by Jenny Moss
At the end of the cave, a pile of rubble greeted us. Sir Kenway stood still for a moment, the torch high in his hand, looking at the piled-up mess before us. His face was lost in shadows and smoke, but I saw the pain there plain enough. He was thinking of her, not the rubble. I felt a pang in my heart at his sorrow.
But I was desperate to throw off the stones and get out of the cave. I was so close, closer than I had ever been to freedom, even though a wall of rock stood in my way. I waited for Sir Kenway to speak.
He pushed the end of the torch into the wet ground and began to move the rocks. I helped him. Silently we worked.
We cleared an opening large enough for us to squeeze through, for we were both thin and long. He went before me, feet first. When only his head was poking through, I was reminded of Eldred, clothed in gray and always watching me.
I went as Sir Kenway did, feet first, and slid down jagged rocks to a soft forest floor. I forgot my cares because I was free.
Sir Kenway was already walking through a grove of tall trees. Looking up, I knew they were pines. I had smelled their sharp pungency when I was enclosed inside the walls. I touched the rough bark and peeled off a piece and put it to my nose and sniffed. I put it in my mouth and bit. I rubbed it on my cheek.
Sir Kenway stared at me. “We have no time for this.” He turned and walked away.
I don’t have to follow, I thought, thrilled by that hope.
I tossed my head back and looked up at the blue morning sky, peeking back at me through tree branches. My thick hair flowed down my back. I spun in circles, feeling dizzy and light. Free air had a different smell, so fresh and sweet.
Sir Kenway grabbed my arm. I whipped my head down and jerked out of his grip.
“You must come with me,” he snarled with a vicious face. I was stunned by the change in him.
“Why?” I asked, moving away from him.
“The regent will be looking for us. He’ll murder us, too. We are—” His voice cracked. “We were the queen’s.” I felt pity for him. He was so distraught. “Or at least I was. You will come with me now!”
“What have I done to provoke this anger in you?”
I backed up as he walked toward me quickly. “I know what you did.”
“I don’t know what you mean—”
“Come with me now!” he yelled. “I will drag you if I must.”
I could tell he would do it. I nodded and followed him into the thick woods, wondering what he thought I did. If he thought I’d murdered the queen, why would he take me with him?
I shook my head, angry. He had no right to accuse me.
I felt so foolish. All it took was a gift of a blanket and I had seen him as kind. Perhaps his visit to the dungeon had been for the queen’s sake, because he thought me a traitor and hoped to find that out, and not because he held any real affection for me.
I was not yet free.
I looked around, seeing only trees and more trees. Sir Kenway knew these woods and I did not. If I did escape, I would be lost or even found by those in the castle who would take me back. So I fought the urge to run. I’d wait and watch for my chance.
We walked on and on. The sky was free of clouds. The sun, strong, warmed us.
The queen lay dead in her bed. I hadn’t known a day without her. I could not help but think of how she’d loved me when we were children. So long ago, and yet I could still taste the memory.
I had ignored her cries the night before. Had she been dying then? This thought made me feel as if I’d been punched. I shook my head. It was not my fault she died. And anyway, I had no feeling for her. She didn’t deserve my love. I needed to leave her behind, along with the look in Eldred’s eyes as he was stabbed. Their deaths were too heavy to carry.
But…I could not escape the horror of the scene. Had Geoff murdered all of the old men? I closed my eyes. Their screams were not easy to forget.
Oh, none of it mattered. What did any of them matter to me? They had never treated me kindly. Why should I care so?
Except for Piers, sweet Piers, whose friendship had kept me from seeing all people as selfish and cruel. He had risked coming to the dungeon just to bring me almonds he’d stolen from the kitchen, and I’d deserted him.
I’d had to leave him. There had been no time, no choice.
There had not been.
I stared at Sir Kenway’s stiff back. Why did he take me with him? I was glad to be out of the castle, but there was some reason he had taken me. I was but a lowly girl to them all, less than a servant. What could he want of me? A favor for a favor, Fyren had said to me. Did the knight want the same thing as Fyren had?
I heard the sound of a gurgling stream to the right of us and caught the scent of wild blackberries in the air. The fruit I most desired and that the queen had grown to detest. How could it be? It was too cold for blackberries.
“We must stop and rest,” I said, anxious for the delicious fruit.
Sir Kenway kept walking.
I said what I thought would convince him. “The regent will be searching the castle for us before he starts on his horses. We have time for a drink. We must have water.”
He turned and gave me a weary look. His face was different from yesterday. It looked as it did when he first came to the castle four years ago. Like that of a wild boy raised by wolves.
“We must continue on, Shad—”
“Do not call me that, boy knight!” I yelled, my fists clenched at my sides.
His head jerked up.
“Not out here,” I said. “I’m not that anymore. I’m no one’s shadow.” I turned off the narrow path and dove into the woods, following the sound of water splashing on rocks. Branches scratched my arms as I struggled through thick bushes and tight spaces, but soon I was at the stream.
It was the loveliest place I had ever seen.
I sat in the cool earth of the bank and dipped my hands into the water. I poured it into my parched mouth and let it run down my hot neck.
Sir Kenway was at my side. He crouched down and took several drinks, then flicked the water off his hand. “I am no boy knight,” he said. I looked at him directly, and his eyes held mine. I remembered the stories the ladies told about him. How bravely he had fought when the Torsans attacked a western port of Deor last spring. “We can rest here for a few moments,” he said, standing. “No more.”
I gathered blackberries from a nearby bush, carrying them in the front of my scooped-up dress. Purple-black stains deepened into the coarse cloth.
“It’s strange,” said Sir Kenway. “How did they survive the cold?”
They’re here for me. Grown for me. The thought excited me because I knew it was true. Someone was providing for me. I couldn’t explain my feeling, and I knew not the origin of it, but I was certain.
I sat on the bank and ate the blackberries one by one, letting the juice dwell on my tongue. For the first time, I was choosing what I wanted to eat, not eating only what the queen selected.
Sir Kenway stood by a willow tree whose branches wept to the ground.
He watched me as the old man used to do. With an outstretched arm, I offered him a blackberry. He did not take it.
“What is your name, then, if it’s not Shadow?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging, “but I know my mother didn’t name me that.”
“That’s why you never call anyone else by name,” he said, as if it were fact. I said nothing. He sat by me in the dirt.
I finished the blackberries—heaven!—and rinsed my hands in the cold stream, watching the water flow from my hands to lily pads and algae-covered rocks.
“You hardly spoke to anyone at all,” he said.
“I spoke to you.”
“The regent was your only friend.” His eyes were fierce, like those of Ingrid, when she thought I had murdered the queen.
“It was not I who killed her,” I said.
“You did not like her,” he accused. “You admitted it.”
I said nothing.
“You eat blackberries and play with your fingers in the water. Where’s your loyalty?” His words were tight with rage. His eyes were red, and he didn’t look like himself. He had loved her. And I didn’t know what that felt like.
“The queen treated me like her puppy. I am as loyal as any dog.”
He flung dirt into my face and stood over me. “You are lowly born. You were a dog beneath her feet. She deserves your grief.” How had I ever thought him kind?
I turned my face from his pain. I spat the dirt out of my mouth and wiped it off my tongue. His grief would make him careless. Ah, yes, I would slip away in the dark while he slept.
With a strong grip on my arm, he jerked me to my feet. “Your rest is at an end, Shadow.”
For now, boy knight.
Chapter Ten
“Hurry,” he said to me again and again. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
We walked quickly through the trees. The air grew warm as we moved toward mid-afternoon. I threw my cloak over my arm.
“We’ll arrive by nightfall,” said Sir Kenway, calling back over his shoulder.
My calves ached, and the soles of my feet were sore, but I cared not. Each step took me farther from the castle and its high walls.
“What is our destination?” I asked.
He looked back at me. His blond hair stuck to his sweaty face. “My home,” he said, with a touch of his old pride back in his voice.
Yes. The home of his father, Lord Leofwine, the traitor. I had thought as much.
“Sir Kenway?” I asked to his back.
He didn’t reply.
I was patient.
“Sir Kenway?” I finally asked again.
“What is it?” he snapped.
“Why are you taking me with you?”
He stopped. I stumbled into him, gripping the front of his tunic to keep from falling. He put his hands over mine and tried to set me on my feet. His grip was warm, soft, firm—sending a sweet, sharp ache to my heart, like pain and longing together. I wanted to let go, and to hold on.
Our eyes met. I saw distrust there. But then that faded and something else, something like curiosity sparked. This unsettled me and I forgot my question. We quickly separated.
He walked on. I followed, feeling a bit foolish. Confusing feelings had swept through me so suddenly I didn’t have time to hide them. Sir Kenway must have seen.
Kenway brought us out of the trees onto a wide road. To my surprise, he kept us on it. I didn’t see or hear horses, but I listened. I guessed he was listening, too, but I worried he was being careless. I didn’t want to go back to that place, my cage.
“We shouldn’t be on the road,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
The woods on the other side were thick and full. We couldn’t make our way through that thicket. Perhaps it thinned out farther down the road.
“If Fyren is after us,” I said, “and I do doubt that, but if he is, his troops might come this way.” More likely, they’d come across us while looking for someone more important and still take us back.
“He will seek us,” Sir Kenway claimed.
I disagreed, but said nothing. I thought Sir Kenway’s arrogance made him elevate his worth.
“But he’ll move on another first,” he added.
I thought on that. “You believe he’ll move on Lord Callus.”
“I don’t believe. I know…”
A few paces ahead, a boy rested against a silver birch tree.
“You are not to speak,” Sir Kenway said in a harsh whisper.
The boy’s sunken cheeks and hungry mouth begged for us to stop. I put my hand to my own gut, suddenly feeling his hunger there, a hollow throbbing. This new sensitivity I had to the pain of others gnawed at me. I was becoming as weak as the queen had been.
As we passed him, the boy followed me with eyes that seemed to have lost all color, the sky with its blue washed out. I thought of Piers and felt a sharp pang.
I knelt beside him.
“Shadow!” yelled Sir Kenway.
“Where’s your mother?” I asked.
“Dead,” he said. His voice was already that of a man’s. I had thought him younger.
Sir Kenway stood over me. Any moment I expected him to yank me up. I spoke quickly. “There will be a path to your right as you pass a fallen tree trunk along one side of the road. You’ll see it.”
He looked confused.
“Take the path and follow it until you hear a stream. Follow its gurgling and you’ll find a bend in the brook that almost meets the path. There is cool fresh water and more blackberries than you could ever eat.”
Sir Kenway dragged me to my feet.
“Can you get up?” I asked the boy.
Sir Kenway pushed me. “I said not to stop.”
I followed him, walking backward to see what the boy would do. He rose slowly. He waved, but did not see me wave in return.
We plunged into the woods on a narrow path.
“It’s the regent’s doing, you know,” said Sir Kenway after a time.
“What is?” I asked, confused.
“In the days of King Alfrid, the people had plenty to eat. The poor were always taken care of by their villages.”
I knew what he was about to say. The tutor had carefully divulged it in whispers and meaningful looks, which the queen no doubt did not detect.
“Now,” Sir Kenway continued, “no one can even feed his own. The villagers can’t worry about orphans. Especially orphans as old as that boy.”
I studied his fine tunic with its gold trim. “You did not take pity on the orphan,” I said to his back.
He snorted. “And where is your pity for Piers, that servant boy you coddle? I don’t see you anxious to go back for him.”
I bit my lip, angry. He was no different from his Audrey, trying to hurt me where I was most vulnerable. I wouldn’t think about Piers. I couldn’t.
As we continued through the forest, I planned my escape, while the sun slid slowly across the sky, like rich butter across the queen’s china plate.
After a time, Sir Kenway stepped off the path. We made our way through biting branches and stinging bushes. Everywhere I looked was sameness, but Sir Kenway knew these woods well.
The sun was low and the forest in shadow when he plopped down against a gnarled oak tree. I sat down on fallen leaves and watched him. He said nothing.
“You’re waiting for the darkness,” I said.
He gave me a curt nod. He didn’t trust me. He was wise not to, for I would be gone by morning. I’d disappear tonight, while he slept.
“Do you think the regent has spies in your father’s castle?” I asked, trying to draw him out.
“He is evil, Shadow.” I could not see his eyes well, but I knew they were on me. “He’s depleted the treasury of our great dead king. There’s nothing left. If he continues to rule, the people of Deor will die.” Such disdain in his voice, all kindness gone. It was clear what he thought of me. He truly thought I’d killed her.
The injustice of that riled me. “And you spoke to our queen about this? Pray, what did she say to do about it?”
He said nothing.
“It is no matter because it’s the land that has died,” I said, stating what everyone knew. “That’s not the regent’s fault.”
“But why does he still take that barren land? Why does he tax the richer lords? He steals from all of us!”
“Fyren has a legitimate claim to the throne, Sir Kenway,” I said, wanting him to admit that truth at least. “His mother was the rightful heir, pushed aside because she was a woman. She taught him to love Deor, and he does love it.”
“He doesn’t love the people of Deor! Don’t you see he’s starving our kingdom?”
His accusations wearied me. “It is not my kingdom. I have never seen it.” I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the tree. I was ready for silence.
Something hit me on the head. He had thrown it, but I couldn’t tell what it was. “Do you care for noth
ing but yourself?”
Me? I thought, rubbing the sore spot on my head.
Once, I was walking behind the queen and Sir Kenway. Their fingers touched briefly as they strolled along the green. Neither noticed that she dropped her white handkerchief. I picked it up and held it against my cheek. Distracted by the linen’s softness, I tripped and fell into black mud.
The queen laughed. Her little foot tapped me on the back—one, two, three. I looked up and saw Sir Kenway staring at the queen with a look of disbelief. His hand reached out to me, but the queen had grabbed it.
His voice came at me now, tight and angry. “Who are you, Shadow? Are you not what you seem?”
“I am no one at all,” I said, pulling my cloak around my shoulders.
“I was told to watch over you. Why?”
Watch over me? An icy terror gripped my heart. I knew the old men would use me for their purposes, without a thought to my well-being. But why me? I had no riches, no power, no knowledge beyond what the tutors and Fyren had told me.
I thought of those moments alone with Fyren in the dungeon. I was certain he had told me nothing that could be of use. Maybe Eldred had known of the visit and thought I knew something I didn’t.
Sir Kenway clucked his tongue in disgust. “Why do you have any value then?”
Why, for myself, I thought. I have value for myself.
Chapter Eleven
It was dark. Sir Kenway told me to stay close. We moved out of the trees into a wide moonlit clearing that encircled the walls of a town. Torchlight blazed in buildings towering over the wall. The town was small, not nearly as large as the castle grounds.
So this was his home. The gentle ladies had whispered about Sir Kenway’s father, a fine rich lord. Eldred claimed Lord Leofwine had been one of King Alfrid’s closest allies. A man of great dignity, and a fierce, loyal subject of the queen, despite the dim view the realm held of him now.
I only half-believed Sir Kenway was from such stock. Four years ago, he arrived at the castle gates with his father’s men accompanying him. He’d said little that day. He had looked as if he might reach out and strike anyone who spoke to him.
The knights had beaten him many times before he was tamed. They were allowed to treat him roughly because of his father’s fall from favor. Standing in the shadows then, I watched him and admired his defiance. But how could such a wild child come from anything but a hole in the ground?