The Shamer's Signet

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  Behind the armchair stood Sascha in her turquoise silk dress, combing out the damp tangles of her master’s hair with a silver comb. She gave me a single furious glare and then carried on as if I didn’t exist.

  “Come here,” said Valdracu.

  I didn’t hang back on purpose. It just took a while before my legs obeyed me, and Marte had to give me a gentle shove.

  Valdracu rose and circled me, like someone judging the worth of a horse.

  “Very good, Marte,” he then said. “She will do.”

  Marte curtsied and turned to leave. On the threshold, she paused for a moment.

  “Dina hasn’t had her meal yet, Lord,” she said. “There wasn’t time.”

  Valdracu raised an eyebrow. “Has she made you her caring friend already? You need not worry. I shall allow you to feed her as soon as she has worked for her keep.”

  Work? What did he want me to do?

  Valdracu turned to me again.

  “You see, Dina, in Dracana we all work. Most of us work very hard indeed, and there is no room for shiftless idlers. I could make use of you at the looms or in the forges, but it has occurred to me that you may serve me better in another way. Sascha, will you fetch the mill-house girl?”

  “Yes, Lord.” Sascha put the comb down on a small lacquered table next to the armchair. It already held the remains of a fine meal, judging from the chicken bones and the ruby dregs of wine at the bottom of the glass. My stomach turned over. But perhaps some of the pangs were really just from hunger.

  “I’ve sent a messenger to my cousin, the Dragon Lord,” Valdracu continued. “I’m sure he has plans for you, but he is a busy man, and we may not hear from him right away. Meanwhile, you belong to me. Your time here need not be unpleasant, as you can see from the room you’ve been given. I punish sloth and incompetence severely, but I can be equally generous to those who serve me well, and I may even be able to shield you somewhat from my cousin’s intemperate ways. You would do well to serve me, Dina. Your small Highland friend might benefit as well.”

  What did he mean by all this persuasion? What did he want me to do? He was normally so good with threats, it was almost more frightening to hear him fly the lure at me in this way. I stirred uneasily.

  “Did you want to say something, Dina?”

  I shook my head.

  “Speak up. You have my permission.”

  I cleared my throat. “What is it Mesire Valdracu wants me to do?” No way would I call him “Lord,” he was no lord of mine!

  “You possess something rare. Your eyes and your voice are a weapon, and only a foolish man casts away such a weapon unused.”

  A weapon? Was that how he saw it? My mother called it a gift, and although I had once considered it more of a curse, she was closer to the truth than he was, I felt. I did not ask him what plans Drakan had for me. I didn’t think he’d tell me, and in any case I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.

  Sandor came in with one of the sparrow girls—still in her tan and gray work clothes, but without the black scarf. It was the girl with the short brown hair, the one who had stuck out her tongue at the bare-chested boy. She looked both frightened and defiant. Sandor nudged her, and she curtsied to Valdracu, but no deeper than she had to.

  “Come here, girl,” said Valdracu impatiently. “What is your name?”

  “Laisa.” Sandor nudged her again, harder this time, and she mumbled a belated “Lord.”

  “I hear ill reports of you, Laisa. You are late, you giggle and sing and make foolish jokes during the workday, and on several occasions you have been rude to the Master Weaver.”

  Laisa pulled herself up straight. “I do my work—Lord.” Again this “Lord” came late, as if she grudged him his title.

  “Yes, well, that is the question. Are you an obedient and industrious girl, or are you really a troublemaker? We shall let Dina decide.”

  “Me?” The word escaped me unintentionally.

  “Dina. Look at Laisa.”

  Oh, so that was what he meant by a weapon. He meant for me to make a lively and somewhat impertinent girl ashamed of singing while she worked!

  Laisa just looked confused. She had no idea what she was in for if I did what he wanted me to do.

  “That’s not—” That’s not a proper use of the Gift, I meant to say. But he brought me up short with a slicing motion of his hand.

  “Remember what I said about the good servant and the bad, Dina.” He rested his hand on the chain around his waist. “Do your duty. I would much rather reward than punish.”

  In my mind, I saw the bloody welt on Tavis’s back, and I remembered how he had cried that night.

  “Look at me, Laisa,” I said halfheartedly, with not a trace of the Gift in my voice. She looked at me anyway. She didn’t know any better.

  Our eyes met. She made a startled movement and looked away. But Valdracu gave Sandor a small nod, and Sandor wrapped his great paw around the back of her neck so that she could no longer turn away from me. Her gaze flickered this way and that. Then she closed her eyes and screwed them up tight.

  “Do your duty, Dina,” said Valdracu quietly, and once more let his fingers play with the slim chain.

  I’m sorry, Laisa, I thought. So sorry. But if I don’t do this, he will hit Tavis again.

  “Look at me, Laisa.”

  It was an effort to get the voice right. Normally I did it almost without thinking, but not this time. There was a strained tremor to it that made it sound nearly false, like a singer ever so slightly off-key, but it still worked. Laisa’s eyes opened and looked helplessly into mine. And images started to flicker between us, memories that leaped from Laisa’s mind to mine.

  “Run along now, Laisa, girl, and don’t dawdle. Come straight home with the rest of the money!” Laisa’s mother was pacing the floor with a howling baby on her arm, Laisa’s new kid brother, ooh, ain’t he a cute one, the aunties said, but Laisa didn’t think so, he was puking and screaming with one end and spurting stinking yellow stuff out the other, what was so cute about that? And Ma was always tired now and couldn’t work much, so Laisa was hungry all the time, and all because of that stinky little brat. “Come straight home…” But at the market there was a woman making pancakes, pancakes with thick golden syrup on them, and Laisa was so hungry, the smell of the pancakes nearly drove her wild. Just one, she thought, just a taste. And suddenly the money was gone, and she hadn’t even got the flour and the lard. And so there was nothing for it but to throw the purse away and scrape her knees. “They just pushed me right over, Ma, and took all the money,” but she got her ear clipped all the same, ’cause Ma was tired, and the brat howled, and her little sister was whining with hunger, and in Laisa’s belly, the pancakes lay like lead.

  I closed my eyes, stopping the stream of pictures in my head. My head throbbed, and I felt sick to my stomach. But Laisa was worse—on her knees, weeping and clutching at my skirt, promising never to do it again, never; and Valdracu, who had no idea that she was talking about stolen pancakes and starving sisters, only smiled and said that that was fine, she could go now.

  Still crying, she backed out of the room, as if she were afraid to turn her back on us. Her hands had disappeared beneath her apron, and I knew very well what they were doing there. Hidden beneath the cloth she had her forefingers crossed in the witch sign that was supposed to ward off evil. It did no good whatsoever against someone like me, but I guess she didn’t know that. I could tell that she was now more afraid of me than of Valdracu, and this made the sick feeling worse, but what else could I do? It was her or Tavis, and at least she was now crying because of something she had once done. If Valdracu hit Tavis again, it would be because of something I had done.

  Valdracu put his hand on my head in a loving way, smoothing my impossible hair. I would rather let a spider crawl all over me, but I didn’t dare shake him off.

  “Excellent, Dina. You will be of great use to me, I can see. Go to Marte now, and get your supper.”

 
He would do it again. He would use me as a weapon over and over again. And if I refused, Tavis would pay the price. I stumbled from the room, no longer hungry. Sickness was clawing at my belly, and I had no idea what to do.

  DINA

  The Boy from the Forge

  “Mesire requires you in the Marble Parlor.”

  I had come to hate those words. Every time I heard them my hands froze and my stomach became a sick little knot of fear and loathing.

  Nineteen days had passed since Valdracu had made me use my eyes on Laisa. Nineteen. I had counted them carefully. And on every one of those days, sometimes more than once, there had been somebody, some poor wretch who had aroused Valdracu’s anger. It was then that I was “required” in the Marble Parlor, or sometimes in the Gold Room where Valdracu kept his desk, and while he watched us hungrily, I had to shame his poor “miscreants” until they wept and begged for forgiveness. They might not be ashamed of whatever it was he thought they had done, but that was all one to him. For him, the important thing was to see them grovel and sob and beg to be released. Then he would smile and stroke my hair and brag about me to Sandor: “What powers! Isn’t it amazing, Sandor? A mere slip of a girl, and she can bring grown men to their knees with a single glance! We have caught us a rare bird indeed.”

  There were few enough grown men among the wretches, though. Mostly they had been children from the mill houses, children like Laisa who wasted the workday with “giggles and foolery” or simply weren’t fast enough or strong enough to please Valdracu. Once it was two women who had come to complain about one of the big looms that was broken and had become dangerous to work with. And one night there had been a battered tramp that Sandor had found by the forges where the poor beggar had been trying to hide in one of the woodsheds. Him they accused of spying and treason, and Valdracu had hit him many times with that damn chain of his, so that his back had become a mass of bloody welts. But although the tears were streaming down his poor bruised face when he looked at me, he spoke nothing except a garbled string of nonsense rhymes and children’s chants, and then he passed out on the floor, and Sandor had to carry him back to wherever they kept him.

  Who was it this time? The tramp again? I was in no hurry to find out.

  “Hurry, girl! You know how he hates waiting.” Marte gave me a nervous little push.

  I nodded, but I kept on walking as slowly as I dared. It did no good, of course. Even if it took me all day, the Marble Parlor would still be there, with Valdracu in his favorite chair by the fireplace, expectantly eyeing some wretch who would be shivering already at the thought of having to meet Valdracu’s tame witch. Oh, yes, I knew what they were calling me. Even the guards looked at me sideways now, with a mixture of revulsion for me and admiration for Valdracu, who had so ably mastered such a monster. “The Lord’s little witch.”

  This time it was a boy, a year or two older than I. He was dressed in black work pants and a stiff brown apron and nothing else. I could smell the forge on him as I got closer, a fierce smell of sweat and soot and hot metal. On his bare back there were marks and scars where sparks from the furnace had singed him. His dark hair was oily with sweat, but he kept himself straighter than most of the people who had been where he now stood.

  “It’s dangerous,” he said, glaring rebelliously straight at Valdracu. “If it wasn’t, how come it’s only us no-man’s-brats doing it? Four accidents in three weeks. Four! One death, and three of us badly hurt. Imrik”—his voice broke, the first sign of weakness he had shown—“Imrik will never walk properly again.”

  He was holding out his hand, palm up, but it did not make him look like a beggar. More like a man expecting to shake hands on a deal fairly made.

  “It’s not that I mind working,” he said. “I want to learn the craft. I’m good at it. Ask the Master Smith if you don’t believe me. But using us like that, as if we were nothing, as if it didn’t matter that you lose a few every month… that’s… that’s wrong, and it’s also… it’s also wasteful. We are worth more than that!”

  But if he thought he could make a deal with Valdracu, he was much mistaken. Valdracu got up slowly. With careful movements he brushed a few crumbs from his velvet sleeve. He looked at the boy’s outstretched hand. And with the speed of a snake, so quickly that the eye could hardly follow it, he drew his chain and slashed it across the boy’s naked palm.

  “I don’t make deals with thralls,” he said.

  The boy yelled with pain. He stared at his hand, at the blood welling from the thin, swollen cut. Then he raised his head again and glared at Valdracu, and for a moment I was afraid that he would actually hit him. Afraid not for Valdracu’s sake, but for the boy’s. If he laid a hand on Valdracu’s lordly body, I didn’t think he would leave the room alive.

  But the boy held on to his temper. His eyes blazed with fury and hatred, but he made no move to hit back.

  “I am no thrall,” he hissed. He turned on his heel and began to leave.

  But he was not allowed even that much freedom.

  Sandor blocked his way to the door.

  “Not so fast, thrall,” said Valdracu. “There are still a couple of things we have to teach you. Humility. Respect. Shame.”

  The boy seemed to see me for the first time. His dark eyes flickered, taking in the silver hooks on the neat bodice of the dress, and I suddenly wished I had been less finely dressed.

  “I’ve heard of you,” he said. “I’ve heard of your witchy eyes. But I’m not afraid of you. I have nothing to be ashamed of!”

  Valdracu smiled, slowly and maliciously.

  “We shall see,” he said. “We shall see.”

  He was strong, that boy. There was already an uncommon width to his shoulders, and one could see that he would become a big man in a few years. And he was strong inside as well, in heart and in spirit.

  It did him no good. Against me, he didn’t stand a chance.

  I caught his eye, forced him to meet my gaze. And the images began to flow.

  A peddler’s cart was rattling down the road, drawn by two mules. Behind the cart two barefooted boys trotted along, somewhat breathlessly; one of them was the boy from the forge, strong and road-hardened, the other a much slighter boy, small-boned and soft-featured. The smaller boy was sniffing, and every few steps a tear slid down his cheek.

  “Oh, stop it, Imrik,” said the larger boy. “It’s not that bad.”

  The small one sniffed even harder. “No, but… my foot hurts so. Tano, can’t you… can’t you say you’re sorry?”

  “No.” Tano was both angry and adamant.

  “But, Tano, if only you said you were sorry, I’m sure he’d let us back in the cart.”

  “No. I’m not groveling to that bastard.”

  They trotted on yet a while.

  “Tano.”

  “What is it now?”

  “Tano, my foot is bleeding.”

  The larger boy stopped. “Let me see.”

  Imrik showed Tano his left foot. There was a bloody cut on the heel, perhaps from a sharp rock.

  Tano swore. Although he was still only twelve, he knew a lot of juicy curses.

  “All right,” he said furiously. “I’ll tell him I’m sorry.” He let go of Imrik’s foot and straightened. “But one of these days we’re out of here. One day soon.”

  “Tano, that’s dangerous—running off. I’m… I’m not as brave as you are.”

  “Of course you are.” Tano put his arm around Imrik’s slight shoulders. “And anyway, I’ll take care of you. Haven’t I told you so, at least a hundred times?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, don’t I keep my promises?”

  “Yes.”

  “There you are, then. You’ll be safe with me.”

  The fireplace and the room around us slowly returned. I was still standing in front of the boy from the forge—Tano, as I now knew. His dark eyes met mine. But there were no guilty tears. He did not lie crouched on the floor, begging forgiveness.

  �
�Get on with it.” I heard Valdracu’s voice somewhere in the background, sharp and impatient. “Do your duty, Dina. You don’t want to anger me, do you?”

  No, that was the last thing I wanted. I had seen what happened to Tavis when Valdracu was displeased with me.

  “Look at me,” I told Tano. And dug a little deeper.

  The air in the forge was hot enough to scorch the lungs. The fire, too, flared so hotly that the iron at its heart grew white in moments. The great bellows that kept it so worked tirelessly, driven by an inhuman power. Nor did human hands and arms make the great hammers rise and fall, rise and fall, blow after blow, the same unvarying beat all the time, until the pounding entered your blood and you heard it in your sleep, thump bang, thump bang, over and over again. No mere man could have worked so tirelessly. But the river flowed incessantly, and it was the river’s current that powered the bellows and the hammers of Dracana’s weapon forges.

  A smith’s hands were needed for the finer work that gave the swords their final form. And the smiths were treated with the respect due their craft, and were well paid for their efforts. Even their apprentices were decently treated, as a rule. But the no-man’s-brats—children like Imrik and Tano who had no father or mother or master at the forge—now, that was a different matter.

  It took no special skill to carry the iron from the furnace to the hammer mill. Nor did you have to be very clever to hold the iron in place while the great hammerheads pounded it into flat bars. All that was needful was that you were just strong enough and not too big, because there wasn’t much space, and the tall ones had to keep ducking their heads to avoid the gears and driveshafts overhead, and the ones that were too fat… if you were too fat, or too clumsy, the machinery might catch you, the way it had happened to Malik. And a hammer designed to flatten iron took no particular notice of human skin and bones and blood. Malik only had time to scream once.