What am I even doing here? she found herself wondering. But she knew better than to sit idly amongst these eloquent and clearly sharp-minded characters; this was an opportunity to study, to learn. To hone a new dimension of wit.
After all, she had a reputation of brilliance to uphold.
*
It was strange being summoned by the king. But even stranger to respond cooperatively and go to him. Reversing the survival instinct she’d fostered for years and taking a casual stroll down the hall to appear before a prior adversary was a difficult transition to make. Then to learn he had summoned her for the simple reason of inquiring as to her first night in the palace…
That he cared at all for her comfort was just baffling and so disconcerting.
“To be completely honest, I’m not sure I slept at all,” she answered truthfully.
“No? Your accommodations are comfortable, I presume?”
“Comfortable – certainly. But the hours during which I am expected to partake of such comforts lack a certain…daytime quality, which I am accustomed to bringing with it the heavy-lidded lethargy.”
The king made an expression of understanding. “I see. You keep a nocturnal schedule, of course.”
Despiris gestured apologetically.
“Well, if it helps – you have my permission, should you grow restless, to roam the palace halls after hours, provided you take an escort. You may have noticed the guard stationed outside your chamber.”
“I did notice.”
“Think of him as a personal bodyguard at your disposal. He can take you anywhere you would like to go. Hanzel is his name.”
Although she was sure Hanzel was there to monitor her as much as serve her, protecting others from her as much as keeping her safe, she resisted saying as much and nodded graciously.
She had learned a thing or two at her morning etiquette session.
“Thank you, your Majesty.”
“And how do you find the palace grounds? You received a tour, yes?”
“I did. The grounds are lovely. I shall enjoy exploring them more thoroughly during my free time.”
Isavor nodded in approval. “Speaking of which – I am sure you are eager to cushion your schedule beyond etiquette and dress fittings. I do hope you enjoyed joining us for court this morning; please feel free to sit in any morning that pleases you. Beyond that, I am having a list drafted of subjects you might wish to pursue. Feel free to select from the list, and I will have tutors assigned accordingly.”
A swell of excitement tingled through her. She tried not to look too eager. “I look forward to it.”
*
The list arrived to her chamber via page that evening. Curiosity hungering for this moment, Despiris whisked open the scroll and perused the contents.
Politics, philosophy, history, economics, mathematics, language arts, music, astronomy, astrology, geology, botany… The list went on, even including such frivolous electives as falconry and painting.
Pleasantly surprised by the extensive lineup, Despiris caught herself with a foolish little grin on her face, running a finger over the items on the list as if fond of their texture. Each item was like a coveted, elaborate gift, just waiting to be unwrapped. Unwrapped and unraveled.
Bathed in the evening light of her window, she felt a warm, tingly feeling pass over her. When was the last time she’d felt so warm? Such a glow of pure joy?
Too long had she pursued the thrills and chills, neglecting this superior elation.
And she had barely scratched the surface of what awaited her here.
*
Only slightly tempering her newfound enthusiasm was the fact that her first ladylike ensemble – a cascading plum-colored monstrosity – was ready for her the following morning. While she was half convinced the constricting, trip-hazard of a number was as much to keep her in check as it was to gift her appropriate wear, she resigned herself to it and lugged her newfound bulk off to her economics lecture.
It was difficult to sit still in the garment, everything about it a nuisance. She was accustomed to the corset factor thanks to the garment Clevwrith had given her to wear when she reached puberty, but the rest was an insufferable lesson in torture. The tight sleeves limited how far she could raise her arms, the seams straining and threatening to pop every time she so much as reached for her quill to take notes. The voluptuous skirt twisted and twined around her legs like a serpent who’d chosen her as its next meal. The satiny material, although smooth and supple, made her sweat profusely.
But perhaps that was merely her rapt concentration, as she hung on every word drawled out by her tutor. One might say he was not so very excited by the concepts he taught, but Despiris found economics to be a fascinating topic.
After economics was history, followed by mathematics and botany. Not surprisingly, among her favorite classes was astronomy, which took place in the observatory under the night sky, fully equipped with a starry-eyed teacher and his beloved pet telescope.
It was during this session that Despiris felt her first pang of homesickness, thoughts of Clevwrith and their charmed, night-rich life tugging on her heartstrings. But she took comfort in looking up at the stars through the magnification of the telescope and knowing he was out under those very same stars. It felt almost like spying on him, taking a closer look at the elements that might as well have been his home décor. A smile tugged at her lips as she experienced that connection to him.
Hello, Clevwrith.
Then the tutor’s voice distracted her, drawing her attention across the sky to a distant constellation.
*
The following morning, the king’s session with his advisors took a surprising turn.
“A beautiful morning, isn’t it, my good men?” the king asked cheerily.
“Fine, certainly,” agreed a no-nonsense, white-haired old man in black and violet robes. He was already shuffling through his scrolls, hardly aware of anything else around him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the king said. “You probably haven’t even glanced out a window long enough to note the weather.”
The advisor paused, looking up from his sheaf of scrolls. He blinked as if not certain he had heard his king correctly.
“Well?” Isavor prompted. “To the window, man. I consider honesty a virtue amongst my subjects. Come back when you have an honest opinion regarding the morning in question.”
Speechless, the advisor let the stack of scrolls spring shut into a tight roll to be revisited, obediently heading to the window. The other advisors glanced amongst themselves, wondering at their king’s behavior.
“What about you, Bentley?” Isavor turned his inquiring on another man. “Have you looked outside today?”
“Erm…no, your Majesty,” Bentley admitted.
“Come now, men. The servants go to great lengths to see your windows scrubbed until they shine every day. If their efforts are being wasted, I will reassign them to more pressing matters. You can clean your own windows and see the light of day while you’re at it. I do love seeing two birds killed with one stone.”
Perplexed silence met his admonishment, all business the parade of advisors had come to address forgotten.
Is this for my benefit? Despiris wondered. After all, she had pointed out upon her first visit to the palace that the servants polished and shined the chandelier crystals to perfection every day, their efforts likely going completely unnoticed. Was the king trying to demonstrate that her savage opinions hadn’t fallen on deaf ears?
Curiously, she watched matters unfold with the advisors.
“Go on,” the king urged when his retinue of brilliant men proved completely at a loss. “There are plenty of windows to go around.”
Not given much choice, the men reluctantly ambled off to find windows, refraining from pushing any business or voicing their opinions on time well spent.
Isavor looked pleased with himself, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Poor goats,” he remarked to Despiris. “Interrupting
their stagnant routine will throw them off for days.”
Despiris smiled politely, still uncertain how to respond to casual conversation. She had never considered herself shy, but having conversed almost exclusively with only one companion for years on end made her decidedly uncomfortable trying to settle into the social scene. Besides, she was still pretending to be the Master of the Shadows in captivity, was she not? For years she’d been a deep, dark secret, and that still felt sacred, somehow – worth sheltering. It certainly would not be characteristic to just let that fall away.
Scarcely a few minutes passed before the advisors were returning from the windows, ready to get on with their morning.
“How do you feel, gentlemen?” Isavor inquired.
“Refreshed, Majesty,” came Bentley’s coined response, the others mumbling hurried confirmations.
“No, you don’t,” Isavor denounced. “You’ve only become flustered and impatient. I dare say you didn’t benefit from the exercise at all.
“Then might I suggest we don’t waste time on such trivialities and niceties in the future, your Majesty?” piped up a gray-bearded fellow, a little too pointedly.
Putting his chin in his hand, Isavor considered the suggestion. “No, I don’t think so. That would leave the problem intact.”
“Forgive me, Sire, but what problem?”
Isavor gestured distastefully. “You all look stale. Like you could use a good airing-out. In fact, what a marvelous idea. Take the day off, all of you.”
Incredulous looks met the unexpected dismissal, a few jaws coming ajar in speechless shock.
“What, don’t know what a day off is?” Isavor asked when no one moved to obey. “Put away your scrolls and your scowls and go do something you actually enjoy.”
The advisors shifted uncertainly, all of them looking as though they had just awakened from sleepwalking and weren’t sure where they were.
“What’s wrong?” the king pressed.
Bentley glanced fleetingly at the others, and spoke for them. “Well, Majesty, it’s just… We don’t…”
Isavor glanced expectantly from one to the next. “Don’t what? Don’t enjoy anything?” He said it half-jokingly, but when no one responded, his expression clouded in understanding. “Oh, well that is sad. And only emphasizes the point.” He searched for a helpful suggestion, scratching his head. “Well then – try a bit of everything. See what sticks. I’ll see you all back here tomorrow morning, business as usual.”
Resigning themselves to it, the advisors took their leave, and Despiris found herself alone with the king.
Alone, that was, other than his guard. And hers.
“There is a difference,” Isavor remarked, “between dedication and obsession. I like to draw the line, every now and again. See my people live a little. Not get so caught up that the world and the people we seek to serve fade into a dimension they are detached from.”
Another polite smile.
“It is a lovely morning, as I have mentioned,” Isavor said with a sense of finality. “Would you care to join me for a stroll in the gardens?”
Etiquette said to accept, since he knew she had nothing on her agenda except what he had just cancelled. Which made her wonder – was he genuinely inspired to take a lax morning, or had he merely been curious to spend some time getting to know the infamous trickster in his midst?
Either way, she supposed it would be a pleasant enough excursion. And she would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious to spend more time analyzing the king as well.
“It would be my pleasure,” she agreed.
“Splendid.” With a soft clap the king rose from his throne and descended the dais. His guard engaged as fluidly as an extension of his being, shadowing the king across the throne room to where Despiris was seated. The king offered his arm, and although the intimate contact made her falter, she knew better than to refuse the gentlemanly gesture. Slipping her fingers through the crook of his arm, she rose from her seat and allowed herself to be escorted down the runner.
Hanzel, waiting by the door, brought up the rear alongside the king’s guard as they dispersed into the hall.
They drew the eyes of the servants, the king and the Shadowmaster, walking arm in arm through the palace. Despiris was hyper-aware of the whispers and the glances, which could have been attributed to either her highly-tuned senses or paranoid imagination. Difficult to say. She breathed a sigh of relief as they escaped to the outdoors, descending from a grand, vine-draped veranda onto the garden pathways.
Gardeners could be seen pruning and snipping, trimming topiary masterpieces and raking leaves from manicured lawns.
“How did you find the document I sent over?” Isavor wanted to know. “Sufficient, to get you started?”
Her etiquette instructor might advise a gracious answer such as ‘quite’ or ‘it is more than I could have hoped’. But she wasn’t ready to pretend it was that simple, that she was so easily placated. She was the Master of the Shadows. She had only the highest standards.
You are not easily impressed, she reminded herself. You still want some form of the upper hand.
“It will do,” she said, maintaining her aloof manner. “For now.”
“Was there something you hoped to see on the list? A coveted subject not included?”
Despiris toyed with her answer, deciding she might as well be bold. Surely he would expect no less. “I was curious,” she admitted, “if you intend to expand to subjects such as alchemy and magecraft.”
Isavor cast her a surprised, sidelong glance. “Do you wish to study those things?”
“Is that not what you are doing, here? Fostering gifted minds? Am I not merely one of several gifted individuals whom you have offered lodging and tutelage to advance their specialties?”
“Is that why you think you are here?”
“You made a grand show of painting the gifted as your new cause. So what’s the truth? Do you seek to restore the Mystic Ages? Or were you just trying to catch a criminal?”
Isavor inclined his head. “Originally, I admit – the goal was to catch a criminal. Someone going a long way toward renaming this the Age of Terror.” The king steered her down a flight of wide, shallow steps to a path that walked alongside a large, stone-rimmed pool. Swans glided between clusters of lily pads and lotus blossoms, and koi fish darted underneath the green-tinted water. “But freeing the gifted quickly became a cause I believed to be a worthy one. I saw an opportunity to merge interests, to make one work for the other, and vice versa. I would not have used the cause as a façade without believing in it. Whether or not that means I intend to restore the Mystic Ages…” He shrugged, and Despiris tensed at the way it made her grip pull snugly against his arm.
Human contact with anyone other than Clevwrith felt wrong. Foreign.
Scandalous.
Isavor gazed contentedly at the swans on the water. “I prefer to think I am engendering a new age entirely. The ‘Enlightened Ages’, perhaps. We shall see. It serves no one to be presumptuous about the greatness of your legacy. True greatness will only fully manifest from a place of humility, from believing you haven’t yet – and perhaps never will have – done enough. Arrogance only stunts our true potential.”
Despiris considered his words, trying to decide if they came laced with hidden implications. But he seemed to merely be expressing himself.
Isavor turned back to the path before them. “But I digress. You were inquiring about tutelage in the mystical arts. I’m afraid we haven’t quite pinned down the details of how this mystical revolution should be governed. It is likely to flounder and fail, and require extensive reform, before it finds its rhythm. As with any momentous new movement.”
“Have you never shared your father’s ideals?” It came out before she realized she intended to speak. For a moment she felt embarrassed, not certain it was an appropriate thing to say – or that openly displaying her curiosity did anything to maintain her mystique. But – ah, well. He already knew she wa
s curious; otherwise she wouldn’t have accepted his terms of ceasing her dedicated criminal habits in return for education.
“My father was a bully and a hypocrite. I modeled his behavior only briefly, until it almost instantaneously curdled my most valued childhood friendships. A single incident of imitating his mannerisms reduced my dear, vivacious young playmate Pippa Midwinter to a state of withdrawn apprehension. When your loveliest friend looks at you in fear at the ripe old age of eleven, you learn what kind of man you are – the kind who relishes that domineering cruelty, or the kind who realizes he never wants a sweet soul like Pippa to be frightened of him again. Or anyone else, for that matter.”
They reached the conclusion of the lotus pool, curving off into a labyrinth of shrubbery taller than their heads.
“I do not wish my people to live in fear of me, nor do I wish to live in fear of them,” Isavor brought the conversation back to the subject of magic’s revival. “I believe that good intentions enacted as the default will breed more of the same. Will there be bitter apples who surface alongside the liberated? Certainly. But those inspired by the movement will become fiercely protective of a world where they can live in the open without being feared or prosecuted, and they will step up to oppose those who exploit and twist their newfound liberty.”
As the labyrinth of greenery offered a more secluded setting for their conversation, so then did the conversation shift to a more intimate note. “There are always bad amongst the good, but I find it crucial to cling to the belief that there will always exist more good in humanity than wicked. I find it gainful to believe the majority who appear wicked are merely misguided. That those who do wrong are not necessarily doing evil. You heard the archangel say that I believe you have a mind worth developing. And I do. But only because I also believe you have a heart worth emboldening. You care. And so I am not afraid to outfit you with resources. For I believe you will only put them to good use.”
Girl of Rooftops and Shadows (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 1) Page 19