Shadowforged (Light & Shadow) (19 page)

It was two days before we heard anything, days in which I began to doubt that the Duke had taken Temar’s advice. I did not think the Duke wanted his niece to become Queen. He preferred the side channels of power—he had watched the nobles snarl and fight for too long to trust that titles meant anything. And yet, on the off-chance that a title did give her power, he did not wish her to have it in her own right.

Miriel was, I knew, as suspicious as I was, but she seemed as serene as a priestess. She danced like a forest nymph, sang like a muse, jested elegantly with the maidens, and held court at dinner; she was always the focus, and yet she never seemed to notice for a moment that she moved in a ripple of murmurs. Most of all, she seemed happy, radiantly happy. No one would know that she was using all of her charm to pursue a goal that now sickened her. No one would know that she was exchanging one cage for another, and she knew it.

She used every ounce of self-control each day to walk out into the court with her head held high and a smile on her lips. She knew that half the courtiers she greeted despised her utterly, and that half or more thought her to be willfully ruining the country. She knew that whether she succeeded or failed in her quest for the throne, a torrent of hatred would follow. The rumors alone were hateful, and none else even knew that the King was pursuing marriage with her; at least once a day, I heard that the DeVere girl had taken with child, the King’s first bastard. For once, Miriel’s tiny body was an asset to us: with the waist of her gown cinched tightly, with the flatness of her chest, she had no need to combat the rumors with words.

She did well beyond belief, but as the marriage negotiations dragged on, it had grown more and more exhausting for her to do so. Each night that I saw her return to the room, I understood a little more why she clung so fervently to her belief in the rebellion. She would hold her smile and the playful turn of her head until the door was closed, until it was latched and the deadbolt had been locked into place; then, the life went out of her like a rag doll and she would slump into a chair. In the last few days, even the blush in her cheeks fled, and she lay as still and white as a dead girl. Each day she walked in fear that the King’s love for her was fading, fear that the marriage deal would not be signed and sealed before his gaze strayed elsewhere. When she returned to her rooms at night, fear had drained her dry.

I saw—and it twisted my heart to admit it—that even my friendship could not support her when she walked out into the glare of the court. She knew that I walked close in the shadows, and that I could stop any blade, any arrow. But there were a dozen kinds of pain that I could not save her from: insults, threats, poisoned words. If she had maintained Wilhelm’s friendship, she might have spoken to a man who understood the pain she faced. Wilhelm knew the spite of the court. But, waiting for the King’s promise, Miriel had retreated utterly from any hint of impropriety. She never, not ever, looked at Wilhelm; the two of them never spoke. If she needed a letter sent to the King, she sent me. And so she must bear the pain of a courtier alone. I was grateful for my cloak of shadows, and grateful, also, that she had an ideal to which she could cling, to sustain her when the darkness of the court seemed overwhelming.

When we were summoned to the Duke’s chambers one night, even her surety of the cause could barely rouse her from her exhaustion. It took
me several minutes of cajoling, pleading, and promising rest soon, before she could bring herself to lift her head from the table, and I ended up hauling her to her feet. She did not seem to come to life until I half-carried her across the threshold of the room; then, she drew herself up and walked slowly to her uncle’s chambers.

He took in her exhausted appearance with scant sympathy.

“Look merry,” he instructed her, the irony of his grim tone entirely lost on him. Miriel shaped her face into its usual sparkling smile, and her uncle nodded. “It is my great pleasure to inform you that the King has signed, just an hour past, a marriage treaty naming you as his betrothed. It is to be announced at services tomorrow morning. You will wear white.”

It was a moment curiously drained of joy. Miriel did no more than nod. She was too tired now to clap her hands with joy, and from the look on her face, this marriage was more a trap than an achievement. It signaled not her ascendancy, but instead the dawning of a new test. I saw her wonder, as she had not allowed herself to wonder until now, if she had made a terrible mistake. As much as I had wondered it myself, I did not want her to share my doubts now. It was the worst time for her belief to fail her.

The Duke understood none of this. His brows snapped together in a frown.

“Look alive, girl! Do you understand nothing? You have it. You are to be Queen.”

“I understand,” Miriel said simply. She was fairly swaying with exhaustion. “May I go to sleep now?”

“Is that all you can say?”

She paused to think, and then said, quietly, “I thank you for your aid, my Lord uncle.”

“Well enough. Then go. Tomorrow you will be witty and enchanting and merry.” The threat was clear in his voice, and a few minutes later, as the doors of her rooms closed behind us, Miriel turned to me and said, eerily calm,

“You will kill him for me one day, Catwin.”

“Yes, your Grace.”

Chapter 19

That night, fearful of assassins, I went over Miriel’s bedroom inch by inch: checking in and behind each wardrobe, under the bed, going over the paneling of the walls, even checking the latches on each of the windows, which I bound with wire. Eventually, satisfied that no one could enter the room quietly, I left Miriel to sleep and checked her privy chamber and the public room with the same exacting detail.

I knew that I should sleep, but I was too nervous. I knew the Duke’s obsession with privacy, and I knew also that Temar could nearly guarantee that the business had been signed and sealed with no one the wiser. And yet—who was to say that the King might not call his mother to his rooms to tell her? Who was to say that he might not gloat in his success?

And so I sat in one of Miriel’s beautiful chairs, by the fireplace, and I let the fire die down, so that no one should think I stood watch. I was wearing my black, and I had wrapped my hair in cloth. I sat and waited for dawn, and I pondered.

If I believed that my dream of my mother was a true telling of a true prophecy—and I was equally sure that I both believed it, and did not want to—then what did the prophecy mean for me, and for Miriel? Poison in my food might mean betrayal, although I could not even be sure of that. But even if it did, then what? A balance would tip, and end would come. What was the balance? What would come to an end?

Near midnight, there was a tap on the door; I jerked awake, and realized that I had slipped into a doze. After checking the room once more, I padded across to the heavy door, and hesitated. If this was the King, I did not want to admit him. I did not want to wake Miriel so that she could resume her endless, sparkling show—and I did not want to know what demands the King might make. But, in answer to my silent question, I heard a breath of a voice, in the mountain dialect:

“Are you there, Shadow?” I drew back the bolt and cracked the door open, peering into Temar’s black eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. The Duke sent me to ensure Miriel was safe.” I looked at him silently, and he held up one hand. “On my honor, Catwin. That, and no more.”

I opened the door for him and he slipped inside, heading for the chairs at the fireplace. I followed him and we sat together, in silence. I stared over at his profile for a few moments. This was the closest we had ever come to acknowledging the enmity between our masters, and the enmity, indeed, between us. I was trying to decide whether or not I should say something about it when Temar looked up and said, quietly,

“How is she, then?”

“Tired,” I said simply. It was no betrayal of her trust to tell him. He had seen her this evening, it would be nothing he could not see for himself. He shook his head.

“She cannot show it until she has the crown on her head,” he warned me.

“I know that.” My voice was sharp. “And she does not show it. Can the Duke have any complaint about her manner in public?” He only shrugged, and I fought the urge to demand that he acknowledge Miriel’s worth. The Duke’s plans hinged on my Lady, and he cared for her so little that even Temar thought Miriel useless.

“Is she in danger tomorrow?” I asked, instead. There was no time for harsh words when we had our masters to protect. “Does anyone else know of the marriage yet?”

“No one that I could think of,” Temar said. “I’ve watched the King’s chambers, and he’s called no one to him since the Duke returned to his rooms.” He looked over at me. “You’re not too tired? You would be able to stop an assassin?”

“I was trained by you,” I said. “So, yes.” In reality, he was touching on one of my greatest fears. I knew every theory and every technique about stopping an assassin, but with both attempts at murder, I had grown less sure of my skills, not more. Saving Miriel’s life with herbs and quick thinking, throwing a dagger at an unsuspecting opponent—that was one thing, but being able to step in front of a dagger, push her out of the way of an arrow, protect her when they came in force and knew I was there to help her—that was entirely another. I was afraid, every day, that when that day came—and I was sure that it would—that I would fail.

Preoccupied with my fear, I said what I should not have: “Unless the assassin is you.”

I could have sworn that the room itself went ice cold. I stared at Temar, and he just looked at me. His eyes, so expressive and so warm when he taught, were as flat as a painting. He stood, and I tried not to flinch, but all he said was, “I will see you in the morning.” His footsteps receded across the room, and the door closed with unexpected gentleness.

I sat frozen in the dark room, waiting for him to come back, wanting to call him back, but he did not return, and I did not send for him.
We both know what cannot be.
I sat in silent misery until dawn arrived, grey and leaden, and then I pushed away my hurt. I got up and sent a serving girl for a bath, and went to wake Miriel. She was lying just as I had left her, so exhausted that she had not even moved in her sleep. For a moment, I wanted to let her be. I thought of the exhaustion I saw in her each morning, when she realized she faced another day of dancing and laughing and pretending. Then, sighing, I bent to shake her awake.

She did not speak to me that morning. There was no anger in her, only a bone-deep tiredness. It took all of her concentration and all of her strength to plan her smiles and curtsies for the day, and I did not distract her with idle chatter. I told the new maid to dress Miriel’s hair finely and put her in her gown of white, and at the woman’s inquisitive look, I lied blithely. A masque after services, I said. Each maiden as a snow sprite. I found that I did not trust even her, the woman the Duke had chosen to serve Miriel.

Against my will, my thoughts drifted back to the night before and my heart twisted. No matter how long he had distrusted me, my own distrust had felt disloyal. I had concealed it behind smiles and half-lies, unable to lie to him, on his own, as easily as I lied to the Duke. I had fooled myself into thinking that, if only I did not tell him that I feared him, if only I did not admit that I worried he would one day kill me in my sleep, my mistrust would be bearable. But now that the truth had crept out into the open, and I had seen his cold anger—and yes, hurt—at my feelings, I felt as if it was I who had crept up behind him and slipped a knife between his ribs. We had always pretended. I was the one who had broken the pact, just as I had been the one to keep the secret of Miriel’s success with the King. Always, it seemed, it was I who betrayed Temar.

With Miriel dressed like a winter queen, like a fairy princess, we walked to morning services. She joined the other maidens in their plain morning gowns, and I saw them take in her finery; the whispers spread outward in a ripple, and some of the Queen’s ladies cast looks over their shoulders at my mistress, who affected—as she always did, as she always must—not to realize that she was now a center of the court’s attention. Where she walked, a hundred pairs of eyes followed her every movement.

I chose a place on of the side benches, watching the courtiers as they paid homage to the Seven. I was quivering with adrenaline, waiting for the moment when the familiar form of the service would be interrupted by the King’s announcement. So far, the whispers had come to naught; I tried to believe that, whatever the courtiers thought of Miriel’s fine clothing, none of them could guess the cause. But what would happen when the King spoke? I had cast a look down the row of servants at the side of the room, and had recognized each face, but it would take only one disaffected courtier, one quick-thinking and self-sacrificing servant, and Miriel would be dead on the floor of the Cathedral.

To my surprise, it was the High Priest himself who stepped down from the pulpit and walked forward into the congregation. The relentless drone of his voice as he preached had been transformed into the strident tones of a war leader.

“For every nation,” he boomed, “there must be a wise and just leader. He must be raised with respect for the words of the Seven Gods, given the wisdom of the Saints, and taught the lessons of history. At his left hand shall be the finest advisors of the land…and at his right hand shall be the finest of women, who may give him the strength of a godly home, and many strong sons to bring his House glory and honor.”

He stopped his procession by the row where the maidens were seated, and then he turned to face the very front of the church, where the King sat.

“Your Grace,” he said. “Name your betrothed.”

“Lady Miriel DeVere,” the King said, his voice ringing out. I saw a flash of surprise on the High Priest’s face, hurriedly pushed down. So even he had not known. Had the King lied to him, then? Doubt stabbed through me. The High Priest was a hard enemy, and he could not yet know that his secret letter-writer was Miriel. He could not yet know for certain that she espoused the same cause, and hoped to guide the King to a truce with the southern rebels. Would he now wish Miriel harm?

I would not have guessed that he held her any ill will, for he held his hand out to her, and without hesitation, she rose and went past her companions to take it. He walked with her down the long aisle in a silence that grew deeper and more terrible with every step. Miriel must know without looking that the Dowager Queen had gone whiter than death, and that the heads of a dozen families watched her with undisguised hatred.

There was no longer the slightest portion of uncertainty in the court. They had known from the moment that Miriel stood that this was not some poor jest, that the King had chosen his bride, and that their own daughters had been passed over for a merchant girl, for the daughter of a woman whose own husband had been ready to deny the child. For the heir of the Duke of Voltur, whom every one of them would have seen dead in a ditch.

But Miriel walked as if she were Queen already, as if their hatred could not touch her. Finally, I saw that she had gained enough trust in my abilities that she would have me watch the court. She expected their hatred as a matter of course, she had spent months hardening her heart against it. The exact shape of it was mine to determine, and mine to guard against. She had devoted all of herself to enchanting the man who awaited her at the end of the aisle.

I saw the Dowager Queen start to rise to her feet before one of her bolder
, quick-thinking ladies reached to lay a hand on her arm. Isra returned to her seat, but I fancied I could see the air around her boiling with her fury. Her son had defied her, her only dynastic hope was shattered—and with the participation of her closest advisor. However he had been trapped by her son, Isra would resent the High Priest for failing to put a stop to this announcement.

The High Priest laid Miriel’s hand on the waiting arm of the King, bowed deeply to his liege, and returned to the pulpit. I barely spared a thought for his words as they rolled over the congregation; few enough people seemed to hear him at all. They were frozen in horror, attentive enough only to realize that, whatever lingering hope they might have held, the King was now irrevocably tied to Miriel DeVere. Even the servants were frozen, there was barely the rustle of cloth, hardly the sound of the crowd breathing.

And so, with the echoes of the High Priest’s blessing dying away, and the stunned, resentful chorus of blessings from the court, Miriel walked down the long aisle as the betrothed of the King, untouched by an assassin’s blade, but the center—now—of a sharp new division in the court.