Dagger's Edge (Shadow series)

by Logston, Anne

  Honey pastries, Jael thought, and then she was retching even as she turned and dragged Tanis at a run, away from the darkness, toward the lights of the market.

  Away from death, toward life.

  VI

  “You’re very quiet this morning,” Larissa commented. “Don’t be discouraged, little heirling. You’re getting better all the time.”

  “Yes, your unarmed combat skills have improved visibly, even in the short time Larissa’s been working with you,” Rabin agreed. “I’m rather jealous, especially as your mother’s going to take over your sword training, or so she tells me.”

  “I suppose she doesn’t think you whack me hard enough,” Jael said ruefully. She resisted the urge to touch the hot lump on the side of her head. “Being my mother and the High Lady, she won’t get in trouble if she breaks my head open.”

  “Well, if she thinks Rabin’s being too kind with you, I’ll have to leave you with twice as many bruises to compensate,” Larissa said merrily. “Now, let’s try again, and a little concentration this time, if you please.” She drew both wooden daggers and took a defensive stance.

  Jael sighed and grimly adopted the attack posture Larissa had told her, but even the prospect of Larissa’s merciless speed and skill could not make her settle into her lesson this morning. All she could think of was Evriel’s still, pale face, the smell of blood, the taste of bile in her mouth, the long silent run back to the castle. Gods, she’d never be able to eat another honey pastry in her life.

  Jael had been so terrified for Tanis’s safety that it had taken a long argument before she agreed that sending guardsmen home with Tanis, or making him ride home in one of the castle carriages, would cause more trouble than benefit. Jael had no way of even knowing if he had safely reached the inn where the acolytes boarded, and the worry hopelessly distracted her.

  She had agonized most of the night over telling her parents or the City Guard about the body without implicating Tanis. But if the guard investigated, they’d find Tanis’s tracks in the dirt and know that Jael had had a companion. Tanis would be brought in for questioning, and at the very least, he’d lose his station at the temple. No, doubtless someone would find this body without her help, just as the others had been found. It was too near the market to go undiscovered for long.

  Jael whoofed out her air as Larissa’s wooden dagger slammed under her ribs, thankfully knuckles first. Jael fell to her knees, unable even to gasp for breath because of the fierce pain in her midriff.

  “Pray to whatever god you like that your next opponent gives you an opening like that,” Larissa said unsympatheti-cally. “Now get up and try again, and watch me this time.”

  Jael tried hard to concentrate, and the remainder of the lesson went a little more productively. By midday, Jael had even managed to throw Larissa to the ground once, and thought that perhaps she had left Rabin with a bruise or two in uncomfortable places.

  Jael was so sore that the prospect of washing up and going to dinner was intolerable; instead, she retired to the bathing pool and had dinner sent up there. A bath, a pot of Calidwyn black tea, and some of Urien’s ointment later, she had regained enough strength to pull on her dirty clothes once more and hurry down to the practice yard to meet her mother. Donya, dressed for practice in old, stained padded leather, had indeed had a guard made for Jael’s sword, a sturdy fold of thin metal that tied with leather thongs over the sharp blade.

  “I tried this on the practice pole just to be certain,” Donya said ruefully. “We tried a leather guard first, but the sword just cut right through it. Try the weight of it.”

  Jael nodded. Even thougn she had practiced with the Kresh blade only a few times, she could feel the slight difference in the blade’s weight, but it was only a small change.

  “I can work with this,” Jael said. “If you’re sure it’s safe, that is.”

  “If I can’t cut through the guard against a hard practice pole with my strength, you can’t do it against my body with yours,” Donya said sensibly. “There’s some practice leather for you by the wall. Put it on, and the helmet, too.”

  Jael hurriedly donned the protective garments. Her mother’s practice sword was modeled from Donya’s own real blade, which was almost as tall as Jael; Jael imagined that with a blade that heavy and sharp, with Donya’s strength behind it, the High Lady of Allanmere could likely cut a charging bull in half lengthwise if she wanted to. Jael wanted as much protection between Donya’s wooden practice sword and her ribs as she could get.

  “Just a short session today,” Donya said, taking position in the yard. “Argent and I have to meet with some of our advisers this afternoon. Get ready; we’ll start slow.”

  Jael soon found herself very glad of the padding indeed; although she was sure that Donya was not putting full strength behind her cuts, the tall warrior was far stronger than Larissa and more skilled even than Rabin. By the time Donya raised her hand to signal a break, Jael knew that she’d ache from head to toe that evening.

  “All right,” Donya said, and Jael was glad to see that her mother was sweaty and winded. “You’ve got a good start, I see. I should’ve thought of the sword years ago.” Donya shook her head, and Jael could see pain in her eyes. “No matter. You’ve got some things to unlearn, I see. Much of what Rabin and Mist have taught you—and what I’ve taught you, too, I admit—isn’t applicable to that sword and the style you’re going to have to use with it. But I think you’ve made a start toward finding that style. When you can stop thinking and start doing, I won’t get past your guard so often.”

  Jael tried to smile at what, for her mother, was high praise, but she ached too much. She gingerly peeled the sweaty padding from her body, wincing at the sore places.

  “Thank you, Mother,” she said. “But if you and Father don’t mind, I think I’ll take supper in my room tonight.” She grinned apologetically. “I’m not certain I’ll be able to sup, anyway.”

  “Sup in your room if you want,” Donya said, “but after supper, Nubric wants to see you in his laboratory. Help me with these buckles, will you?”

  Jael’s own sore fingers fumbled with the buckles at Donya’s left shoulder, which Jael knew was often stiff and painful from an old battle wound.

  “What does Nubric want?” Jael asked.

  “He’s going to try a few tests of your quirk of bending magic,” Donya said, sighing as she rubbed her shoulder. “If we can’t find out how to stop it, perhaps we can prevent the incidents before they occur, or at least understand how they happen. Nubric promises not to paint any green runes on your back.”

  “He wouldn’t be able to read them over the bruises,” Jael grumbled, but she smiled to herself. Apparently her mother had taken her promise very seriously.

  “One other thing.” Donya laid a hand on Jael’s arm as they were about to walk through the practice field’s gate. “Lord Urien sent a messenger over, asking our permission for you to join him tomorrow for supper.” Donya grimaced. “I told the messenger that you had our permission to go—with a few guards as escort there and back—but you’d send your own answer this evening.”

  “Uh, thank you.” Jael felt suddenly awkward, realizing that all the while they’d been practicing, her mother had been thinking about that message, perhaps wondering how to deliver it—or even whether to deliver it. “I’ll send the message before I go upstairs.”

  Donya nodded and walked beside Jael to the castle, but to Jael’s surprise her mother did not ask what answer she would send.

  “If I remember your wardrobe,” Donya said slowly, “most of your tunics are getting a little threadbare in the elbows. Since the cleaning maids had some of your clothing anyway, I told the seamstresses to make you a few new tunics and trousers—some for everyday, and maybe a few for best. Something might be done by tomorrow evening.”

  Jael stared at her mother in amazement, and Donya grinned a little uncomfortably.

  “Seems you’ve got that young lord all moon-eyed over you,” Donya sa
id, chuckling weakly. “I can’t say I like it

  much, but as Shadow reminded me, it’s true that I’ve had fancy boots beside my bedroll a time or two, and it’s never done me any great harm. Except, of course, the time the youngest son of Duke Eoran forgot to take his boots off and slashed my ankle open with his spur.”

  “With his boots on?” Jael said incredulously.

  “With his boots on,” Donya said ruefully. “And I’ve still

  got the scar to prove it. Shadow liked to tease me about the one wound she tended that wasn’t a battle injury—in the traditional sense, at least. It was her revenge, I suppose, for having to come stitch my ankle in the middle of the night.” Donya sighed. “If you never have anything worse to recall your assignations than a blush, a laugh, and a scar on your ankle, Jaellyn, you haven’t fared too poorly. Remember that.”

  “Mother—” Jael hesitated. Her instinct had been to reassure Donya, to tell her that Jael had never had any desire to seduce Urien or let him seduce her, but that was too embarrassing to say—and it wasn’t exactly true anymore, was it?

  “What?” Donya said, turning to glance at Jael again.

  “Thank you,” Jael said lamely. She slipped her hand into Donya’s, squeezing it. “I’ll remember, I promise.”

  Donya grinned and slapped Jael’s shoulder jovially, knocking Jael somewhat off her stride.

  “Go soak in the bathing pool and see Nubric,” Donya told her. “He may find something to your benefit. And I’ll cancel all your lessons for tomorrow. You may want to practice a little alone, but you look like you lost this match, and the next three, too.”

  “Mother, what are you and Father meeting about tonight?” Jael asked boldly. “Is it about the elves who were killed? Has anything else happened?”

  Donya was silent for a long moment, but when she answered, she met Jael’s eyes squarely.

  “We still haven’t found out what became of the merchant who disappeared,” she said slowly. “But there have been three more murders.”

  “Three?” Jael repeated, not having to feign shock. She only knew of two. “Were they all elves? What happened?”

  “Two were elves,” Donya told her. “An elven woman was found at the Docks with her throat slit, and another in an alley north of Rivertown. She’d been disemboweled. The third was a human, an old one-armed beggar named Nessle, found in another alley to the south of the disembowled elf. His throat had been slit, we think by the murderers of the elven woman as they fled south.”

  “Do you think the murders of the elves are related?” Jael asked. “I mean, they were all killed in different ways, except for the first two elves in Rivertown.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Donya admitted. “But I saw the bodies of the woman from the Docks and the beggar. Both their throats were cut with a serrated blade, very thin. It’s unusual enough to be recognizable. Some of my sages are studying the other—well—the corpses, and Jermyn is going to try a few of the more specific divinations to see if he can find anything that way, but I don’t have much hope of him learning anything useful. Hindsight never seems to work well with dead elves. Their past seems to fade right out of them not long after death, or so I’m told by our seers.”

  Donya shook her head.

  “There’s no need to concern yourself with this, Jaellyn,” she said. “Just be careful in town and there’s nothing for you to fear. Now go and send your message, and don’t forget to report to Nubric after supper.”

  Jael was so sore that after finding a messenger to tell Lord Urien she would be honored to sup with him, she could hardly bear to crawl out of her clothes and into the hot bathing pool for her second soak of the day. It was surprising, she mused to herself, how much one could hurt from strikes that didn’t even break the skin. In the hot water, great blue and purple splotches bloomed over her skin, and Jael knew there would be twice as many tomorrow morning. Still, she had Urien’s salve; this would be a good chance to see just how potent it was.

  A long soak restored Jael’s appetite enough that she could swallow a little supper. A pot of hot tea and a generous application of Urien’s ointment later, Jael was a little more comfortable as she donned a clean tunic and trousers.

  Jermyn and Nubric, the castle mages, both had their workrooms on the third floor of the castle, but while Jermyn preferred his workshop near the stairs for convenience, Nubric hid his cluttered laboratory in the most remote corner of the floor. Jael found that all Nubric wished of her was to sit quietly in a chair while he cast this spell or that at varying distances from her, look at this, touch that. Jael did not find the process too tedious, however, since a good many of the mage’s spells failed in spectacular ways, occasionally sending both Nubric and Jael scampering under Nubric’s workbench for shelter. By the time Nubric paused, there were several charred circles on the floor, and the laboratory stank of scattered potions and powders.

  “Isn’t there a safer way to do this?” Jael pleaded, groaning as she crawled out from under the table.

  “I was trying to establish the radius of your disruption effect,” Nubric explained, brushing ash out of his sandy blond beard. “There’s definitely an increase in the effect when you are in actual contact with the magic. I believe it’s not as simple as direct proximity, however, nor does the type of magic appear to matter. I thought complex spells would be more vulnerable, but that’s proved untrue. The only variable I can see is attention.”

  “Attention?” Jael repeated. “You mean if you aren’t concentrating when you cast the spell—”

  “No, your attention,” Nubric corrected. He scratched his head, then raised his eyebrows and picked a long splinter out of his hair. “When you started to become disinterested and your attention drifted from my magic, my spells worked without interference. When you actually concentrated on my spells, they invariably failed, often dramatically. I believe your—well—talent functions primarily when you focus your attention on magic, pulling nearby magical energies toward you. That’s why you could safely pass through the Gate so long as you were asleep. I believe that if you don’t come in physical contact with the magic, and you don’t actually focus your attention on it, there should be no difficulty. If anything happens to prove me wrong, I’ll appreciate you telling me, of course. Magic isn’t an exact science.”

  “But I’ve gone through the Gate awake before,” Jael argued. “Just last summer I did it twice.”

  “I never studied this phenomenon before, so I can’t be certain,” Nubric said hesitantly, “but given what your parents have told me about soul-sickness, I would speculate that the problem has become more severe as you age and, well, develop physically. As to the Gate specifically, it might be a factor of how you had your attention focused at the time— were you thinking of the Gate itself, or were you eager to pass through, to be in the forest or to come home?”

  Thinking back, Jael had to admit that there was sense in what he said. In the spring she was always excited about joining Mist in the forest and preoccupied with plans for her summer; when she came back later in the year, she was usually exhausted and thinking only of returning to her family, a comfortable bed, and a hot bath.

  “So the light globes in the dining hall exploded because I was focusing on them?” Jael asked, thinking furiously. She’d been paying sharp attention to the illusion in the market, true, and she must have actually brushed against Urien’s jug of tea. Mist’s soupstone might have been either; she’d placed it in the stew herself, and, hungry, she’d fumed over the stewpot while it cooked. She’d been watching Nubric when the water elemental had gotten out of control—

  “I imagine so,” Nubric said, breaking into her thoughts and startling her; she’d forgotten asking the question. “Look here. Perhaps this will help you understand.”

  Nubric laid a large piece of lodestone on the table and rolled a small iron ball across the tabletop parallel to the stone, first quickly, then more slowly. On the first trial, the ball veered off its course; on the second, it
rolled directly to the stone.

  “Sometimes you simply draw magical energies away from their intended pattern, altering the spell’s result,” Nubric told her. “Other times you may draw it directly to you, making a spell fail entirely. And when you come in direct contact—” He touched the small ball to the lodestone, where it adhered firmly.

  “Will it happen every time I even notice magic?” Jael asked worriedly. “Grandmother Celene cast two sleep spells on me, and they worked perfectly.”

  “Of course,” Nubric said mildly. He pulled the iron ball away from the lodestone and then rolled it directly toward the rock. The ball rolled unerringly to its target. “You attract these energies. A spell cast directly upon you—not a potion, for example—should function normally. But magic is not an exact science, as I said, and there’s no way I know of to be certain. Do you understand?”

  “I suppose so,” Jael said, sighing. It explained a great deal, and worse, it made sense. She wanted to ask Nubric how his theory related to the missing part of her soul and her own inability to use magic, but doubting that Donya had told Nubric the details of Jael’s parentage, it seemed wiser not to ask.

  Nubric was eager to tell Donya and Argent the results of his tests, but Jael had no desire to hear the rather discouraging news again; in addition, her frequent dives under Nubric’s worktable hadn’t helped her bruises and sore muscles. Well, another coating of salve and a pot of tea would do her some good, and what that didn’t cure, a good night’s rest and another hot bath in the morning likely would.

  In the morning, Jael was amazed to see that most of her bruises had healed, and the rest had faded; she had to get the formula for that salve from Urien! She felt well enough to take her sword to the practice yard and work alone for a little while.

  When Markus and Mera arrived for their lesson with Rabin, she stayed to watch, interested now that she had learned a little more about the different styles of swordplay. Tall Mera used the human style, where her strength and longer reach gave her an advantage, and Markus fought elven style, relying on speed and agility. Each had progressed far enough that they could work together with metal swords, although the edges of the blades had been filed dull and the points blunted. Jael knew that the twins sometimes used protective padding, but on this occasion Rabin let them practice with only the helms, and Jael was gratified to see that Markus and Mera would have their own share of bruises in the morning. Jael considered sharing Urien’s wonderful salve with them, but when she remembered how they’d sat on the wall and taunted her, she grinned and kept her silence.