SHADOW WEAVER

by Claire Merle

  I shiver. The poison has depleted me and left me in a cold sweat, but it is the memory of the peasants near Strik's castle that pushes a frosty hand through my chest, turning my insides to ice. The way they'd all stirred when Strik's presence grew near. Their minds like giant paper-houses. Empty, abandoned.

  “The King had his chance to stop my grandfather,” Lady Calmi says. “He did not dare stand against him. Now it is up to the Prince.”

  “The fields the peasants worked were not guarded,” I say. “How does your grandfather stop the Uru Ana from escaping?”

  “Their water supply is contaminated with mist berries. Their memories are constantly dulled and erased. They are like lost children. They can't even remember from one day to the next what has happened to them.”

  Her words cut the back of my throat. Lord Strik has enslaved hundreds, perhaps thousands of Uru Ana. Stolen their memories, their identities, carved out their souls and left empty vessels working his lands.

  I think of all the Uru Ana babies born into slavery, knowing nothing but emptiness, black fog, hard toil, and fear. Not even understanding the concept of freedom, which was stolen from them at birth.

  Tears well in my eyes. I wipe them quickly, haul myself up, and stagger to the balcony. My whole body trembles as I gasp at the warm air.

  “How many of the royal council members are under Lord Strik's influence?” I ask, my back turned to Calmi.

  “One. Of the other two I do not know.”

  “Wait outside,” I tell her. I listen to bottles chinking as she collects her basket. The chamber door clicks shut. When she has left, I return inside.

  “You should leave the Red City,” I say to Tug. “Take this news back to Lyndonia.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I will convince Jakut he must arrest the Queen.”

  “So you are buying Calmi's story?”

  “I saw her memories. She does not lie. She desires Strik's death more than anything. The Prince has been trying to do what his father would not. You have been prejudiced against Jakut from the very beginning.”

  Tug's jaw line hardens. “He is guilty or he would not have performed the Carucan cleansing.”

  “Guilt is not the only reason a man turns to faith.” Tug looks fixedly at me. I meet his gaze with a hard stare.

  “Strik acts under the supposition the Prince wants the throne and his granddaughter's hand,” I say. “Now the Queen carries an heir to the throne, Prince Jakut's only course of action is to convince the council to arrest her. This way he assures the crown for himself. Lord Strik will expect it. I will convince Jakut he must gain the council's consent. While he is swaying them, I will warn Queen Usas to leave the Red City.”

  Tug grabs my wrist. Pain shoots through my arm. My body contorts to lessen the agony. I lose my grip on the knife. He snatches it, disarming me.

  “You are barely strong enough to stand,” he says, drawing up close. “And incapable of defending yourself. Calmi may want her grandfather dead, but we can't be sure she is not also under the influence of his power. If you get anywhere near Strik, he will destroy you.”

  “Like he destroyed you?” I hiss, pushing him in the chest, furious with him, with the world. Anger barrels through me. I'm not an idiot! If something goes wrong, and Strik arrives before I make it out of the Red City, he will finish the job he started with the bird-men. I'll be defenceless. Unable to resist the power in his voice. And death would not be the worst possible fate. What if I were dragged into the black hole of his mind and never got out again?

  But I will not run away. I cannot do nothing, like all those who watched the kingdom exterminate and crush my people.

  “You made me a promise,” I say, pushing Tug back from where he swamps me with his great bulk. He is like a brick wall, fixed in place, penning me in. “You made me a promise.”

  “I did not promise to let you get yourself killed.” His chest rises and falls in line with my shoulders. I try to steady my breathing. I need his agreement. I need him to tell me he will go back for Kel. I struggle for something I can say to sway him, and find nothing. Frustration seethes through me.

  “Why have you come to the Ruby Court?”

  “I will write to Elise,” he says, ignoring my question. “A carrier pigeon will arrive faster.”

  “And who will take Kel to Blackfoot Forest?”

  “You will. As soon as we have convinced Jakut to arrest the Queen, and got the Queen out of the Red City.”

  He does not believe Strik can be defeated. He does not believe Jakut is strong enough for this deadly plan. So why is he agreeing to help?

  “Why are you really here, Tug?” I glare at him, but I know he won't answer. He never answers! When I break his steady gaze and look away, he speaks.

  “You remind me of the man I was. A man I'd forgotten.”

  “And what man is that?” I say tartly.

  “A man who had hope.”

  I should laugh in his face, call his bluff. But I cannot. His words strike a chord deep inside me.

  “You want me to trust you?” I ask.

  “I want you to trust me.”

  “Then why did you betray me to Duchess Elise?”

  “Kel is safer now than if you two were roaming the country with his eyes unsettled. And when given the choice by the Prince, you chose to come here. As betrayals go, you did not come off too badly, Mirra.”

  Forty-One

  The soldier assigned to guard me doesn't see it coming. I approach Calmi at the end of the hall, hear the punch, followed by a choking gurgle. Cloth swooshes across marble as Tug drags the guard into my chambers.

  “Who else but my maid saw you come here?” I ask Lady Calmi.

  “No one.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Right now the men assigned to guard me are following a young woman whom I have used often, and most successfully, as my double.”

  I am only half-listening as I stroll past her down the hall. We have company. Someone lingers behind the curved balustrade, and either they are with Calmi, or they spy for the Queen. Queen Usas already distrusts me. If she hears of Calmi's visit, her suspicions will increase ten-fold and I will never convince her to leave the Red City.

  I slip my knife from the band around my boot and skulk to the edge of the corridor wall. Then I swing around the side into a small, unarmed man. His eyes widen at the sight of me. He flinches, but doesn't reach for a weapon, or run in the opposite direction. His weathered skin is a shade darker than my own. His trousers and shirt clean but ill fitted, crumpled.

  It is Sixe. Calmi's leash. The shadow weaver her grandfather assigned to watch over her the day she arrived at his castle.

  He stares, expression transforming to fascination. A sentiment I reciprocate, though I don't understand why I should be of particular interest considering he lives on Strik's lands and is surrounded by our kind. I on the other hand, have not come close to a grown-up Uru Ana since we lived in the Sea of Trees. Unless you count the Duchess, and I do not.

  An arm floats up from his curved shoulders. His cracked, rough fingers prod my cheek as though testing whether I am real. A current of recognition passes between us. Far off in the mind-world, waves crash against crystal cliffs.

  “He's with me,” Calmi says. I take a step back. Sixe knows we are alike. If he reveals my identity and Strik learns I am Uru Ana, I shudder at what the lord would do if we met again. And it would shatter Strik's misconception of the Prince as an unmindful idiot who readily follows their plan for his own self-serving ambitions. “Sixe,” she continues, “is my eyes and ears in the palace.”

  “Your eyes and ears, or your grandfather's?” I ask, allowing distrust to seep through my voice. If I’m forced to strike Sixe unconscious so he does not reveal my sight to Calmi, my distrust will be the motive.

  “Grandfather caught him when he was a boy. He wishes to be free as much as I do. He has been watching over the Prince and Queen all morning for me.”
r />   “Let's not forget he has been watching you too,” I say. He is bound by Strik's power to follow Calmi, to know her whereabouts at all times. No doubt he longs for freedom, but like Calmi, he is not governed by his own will. They are both dangerous allies.

  “You have been surveying the Prince,” I say to him, “Where is he now?”

  “Sixe cannot speak. But if you wish to see Prince Jakut, he will take us.”

  The stooped Uru Ana slave bows his head, showing he is at my service.

  A distant click makes me jump. I step back to see around the balustrade. Tug stands outside my closed chamber door, brushing off a crinkle in his new white shirt. The Queen's guard is taken care of.

  I turn to Calmi. “I will speak to the Prince of what you have said, alone. Remain in my chambers until my maid returns. Keep my maid in my room by whatever means necessary. Sixe will take me to Prince Jakut.”

  “How long should I detain her?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “As what takes?”

  Tug joins us, expression neutral, though his eyes linger on Sixe, and I imagine he wonders whom in the name of the Gods we are dealing with now.

  “The less you know,” I say to Calmi, “the safer we will all be.”

  Sixe leads us down spiral staircases, passages hidden between walls, empty, neglected reception rooms, a ballroom and servant quarters, until we are on the first level of the palace.

  We stand in a narrow corridor sandwiched between mould-infested walls. I remember how he lurked in the little rat-holes of Strik's castle. He stares at me, seeing the memory in the mind-world. An instant later, an image he is recalling swims on my inner-eye.

  Queen Usas stands on a balcony, looking down over an enormous grass square. Over a hundred mourners have already gathered. They lay candles in a spiralling circle around a great stone pyre. They stand with heads bowed. A body wrapped in white cloth lies on the great pyre, and all around the square on huge poles, flags flap in the breeze.

  “He said it was urgent, Your Royal Highness,” her trusted officer says. “He will not leave the throne room until he has seen you.”

  Her hands grip the balcony railing. “What news of the council?” she asks.

  “They refuse to meet without the Prince and the Duke present.”

  And then:

  She glides through the palace surrounded by guards. The officer who informed her of the Prince's arrival strides by her side, talking in low, urgent tones.

  “I request most respectfully that you do not enter until we have secured the hall.”

  “He is not courageous enough for a head-on confrontation,” she says. “I am far more likely to be poisoned by his pretty little friend, or stabbed in my sleep. Get the Council!”

  Queen Usas is on her way to meet Jakut. I have not got long.

  “Stay here,” I tell Tug. The minutest flexion in his facial muscles shows his resistance to being ordered about. Particularly by me. “Please,” I add.

  “What's happening?”

  “The Prince has requested to speak to the Queen in the throne room. You want me to trust you? Well trust works both ways, or not at all.” Tug's grip on his scabbard tightens. His jaw clenches. “I need to speak to the Prince alone.”

  “If the Queen finds you with Prince Jakut—”

  “I know.” We will never convince her to leave the Red City and save her life and the life of her unborn child.

  I slip down the passage and halt at the edge of the great hall. Sunlight streams through an enormous bay window behind the canopied thrones. Beyond the window, a vast mountain range meets a dazzling blue sky. Gold on the cornices and umber columns gleams like the hall has been set on fire.

  The Prince kneels before the dais steps, crowned in a brilliant haze that shafts through a domed ceiling window. His head is lowered in prayer. A strange peacefulness fills the hall's magnificence as though he is communing with the Gods themselves.

  “Your Royal Highness,” I say.

  He looks up, the myriad shades of hazel in his eyes differentiated and contrasted by the sun. But the sun cannot eclipse the pain and torment written in their expression. He watches me for an instant, then he lowers his head, and closes his eyes.

  I pad into the veiled stillness of this odd sanctuary. Last night, the throne room's grandeur was threatening, imposing, accusing. The unsettling memory of my dream scuds across my thoughts. But as I look around, a serene beauty stirs the lost corners of the palace room.

  Why is Jakut here? Why the anguished torment? Has he remembered something? What is so pressing he has requested to speak with the Queen an hour before the departing ceremony?

  “Jakut,” I say, moving closer.

  “Leave.”

  “What has happened?”

  “I said leave!” He has never raised his voice in anger. Not even when I accused him of being a traitor.

  “I will not leave,” I say. “I have risked everything to be here. To help you. You are not giving up!”

  “Leave, Mirra.” His voice is imploring, begging. I kneel before him. There is such brightness around him I must squint to see his face. “Why have you requested an audience with the Queen?”

  “So she may arrest me.” He looks up, regret and disgust in his eyes. “I am a traitor. Just as you told me that night in Lyndonia. I told you what I would do if I discovered it was the truth.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “No, no. I was wrong. You did not condone the slaughter of your escort.”

  His eyes glass over, sorrow and regret consuming him. “It is worse. I have done worse.”

  In the mind-world, the Queen sweeps through an arcade of green and white diamond tiled walls. I recognize the cloister from the Duke's boyhood memories. Sixe shows me what he sees from inside the Queen's mind. She is close.

  “Come with me,” I say. “We will discuss this elsewhere.”

  “I am sorry, Mirra. I cannot help the Uru Ana.”

  I lean in to him, rest a hand on his slim shoulder, squeezing a little so he cannot drift back into his refuge of prayer and regret. “You brought me here to see what you could not. You must give me the chance to share with you what I have seen before you throw everything away.”

  “We are very, very different. You accept the darkness that wars inside a man. You accept a man's failings, hoping he may rise above them. You accepted my failings. But I... I cannot.”

  So Jakut remembers betraying his father, and the Carucan army. But he cannot remember why. He doesn't know enough about Lord Strik to understand why killing him could be an act of greatness, and there isn't time to explain.

  “You will accept your failings,” I say. “You have made bad choices. We've all made bad choices! But more than one destiny lies in your hands, and if you act now out of some mistaken sense of supreme morality, we will all die.”

  “I betrayed my own father!”

  “Well perhaps you should take the time to find out why. Queen Usas will walk through the throne room doors any second now. If you don't come with me and let me explain what is going on, the rest of your numbered days will be in a turmoil of remorse and regret far greater than any you feel now.”

  He hands me a note. It bears the seal of the emerald ring, which has been in his possession since waking from the winter long-sleep. I do not know where he has got it from, or if it proves he was in league with Lord Strik. It doesn’t matter. I rip it in half.

  A clunking sound reverberates from the end of the hall. The guards are opening the outer throne room doors.

  I lay my hand on his cheek. His skin is warm against my cold fingers. I draw away at once, as though I have been singed. Something passed through him into me. Something as inscrutable as the diamond sparkles on an ocean bathed in sunshine.

  I clear my throat. “You have not betrayed your soul,” I say. “Or your Gods. But if you stay and confess your crimes, you will do. You have yet to accomplish your greatest and most difficult task.”

  Then I am on my fee
t, running to the concealed gap in the wall below the dais steps. Boots stomp across the far end of the stone hall. In the shadows, I clutch my aching rib. The whites of Sixe's eyes shine, fixed on me.

  “Where is he?” Tug growls.

  “He is coming,” I say, sounding more certain than I am. “Prepare yourselves. He may not be alone.”

  Forty-Two

  The Prince's tall silhouette blots out the dull light bleeding into the passage from the throne room. He has followed me. Heartbeat thundering in my ears, I grab his arm and pull him through. Behind him, I glimpse soldiers in the great hall. They flow out in a semicircle beneath the haze of sunlight shafting through the domed window. Usas strides down the center of them like she is parting waves.

  “Where is he?” she says, her commanding voice raised to fill every inch of the hall.

  I push Jakut into the passage and close the panelled door. The Prince stands so close and the passage is so narrow I cannot slip around him.

  “We must go!”

  I cannot make out the Prince in the blackness, but I hear his breathing, can almost feel the heat radiating from his body.

  “I noticed in the throne room that you look unwell, Mirra,” he says.

  “We may talk about my health when we are away from here,” I whisper, nudging into him to get him moving. He does not comply.

  “What's going on?” Tug says. From the closeness of his voice, I realize he has moved up the tunnel to join us.

  “The Prince is concerned I look unwell,” I mock.

  “Sssh, not so loud,” Tug says.

  I wipe a few wisps of hair sticking to my forehead with the sleeve of my dress. Of all the men in Caruca why did I get stuck with two of the most stubborn and infuriating?

  “Are we going to go?” I say.

  “I will speak to you of whatever I wish, Mirra, or I am returning to confess my crimes to the Queen.”

  I suck in my breath and hold it when what I really want to do is scream.

  A memory surfaces in the mind-world.

  “He was kneeling right here, Your Royal Highness. He stood up, stepped out of the sunlight and vanished.”