Dagger's Edge (Shadow series)

by Logston, Anne

  Dagger’s Edge

  Anne Logston

  Mundania Press LLC

  Published by Mundania Press

  Also by Anne Logston

  Shadow

  Shadow Hunt

  Shadow Dance

  Dagger's Edge

  Dagger's Point

  Wild Blood

  Greendaughter

  Guardian's Key

  Exile

  Firewalk

  Waterdance

  Dagger’s Edge

  Copyright © 1994, 2013 by Anne Logston

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Cover Art © 2013 by Skyla Dawn Cameron

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-59426-963-9

  Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-59426-965-3

  First Mundania Edition • March 2013

  Published by:

  Mundania Press

  6457 Glenway Ave., #109

  Cincinnati, OH 45211

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, Mundania Press LLC, 6457 Glenway Avenue, #109, Cincinnati, Ohio 45211, books@mundania.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  Production by Mundania Press LLC

  Mundania Press LLC is a division of Celeritas Unlimited LLC

  Dedication

  Bill Ruesch, Joel Monka, Mary Cook,

  and, of course, Paul Logston,

  expert jump starters.

  And very special thanks to

  my agent, Richard Curtis,

  and my editor, Laura Anne Gilman,

  for their guidance and encouragement.

  I

  Jael pulled her knees up under her chin, pressing her back against the warm stone. This was her thinking place, a niche in the northeast parapet un-reachable to anyone lacking either Jael’s iron-strong fingers and toes or the inclination to creep precariously along the castle wall like a spider. In the spring, when the swamp flooded and winds wafted the swamp stench southward, her thinking place was almost unbearable, but now, in late summer, the swamp was mostly dry and the west wind was sweet. Jael felt comfortable here, surrounded on three sides by stone but able to look out over the eastern edge of the Dim Reaches where it met the forest in uneasy contest.

  Right now her thinking place was the only spot in the castle where Jael could find a little peace and quiet. Today Mother and Father were meeting with the City Council, and there would be arguments and shouting; after that, Mother and Father would meet with their advisers, with more arguments and shouting. After that, if events followed their normal course, they would argue and shout at each other—or Mother would, at least; Father wasn’t the shouting sort, although council meetings always left them both prickly as an angry spineback. Then, if Jael was really unlucky and the whole council ruckus had been over her—it often was—there might be more angry words, this time directed at her.

  Jael couldn’t remember having done anything too terrible in the last few days. Well, there was that unfortunate incident when she had sneaked to watch Nubric, one of the castle mages, working on the bathing springs, and the water elemental had gotten out of control and flooded the cellars. But it was hardly her fault if Nubric’s wards weren’t properly set, and nobody had caught her, anyway.

  Jael sighed and shook her head mournfully. Even if she hadn’t done anything wrong, the council usually ended up talking about her anyway. If they weren’t arguing over whether or not she should be declared Heir, they were complaining about her failure to find a husband, or fretting over what people in the city were saying about her.

  And the people of the city had plenty to say. Most of the city folk had seen elves aplenty, but few or none as odd-looking as she. Many elves were as short and slight as Jael, but only a very few of the Hidden Folk had such long, mobile ears as she did. Some elves had eyes as large and slanted as Jael’s, but theirs were brown or green or black, not the polished bronze of Jael’s eyes and her hair as well, which matched neither Donya’s dark brown braids nor Argent’s silver-white one. At least her boots covered her most unusual feature, the sixth toe on her left foot. Only a tiny number of the very oldest Hidden Folk had such extra digits.

  If Jael’s singular appearance had given the city’s folk fuel for gossip, her single birth, almost exactly nine months after Donya and Argent’s marriage, had fanned the coals into flame. Jael didn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about, but she knew that the rumors got worse ten years later, when the twins, Markus and Mera, were born. There’d been nothing but trouble ever since for Jael, and it was as likely as not that today’s council meeting, called on short notice, meant more trouble about her, or for her.

  It seemed like the start of an abysmal day.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jael saw movement at the corner of the courtyard, where the secret gate led out of the castle grounds and out of the city as well. Just as she turned to look, a familiar small, dark-haired figure stepped out of the concealing bushes and strolled leisurely toward the castle.

  Jael waved as vigorously as her somewhat cramped position would allow.

  “Aunt Shadow!” she shouted delightedly.

  The small figure looked up and waved back, and Jael took the shortcut down, scrambling dangerously down the ivy on the castle wall rather than climbing back up to the parapet and going down through the halls. Shadow met her at the bottom and suffered stoically through Jael’s energetic hug.

  “Better not let your mother catch you up there,” Shadow said mildly.

  “It’s the only place I can go to get away from the twins,” Jael sighed. “They follow me everywhere.”

  “How old are they now? Ten?” Shadow mused. “Yes, about the age for following an older sister around, I guess. So how’s Donya and Argent?”

  “Mother and Father are in council right now,” Jael said, sighing again. “And after the City Council, they’ll be meeting their advisers, and then—”

  “And then arguing for another couple of hours over whether or not to pay attention to whatever those shriveled wheezers had to say,” Shadow chuckled. “Right, I know the routine. What’s the problem this time? Must be pretty dire for Doe to drag me back here.”

  “When did she call the signet back?” Jael ask
ed surprisedly, following Shadow to the secret door that entered Jael’s own rooms.

  “Almost a month ago,” Shadow said. She threw herself on Jael’s bed, oblivious to the travel dirt on her clothes. “I was almost to the eastern coast. And I’m here to tell you that Fortune-be-damned ring popped off my finger at a most inconvenient time.”

  “A month.” Jael shook her head. “Could be anything.”

  “You?” Shadow grinned at her.

  “That, too.” Jael flopped down on the bed beside Shadow. “Half the council wants me married and declared Heir, and the other half wants me quietly sent away somewhere so that everyone can forget about me.”

  Shadow sighed.

  “Got any wine?”

  “Uh-uh. Upsets my stomach. But there’s water in that jug.”

  Shadow grimaced.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I brought my own.” She rummaged through the pack and pulled out a skin of wine, drinking deeply.

  “Hadn’t you better join Mother and Father in the council chambers?” Jael suggested.

  “Nah. I won’t get an intelligent word out of them until they’re done with the City Council and their advisers,” Shadow said lazily. “That leaves me time for a bath and a meal, and I’ll meet them in their chambers. That is, if we can avoid the servants and the twins, so nobody rushes in and pulls Doe and Argent out of council.”

  “The servants are no trouble,” Jael said negligently. “I sneak around them all the time. As for the twins, they’re lessoning in their study with either Sage Abrin or Sage Germyn until midafternoon. Then they have sword practice.”

  “And what about you?” Shadow chuckled. “Shouldn’t you be having some lessons yourself?”

  Jael sighed.

  “Oh, I’m not very good at anything,” she said ruefully. “I can’t sit still long enough to study, and everything I try to memorize gets all mixed up in my mind. My penmanship is so clumsy that I can’t read my own script. I’m not strong enough for human-style swordfighting—I can hardly lift Mother’s sword, let alone use it—and I trip over my own feet when I try the elven way. Most of my tutors have all but given up on me. They don’t even bother anymore to complain to Mother and Father when I skip my lessons.”

  “Oh, I was the same way at your age,” Shadow shrugged. “All feet and elbows. But I was surprised to see you here. Shouldn’t you still be in the Heartwood? It’s weeks yet before it starts getting too cold.”

  Jael said nothing, staring at the ceiling until Shadow raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, go on, little seedling,” Shadow prompted. “Let’s hear the bad news.”

  “I didn’t go this summer,” Jael mumbled.

  “I can see that,” Shadow said patiently. “But why not?”

  “Mother thought I’d better stay home this year,” Jael said. She didn’t add that Donya’s decision had come as a considerable relief to her.

  ****

  There had been quite a fuss when she was eight years old. Shadow thought, and Argent agreed, that Jael should be fostered in the forest; Donya had unexpectedly demurred, saying that Jael was too young to leave home. The balance shifted, however, only a few weeks later when Donya took Jael on her first hunt; at the moment Donya’s arrow struck the stag, Jael screamed, clutched her thin chest, and fell unconscious from her horse, breaking her left arm in two places.

  “She has the makings of a beast-speaker,” Shadow had told Donya at Jael’s bedside after the healers had gone and Jael lay there feigning sleep. “It’s like her ears—as if all the old blood of the elves is coming back out in her.”

  “I pray that’s what it is,” Donya said, sighing raggedly.

  “If it is, she’s going to need guidance that we can’t give her,” Shadow said firmly. “All elves have at least a little magic in their blood, but Celene says there’s the makings of a mage in her, too, buried so deep it may not come out on its own. It all amounts to the same thing—she’s got to go to the forest for a teacher.”

  Donya was silent for a long time, and when she spoke, it was so softly that Jael held her breath to hear the answer, peering cautiously through her lashes.

  “Who were you thinking of?” the High Lady said at last.

  “Let me take her to Mist,” Shadow said. “He’ll know how to deal with the wild blood in her. For her sake he’ll move closer to Inner Heart, where she can come back through the Gate whenever she needs to.”

  Donya laughed ruefully.

  “Are you sure, Shady, you’re not just trying to make him more accessible for your own purposes?”

  Shadow chuckled.

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind that, either. But look at it this way: The more I visit Mist, the more often I can check on her.”

  “All right,” Donya said, sighing again. “I suppose it’s the best thing to do for now, at least.”

  “Bet on it,” Shadow said firmly. And as the High Lady and her friend left the room, Shadow had glanced over her shoulder and grinned, winking deliberately at Jael.

  The fostering had solved some of Jael’s problems. Mist was a kind and loving foster father, wise and patient with his flighty charge. He taught her all the elven skills he could—

  tracking, recognition of plants as food, medicine, or even poison, learning to read the forest’s subtle signs that warned of weather changes or danger, and as much elven-style sword-fighting as Jael could manage (even Donya admitted that her own style of swordplay required a height and strength that her wiry but small daughter would never achieve). The elves accepted her wholeheartedly and never made Jael feel self-conscious about her appearance.

  In many ways, however, her time in the forest was more difficult than living in the city. Jael could not hunt because the pain and fear of the prey sometimes sent her reeling, and the myriad small pains and deaths going on around her all the time often drove her to trembling tears. The control of a beast-speaker’s gift continued to elude her, despite the best teachers Mist could find.

  Mist was a far more patient and less demanding teacher than Donya, but Jael knew she disappointed him with her clumsy hands and feet and seeming inability to concentrate on anything for more than a few moments at a time. Added to that was the uncanny bad luck that seemed to follow Jael, if she and Mist were preparing new furs for trade, the quick-tanning spell would as often as not leave half the skin moist and smelly. If they met other elves and stopped to share food and fire, the soupstone would unaccountably impart a rotten flavor to the stew, or the crackproofed cooking pots would develop mysterious holes and empty themselves unnoticed. If it rained, the waterproofed tent hides would drip on them all night. Mist no longer even tried to gamble when Jael was with him.

  Jael’s health also suffered in the forest, despite all that the best elven healers could do for her. When the flowers bloomed, Jael’s eyes and nose ran like rivers, and in damp weather, her breath wheezed like a saw through wood. She always had to leave the forest and come home early in the autumn, before the autumn rains.

  This year Donya had not sent her. The High Lady’s excuse, that the unusually wet spring had aggravated Jael’s raspy breathing and Donya feared for her health, seemed feeble; healers in the forest were as competent as those in the city, and even Mist’s temporary woven-switch camps seemed at least as good a shelter as the drafty stone castle. Jael suspected that Donya’s real reason had more to do with the debate raging over her heirship than it did the spring floods.

  “Mmm,” Shadow mused. “One more thing to talk to your mother about. I’ll slip down to the baths, and you see if you can’t sneak me down some kind of a meal, will you?”

  “All right, Aunt Shadow,” Jael said, grinning. “Under one condition.”

  Shadow eyed Jael cautiously.

  “What’s the price this time?”

  “The story of what you were doing when Mother called the signet back.”

  Shadow laughed.

  “Well, that’ll expand your education, that’s for certain,” Shadow said. “All right
, little sapling, it’s a deal.”

  “—so since there was still a day before the merchant caravan was going to leave, I got to make amends for the interruption,” Shadow finished. She dunked under the surface of the water again to rinse the soap out of her hair, knuckled water out of her eyes, and reached for another fish cake.

  “Really? Head of a mercantile House, and you just walked out, just like that?” Jael was duly awed.

  “Well, not ‘just like that,’“ Shadow chuckled. “I thought I already established that.”

  “Well, didn’t he mind?” Jael pressed. “I mean, you’d stayed with him for two months!”

  “Let me tell you something about men, little acorn,” Shadow said sagely. “They’re glad when you arrive, they’re glad while you’re there, but they’re also a little bit glad when you leave, too.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Jael said crossly.

  “Well, men usually don’t. But wait till you see the necklace he gave me,” Shadow grinned. “Worth a couple thousand Suns, at least. Almost makes up for all the stuff I didn’t steal from him. Hey, just wait, though, till I tell you about this gem merchant I did in Keradren—”

  Jael settled herself back comfortably against the stone wall, letting Shadow ramble on, enjoying the sound of her voice while giving only slight attention to her story. She loved to hear Aunt Shadow tell stories about her travels; it wasn’t the stories themselves that were so exciting, but the way Shadow’s eyes sparkled and her voice scaled up and down excitedly and her hands flashed animatedly in gestures almost too rapid to follow. Sometimes Jael thought that Aunt Shadow had more life in her than there was in the whole city and forest put together.

  Jael felt comfortable with Aunt Shadow, a rare sensation. Donya often called Shadow in when her unpredictable daughter became too much for her or asked uncomfortable questions. Shadow never flinched from a question, nor dissembled, nor talked around it, nor bothered overmuch with politeness and tact. Jael could speak plainly and frankly to the older elf about what bothered her and expect an equally frank answer in return, whether the subject was sex, death, Shadow’s own personal life, or what the peasants were saying about her. If there was a question Shadow couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, she said as much, and that was that. But she never refused to listen. Shadow even took Jael along when she gambled, and if she lost, she’d shrug and grin the same familiar grin, laugh, “It’s only coin,” and proceed to lift the winner’s purse on the way out anyway.