Shadowcaster Read online

  “Sit, Captain,” she said.

  “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I prefer to—”

  “I intend to sit, and I won’t have you standing over me.” She claimed the chair closest to the window, so that the light poured over her. Closing her eyes, she basked in the sunlight like a cat. Without opening her eyes, she said, “Your gutter-swiving king has taught me to dread the dark days of midwinter.”

  What does she mean? We never march north in midwinter.

  Also, Hal couldn’t remember ever hearing a lady use the term “gutter-swiving.”

  He sat in the other chair, taking advantage of the opportunity to take another good look at her. Her fawn-colored hair was sun-streaked from long days spent outdoors. Now it was done up copperhead style, the multiple braids decorated with beads and feathers. One braid per kill—wasn’t that the rule?

  Hal couldn’t help himself. He began to count.

  Right then, the princess opened her eyes to catch him leaning forward from the edge of his chair, looking at her. He reared back in his chair and shifted his eyes away.

  Saints and martyrs, he thought.

  “Would you like something to drink, Captain?” Gray said. “You must be thirsty after your bout.”

  Hal knew better than to accept that kind of offer.

  “I prefer to drink from the common well, Captain,” he said. “I’ve advised my men to do the same.”

  Gray looked perplexed for a moment, then apparently worked it out, because she scowled.

  Damn! He should have just said he wasn’t thirsty. He wasn’t here to yank anyone’s tail, not if he hoped to survive.

  “Do you really think we would feed and house you for a week, and then poison you? That would be damned inefficient.”

  Hal didn’t look at her—he was worried he might reveal too much if he met her gaze. “Perhaps not a potion to kill, but one to . . . to turn us into something we’re not.”

  “You mean . . . like a toad or—or—a billy goat?” Her lips twitched, as if it was all she could do not to burst out laughing. “I know! A flock of chickens. We could use some fresh eggs around here.”

  Hal stared at her. Did she really not understand what he was talking about? “We’ve heard stories of spells and potions that steal a man’s courage or his strength. That cause him to turn against his fellow soldiers and kill them. That give him such a massive case of the itches that—”

  “Believe me, Captain, if I had that power, I would have sent you all home with the itches a long time ago,” Gray said, wiping at her eyes.

  With that, she made one of her abrupt turns. “Now, tell me about you and Bosley.” She tilted her head back and looked down her nose at him.

  Hal sighed. He had no desire to entangle himself in this. He’d overheard Bosley bragging to his fellow soldiers that he and Gray were lovers. Bosley had described a series of recent trysts with her in embarrassingly graphic detail. Maybe customs were different here in the north, but it seemed crude and dishonorable to share that.

  He couldn’t fathom what Gray saw in Bosley, but it was none of his business, after all.

  Then why did he spend so much time thinking about it?

  “Captain?” Gray said, bringing him out of the bedchamber and back to the library.

  Hal cleared his throat. “I’d organized some tournaments for my men, to keep them occupied and to give them something to look forward to,” he said. “It started with practice swords and quarterstaves, but later we added footraces and wrestling, stone slinging—whatever they wanted to do with what we had available.” He wiped his damp palms on his breeches. “I put up a standings board, and passed out ribbons to the winners.

  “The first day, it was just a handful, but the next day more turned out, and then still more. Soon they were organizing events on their own, and coming up with prizes that they—” Hal stopped, took a breath. He was proud of what he’d done, but that didn’t mean Gray was interested.

  Yet she nodded thoughtfully. “So you improved both the morale and the physical conditioning of your soldiers,” she said. “Smart.”

  “Then, one day, during the games, some Highlanders approached and asked if I could include them in our bouts. I wasn’t keen on the idea, but they persisted, saying that they . . . ah . . . could use more training than they were getting. As it turned out, they were in Bosley’s command.” He looked up at Gray. “Don’t get me wrong, ma’am, I’m not criticizing anyone, I just—”

  “Stipulated,” she said, sitting back and resting her hands, palms up, on the arms of her chair. He couldn’t help noticing how callused her hands were from the use of weapons. He’d never met a highborn woman with hands like that. He wondered what it would be like to have a go in the practice yard with—

  “I said stipulated, Captain. Do go on.”

  He looked up, blinking, then realized that he’d been staring. “So Bosley’s soldiers began participating in some of the tournaments. Having a larger group was good, because I could switch off the matchups and—”

  “It seems you have no problem sleeping with the enemy.”

  Hal’s face heated, his mouth went dry, and he shifted in his chair. “Ma’am?” he said hoarsely.

  “You know what I mean. What would your father say if he saw you training Fellsian soldiers?”

  She’d chosen those words on purpose. She was toying with him. Hal tried to control his temper. “My father would approve of my learning more about Fellsian training methods and military practices. He would be glad I wasn’t sitting on my ass, getting soft. To summarize, ma’am, my father would have no problem with it, but Lieutenant Bosley apparently did.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Damn again! He’d meant to keep his report totally neutral. If Bosley was sleeping with his commanding officer, the last thing Hal wanted was to get caught in that cross fire.

  Too late. He was too far in to take it back, but maybe he could regain some ground. “Somehow, the lieutenant got word of what was going on. So he came to the session this morning and suggested that the two of us have a go to . . . ah . . . demonstrate proper form.”

  “Hmm.” She worried at one of her nails with her teeth. “Why do you think that Lieutenant Bosley disapproved of your sessions with his soldiers?”

  Hal hesitated. “Maybe you should ask the—”

  “I’m asking you.”

  Hal tried to think of a way to put a more positive face on it. “I guess he thought I was interfering with his way of doing things or poking in where I had no business.”

  “Did you readily agree to the . . . demonstration?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Did Bosley give you a choice?”

  Sweat trickled between Hal’s shoulder blades. Captain Gray had a way of cutting all the way to the bone.

  “You can tell the truth, Captain,” she said softly, looking straight into his eyes. “This is between us.”

  And, somehow, he found himself saying, “I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to have a go. I told him I wouldn’t include his soldiers anymore if he didn’t like it. I tried to get out of it, but the lieutenant was . . . He insisted.”

  “He wanted to show you up?”

  “You should ask—” When Gray scowled at him, he gave in. “I suspect so, ma’am. If I was a smarter man, I would have found a way to lose to him.” He paused. “I don’t like losing.”

  “Me neither, Captain. But you’d better get used to it.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’m going to drive your armies into the sea.” It was as if they’d been sparring, and then all of a sudden she went for the throat.

  “Why? Because you have more magic on your side?” he said, drawn in despite his determination not to be. “If I had my way, it would be a fair fight, men against men, with no . . .” He mimicked a spellcasting gesture.

  “Men against men? Oh. Right. I keep forgetting. You don’t have women in your army.”

  Hal couldn’t seem to open his mouth
without hitting a nerve. He darted a look at her. “No. We don’t, ma’am.” He tried to think of something to add, to explain it. “Our women are not like you. They are not well suited for battle.”

  “You might find out that they are more capable than you know.”

  “I’m not saying that women are incapable, I am saying that they are capable of . . . different things.”

  Captain Gray snorted. “It’s no wonder you’re losing.”

  Hal could feel the hot blood rising in him. She seemed to know just where to poke him. “We lost a battle, because we were outplayed. Not the war. Your soldiers, both the copperheads—”

  “Clans,” she corrected.

  “—both the clans and the Highlanders fight hard, and they are some of the bravest soldiers I’ve ever met. No bit of ground is easily won. But face the facts. You are starving up here. At first, I thought my men were being given lean prisoner rations. Then I realized they were getting the same as your own soldiers.”

  “We’ve managed,” she said. “Maybe it isn’t fancy, but—”

  “You cannot grow enough food to support yourselves, and now that we’ve deployed a navy you won’t be able to bring in foodstuffs by sea. We draw troops from every part of the empire—”

  “Troops that really don’t care whether you win or lose. Troops that just want to survive the war and go home. Many of whom are unwilling conscripts. Is that why your own mages tried to kill you? Would you like to go to war with a flashcraft collar around your neck?”

  It’s a little more complicated than that, Hal thought. But he wasn’t going to tell this northern captain that his own king was gunning for him.

  “And yet we’ve won control of the entire continent, except for a few outliers,” he said. “Our granaries are bulging, and we control the sources of iron, and steel, and gunpowder. What do you intend to fight with?”

  “We recently acquired some new coal mines and iron furnaces,” she countered. “Were you aware of that, Captain?”

  “Aye. You did. But you won’t hold them for long. You are surrounded by enemies, and you can only live on courage for so long. You are going to lose, Captain. Time—and everything else—is on our side. Best to plan for it.”

  Now she rose, and paced back and forth, punctuating her speech by slamming her fist into her other palm. “What would you have us do, Captain? Bend the knee after twenty-five years of war? Watch them slaughter the Spirit Clans and burn and collar our wizards? Turn our rivers into cesspools and build a Delphi in the middle of the Vale?” She swiveled, her braids flying, and came and glared down at him.

  He tried to think of something encouraging to say. “Ma’am. We are soldiers, you and I. There is always a need for soldiers. It might be that our lives wouldn’t change much, no matter who sits on the throne.” Even as he said it, he didn’t believe it.

  Her expression said that he was impossibly naive. “I am not a soldier in the eyes of your king, your church, and your commanders. Do you really think my life wouldn’t change if Arden wins this war? What do you suppose would happen to our queen and our princess heir? You’ve been demonizing them for years, calling them witches and whores and sorceresses and accusing them of all manner of foul deeds. Is there any way your war-weary people and your bloodthirsty church would allow them to live?”

  She really cares about them, Hal thought. She loves her queen—that’s plain to see. This is not just a job for her. Hal had always been a loyal soldier, but his relationship with King Gerard had nothing to do with love. It was duty. He’d never bought the church’s argument that his king was anointed by the gods.

  Hal groped for a reply. How had they moved on to politics and religion, topics he was never comfortable with?

  In truth, he had no idea what would happen to the Fellsian royals, but he wasn’t optimistic, based on past experience. He had a duty to try to encourage the northerners to surrender, but he couldn’t bring himself to make any assurances about their safety.

  “The church doesn’t speak for everyone in Arden,” Hal said, which was about as positive as he could make it. “After the war, King Gerard will want to pacify the northern realms as quickly as possible. The thanes—my father included—are weary of war as well, and more and more reluctant to contribute money and men to the cause.”

  Captain Gray was nodding encouragingly. Hal stopped abruptly, realizing that he’d been ensnared into revealing too much.

  The northerners didn’t need to know how much pressure there had been in the south for an end to the war. But it was so hard to remember that she was his enemy, and not just a brave girl—a soldier—faced with an impossible choice.

  “So. Anyway. It might be that an advantageous marriage could be arranged that would bring the kingdom of the Fells into the fold.”

  From the look on her face, he might have just asked her to bite into a turd.

  “Queendom, Captain,” she spat. “This is a queendom. Your king made that offer to our queen more than twenty-five years ago. She refused him then, and he invaded, launching this war. Since then, Arden has murdered her husband, and her daughter, and”—she stumbled a bit—“and tried to kill her son.”

  “This is war,” Hal said. “People die—even innocents die, unfortunately.” It sounded weak, even to him, even though it was true.

  “I’m not talking about killing enemy soldiers in battle,” Gray said. “I’m not even talking about civilians caught in the cross fire. I’m talking about Ardenine assassins sneaking into our cities and ambushing us on the street and in our beds.”

  Hal had no idea what she was talking about, though it wouldn’t surprise him to find out that King Gerard had employed that kind of tactic abroad as well as at home. This was the king who had won the throne by killing off his older brothers. This was the king who had sent Hal and his battalion of younglings on a suicide mission.

  Hal had signed on as a soldier, but he’d never signed on for the job of defending Gerard Montaigne. He found himself stumbling badly.

  “I don’t know what you—are you sure that they were attacked by agents of Arden? Isn’t it possible that—?”

  “When Princess Hanalea was murdered, your king sent her head to her mother in a golden casket with a note, in case she didn’t give credit where credit was due,” Gray said. “This campaign of assassination has been going on for more than four years.” She fixed him with a pair of brown eyes hard as agates. “Frankly, Captain, I’d rather die than marry any son of Arden.”

  29

  INN LOCKUP

  They took Breon’s jafasa, and his leaf, and his shepherd’s clothes, and put him in mud-colored breeches and a shirt. They left his hands and feet loosely shackled so he could shuffle all around his little cell. They even brought him some books about ships when he asked for them. Encouraged, he asked for wood, and tools for carving, but they didn’t go for it.

  If he was going to survive this latest setback, if he was going to charm his way out of this, he was going to need an instrument to channel through. His voice wouldn’t be enough to put a dent in these hard-hearted captors. And, so far, he’d not been able to pinch anything from them that he could use to link to their music.

  To be fair, the lockup at Chalk Cliffs keep wasn’t bad, as lockups go. Not that Breon’d had a wide experience, being mostly law-abiding, but he’d been in gaol in Arden and Bruinswallow and Tamron—well, twice in Tamron—and this was top-shelf in comparison. For one thing, it wasn’t underground, it was in a tower, and he could hear the sea through his tiny, barred window. The wind off the Indio was cold, but he didn’t close his shutters, because he wanted to smell and hear the sea during what might be his last days.

  Even the food was decent, that first night—fish stew and bread to sop it up and a leftover Solstice cake. Breon ate it all, not knowing what plans they had for him, aware that this might be his last meal. Also because he was starving. Also because he had a special fondness for cake.

  They seemed to be having trouble rounding up impo
rtant people to talk to him—ones that could be trusted, anyway. Maybe they were all at some blueblood meeting. Still, he had a steady stream of visitors. First came a whole posse of bluejackets to empty his chamber pot, during which they eyed him like he might jump them at any moment.

  How many bluejackets does it take to empty a chamber pot? he wanted to ask, but thought better of it.

  A copperhead healer arrived with her own escort of bluejackets to treat his black eye and bruised cheekbone. Breon asked if she’d ever thought of trying razorleaf to relieve pain and she said no.

  Finally, Rogan “the Rat” Shadow Dancer barged in with his bluejacket mate, Talbot the Tree, and a handsome young mage with striking silver hair, icy blue eyes, and a distinctive glow of magic.

  Breon eyed the new mage nervously. Why was he here?

  Breon happened to be sitting cross-legged on what passed for a bed, trying to fashion a whistle out of a piece of cork with the tip of a spoon.

  “What are you doing?” the trader demanded.

  “Just passing the time,” Breon said, like any dolt who might occupy his time by whittling a cork.

  “Give it here,” Shadow said, sticking out his hand. Breon handed it over, and Shadow put it into his pocket.

  Breon rolled his eyes. “Leave a man with a cork and he might poke you with it.”

  Talbot rested her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Poke me, and I’ll poke you back, you scaly, scum-sucking sneaksby.”

  Breon cocked his head, nodded grudgingly. “Impressive.”

  She scowled. “What?”

  “Your use of alliteration. Can you say that again? That scum-sucking thing?”

  “What in the bloody hell—?”

  “No, no, no,” Breon said, shaking his head. “I’m looking for S-words.” Opening his journal, he pretended to scan down a list. “I’ve got ‘slug-strumming strammel’ and ‘spoony sap-sculled simpleton.’” He looked up brightly. “Which do you prefer?”

  Talbot lunged at him, but somehow Shadow got between them before she landed a blow. He gave her a talking-to in a low voice, probably saying, Don’t break it before we squeeze it dry.