Shadows and Shade Box Set

by Amanda Cashure

  The boys exchange looks.

  “I’m not going into a dining hall full of Sabers. If you don’t recall, you guys are assholes.”

  Killian huff-grunts in agreement.

  “You sit close to the kitchens. I wash dishes. You wait until everyone’s gone then I’ll come out. And I’ll try not to get sent to the stocks. Okay?”

  No one says anything – which I’m going to take as agreement. I win.

  Turns out Clara took pity on me. The woman even hugs me. I wash dishes and steal scraps of food from the plates, and the boys eat in the dining room. I’m not the only one washing dishes, and Clara agrees to continue to leave me off the schedule, as if I don’t exist in servant land. Just here to help out the replacement dishwasher, Amber. Who was the original dishwasher and I usurped her for the one and only day that I turned up for duties.

  Unusual. Frowned upon. Awkward and all. But ultimately, that part works fine.

  “Shade,” Killian bellows.

  Genuinely bellows. Every servant in the kitchen jumps, turning to glare at me. I even jump. It’s like a big group jump. I shake the bubbles from my hands and scurry my butt out of the room before Killian decides to do it again, and the servants in here have themselves panic attacks.

  The dining hall’s almost empty, just one other group of Sabers sitting in the far corner.

  “What was that for?” I hiss.

  “Eat,” Killian orders, shoving a plate toward me.

  There are two empty seats. These tables are made to fit two triunes, but that makes for one Elorsin tetrad – what’s the word for the five of us…

  I cut that thought off, eyeing the plate of food: a roll, roast meat, green beans, that kind of thing.

  “You can feel empty stomachs?” I ask Killian.

  He doesn’t answer me, and I don’t really care because – food.

  I sit down and reach right past the plate Killian had offered me for a plate of sweets beyond it, snagging a cupcake spewing jam and drizzled in chocolate and taking the biggest bite I possibly can.

  It’s so good I have to wipe the corner of my mouth to check I’m not drooling.

  “Um, mortals are amusing when they eat,” Seth says.

  “Only when I eat chocolate,” I say, pulling a hard piece from the top of the cake.

  “How do you even know what chocolate is, sootling?” Seth asks.

  “Oh, I’ve had chocolate. It’s not something I could forget.”

  Seth snorts, watching me as I devour the rest of the cake. But the frown on Killian’s face makes me think I’ve broken some eating rule by going for the sweets before the savory.

  I reach for the plate in front of me, the only other sweet thing on the table – a half eaten piece of cherry pie. Damn, it looks good. The only person who ate this well at the Manor was the Manor Lord.

  My fingertips grip the rim of the plate and instantly Pax rumbles.

  Roarke rests a hand on my wrist. “Don’t touch the pie.”

  I release the plate, saying, “Okay,” very softly as I inch my hand away.

  A ringing bell cuts through the tension at the table.

  The four of them move, getting up with an echo of scraping chairs, Pax taking his piece of pie with him, and making light work of devouring it on his way to the exit. I grab a bread roll and stuff it full of sliced roast lamb and green beans before following them.

  “We need to utilize this gossip,” Pax says, eyeing the empty tables as we leave.

  Killian gives a grunt of agreement.

  “What gossip?” I ask, because if there was gossip out here, I missed it.

  The servants in the kitchen were all talking about a new triune, which didn’t catch my interest at all. Except for the part where they said the Sabers just arrived. They feel the pull to the White Castle and ride or walk here and whoever else arrives on the same day is their new ‘team’. There’s some magic and initiation involved, the details of which I don’t have. I understand that magic does some pretty weird stuff, especially when it’s doing it all on its own, but that’s a big life choice to make for no other reason but ‘magic said so’. The triunes train together, work together, take classes together, and fight together. They pretty much die together, and you can’t pick who’s in your team. Since it all happens the year they turn fifty, there are no other teams of siblings – except for the Elorsins.

  Strangers.

  “Us gossip,” Roarke elaborates, bringing my attention back.

  By us he means me.

  “Which was what, exactly?” I ask, then pop the last bite of my roll into my mouth.

  “Just gossip,” Pax says in his end-of-conversation voice.

  Fine. I want to ask where we are going, but I keep that to myself.

  “Time for Sigil class,” Seth says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “Why?” Killian asks.

  “I love Sigil class,” Seth says.

  “Liar,” Killian grunts back.

  “You guys have classes?” I ask. I mean, I kind of knew they did, having a Potion Master who has a classroom and tests people does mean that someone attends potions classes.

  But it makes me think about the little kids sitting around Cook’s big table, learning to memorise recipes and remedies. Or the brand new troubles, young and dumb. Not four more-than-grown-up men.

  “Think of it like any other kind of training. Weapons. Horses. Books,” Roarke says. “Most classes are separated into levels, more like the first year of a mortal apprenticeship, but across every available mastery. Sigils isn’t the ideal class, since the Sigils Master Aolyaire clearly joined Lithael’s fan club.”

  “Our new recruit has a lot to learn,” Seth says. “Sigils is fun.”

  “She’s not a recruit,” Pax grumbles. “Since when do you care what she knows about sigils?”

  I keep my mouth shut. Being a servant to these four puts me about as far away from the shadows and the shade as possible. People are literally turning around and walking the other way.

  Sabers come in all shapes and sizes. From those who look like they’d outrun danger easier than fight it, to those who look like they’d smash danger with their bare hands. However they look, they all have an air of confidence, skill, higher purpose.

  But compared to these particular four striding down the hall in front of me – actually, it’s not even worth comparing. No comparison.

  The Elorsin tetrad feels like a wall of power and muscle. Every now and then, a group stands almost at attention to let us pass. Holding back bows and the things they can no longer say, because they’re no longer the Crown’s sons.

  I swallow back that thought. I want to ask about all of that. Need to ask. But any sentence with the word ‘Crown’ in it is hard to get out, and anything that even skirts around the subject makes Pax use his alpha voice.

  “I always care,” Seth says, a lilt to his voice that warns of mischief to come. “And I like the entertainment.”

  I want to smack him over the back of the head… then Pax does it for me. Which actually makes me sigh with relief at the sight of Seth being reminded to behave.

  Two steps later and I find myself falling into line behind Killian as the boys funnel onto the stairs, and for just the barest of seconds I count us.

  One – Pax.

  Two – Seth.

  Three – Roarke.

  Four – Killian.

  Five – me.

  Then I grip that idea in an iron fist and force it down. Behind these four, I’m a servant. I walk like one. I talk like one. I look like one, and I’m pretty sure I smell and feel like one too.

  It’s obvious the minute we arrive at the classroom that there’s no servants inside. There are a whole lot of Sabers dressed in their usual simple, yet expensive, attire. Ladies in dresses and men in dress-shirts. The kind of garments worn by people relaxing at a castle – people who aren’t expecting spontaneous fights.

  The Elorsins are the only ones that lean toward the clearly ready to fi
ght demeanor. My guys are all in ready-to-kill-you type clothing.

  I stop outside the door. There’s nowhere else to hide. But maybe if I wait here and politely tell anyone who inquires that I’m waiting to serve the Elorsin brothers, they’ll leave me alone? I can only hope that whoever tries to move me along is a guy, otherwise my main fighting tactic – kicking them in the balls – will be useless.

  “No Logan,” I hear Roarke say.

  Wait… Logan was going to be here? My teeth grind hard, another really good reason why we shouldn’t be here.

  Killian takes two giant steps backward, grabs me by the collar of my shirt and marches me into the room. He manhandles me all of the way to one of the tables.

  The room’s almost an exact copy of the Potions Master’s. Big desk near the far wall with stained glass windows high up, featuring the usual picture of a tree practically glowing in the sunlight. A balcony sits high on the wall to my left and right, with a narrow bridge arcing high above us to join the two. The stairs and railings are made from branches and the only purpose for the space seems to be to store books. Shelves upon shelves of books. Underneath the balconies, in the gloomy shadowy part, are glass-doored cabinets full of jars, vials, and rolled out parchments on display.

  “Stay,” Killian says.

  Is my interest in the shadows that obvious?

  The center of the room is filled with a large display table, covered in flat wooden discs with symbols painted in a variety of colors. Eight other tables have been made from slabs of wood, polished smooth with veins of blue running through the natural pattern of the timber, paper and pens sitting neatly down their middles. Plus bench seats that comfortably fit three on each side, which seems to be fine at every other table, where the groups are made of threes. We’re a group of five and when we choose the nearest table, we take up almost all available space.

  On the up side, I’ve ended up wedged between Killian and Seth. Both the bigger of the boys and both overshadow me.

  All of the other tables are filled, and three students are hovering at the front of the room. They’re not even talking with each other, while everyone else in here chats loudly.

  Aolyaire walks in, sending a hush through the room. I’d expected a woman; to me, Aolyaire is a woman’s name. I’m pretty new to the weird Silvari names, though, and clearly Aolyaire is a man. Tall, heavy, spent a lot of time in battle, walks with a limp, and wears his long white hair in a braid down his back, skin darker than his clothes, type guy.

  “Welcome to our new triune,” he says, his voice silky as it flows over us.

  “What’s his Seed?” I whisper, leaning closer to Seth.

  “He’s an InfluenceSeed.”

  “Like Roarke?”

  “Distant, distant cousin to Roarke’s Seed. Roarke can make people feel stuff, think stuff, do stuff, and also take all of that away. InfluenceSeeds can only make the suggestion. You have to already want it or have the idea swimming around in your head. And he can’t pull anything away from you.”

  The rest of the room has fallen silent. It’s a safe bet that there’s Sabers in here that are a few hundred years old, but they all look around twenty. Damn immortal aging. There are a lot of different heights, and hair colors and styles, and maybe I didn’t look hard enough when I walked in but as Aolyaire does a glaring lap of the room, my attention falls completely on the boy in the back corner.

  “He’s blue,” I whisper.

  “He’s Babisqu,” Roarke says, looking amused.

  “What is that? Is he even human? Does he speak common?”

  “No, he speaks blue, and Aolyaire speaks black, and there’s a ShimmerSeed in Acrobatics class that speaks fluent freckle,” Seth chuckles, trying to keep his voice a whisper and his joke between us.

  “No, they don’t. I’m not stupid.”

  “Babisqu are very rare, mostly because about as much as we dislike mortals, they dislike everyone – mortals and Silvari. And yes, they do so in the common tongue,” Roarke says.

  “So Babisqu are the same as us?” I ask. I mean, the guy looks just like everyone else aside from the blue shimmer to his skin.

  Not like dipped in paint blue, more like his skin is transparent and his insides are vibrant blue.

  “Does color mean something different on the mortal side of the border?” Seth asks, specifically to Roarke but I answer anyway.

  “Not particularly. Money and title speak, the color of anything doesn’t,” I mutter. “But mortals don’t come in blue.”

  Roarke adds, “I mean, color contributes to the story of your soul, but that’s about it.”

  “Right,” I nod, turning away from the blue guy.

  “Quin and his triune arrived at the castle yesterday,” Aolyaire announces, a bit too loudly in a mostly hushed room.

  His gaze searches for empty seats and lands on our table. If the Elorsins were a normal triune, there’d be three spare seats here. They’re not – they have Seth and me, and there’s only one seat left.

  “Sit over there.” Aolyaire waves toward the space left next to Roarke, and the three new guys bow obediently, moving to obey without question.

  Which results in one guy sitting, their commander at a guess, and the other two kneeling at either end of the table. They’re all guys; a redhead, with a wickedly excited smile that he just can’t wipe from his face, kneels on the left. The guy who gets the seat is shorter, and has hard black eyes that I’d say have never cared for the sight of a smile, and the last guy kneeling at the other end of our table has styled his hair into tall spikes and doesn’t look at all interested in being here.

  “I’m moving,” I say under my breath.

  “Nope,” Seth says, putting an arm across my lap.

  Killian puts his arm behind me, leaning on the bench seat and blocking me in.

  The combination of them mixes feelings in me, in this odd kind of way. Killian is safety and Seth, Seth is confidence.

  “Do we all get pets?” the redhead asks, his tone bordering on a sneer.

  Three sets of angry eyes turn on him. He tries to resist, keeping eye contact on me, but I can practically feel the power emanating from my guys, and I wouldn’t want to be the one they’re staring down.

  “Nope, only us,” Roarke says, without looking up from his notebook.

  “Do you like breathing?” Killian grumbles.

  Their commander leans forward to set his eyes on Pax.

  “That makes you Commander Pax. Logan warned us about you.”

  “Logan?” Roarke asks, still not looking up from the book.

  “Official welcoming committee,” the bored guy says with a roll of his eyes.

  “Logan’s meeting you at the gates now?” Roarke asks.

  “Well, last night when we arrived,” Bored guy says. “Full of wisdom all the way from the gate to the induction ceremony. Pretty sure the only reason Quin got commander is because his head’s a big as the prince’s.”

  Their commander loses his staring contest. I’m not sure exactly what happened because no one moved or did anything to him, but suddenly the grain of the wood in the table is very interesting. And he’s growling at it. I have no idea what his Seed is, but his growl is nothing compared to Killian’s or Pax’s.

  “Don’t worry,” Roarke says, possibly to me, but he still hasn’t looked up. “They’re only three horses short, on a three-horse carriage.”

  “They’re really going places,” Seth adds, and he manages to keep a straight face for all of a single heartbeat.

  Then he starts laughing. Not a bursting-at-the-seams kind of laugh, but an under-his-breath, I-agree type laugh.

  Roarke barely smiles even though he’s the one who made the joke.

  Killian thumps his fist down on the table, getting everyone's attention – even those at the next table. I chew my bottom lip and look around. Aolyaire is at his desk, jaw visibly clenched with simmering fury, but his gaze is focused on a letter with a red seal. Clearly it’s more important than Killian ri
ght now.

  “What?” Killian grunts.

  He doesn’t care about Aolyaire, though I get the distinct feeling he should.

  “What my brother is trying to ask is, what did Logan say to you when he so humbly indoctrinated you into Saber life?” Roarke translates.

  “Not much, really,” Bored guys says. “Not that we didn’t already know. He’s the supreme being within these walls, he has the crown behind him, he will one day rule, he’ll make us great if we are loyal to him –”

  “Quiet,” Quin hisses.

  “I’m sure they already know it. I could have given Logan’s speech before I even met him,” Bored guy says.

  Seth’s lips draw back into a lopsided smile, as he pokes his thumb toward Bored guy and says, “I like him.”

  Which is mostly overshadowed by Killian’s rumble.

  “We’re a team,” Quin hisses.

  “Not yet we aren’t, maybe after the trials. Maybe if my life depends on it. But not yet,” the Redhead says, then his eyes meet Pax’s and he adds, “I still want to see you bleed, though.”

  “Nothing new,” Roarke says.

  “One token per person,” Aolyaire suddenly says, cutting off our conversation.

  Even I know that Logan isn’t the right person to be leaving first impressions on new Sabers, but it is the best way for the Crown to influence the ranks into being loyal to him.

  “Decipher it by the end of the lesson,” Aolyaire says.

  The room bursts into movement. Some of the wooden disks on the center table must be better than others as people rush to make their choices. Roarke gets up from our group, casually grabbing four and sitting back down.

  “What are they?” I ask Roarke when he returns.

  “Sigils.”

  “I thought they were tokens?”

  “Sigils on tokens.”

  “Thanks for the information,” I drawl, because that doesn’t answer my question at all.

  Aolyaire wanders through the tables, taking his time to intimidate almost everyone in the room.

  “And anyone who doesn’t decipher their sigil will be wearing it until sunset,” he announces.