Shadowforged (Light & Shadow)

by Katson, Moira

  How many times? I demanded of myself, mouthing the words silently, biting my lip against the start of a sob. How many lessons will it take? I had been given chances, dozens of them, to cut this weakness out of my heart; and the Gods could have borne witness, in this moment, that I wished I had done so. We were assassins, Temar and I, we were killers; it was foolish for us to love, and more foolish still for anyone to love us. I, of all people, should know better than to hold such sentiment for him.

  But I, of all people, had seen also that he was caught between logic and instinct—and that was the crux of it. My steps slowed, and I leaned against the wall, hunching over as if the pain in my chest were true, a wound of flesh and blood instead of emotion. As long as I saw that struggle in Temar, I could not hate him; I could not even blame him, however much I might believe that I should. If ever there had been a chance of that, it had been in the moment when my anger spilled out, and it had been wiped away when I saw him press down the guilt he carried with him. I could not hate him, and without hatred, I could not cut away the rest.

  Logic against instinct: the cold truth that an ally with doubts and divided loyalties was no more than an enemy in disguise, and the instinct that led the two of us not to glare, and posture, but instead to smile, to search out the spark of empathy in each other’s eyes. However misplaced it might be, we had I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the cold of the wall seeping into my skin, and I prayed that Temar had not pushed his instinct beyond reach.

  I opened my eyes, and had a moment of confusion. Looking around myself, I realized that my feet had brought me not to Miriel’s rooms, but to Roine’s. I hesitated, caught by the desire to run, and avoid her censure, but I found myself moving forward inexorably. She might still be disapproving, she might barely speak to me anymore, but I needed nothing more, in that moment, to see her and remember who I had once been, before the Duke named me a Shadow. I stopped for a moment, wondering who reminded Temar of his past, then I shook my head, and pushed open the door.

  She turned from her work table to regard me. Her eyes took in my tears, and she was at my side in an instant.

  “What’s happened?” she demanded, her voice low and urgent.

  “I can’t tell you.” A mumble. A look away. Roine would not understand. She would tell me that to love an assassin was foolishness—and to explain that I could see beneath that, see what Temar was and had once been, was to remind her that I, too, was an assassin. Roine never wanted reminders of that.

  She looked into my eyes for a moment, and then she sighed, brushed the hair away from my eyes, and enfolded me in a hug. At this, I began to cry. I stood there, frozen with the fear of everything crashing down around me, and I tried to find words for what had gone wrong. “I have to go help Miriel plead with the King. Again. And lie. Again.” I gulped and pulled away to blow my nose into my handkerchief. Roine sat back, watching me, her brow furrowed. “I’m sick of lying,” I said thickly. “I don’t think it’s worth it anymore.”

  “Then let Miriel fight her own battles,” Roine said quickly. She swallowed. “Get out now, Catwin. Run away. Right now. You don’t want to be a part of what’s coming. Go.” There was real passion in her voice, and I shook my head regretfully.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I took a vow to Miriel, that I would protect her. I have to go to her now. It’s just…it’s hard,” I finished, lamely. I looked over to her, and saw not her anger, which I expected, but a deep sadness. “You’re not angry?”

  “No,” she said. She shook her head. “I knew how you would choose.” She took a deep breath. “Go, then. I won’t keep you.” I nodded; there was no time to waste, and certainly no time to talk to her of Temar. She would never understand that kind of loyalty, I thought, as I hugged her and left.

  I was cautious as I approached Miriel’s rooms. No guards waited outside, as I had been afraid they might—the King, knowing of my escape, must be searching for me—but the door, to my surprise, was locked. I rattled it, and then, confident that the deadbolt was not in place, set to picking the lock. It was evening, with most of the Court at dinner, and so few enough people were about. Still, I was lucky that no one rounded the corner as I opened the door and slipped inside.

  A sound caught my ear, the tiniest sound, and I pushed my way through the privy chamber and into her bedroom. Nothing. Not even Anna was here. I was just about to leave when I heard it again: a little scratching sound, coming from the wardrobe. Cautiously, seized by a sudden, superstitious fear, I drew my dagger. I yanked the door open and leaped back—

  “Miriel?” Her eyes were wide in silent appeal, her mouth bound with a strip of cloth and her hands tied behind her back. I sheathed my dagger and set to work on the knots. Clever. Damnably clever, to hide Miriel in the last place the Duke would think of looking for her. Hide her, and know that if the Duke and Temar came looking for her, she would keep quiet out of fear of them.

  “He said if I gave anyone a hint I was here, he would have me killed,” she whispered, when her gag fell away. “But I thought…I know how you walk. I had to try.” Her mouth twitched in an attempt at a smile. “I know you could kill anyone that had come in with you, anyway. Where were you? They took you away…” Her voice trailed off as she realized that she was babbling, and she took a deep, shuddering breath. I helped her up and then, on a whim, wrapped my arms around her in a hug. I felt her arms grip me as she hugged me back, both of us wordless in our relief to find the other unscathed.

  “They took me to the dungeons under the armory,” I said. “But I got out. Listen. Your uncle doesn’t know what really happened. Promise not to be mad?”

  She drew back and eyed me narrowly, but nodded. “I promise.”

  “The King gave out that you were sick,” I explained. “But the Duke knew it was false. He sent Temar to find us, and…well, he found me. I told him that the king thinks you sympathize, but it was all a misunderstanding.” She opened her mouth to speak, but I shook my head. “I said you were angry that the Duke hadn’t given you enough credit, and so you tried to get his command taken away—but the King thought you didn’t want him to go because you were sympathizing with the rebels.” Miriel was staring at me as if I had gone mad and I shrugged, helplessly. “It was the best I could do,” I pleaded with her. “The Duke will be angry, but I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t make him angry. His command was already taken away—he knew something was wrong.”

  “So, I’d better get the crown on my head or he’ll kill me,” Miriel said grimly, her babbling relief forgotten. She was all business. She waved a hand at me, distracted by her thoughts. “It was a good enough lie,” she said absently, and I sighed with relief. I had known it, but it was another thing entirely to hear her say it.

  It was good that I had not earned her anger in addition to everything else. We did not have time for blame, and a shouting match—for I knew, if pushed, that I would yell at her that she had gotten us into this mess to start with. I would not need to; she knew it well enough. And in truth, I did not blame her. The best either of us could do now was move forward.

  “Also…” I swallowed. “Look, I know you wanted to wait, but we needed an ally.” She looked over at me wordlessly, and I sighed. “I told the High Priest who you were.” She bit her lip, then nodded.

  “Fair. What’s he going to do?”

  “He said he wants the King to support the rebellion, too,” I said grimly. “He’s not sure he can persuade him, but I convinced him that our interests were the same.”

  “You know, I do look forward to meeting him someday,” Miriel said. “Now that he knows I’m an ally.” She looked almost hopeful, but then she sighed, and the hope drained away. “Gods. I have to go to Garad, don’t I?” The bitterness was so sharp in her voice that I took a step back, and she smiled sadly.

  “I don’t even want to anymore,” she said, and I heard the twist of powerless anger in her voice. “At first, I thought I just had to get him back. And then I was sitting there, alone,
and I thought…what if I do win him back? What then? I’ll spend my whole life with a man who tried to destroy everything I love. How can I do that?” We stared at each other for a moment. I had no answer for her, and she knew it. She knew from my silence that I had wondered much the same thing.

  “But is there any other way?” I asked. It was the most important question. It was the question that held us trapped. She shook her head.

  “Not if we want to survive at Court.” She pointed to my cot. “Very well, then,” she said grimly. “Sit. Tell me what we know. If we have to get him back, we need a plan. A very good one.”

  “We need the best lie we’ve ever told,” I said, the words bitter in my mouth, and she tilted her head to the side, at once looking thoughtful.

  “You know…” she said. “Now that you mention it, we might not.”

  “What do you mean?” I frowned, and she gave a wondering sort of laugh.

  “What’s the one thing we haven’t tried? The truth. We’ve never just told him the truth.” To her credit, the fact amused her.

  “You’re going to tell him—“ I started, and she cut me off.

  “That I don’t love him? No. Not that truth. But what if he knew that he had hurt me. That my uncle had nearly killed us after the audience, that someone had come to kill us with poison…what then?”

  “He would feel guilty,” I said slowly, beginning to see her plan.

  “And so then it wouldn’t just be me who had betrayed him,” she said grimly.

  “No,” I agreed, with the sinking feeling that this could work. We might come out on top again, and Miriel would be right where she had been: within inches of the crown. I was trying to untangle just why that thought was so repugnant to me when Miriel clapped her hands.

  “I have it,” she said. “You will tell him about my uncle, and that he—Garad—has made me enemies, and kept me in fear. Then I will step in and have you stop yelling at him, and he will listen. He’ll be surprised, you see. No one’s ever told him he was wrong. It will give us an opening.”

  “What will you say?” I asked curiously, and she shrugged.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll think while I get ready. Go guard the door; we can’t let anyone in.” Wearily, I went to obey. We had faced ruin and disgrace, and now our only choice seemed to be to forge ahead, ever pursuing a goal that would bring us no joy at all. I could only hope that when Miriel had the crown on her head, the game would change. I was not sure how much more of this I could stomach, and from her own outburst, I knew she felt the same.

  Chapter 24

  “Are you ready?” I slipped into the bedroom and raised my eyebrows in surprise at Miriel’s attire. Instead of one of her fine, jeweled gowns, Miriel wore a nightgown and a robe, her hair falling loose in a wealth of dark curls. She wore one of the finest of her robes, embroidered with silver thread and seed pearls, but the effect was deceptively simple. It was innocent, very far from the tiresome elegance of the Court; it was how Garad had first seen her in their meetings. She shaped her mouth into a smile, but her eyes were frightened.

  “I’m afraid it won’t work,” she confessed. “I can’t stop thinking that we’ve lost. I don’t want to go, I want to run away.” When Miriel was in the spotlight, when she was performing, there was no room for doubt in her mind—only absolute, uncompromising conviction. It was always strange to see her fear when the mask came away.

  “Do you want to run away now?” I asked her curiously, a strange seed of hope in my chest, and she considered the question for a moment. Then she shook her head.

  “No. I don’t think it will work, but I have to try. If I don’t, I’ll always wonder what might have been, because I’ll know I crumbled.”

  “We might not have a chance to run later, if this goes wrong,” I warned her, and her brow furrowed.

  “No. We have to go. Do you agree?” Silently, I nodded. There was no other choice, no safe place to escape to. Even when our hopes lay shattered, there was no way but forward. “Then don’t make this harder for me,” she pleaded, and I took a deep breath.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Our journey through the depths of the palace was quiet. Miriel was preparing herself for the most important act of her life, and I was twice as vigilant as normal, steering us along a circuitous route that even Temar would not think to check. I did not speak in part for fear of scaring Miriel. My heart was pounding so hard that I thought I might be sick, and I remembered how I had felt when I first came to the palace: like I was trapped in a story, where nothing was quite right. Was this how heroes felt in stories?

  A ridiculous thought. Had any true hero ever accompanied a lady as she tried, once more, to pull the wool over the eyes of the King she had already betrayed? No, fairy tales were simple—a lady and a knight, no difficult loyalties, no lies. Heroes did not betray their families and their Kings.

  “Did we ever have a choice?” I asked Miriel, before I could stop myself. To my surprise, she stopped her progress to consider.

  “Yes,” she said finally, and I felt the sinking feeling that she was right, that we had walked into every deception with our eyes open, and always the choice to walk away. Despite how many times we had told ourselves that we were trapped, we never had been. “But you know,” Miriel said, “I don’t think we did wrong. What could we have been if we ran away? What I wanted for Heddred was noble, and what you wanted…Catwin, what do you want? For you?”

  I winced and looked away. Unwittingly, she had touched on the sorest point, one I had meditated on as she had gotten dressed. Miriel had schemed and lied and betrayed because she believed she could rid the world of injustice and reshape the court and the country for the good of all. I had no such lofty goal. I had lied and betrayed as much as she had, but to no good purpose. More, what could I ever want? Temar?

  Useless even to think it.

  “I don’t know what I want,” I admitted in a strangled voice, and I felt tears come to my eyes when she reached out to lay her hand on my arm.

  “If we get through this, Catwin—you’ve been my friend when I had none other, you’re the only one who ever believed that I could help the country like I wanted to, and not just because I could help you to your own ends. Whenever you find what you want, I’ll help you like you’ve helped me.” I said nothing, blinking back the tears, and she squeezed my arm. “Are you ready?”

  I sniffled inelegantly and nodded, then wiped my eyes, and we set off once more. When we emerged from the side corridor, I drew my old boot knife out and slid it across the floor to the guards. If they searched me, they would find the others, but as I had bargained, this appeased them. They were new guards, I noted, and I was pleased to see that they did not know of Miriel’s disgrace, only her status as the King’s betrothed. With curt nods, they swung the doors open to us, and closed them again once we were through.

  “Your Grace?” I called, and there was a rustle from the direction of the King’s bedchamber.

  “Who’s there?” There was real fear in his voice, and for a moment, I truly felt pity for him. What good purpose could any visitor have? There had only ever been two people who would visit him for friendly purpose, and now he knew that neither loved him with an undivided heart, and neither shared his vision for Heddred. In the world of a King, with ill will on all sides—Kasimir’s threats, and Nilson’s, and those who would see the throne itself torn down—Garad had never been quite alone, until now. And he was afraid, and I was sick to my soul at the thought of more lies and sneaking about, all to a young man.

  I felt the shadow welling up in my heart, undeniable. Garad was no friend of ours: I could not blame him for not caring for my happiness, but he had closed his eyes even to Miriel’s best interests, and he had put her in grave danger time and again. Right now, he was our enemy. When you play to win, everyone is always your enemy. Miriel might soften towards him one day, as might I. He might become an ally. But tonight, there was no time for sentiment, no time for my foolish qualms.

 
; “It is Catwin, your Grace,” I called, and I held out my hands, palms forward, so that he might see I meant him no harm. “I have brought Miriel.”

  The King emerged from his bedchamber scowling.

  “I do not wish to speak to the Lady,” he said coldly. “And you. You defied my wishes, you went and freed her, then.” I did not point out that it had been laughably easy; however much he might have cautioned them, his guardsmen had not believed that two girls could outwit them.

  “I swore a vow to her,” I said simply. Even if this was a piece of our place, I was proud to say it, and I was glad to speak the truth at last. “After they tried to kill us, we swore to each other that we would be on the same side. If it is in my power, I will never let her be alone and imprisoned. And, see, we came back,” I added.

  “Who tried to kill you?” he asked suspiciously, seizing on that, taking the bait. I bit my lip.

  “We still don’t know. Do you remember her ‘illness’ after the official audience? That was not illness, it was poison in her food and mine.”

  “Someone tried to kill her, and you did not tell me?” he demanded. As Miriel had predicted, such news distressed him. He was angry, and still he loved her. I wondered what she made of this, watching from the shadows, but I did not have much time to spare for such thoughts. I had not her skill at weaving illusions, even when they were made of truths.

  “We were afraid,” I admitted to him. “We did not know who we could trust. To call attention to it might have brought her more danger.” I drew a deep breath and took the plunge. “We even suspected the Duke, her uncle. We have asked him, and he has not denied it—but you see, I think it is just to keep us in fear. When Miriel arrived here, he told her that she must obey him and behave with absolute purity, or he would have her killed. When he knew that she had been going to see you without telling him, he was…” I took a moment to remember the Duke’s rage after that audience with the King, so that fear would show on my face; I was not Miriel, who could create the illusion of emotion from nothing. “He was very angry,” I finished softly.