by Fran Jacobs
***
I woke into darkness. Without a window in my room, I could never be sure what time of day it was. I didn't even know if it was morning. There was a light coming in, from under my bedroom door. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it would keep me awake, so I got up and slowly started to move towards it.
The source of the light was a lantern that had been left lit on the table. As there was no sign of Trellany or Tev, I decided that it was safe to put it out for the night and started to walk towards it. The sound of Trellany's door opening stopped me. I prepared myself for another argument, only it was Teveriel who walked out of her room. Dressed in just his shirt, carrying his clothes in his hands, there was no mistaking what he had been doing in my guard's room.
"I-I didn't know you were up," he said, his face flushing bright red. "I thought you were still asleep. I-I had hoped..."
"You," I said slowly, "you and ... Trellany?"
"We were drunk," he said uncomfortably. "We finished the last of my wine, in fact." He dropped his clothes into a pile at his feet and searched them until he found his breeches, which he slid into quickly. "Trellany was upset. She kept saying that it was her fault, that she should have known better than to let you work in the kitchen like a scullery maid, that it was a good thing she had resigned or your King Sorron would have fired her. I gave her some wine, we both got drunk and it ... happened. It won't happen again."
I edged towards my bedroom, looking through the open door at the safety beyond it. A sudden flare of jealousy had gripped me and I really didn't want to be discussing this right now, or indeed, ever. "It's not my concern," I said. "It's up to you what you do. It's none of my business."
"I'm your friend and she's your guard. Of course it's your business. Candale, it was a mistake. Trellany threw me out the moment she woke up. She regrets it as much as I do. Gods, Dale, I don't even really like her --"
"It's fine," I said. "I-I still feel shaky after my fit. I think I'll go back to bed, get some more sleep before kitchen duty ..."
"I don't think you should go down there in the morning. Take a couple of days to rest properly, to recover --"
"No, no," I said quickly. I was almost at my door now. "I'm fine, Tev." And I slid into my room, shutting the door behind me. I got back into my bed and pulled the covers up to my ears. I suddenly felt very isolated and alone. Trellany, my guard, and Teveriel, my best friend, had been together. They had shared something with each other that I hadn't shared with anyone, and I felt left out and jealous and lonely.
A moment later the door opened and Teveriel came in, climbed onto the bed and sat squarely on my feet. I didn't look at him, just stared at the wall. "Please, Dale. Can we talk about this?"
"It's fine, Tev."
"So you said, but if it really was 'fine' you wouldn't have run out of there so quickly. Look at me."
"Tev --"
"Please. I'm not going to get off your feet until you do."
I rolled over slowly, throwing his heavy weight off my feet, and sat up. "Tev," I said, "I'm a little jealous, yes, and a bit surprised, but really, it is all right."
Teveriel looked me over, scanning my face. Then he nodded, seeming convinced. "All right," he said, giving me a nervous smile. "I'm glad to hear that. I wouldn't want to ruin our friendship over one mistake."
"You haven't," I said stiffly. "I'm only sorry that I upset her that much."
"You upset both of us, Dale," Teveriel said. "And I hate to say it, but I agree with her. You do need to take things slower."
"I know and I will," I said, "but I can't stop working in the kitchens. My grandfather will leave home when the snow has melted. Belyisia gave that about two weeks or so. He'll be here before I know it and I won't see my friends again. Working in the kitchens might be the last chance I get to spend any time with them. Besides, I want to prove it to Trellany, and to myself, that I can do this."
"But you hate it," Teveriel said. "You have complained about the heat and the smell non-stop since you were sent down there."
"I know," I said. "I know. I will try and watch my complaints."
"That wasn't what I meant. You hate it down there, you have a chance to get out of it. Are you really prepared to keep going just to spend time with Silver and Belyisia?"
"They're my friends. I would do the same for you if it was the only way I could get to see you."
"Oh." A faint blush of colour flooded his face and he seemed very pleased. "All right then. I can try and talk to Trellany for you, explain your side, if you want."
"No," I said. "I can do it. Thank you."
"You will at least listen to her advice and rest for a couple of days?"
"Yes," I said. "I'll at least do that."
"Good." He nodded. "Well, I better leave you to get more sleep. I know that I need to." He started to get up from the bed, but then he leaned forward and planted a kiss, square on my forehead. He flashed me a bright smile, but his green eyes were still and quiet. "Sleep well, Candale."
I could only stare after him, as he left me to sleep, with the feel of his lips burning into my forehead.
***
The next couple of days were rather awkward. Teveriel and Trellany couldn't stand to be alone in the same room with each other, and when it was the three of us, we all took great efforts to talk around the subject of what had happened. I thought that things would get better when I got down into the kitchens again, that at least life would start to get back to normal, but my first morning back was far from comfortable. The kitchen staff kept giving me odd looks, Ulore made it obvious that he was trying to avoid me and Trellany, who now insisted on coming with me, stood over me the whole time to make sure I took it easy and rested often. It was a relief when the morning shift was over and I could escape back to my rooms to get ready for class.
Only, when we got back, we found the door to the suite was standing open. "That's odd." My guard narrowed her eyes as she studied it, her hand on the hilt of her sword. "I'm sure we closed it when we left."
"Perhaps Tev went for a walk," I said.
Trellany snorted, tossing her red braid back over one shoulder. "That boy never gets out of bed unless it's to eat, and he long ago decided that breaking his fast in the morning was unnecessary." She pushed the door open cautiously with her fingertips, squinting into the darkness beyond it. "I'm going to go first," she told me. "You stay back here."
"It could have just blown open."
"With all the windows closed in our suite, I don't think so." She pushed the door open even wider, so that she could slide into the room. It creaked on its hinges and Trellany flinched as the sound echoed.
Then we heard Teveriel's voice coming from somewhere in the darkness: "There's no one here," he said. "Just me."
"What happened? This room looks a mess," Trellany said, her voice heavy with relief. She moved more fully into the room, but her hand was still on the hilt of her sword.
"It is a mess," Teveriel's replied. "Apparently this is what happens when a mere bard messes around with a fighter's property."
"Excuse me?" Trellany whispered.
"I had a visit from Haran," Teveriel said. "And this is what happened."
Trellany glanced back at me and then she disappeared into the darkness of the room. I heard her stumbling over fallen objects and swearing as she bumped into things. Then the curtains were roughly pulled back to let in a flood of grey winter sunlight, which lit up the room, in all its destroyed glory, for us to see.
Furniture was turned on its side and a couple of chairs had lost their legs or arms. Tapestries lay crumpled on the floor, or were hanging on the wall by just a thread, as it were. The figurines, that had decorated parts of the room in all their dustiness, were broken, the rug was dishevelled and logs, which had sat neatly in a box by the fire, were thrown randomly around.
Teveriel sat on the only upright chair, his head bowed and hidden by his honey hair. He was in his grey silk nightshirt, his long legs bare and drawn up benea
th him. He seemed vulnerable, curled up in the chair like that.
"Tev," I said. "What happened? Are you all right?"
Teveriel lifted his head slowly, in a dramatic way that any actor would envy, to show us what Haran had done to his face.
He was holding a handkerchief to his nose and it was soaked with blood. He had a split, swollen lip, blood in his hair, and a large bruise had swelled around one green eye, while another was sprawled across his left cheekbone. They were beautiful looking bruises, large, and dark purple-blue in colour, but it was nothing too drastic. I knew it could have been a lot worse. But it did look as though it hurt a fair bit and Teveriel seemed shaken up about it; his green eyes were pained and teary.
"Haran found out that Trellany and I shared a night together," he said in a strange sort of nasal voice, brought about by his sore nose, no doubt. "And he was just letting me know that he was displeased." He gave me a shrug and a lopsided grin, which faded with a grimace of pain.
"Haran did this?" Trellany asked, her voice tight with anger, "because you and I slept together?"
"Yes. Although I'm not sure how he found out."
"I told him," Trellany said.
"Why?" Teveriel asked. "Why in the Drakan's name would you do something that stupid? I thought you had more sense than that!"
Trellany's eyes narrowed. "Why shouldn't I tell him?" she said. "It's my life and it's my body. I can sleep with whomever I choose."
"Yes," Teveriel said, "you can, but just because you find it easy to do so, it doesn't mean that Haran finds it easy to let you!"
"Let me? It's not up to him what I do."
"No," Teveriel said. "It's not and it's not up to you what he does! He didn't appreciate the fact that another man had enjoyed himself with his property and here I am looking like this because of it."
"I am no one's property!" she spat, almost a shriek. "The gods damn it, you men are so infuriating! You want to own and control everything! Women, children, animals, the land itself, everything has to belong to you and you think that you have the right to then fight over ownership of it, as though it were a piece of meat caught between two hungry dogs. And then, when you are tired of it, you think you can throw it away like a broken toy. It doesn't matter to you how anyone else might feel about that, as long as you get what you want."
"And you think that women aren't just the same?" Teveriel asked calmly. "That they don't consider their lovers their property? Because I know for a fact that they do. My sisters often fought over men. Are you telling me that it's all right for women to fight over men but not for men to fight over women?"
"No," Trellany said, very softly, but she was by no means calm, however deceiving her soft voice might be. "I'm saying that it's not all right for Haran to fight you over me!" She stormed from the room like a whirlwind, slamming the door shut hard behind her, leaving me standing there with all the upturned furniture and Teveriel, still nursing his nosebleed.
"Your nose is bleeding," I said lamely.
"Yes," he agreed. "I thought that. The blood flowing from it was my first clue. What was yours?"
I sighed, sometimes his sarcastic flippancy could be a little tiring. "Stay there." I picked my way over the discarded furniture, stopping to pick up a couple of chairs, and made my way into Trellany's room. At the bottom of her closet were her healing supplies. I gathered up the small cloth bag of various vials and pieces of gauze and made my way back to Teveriel. "Let me have a look."
"You aren't a healer."
"No," I agreed, "but I am clumsy. I've had my fair share of nosebleeds and black eyes from falling over my own feet." Teveriel's eyes were unsure but he took the handkerchief away from his face. "Tev, how in Drakan's name was your nose going to stop bleeding if you kept dabbing at it and encouraging it to bleed?"
"I didn't want to get blood on my clothes," he told me.
"Blood stains can be removed, Tev," I told him, "but I can't imagine it's nice to have your nose bleeding continually like that."
"Blood is a bugger to shift out of silk, thanks, Candale," he said, brushing at the front of his nightshirt with worried eyes, as if just the mention of getting blood on it had miraculously made it happen.
I rolled my eyes and reached out to pinch the bridge of his nose. He cried out in pain and gave me a startled look. "It will stop the bleeding," I assured him. "The nose doesn't look broken, but you might want to visit Dynild afterwards and get it checked out."
"I might," he agreed, "if he wasn't a friend of Haran."
I rolled my eyes. "When you create a situation, you make sure you do it properly, don't you?" Teveriel just smiled. I tilted his head back a little, to stop the blood staining his oh so precious silken nightshirt, and kept a firm grip on the bridge of his nose. It had always worked for me in the past, to stop a nosebleed, and it worked for Teveriel. The blood stopped eventually and Teveriel reached up to touch his nose carefully, curiously.
"A scullery maid and a healer," he said. "You would make someone a wonderful wife."
"Thank you." I watched him dab at his face with his blood soaked handkerchief. He was merely smearing the blood around his face, which I was fairly convinced he didn't want to be doing. "If the handkerchief was wet you might find it easier to clean up all that blood." Teveriel's eyes narrowed as he looked down his nose at me. "And," I continued cheerfully, "a mirror might be useful, too, so you can see where the blood actually is."
"By my nose," he said dryly.
"Oh," I said, "it was, until you started smearing it all over your face like that."
Teveriel gave me a startled look. He got up so fast that he knocked his chair over, before he fled into his bedroom and the cold comfort of his mirror. I just laughed, shaking my head as I picked up his fallen chair. When it was straight, I started to pick up the other overturned items in the room. It was going to be a big task, to get this room back into some sort of order and it could probably wait until evening, when I had more time, but I hated the idea of leaving a mess everywhere. I gathered all the broken pieces of plates and the figurines together and piled them up on the table. We would have to explain the broken furniture to Tival, although it was doubtful he would mind that much. After all there were plenty of unused rooms filled with furniture that could easily replace this lot, but my sense of honour made me want to offer money to replace it. It just wasn't done to come to someone's home, break all the furniture and then not offer to replace it.
"So what did happen?" I called out to Tev.
"Haran woke me, pounding on the door," Tev called back, his voice muffled by his half open door. "And then there was a lot of running away and a lot of chasing. He kept coming after me, trying to hit me, and I kept moving out of his way, throwing things at him to slow him down." He laughed. "It would make quite an amusing scene in a play, if it hadn't been so damn scary! Haran is a big man and I thought he was going to kill me." Teveriel reappeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame in that trying-to-look-relaxed pose of his. He had moped up the blood from his face, but the bruises were going to be there for a while. "But eventually he caught me, hit me, yelled at me, hit me again, and then he left. Then I just sat here, bruised and damaged and waited for you to come back and rescue me." He flashed me a smile, but I knew it was just for show. "So, all in all, it was a rather eventful morning, although I'd much rather have been asleep. How was yours?"
"Awkward, because everyone seems to be afraid of me now. Although having Trellany there did make it easier, for everyone else at least. Ulore is so scared of her he actually watched what he said, who he shouted at and how often."
"Then she is useful for something," he said sharply.
I picked up another fallen chair, biting back the urge to reply. He had a right to be angry with her. I could even understand why he had deliberately antagonised her, calling her Haran's property, but I didn't want him to think I was taking sides. "Are you going to help me pick everything up?" I asked instead. "Or just stand there?"
"Stand here
," he said. He gave a short laugh. "No, all right, I'll lend a hand."
"Thanks," I muttered. "I really appreciate your generosity."
It took an hour to straighten out the mess and, when we were done, Teveriel took himself back off to bed, and I headed into my bedroom. I was already late for class, but I couldn't go down there stinking of kitchen grease and sweat. I would have to get cleaned up first and it wasn't as though I was missing anything I hadn't studied before, after all.
I peeled off my grease splattered clothes and left them in a pile by the edge of the bed, while I opened my closet to pull out the first clean thing that came to hand.
The sound of a floorboard creaking behind me caught my attention and I whirled around just in time to watch a dark figure move out of the shadows that lined the corner of my room.
The figure was completely black and insubstantial, yet it was shaped like a man, tall, with clearly defined arms, legs and head. The edges were blurred and soft, like a shadow in the midday sun, and I could even see the walls and floor through it, yet I knew that it wasn't just my shadow, or a collection of shadows that somehow looked like a man. I knew that it was a man, and I knew that it was here for me.
It was a shadow man, for the Shadow Seer.
A cold grip of fear seized me. This shadow, it had made the floorboards creak; that meant it had enough presence here to do more. I had to get out of here.
I started to edge towards the door, watching the shadow man the whole time, waiting to see if it would suddenly lunge at me. It didn't, it remained still, but the air in the room started to change, began to feel really tight, almost alive. I half expected the air to start crackling and white bolts of lightening to shoot out, as it did during a thunderstorm, but there was nothing, just the build up of pressure, which seemed to be coming from the shadow man. I tried to ignore it, struggled to control my breathing, as I continued to edge towards the door and all the while the shadow remained still, watching me, the way a cat did with a mouse, while the energy in the room grew in intensity.