he hadn’t inherited from Shiver. She had accidentally sensed Shiver only once. He had looked at her as she had met briefly with Sammah before starting her evening work with Ross. Behind those eyes had been a lust that had almost knocked her off her feet. She hadn’t felt complimented by that. He hadn’t considered her beauty, or her worth a person. The lust was simple, unadulterated, and contained no restraining or qualitative features. He had considered her as an object, and had found her to be desirable, much the way she’d expect someone to assess the purchase of a fine mare for breeding.
The emotions coming from this man were strange. Normally men from the kingdom of Everfell’s southernmost city walked with a sway and a swagger. They all regarded themselves as the men that had won the war, schooled and goaded this way by their leader. Quinn didn’t know much about this, it had ended not long before she was born. All she heard were the stories, still so raw in the minds of those not a great deal older than her. Sevenspells widely considered themselves the saviours of Everfell, primarily due to the exploits of their general at the time, now their lord. Shiver knew this. Shiver knew every positive feature he possessed, and his efforts to continually enhance them only served to accentuate every single aspect of his egotistical and flawed personality.
This worried man in the hallway did not seem like a normal man of Sevenspells. For a start, she had never known one to feel so unsure of himself. Quinn did consider again going out to help him, but as she went to leave the safety of her rooms he called out to someone. Yvette was gliding through the hallways. Quinn grimaced, expecting the man’s worry to turn into an emotion she would rather not sense. Instead she saw him physically tense, and as bile flooded her mouth and her ears began to ring, she had to admit surprisingly that he was only feeling negativity towards Yvette. She hadn’t felt strong reactions of tense disapproval in this combination, and had to report it to Sammah. She shut the door and dashed to the window, leaning out and trying to find something else to focus her attention on. By the time the sickness had passed, and she ventured back out in to the corridor, both Yvette and the strange man had disappeared.
Relieved, though more than slightly curious about who that man had been, Quinn trotted back to her apartments at the other side of the castle, her tasks for the day complete. The nausea was forgotten, and the exhaustion she had felt towards the end had been replaced with an alert wakefulness, with buzzing questions rampaging around her head.
12
“You look terrible, Shiver. Are you still drunk?”
Sammah reclined in his chair exhaling smoke rings from a long draw on his pipe as the Lord of Sevenspells swayed on his feet. He was a pathetic sight, with long dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, his hair dishevelled and his white tunic blotted pink with spilled red wine.
“I’m fine, baron.” Shiver’s words were heavy. He deliberately intoned, as if he was concentrating on pronouncing each and every word correctly. Elias had just dragged Shiver out of his bed without warning. Sammah needed to let Shiver know who was really in the dominant position in their partnership.
“We’ve isolated one of your men, Shiver. Why are you trying to work a position on me?”
“Men?” Shiver staggered back a step and belched. Sammah kept his face straight, taking another long toke from his pipe, exhaling yellow smoke at the blind-drunk lord.
“One of your spies. He wasn’t what I’d call robust. Very easy to break. I hear you’re trying to position yourself against the king on revenues. Why didn’t you run this past me first?”
Frowning, Shiver tried to form a response. “I didn’t plan this, baron. It wasn’t my idea.”
“Aren’t you in control of what your men do?”
Shiver bristled through his drunken haze. “I am Sevenspells. No one moves without my consent.”
Sammah waved Elias closer into the room. “So I’ll ask you again, and this will be the last time I ask you politely. Why are you moving against the king out of our agreed po
sition?”
Sammah watched Shiver’s Adam’s apple work up and down, suddenly thinking it would have been a good idea to have Quinn in here. The cloud of alcohol though, he knew, would confuse what she felt in the room.
“What the king charges in taxes has nothing to do with our agreement. This is for my people, not for you. Not against you.”
Sammah flicked a finger up at Elias. The huge guard grabbed Shiver’s wrist, twisting the loose arm behind the lord’s back and pushing up viciously. Shiver yelled out in agony and shock as Elias pushed him down to his knees, now pulling up on the vulnerable arm to keep Shiver under control. Shiver started panting, the unexpected pain sobering him in an unexpected and unwelcome way. His eyes darted to Sammah, who was still reclined in his chair, quietly smoking from his pipe, assessing the situation.
“You must understand Shiver, that I don’t like doing this. You are my strongest ally. I hate having to teach you lessons. But I don’t trust you, and you are doing nothing to help me change my mind. We can’t push forward with our plans, if I’m occupied with keeping an eye on you all the time. So, here’s what you’re going to do.
“Call off your men. I’ve already got rid of one of them. I want the rest of them out of the city by sundown tonight. I don’t care what the king is taxing you. Think of the wider work here, Shiver. It’s not going to matter in the future, the little extra the king takes from you here and now. You’ll get it all back and more. You just need to start falling in line. If you can’t follow basic orders, then I will need to replace you with someone more manageable. There are others that think the same as us, Shiver. Don’t think you’re the only one I can lean on to get this done. I’ve heard pain gives you great clarity, Lord Shiver. Am I clear enough?”
“Yes! Please, baron, it wasn’t an aggressive move.”
“Maybe not Shiver, but this is. I don’t care what you’ve achieved for this country. I’m the one in charge in Everfell. You’ll come back here tonight, and I’ll ask you the same questions again. And Shiver?” Elias yanked Shiver’s head up by its hair, so he was forced to look into Sammah’s malevolent eyes. “I’ll know if you’re telling me the truth, Shiver. If you defy me, if you lie, I suggest you make arrangements to take your eldest son somewhere safe.”
Elias released Shiver’s hair and arm. The lord collapsed forward, gasping and muttering. Unwanted tears littered his eyes, but he blinked them away. He scrambled to his feet, trying to sketch a bow to Sammah, but staggering forward instead nearly falling into the baron’s lap. “Get him out of here. Take him down to the bathing rooms and get him cleaned up. He looks more like a drunk stable boy than a lord.”
Sammah recoiled in disgust as Elias grabbed Shiver by the back of the tunic, handling him out of the room. The door slammed behind them both as Sammah relaxed back in his chair. He reached for his pipe again, sighing as another deep lungful of smoke drifted from between his parted lips. Sammah extinguished the pipe. The sky was starting to lighten, though the sun hadn’t crested the horizon yet. Time for a few hours of rest. The first court meeting was later, and he would need to be alert. If he allies were trying to flank him, he was going to need to ask a lot of searching questions over the next couple of days.
13
Sammah listened with interest throughout breakfast as Quinn chattered away about the man she had seen in the corridor, and the strange mixture of emotions she had felt pouring from him. Sammah was curious, too. Not many young men would turn away the affections of Yvette in the dead of the night, under the assumption affections were offered. The man had been wandering around in an area of the castle reserved only for the nobility. As Sevenspells were the only retinue to arrive so far for the meeting, it would make the man either Shiver himself, Harn, or one of Shiver’s sons. Given the state Shiver had been in earlier this morning, there was little chance it had been the lord himself, and Harn was always by his lord’s side, when he was about the castle on his standard duties. That only left Rowan, River, or Eden. Rowan had most likely stayed with his father, trying to learn the haphazard way that Sevenspells men approached court matters. Of River and Eden, Sammah didn’t know enough to judge, though, with Eden becoming captain of the guard, he might have taken the higher ground, trying to show responsibility in the face of his father’s baccinal tastes.
Regardless of which son it had been, Sammah was reasonably sure from his own research and notes on empathic powers that Quinn had sensed near to pure disgust from this man. That he had reacted so badly spoke volumes. Perhaps Sammah had more chance of getting reasonable cooperation from one of Shiver’s sons, rather than struggling to keep the lord himself under control at the end of a tight leash.
Sammah had heard this morning from Ross that Quinn had taken up the work of two of his girls last night, so they could pursue Shiver under the guise of working. He had rewarded her with the day off from her duties to him. At the end of breakfast, the young girl had retreated to her rooms, her dark eyes showing exhausted gratitude. She was obedient. Quiet obedience was one of Sammah’s favourite traits in a child.
Sammah poured himself another glass of water as Neyv cleared his table. She was a quiet little girl, much like Quinn had been in her early teens. He wasn’t sure what her talents were yet, but he knew there was something waiting to come out. Whatever she was capable of, she remained quiet and servile, overwhelmingly thankful that Sammah had saved her from her suddenly vulnerable status as an outcast and an orphan on the streets of Daggerdale. Neyv didn’t meet his eyes, and he still had Sirah holding most of her lessons, dictating most of her tasks. The girl didn’t seem to trust men very much. Sammah had already explored the possibilities of this being behind her abilities, but he couldn’t match anything to the girl. Perhaps she just wasn’t very trusting. Some of the young gifted were like that because they felt fundamentally different to those around them—again much like Quinn—though she felt it more keenly with her empathic abilities. Sammah saw the way that Quinn looked at other people and, more often, the way she regarded him. Quinn was only loyal to Sammah because he had saved her, and she could not sense him. When she had been young, he had been a calm and solid stone in the chaos around her, shielding her from the evils of the world.
Quinn was getting older though, and if not wiser, she was definitely more suspicious of those around her. Sammah knew that one day those suspicions would begin to include him, as she became used to reading only what she needed, to gauge the thoughts and feelings of those around her. He needed a plan in place for when that day came, for how he would deal with the most important of his charges. He needed Quinn, and Sammah’s advantage was that she just didn’t know how much.
Dabbing at the side of his mouth with a crisp white cloth, Sammah stood slowly from the table. Shiver was already in residence, but the Lord of Sevenspells was only one piece in the complex game of chess Sammah was playing. Neyv paused, midway through picking up a still half-full platter of breads. She was skinny, Sammah realised. Overly-so. Was she eating? He gestured for her to put the platter back down. Neyv did so, blushing.
“Sorry, sir. I thought you had finished. I…”
“It’s fine, Neyv. I am finished. You sit, and eat where the others can’t steal your food.” Her cheeks went impossibly red now. Sammah frowned. “How long has this been happening, Neyv?”
She froze, a small white roll halfway to her open mouth. She dropped it. “They’ve always picked on me sir, since I got here. I don’t have real parents, they say. I shouldn’t even be in Everfell, never mind the court. They call me a runt. They never remember me. They say it all the time. As if they’ve never met me before.”
Sammah grunted. Neyv might be small, but she shouldn’t be the brunt of bullying. Such trauma might stunt her development in many ways, and it wasn’t her fault she was an orphan. Sammah had very much played a hand in that.
“I will have a word with Renner. You will breakfast here for the rest of the week, and I will arrange for some lessons for you, for self-defence.”
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Neyv dipped her head. “Sir, you’re too kind, with everything you’ve already done for me.”
“Nonsense,” Sammah waved. “You’re my daughter now, nothing is too much. Eat anything you want here. Just make sure you clear it up properly when you’re done.”
Neyv blurted out her thanks between floods of tears. She rushed to hug Sammah, which he endured awkwardly, though the little girl didn’t notice. She rushed back to the table, grabbing at a bunch of grapes and popping them into her mouth without leaving time to chew. The child must have been famished. Sammah shook his head, leaving her to her unexpected feast. If Maertn had shown such vulnerability at that age, Sammah would have beaten the lad to give him the same lesson. He wasn’t sure that Quinn would have been so cowed, either. But Neyv was still an anomaly to him. Sammah wasn’t beyond bestowing the odd kindness on his children, though he didn’t need their physical affections. He looked over his clothes, picking at a sticky patch left behind by Neyv’s dirty hands. Now he’d have to change before heading to the first meeting. Perhaps he would have Neyv beaten, after all.
14
Quinn couldn’t sleep, though she was absolutely desperate for some rest. Perhaps that was the problem. She sat up in her cot, tugging down her nightshift to make sure her body was covered. Sammah had given them rooms indiscriminately when they were younger, so some of the boys now would barrel into rooms without announcing themselves. Quinn was old enough now, that she didn’t want men, unfamiliar or not, seeing her body without her consent. Not even Maertn was an exception to this rule, though Quinn liked the tall apprentice, and they had gone skinny-dipping in the river together many times in their youth. He was calm and easy to talk to. He didn’t fit in the Everfell male mold, which was to say he didn’t terrorise those around him that were weaker, and he didn’t spend his time chasing around women. Quinn was sadly too aware of why Maertn’s affections were limited, though. Whenever he spoke to her, she fought hard to keep a straight face as the gentle warmth stroked at her temples, through her head and over her skin. The hottest place was her heart; she knew without doubt that Maertn loved her, and was sure he rejected the advances of other women because of those feelings.
