“I am glad we had this talk,” he told me. “I will make sure that you stay well informed. You will do the same for me.”
“Of course, my Lord.”
“And, Catwin—“
“Yes, my Lord?”
“Tell Miriel to find out from the King where he is searching for Jacces. Tell her to plant the idea that it may not only be Jacces’ funding that comes from Mavol. The more we search, the more I think he is not in the Norstrung Provinces at all.”
It was all I could do to keep my face straight—that last sentence had given me the missing piece of the puzzle: Jacces was not in Norstrung. There was a reason there were no printing presses to be found in the peasants’ houses, no stashes of books, no troves of learning. Nilson’s men had looked everywhere, the Royal soldiers had questioned anyone they could lay their hands on, and no one had known. Of course, of course.
No one had seen what was right in front of our eyes. And that information had laid the other clues bare for me to see; Miriel was correct, it had been in front of my face the whole time. And so, trembling with relief and new knowledge, I bowed to the Duke, and went to find Miriel and tell her of this new development.
“It’s the High Priest,” I hissed to her, as I came into the room. She looked up from her studying with a ready grin, and I began to laugh. I could not even be angry at her for a moment; we reveled in the knowledge together.
“Just so,” she said, simply. “And so, now that you know…I have a letter for you to take to him.”
“What?” Her ready jumps from information to action had always baffled me.
“It’s not signed,” Miriel said. “Just letting him know that someone at court has figured it out…and is an ally.”
“You idiot, what if he has you killed?”
“It’s not signed,” Miriel repeated. “And I would think I could trust you to deliver a letter without him seeing you.” Her voice was sharp, and I threw up my hands.
“Think about it—he’s been smuggling his letters out of the Capital without even Temar seeing. He’s got a spy network, he’s been planning a rebellion for years. And,” I added pettishly, “he tried to kill you once.”
“For leverage against an enemy,” Miriel countered. “Catwin…I am still leverage against his enemy, and after that meeting in court, he knows that I have the ear of the King. We know he’s willing to kill to further his ends. Is it not wise to show him that we are his allies?”
“Oh.” I sat down and pondered. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I thought not. And I’m glad you’ve figured it out at last. We couldn’t have waited much longer.” She drew a letter out of a purse at her waist, and held it out to me. I pocketed it, reluctantly.
“I have news, too,” I told her. A plan had formed in my mind: give the Duke some useless tidbit. Not something that would get her in trouble, but something that she would not have told him herself, something that would prove my loyalty and gain me a small portion of his trust. I had not been able to think of something, but I was sure that between the two of us, we could contrive to come up with an idea. Miriel proved, to my surprise, intractable. She refused absolutely. At this inopportune moment, Miriel was suddenly unwilling to deceive.
“We have to tell him something,” I said, frustrated. The conversation had wound on for an hour. I was hungry, and tired, and beginning to be genuinely angry.
“Oh? Why? Why can you not let it rest?”
“I’ve explained three times.” My voice grew sharp, to match hers.
“Yes—that you throw me on his anger to make yourself look good!” Miriel glared at me. “Well, I don’t agree to it.”
“You know as well as I do that he’s waiting for something. He suspects you, he thinks you will defy him again. You’ve played on that before, yourself! If I hadn’t suggested this, you would have.” That thought made me particularly bitter. “You would have thought it a clever plan if you had come up with it.”
“But you suggested it,” she pointed out, agreeing without hesitation. “It benefits you.”
“It benefits both of us.”
“You would doubt me, if it were the other way around.” She justified herself without looking at me, but I saw from the stubborn set of her jaw that she felt her position was growing precarious.
“Give him this,” I said, trying to be patient, “and he won’t go looking for something else. Just this one thing.” She did not calm down, she flared up.
“What did he offer you?” she demanded fiercely. “Tell me the truth.”
“I told you, he only said—“ I broke off, unable to look into her eyes, and then I hopped down from my perch on the sill and pushed my way past her, out of her bedroom. How many times would it take me to learn this lesson? First Jacces, now this. Miriel trusted no one, and while I had learned to trust her, she would never let herself trust me. She demanded my trust, she would not rest until she had my secrets, but she made games of what she knew. She had never wanted us to be a side together, only to have me on her side—and she would always be waiting for me to betray her. In the rising tide of my anger, I conveniently forgot the dreams she had shared without hesitation, the secrets she gave me, the theories we came up with together. She had given me enough to ruin her a dozen times over, but I could not remember that with fury beating its rhythm in my temples.
“What are you going to tell him, then?” she asked nervously. She was hovering in the doorway, nervous and yet, as always, framed perfectly by her surroundings. I opened my mouth to tell her that I had no second plan, not having anticipated her anger.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said. It was an attempt at the prevarication she did so well. “I’ll go deliver your letter now,” I added, as insolently as I dared. And, as I would never be able to spar away my anger with her, herself, I went off to find Donnett.
“Ye can’t be too hard on her,” Donnett said, sometime later, as I poured water on a scrape. He snorted when I looked at him. “Lad, ye may be able t’sneak well enough, but yer as subtle as a boar when yer angry.”
“And you want me to be understanding of nobles?” I asked, skeptical.
“Aye,” he said cheerfully, with a twinkle in his eye. “It’s hard on ‘em, lad. They’re not all there in the head. It’s from marryin’ their cousins all those years,” he added, in a whisper. I gave a watery laugh and he clapped me on the shoulder. “Cheer up,” he advised me. “It’ll blow past.”
But it did not. As the weeks wound on, I waited for my own anger to fade, as it usually did. I waited for Miriel to forgive me, as she usually did. But instead, we watched each other like polite adversaries. We never came to open opposition; we still shared bits of information, we still worked with the tiny signals and unspoken commands we had developed. But I found myself wondering if she might indeed be hiding more than I knew, and she watched me with quiet suspicion; whenever she saw me with Temar, her eyes flicked back and forth between us, and she did not care that I saw.
She knew that I had not told the Duke of Jacces, or her letter—indeed, I had not told anyone of the many letters I had passed back and forth between the two of them, my routes between the palace proper and Miriel’s chambers becoming ever more complex, to evade the spies I was sure Jacces had set to find his supposed ally. Miriel needed me; she left the letters for me, and waited for me to retrieve the responses. But she knew that I could tell her uncle, and she hid her thoughts from me now. She did not share the content of the letters she exchanged with the High Priest, and I did not ask.
I had thought at the time that the Duke’s offer had failed, but now I wondered if he had planned this. Perhaps he had known that I would take the offer to Miriel, and that she would be suspicious. He might have known, with some deep cunning, that our tenuous friendship needed only a nudge, and then: a widening gulf, silence where there had been laughter, an edge in our voices. Or perhaps that had been a plan of Temar’s devising.
In my hopeful moments, I tried to believe that Mi
riel and I were simply outgrowing our squabbling. In my exhausted, resentful moments, I thought that it had been foolish of us even to try to build our own alliance, never mind a friendship; we had learned one secret, oh, the greatest secret—but that success could only be followed by failure. A half-breed noble girl raised in seclusion, romancing a King: that was fanciful, and dreadfully romantic, a fairy tale in the making. The bedtime stories never mentioned friendship between a future Queen and her little orphan bodyguard, and now I knew why.
We might share quick minds and have grown up together in the same nowhere corner of the world, only to be thrown together under the harsh rule of the Duke, but Miriel and I were far apart in station, in glamour, in skills. How could the King’s mistress share her view of the world with a shadow half-soldier? And without such an understanding, how could they share dreams? And from there: plans, a side of their own. It was impossible.
Worse, we had compounded the bad luck of being part of the Duke’s faction with the foolishness of plotting against him. I asked myself if I had run mad. Two girls, choosing for their target a war hero, with an army of a retinue—and the army of Heddred—in his camp. While we had begun a correspondence with the leader of the rebellion, that had led to no open alliance—and was our lack of progress not good? Shameful, how pathetic our rebellion was: a few words, a few secrets. But better that we abandon such an ill-starred alliance before it led us too far into danger. We could still walk away; the High Priest would never know that his correspondence had been with us.
What Miriel thought, I still do not know. We slipped away from each other, in evenings of silence, too-polite exchanges, smiles that did not reach our eyes. I was as lonely as I ever had been. It was worse than when I had come to the palace, knowing no one at all. Then, I had had Roine’s friendship and Temar’s guidance. I had not had any secrets to keep. Now, I lived two lives, my teacher mistrusted me, my surrogate mother would not speak to me. And I had lost even Miriel’s friendship.
I waited each night for the slow, deep breathing of Miriel and Anna, and then I curled into a ball and wept onto my pillow. I was so alone, and I was so afraid. I had never faced the world alone. I did not know how to survive alone. However symbolic Miriel’s support had been, it had been all that stood between me, and my fear.
I made sure that my eyes were dry and my face clean each morning, and I felt myself become very quiet. I made my face a mask, as Miriel once had, and wondered if the tight knot of fear in my belly would ever go away. The days seemed ceaseless and unchanging, I opened my eyes each morning with weariness.
And then, as we moved into the thaw of the year, the King came to Miriel with an incredible plan.
“Why should monarchs pretend to be allies while all they share are cold words?” he demanded. “Do you know, I have never met King Dusan. We have never met, and yet—and yet!—we write to each other as if I am my father, or as if we are our grandfathers, back and back. And why?” He was too excited to wait for Miriel’s response. “Think how many insults and how much anger we carry on and on from those generations. It is not our anger, it does not need to be this way. It should not be this way.”
He was flushed with conviction, and I had two thoughts at once. First, that he was almost unbearably naïve, and that the Council must be at a loss to find ways to advise such a boy. Second, that I could see why Miriel had begun to fall in love with him, all those fateful months past. Even now, made bitter by disappointment, I saw a warmth in her smile that was not only deception. Garad shared her same hopeful heart; I had the fleeting idea that life had warped them both, and it was sad that they could never now be truly happy together—whatever Garad might think.
“So tell me!” Miriel was flushed and laughing at his passionate speech. “What was your idea?”
“Oh, my love—“ Miriel’s smile never faltered at the endearment “—my love, you must be my champion in this—“
“Tell me!”
“—for I know the Council will be ranged against me, and I could not bear to have you against me as well. They will tell me it is impossible,” he finished in a breathless rush. Miriel wrapped her fingers around his and smiled, so warmly that I myself wanted to confide in her.
“You must tell me this idea that makes you so happy,” she said, and a smile broke across his face like dawn.
“We will travel to meet Dusan,” he said. “We will all meet together on the plains, the whole of the Courts, all the great nobles of the world, and discuss the future of Heddred and Ismir like men, not squabbling boys. It will be a great event, the most historic moment of our nations! It will be the true beginning of the golden age.”
As we walked back to our rooms, I said to Miriel, “You did very well.”
“I didn’t know what to say,” she confessed, with a laugh. “Such an idea! What do we do now?” I sobered, and checked the hallway. It was empty, and so I put a hand on her arm to slow her. I did not have to say anything; she knew what I meant without me speaking a single word. I saw her bite her lip.
“You’re not betraying him,” I assured her, my voice low. “He’ll tell them all tomorrow,” I assured her.
She nodded. “I know. And you’re right. And it’s a good plan.”
“And you’ve been very good about not getting us into trouble,” I conceded. It was not everything, but it was enough, after our laughter, to open the door. She inclined her head, like a Queen.
“Then let us go tell my uncle,” she said.
“This is a bad idea,” I said, out loud, before I thought. A bad idea to begin working against the Duke once more, a bad idea to renew our alliance. It was dangerous. Miriel only tilted her head to the side, and smiled. She did not have to ask what I was talking about, she always understood me.
“Don’t leave me, Catwin,” she said. “You’re all I have.”
Chapter 11
Garad had been correct: the Council swore that it could not be done. The Duke, having gone white with fury at the thought of ushering the Ismiri army through Voltur Pass, had raged at me and at Miriel when we brought him the news. Miriel sat, pale and trembling, and I knew that she hoped only to escape this meeting without her uncle’s anger turning to violence. Finally, his fury had burned away, and he dropped into his great, carved chair and stared at the wall.
“Do not encourage him,” he told us, and we nodded, frightened into silence. “Let us try to bring him around.”
And so he had gone to the Council meeting the next day, where Gerald Conradine predicted betrayal on the open plains, and Guy de la Marque told the King that he overreached himself; this time, none on the Council spoke against him for raging at the King. They, too, were terrified. Half of their time was spent assuring Garad that Dusan would never agree to such a thing, and the other half was filled with desperate pleading to abandon the idea. Every member of the council had lived through the last war, most of them had fought in it, all of them had lost family—Ismir had been beaten back, Heddred had won, could the King not leave well enough alone?
Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Garad sat silent on his throne while the men of the Council spoke earnestly. He listened to their words, he marked who spoke and who did not. He nodded in response to some comments. He let the Council beg him until their voices failed, and then he said simply that his mind had been made up, and he would send the invitation shortly by courier.
The Duke, forewarned by us, had regained his composure enough to sit quietly in the Council meetings, biting his tongue against what he saw as willful stupidity. While the other Council members left, only to join together in knots and mutter fearful predictions in the banquet hall, the Duke would retire early to his rooms each night, unnoticed.
Only those of us in his faction knew that he was working to create a plan that would both win him the adoration of the King, and soothe his own troubled mind. When Miriel and I were called in for urgent meetings with the Duke, we could see maps strewn about on all the tables, little figurines set up to show Voltur guards
men, Kleist troops, the Royal Army.
Temar, in a rare moment of friendship, showed me the Duke’s most recent plans. He brought a map to our lesson, rolled up carefully in a leather tube, and he had me brush off a table in the corner so that we could spread the map out on a clean surface.
As we smoothed the map out and laid little weights at the corners, I could not help but marvel at my life, that priceless objects were everywhere now. I had become so inured to gold, jewels and silks, books and maps, that I rarely thought of it anymore. And then sometimes, Temar would show me a book or a map, and I would remember that I was wearing warm clothes, that braziers burned in my bedroom, and that my belly was full and had been every day that week.
“Miriel cannot speak of this to the King,” Temar cautioned me, and his voice brought me back to the moment. I nodded, in agreement with the principle, but Temar still felt the need to explain. “We cannot let the King think that the Duke discusses his plans with Miriel. The King cannot think that they are a united group.”
“Yes,” I said simply. It was not worth the argument to tell him that I knew as much; when Temar thought of me as a child in need of instruction, he did not think of me as a woman who had betrayed him. I fought the uncomfortable thought that I did not want him to think of me as a child at all, and poured the little figurines out of their bag. I held them out to Temar, one by one, and he began to place them on the map.
“Here is where the King would meet, yes? And this is a portion the Royal Army.” He tapped to the north of the King’s proposed meeting place. A blue figurine went there. “Another here.” East of the meeting place, equally ready to meet the King if he were in need, or stand against an advancing force.
“Now.” Temar placed three green figurines on the board to the south, behind a mountain. “These forces can sweep west and north, or east and north, to flank the Ismiri. Retreat can be stopped by a detachment of Voltur guardsmen—“ blue figurines, placed in the foothills “—or enabled by sweeping the guardsmen along the north flank, to funnel the Ismiri back through the passes. What do you think?”
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