SHADOW WEAVER

by Claire Merle

  I glance down at the bundle of broken sticks. “My father believes a girl should know how to take care of herself.”

  “You are not tired after today's ride?”

  “Of course, Your Royal Highness.” It is the first time I have stood so close to the Duke. In the sunset, his face strikes me as young. It is a strong face, with alert blue eyes that remind me of my father. He glances across the camp, and I see what he sees. Commander Fror is distracting the Prince with a map.

  “Walk with me a little,” the Duke says. I curtsey and move into step beside him.

  “Tomorrow we will stop in the town of Lindy and take rooms. You will be able to wash and change your clothes. Though I have not heard you complain. I've never met a woman so impartial to her own appearance.”

  I smile as though he compliments me though it could as easily be an insult. The Duke stops and checks behind. My empty stomach twists a notch tighter.

  “This is an awkward question, Lady Mirra, so I will be direct. How certain are you of Prince Jakut's feelings?”

  Oh, he detests me, no doubt about it. “I'm not—” I falter and bow my head in embarrassment. “I'm not experienced in matters of the heart, Your Royal Highness.”

  “My wife says he has already asked your father for your hand.” I swallow hard and nod. Did Elise tell her husband this before or after she knew it as a lie? “And yet if my brother is still alive, such a match will be forbidden.” Like Jakut, he hopes that the King is an Etean prisoner and not dead.

  “You married Elise,” I say quietly.

  “I was not next in line to the throne. And my own father had departed this life or he would not have permitted it.”

  “You are wondering about the Princess of Rudeash?”

  “The Prince has spoken to you about her?” I shake my head. “What happened with the Princess is a question that needs clarification, but I will be blunt with you, my concern lies elsewhere.”

  “Go on,” I say.

  “Has Jakut spoken to you of Lady Calmi?”

  “I did not know of her until your wife told me she had been in the Prince's favour before he left for the north.”

  The Duke scratches the gray speckled stubble of his beard. The sun slips off the edge of the world, abandoning us to twilight. Soldiers gather around blazing fires. The clatter of spoons on bowls and conversation fills the valley.

  If he has something to tell me, he'd better hurry up about it.

  “King Alixter was particularly opposed to the Prince's relationship with Lady Calmi because she was Lord Strik's granddaughter.”

  “Granddaughter...”

  “You have turned pale.”

  “I am fine.” My hand flutters to my bare neck in an old habit of checking for my lodestone. My north. My guarantee when I was in Blackfoot Forest of finding the way home.

  “It is no secret in the Red City and many of the provinces that Lord Strik and the King Alixter are, or were, not on good terms. But as you saw for yourself today, Lord Strik commands a great deal of farming land. The Red City is in part dependent on his produce and he has much influence over the nobles of the provinces. Lord Strik will have known that Lady Calmi and the Prince were on special terms. It was said she held great influence over him, influence Lord Strik will wish to uphold. Had he learned today of the Prince's affection for you, your life would be in danger.”

  Once we arrive at the Ruby Court, I already have enough to worry about. I must help Jakut hide the state of his shredded memories from a warrior Queen and a lady he wished to marry. I must discover who lay behind the attack on his escort without revealing my outlawed talent. I do not need a tyrannical lord, whose dark-mind is like gazing into an abyss, to worry about as well!

  “If Prince Jakut introduces me to the Red Court as Lady Mirra of the House of Tersil, Lord Strik will hear of it,” I say.

  “Yes. Which is why I ask if you are sure of the Prince's affection?”

  “What is your advice, Your Royal Highness?”

  “That you ask him to leave you and your kinsmen in Lindy. You are an intelligent girl so I will not condescend to your inexperience or youth by hiding the truth. You know of the assassination attempt against the Prince. And now it seems the Prince has aligned himself with Lord Strik. These are unsettled times. The innocent often end up suffering the most.”

  “Aligned himself?” So the Duke and I have come to the same assumption.

  “Lord Strik recognized Jakut. They have met before.”

  “But anyone who has been to the Ruby Court would recognize the Prince.”

  “King Alixter did not allow Lord Strik to set foot in the Red City. If Jakut holds you close to his heart he will grant you this request and desire to protect you. And if you are confident of his feelings, you have no need to fear the influence of the Lady Calmi.”

  But Jakut will never grant such a request. He cannot.

  “He needs me,” I say, though the Duke may take my refusal to listen to his advice as an insult. “I cannot abandon him.”

  Roarhil stares at me until the heat rises through my chest to my face and my hands start to prickle. I curtsey. My back foot slips on a rock. “Excuse me,” I say, stumbling and turning. Then I stride back to the camp.

  I reach the fire where Tug and Brin slurp soup from bowls.

  “What was that about?” Tug asks.

  I slump down near them, brushing hair from my eyes with my sleeve.

  “Deadran would be disappointed. All that effort he went to to get you to behave like a lady.”

  I glare at Tug, then straighten my spine and shoulders. The cook, a boy of fourteen or fifteen, and the youngest of the Duke's soldiers, arrives.

  “I'm sorry, Lady Mirra,” he says, handing me a bowl. “No time for the hunters to bring back meat today.”

  “It is fine. Thank you.” He blushes and bows and hurries back to serve the Duke who passes our fire, ignoring us.

  “He is not pleased with you,” Tug says.

  “Where is the Prince?”

  “Commander Fror has him sequestered away in the main tent. They are planning which way we should approach the Red City to avoid the King's army—now serving the Queen's orders.”

  “I bet the food's better in there,” Brin adds, watching the Duke enter the main tent.

  I take a spoon of the over-spiced grain. It burns my mouth and makes tears come to my eyes. Tug passes me a cup of water. After I've gulped it all, I put down the cup.

  “Lady Calmi,” I say, “the young woman the Prince wished to defy his father for and marry, has a grandfather, Lord Strik. Naturally, Strik desires their marriage. If he hears the Prince's favour now lies with Lord Tersil's daughter, the Duke believes he will try to get rid of me. He wants me to stay away from the Ruby Court.”

  Brin splutters on his broth, flings aside his bowl, and pushes to his feet. “If I die guarding Mirra,” he mutters, “I'm gonna kill you, Tug.” He stomps off towards soldiers gathered at a nearby fire.

  “So that's why the Duke introduced you as his niece,” Tug says. He stares at me until it is awkward, then strange, then annoying.

  “What?”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “An apology? Well, that certainly paints a silver lining on what I rate as the second to worst day of my life. The day I met you being top of my list, of course. And what are you sorry for? Shooting my father and leaving him to die, kidnapping my brother, blinding us, beating me up, selling Kel or selling me to a Prince who's going to get us all killed?”

  Tug's face doesn't shift a muscle. “It is important you make Jakut understand just how dangerous Strik is. The King's dethronement and the Prince's return provide Strik with an opportunity for power he will not let slip through his fingers.”

  I think of the deathly coldness in Tug's attitude when he introduced Lord Strik as the man who stole Baron Tye Keylore's lands. His lands. Tug's face and name have changed, but I do not imagine he was ever the sort who would accept an offence of this magnitude without d
eclaring war.

  “What happened between you two?” I ask.

  He stares at me again until I want to fidget. “You are too old for your years, Mirra. Even for an Uru Ana.”

  Thirty-Two

  The town of Lindy, nestled by a river, lies thirty miles from the Red City. Tomorrow, when we arrive at the royal court we will have made the two-week journey in eleven days.

  The Duke and Commander Fror chose lodgings at the edge of the town, where there is a field for the men to camp. Through the window of my narrow room at the top of the inn, I watch Lindy men scurrying around, carrying great tubs into the field where they will be filled with hot water for the soldiers to bathe. The Duke has ordered the cook to find the town's finest caterers and bring a feast for his men with all the delicacies of Lindy. I see now how hard it must have been for Elise to lie to her husband. He is generous and well respected by the men. He tried to warn me about Lord Strik with no ulterior motive than my safety. He must think I'm ungrateful and simpleminded for ignoring his advice.

  Sensing the minds at my open door, I turn. A young soldier enters with my trunk, followed by two girls barely out of childhood. They curtsey and stand back, eyes lowered, giggling and nudging each other as the Prince enters.

  “These girls will help you bathe and dress for the evening meal and before we set out in the morning,” Jakut says.

  I nod. Without a maid to dress and undress me, I have worn my skin trousers and men's shirts for the last ten days. This is the Prince's way of telling me that tomorrow I am expected to ride in the cumbersome dresses of a lady.

  “I must speak with you a moment, Your Royal Highness,” I say. He indicates for the girls to leave and they bustle out curtseying.

  Jakut's manner stiffens. He remains by the door, as though he cannot wait to escape.

  “We need to talk about Lord Strik.”

  “I'm listening.”

  “His granddaughter is Lady Calmi, the young woman in the Red Court who you wished to marry. She is the reason your father sent you to the tundra to return with the Princess of Rudeash.”

  His jaw clenches, tiny muscles in the sides of his cheeks flexing as he grits his teeth. The anxiety he's struggled to conceal since our encounter with Lord Strik seems to spill across the room like an icy draught. I wonder what chills him more—that I accused him of sanctioning the slaughter of his own escort, or that he is starting to believe it?

  “You have returned without the Princess, and your father no longer stands in your way. Lord Strik will want to see the two of you wed. If you present me to the Ruby Court as Lady Mirra Tersil from the north, who sat by your bedside bringing you back to health, and who has won your affection, you will position me as a direct rival to his granddaughter.”

  Jakut flexes and cracks his knuckles. “You believe Strik is dangerous and powerful enough to try to assassinate you while you are under my protection in the Ruby Palace?”

  Protection? Captivity, more like.

  “Your uncle certainly thinks so. He advised me not to accompany you to the Ruby Court. And Lord Strik is without a doubt the most dangerous man I have ever crossed. Something about his mind is unnatural. He could persuade a person to act against their better judgment. Against their own desire.”

  “Is this some dark art I have not heard of?”

  “If it is, I have not heard of it before either.”

  “Lady Calmi's grandfather,” he mutters. “This is why he knew me and gave us free passage through his lands.”

  The coolness in the Prince's general manner vanishes. From his breast pocket he retrieves a leather binding. He unfastens it and holds out a leaf of well-made papyrus paper. “Is this her?” he asks, stepping closer, hand unsteady so I have to take it to see properly.

  The sketch is of a young woman with wavy hair, large slanted eyes, and a thin nose.

  He remembers! The hours I've wasted combing the dark cavernous expanse of his mind and puzzled together nothing, while he has been sketching portraits of the girl he was in love with. How long has he been carrying this around?

  “Lady Calmi joined the Ruby Court about a year ago,” I say, gaze fixed on the picture. “Neither the Duke nor any of his men have met her so I do not know what she looks like.”

  Jakut's talent for rendering a life-like image far exceeds my own. The girl's tormented eyes stare out of the paper, as though she is begging me to destroy the image that traps her. I look up. Jakut's gaze flits from my face, and he takes back the picture. “Do you remember her?” I ask.

  He shuffles the leaf into the leather binding before producing another. A slim faced woman with braided hair, loose cotton trousers, a fitted shirt, and a sword at her waist.

  “Queen Usas,” I murmur.

  “Yes, from your portrait and descriptions, I came to the same conclusion.”

  “This is good news,” I say, “your memories are returning.” But I'm not convinced it is good news, at all. The Prince’s lack of memory has allowed him to live with a clear conscience, free of any past wrongdoings, free to believe he is noble and good. He believes his destiny is guided by the Carucan Gods. But all evidence points to him once being a devious man with an unscrupulous passion to wed Lady Calmi, no matter his duty to King or Kingdom, the barriers in his way, or the dark alliances he had to form.

  He returns the sketch to the binding and passes me another. My hand reaches for it, then I see what he is offering and it's as though the paper catches fire.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  I shake my head, heart pounding in my chest. This is not something sketched from the shambles of his shipwrecked memories.

  “He does not look familiar?” he asks, watching me. I stare back, gaze scratching and chipping at the layers between his eyes and his soul. Has he been toying with me all along? Is it possible to know a man who has so many disguises? And what, if anything, lies beneath, when he takes them all off?

  I can trust nothing about the Prince, assume nothing. The slap of Lady Calmi's portrait was a gentle wake-up prod, so I would not miss my torturer unravelling his instruments and sharpening the knives.

  In the drawing Jakut has rendered, my brother's head is dipped, and a blindfold covers his eyes, but the mouth and chin are unmistakable.

  “I presume you continue to sift the darkness of my mind for crumbs of my old life,” he says.

  “Unlike you, Your Highness, darkness is all I have found.” Something flashes in his eyes. As though my barbed innuendo—that the darkness possesses more than just his memories—causes him pain.

  I wish I could trust these occasional moments when the barrier drops leaving him tender and raw. If it were more than another layer of deception, if he felt some affection for me, it would be much easier to hurt him. Which is what I ache to do now he has snuffed out the candle of hope burning in that dark house. The Prince's knowledge of my brother's existence throws Kel's safety into perilous uncertainty again.

  He holds the sketch of Kel closer to his face, eyes narrowing as he traces a finger around the outline. Then he returns it to the leaves of his leather binding. I want to snatch it and rip it to shreds. Tell him he may have me, use me for whatever sinister, treacherous acts he requires. But he cannot have Kel.

  Instead, I am unmoving. I cannot forgo the smallest chance he does not know what he has in his possession.

  “I have seen no more of my past than you, Mirra.”

  “And what, then, am I to understand of these drawings?”

  His gaze loses focus, thoughts travelling thousands of miles away. Gone to join his soul, perhaps, where it is trapped in the lonely glacial mountains.

  “If only you and I were not quite so good at surviving,” he says.

  “Then we would be dead.”

  He nods, heaviness slowing his movements.

  “If the sketches,” I say, “are not from your memories, where are they from?”

  “One day I expect we will both have our answers. I only hope it is not too late.”


  The bath water turns cold and the girls grow tired of waiting. They knock and enter with towels. I dry myself, send one to bring supper to my room, telling her I crave only a large bone of meat, preferably the foreleg of the biggest animal she can find. The other I send to make my excuses to the Prince and Duke and then fetch needle, thread and scissors. They offer to sew or mend anything I require, but I refuse and dismiss them for the night, nodding at the guard posted outside my door before locking it from the inside.

  Using a lump of sandstone from the bathroom fire, I spend the next few hours grinding and sharpening the deer bone. I don't have the tools to make a haft or balance the blade, so the result is nothing to be proud of. But it's a weapon. And I feel better when I've sewn a holder for it at the top of my riding boot where it will be hidden beneath my skirt.

  When I'm done, I place the bedcovers on the wooden floor, and lie listening to the quiet. The last of the soldiers retired ages ago, their drinking and bantering replaced by the howling wind.

  I can come up with only one likely explanation for Jakut's sketch of my brother. He must have seen Tug, Brin, Kel and I enter the Pit together. After days of ruminating on what possible fishhooks Tug has impaled me with to acquire my cooperation, Jakut has come to the conclusion that the glitter-eyed boy who looked nothing like me, but who was captured and sold at the same time, is more than just another bounty hunter's prize.

  But why didn't he confront me directly? Why draw Kel blind-folded, reveal only half his face so I am left doubting if it was really Kel, or whether paranoia has submerged my capacity to think straight?

  Pa told me a man who fights monsters must be careful he does not become one. But he did not say what happens to those who fight alongside a monster without realising it. He did not say whether there is a turning point, when a man becomes a monster, or what happens when they realize they've already crossed that line.

  Thirty-Three

  Impatience gnaws at me as the girls fuss with my dress and hair. Outside, the unit packs and prepares for the final leg of our journey, languid after a night of drinking and joviality.