Shadow's End (Light & Shadow) (4 page)

“Useless,” he said
flatly. “The King would never sign it.”

“Garad would not have done so,” Miriel agreed. “But Wilhelm will.” I heard the hope in her voice, and wished
with all my heart that Wilhelm would prove to be our ally. It would break Miriel’s heart if he were not. And, of course, our new allies would most likely kill us. It occurred me to that we had not greatly improved our position in the world. We were still bargaining, still living on the knife’s edge.

“How can you be sure?” Jeram was no fool. I saw him cast an annoyed glance at the men who had nodded to her words without a thought.
He was a common man, who had always known the simple fact that the laws protected the lawmakers. He had no confidence, as Miriel did, in the sanctity of words on paper.

“
I know Wilhelm to be a sympathizer,” Miriel said, with great dignity. “You forget, I was at the Court with him before he was King. He and I spoke of the rebellion. And I tell you truly that Jacces, also, knows Wilhelm to be a sympathizer.” There was a murmur of interest, and Jeram’s eyes narrowed. I marveled at Miriel’s daring, but knew the necessity of it—she was nothing to these men, an outsider. But if she was a woman who knew their fabled leader…

“How do you know this?”
Jeram demanded. Jacces was the leader who might never have existed, the man that no one—even his own adherents—could find.

“While at court, I maintained a correspondence with
him.” Miriel stood calmly under Jeram’s scrutiny. She never wavered. Her confidence was palpable.

“You know his identity?”

“I have a guess.” Miriel lied without hesitation. “But for that person’s safety, I will not speak it.”

“You must tell us,” Jer
am said, and she shook her head; she had marked, as I had, the true desperation in Jeram’s voice. He might be the leader of the rebellion in Norvelt, but even he had no knowledge of Jacces himself. And here, again, lay the difference between me, and Miriel: I only marked the fact, and looked about to see what the other rebels might think, but Miriel noted it, and played it for what it was worth, turning the minds of her listeners back to her purpose.

“No. Does it matter? What we must do, whoever he might be, is be true to his vision. This is a movement of the people, not one man. Jacces knows that.”
I rather thought that the High Priest might have something to say about that, but the men nodded readily enough, and at length even Jeram conceded the point.

“Very well. We will shelter you.” He held up a finger, cautionary, when he saw her satisfied smile. “You have half a year,” he said bluntly. “In that time, you will help us draw up a treaty that all of us agree to, and you will get the King to sign it. Your servant will train our men in the use of weapons and in troop formations. If you cannot persuade the King to sign
our
treaty by then…” He had the agreement of his men. They nodded, gruffly, and for a moment the spell was broken; but Miriel was dauntless in the face of his mistrust.

“I can do it,” she said. “We will draw up the treaty together, all of us.”
As Jeram had done, she included the rest of the men; her brilliant smile warmed them, and I could see them smiling back at her. “We will be a force for good in this nation, Jeram—all of us together.”

He inclined his head—the gesture of one player to another, and she only smiled back, as if she were not striving to replace him in the hearts of his men, as if she had not played this game day in and day out, against rivals far more sophisticated than he was. He had lost, and
he simply did not know it yet. I wondered, with the detachment of a courtier, when Miriel’s chance would come—what moment, what opportunity would present itself for her to cement her triumph.

We bid them good
night, Miriel curtsying prettily to their cheers, and returned to our room. Jeram had promised us lodging with the baker. This would be our last night on the lumpy cots of the inn, and I was glad of it.

“We’re lying again,” I said glumly, and Miriel tried to mask her discomfort with one of her elegant shrugs.

“The only lie we told was that we didn’t know who Jacces was.” Her voice was pitched low to make sure no one could eavesdrop. “And do you have a better plan?”

“It was all a…performance.”
The distaste was thick in my mouth.

“It’s always a performance for me,” Miriel said simply. “You’re in the shadows, you pretend by being unseen. But I’m in the light, so I perform.” Her face softened. “And we’ll give them everything we promised. It’s a performance, but not a lie, Catwin. This isn’t like it was with Garad.” I swallowed down the wave of guilt that rushed over me when I heard
his name, and nodded.

“But aren’t you afraid that he might not sign?” I asked, and Miriel looked down rather than meet my eyes.

“I cannot think of that,” she said. “I never think of it.”

She went to bed at once, but I could not sleep. Miriel had announced her presence here, and
who might have slipped off to tell the Duke where we were? I no longer underestimated Temar’s spy network; it would have been very like him to send someone to wait for us in the southern cities. If we stayed in one place for long enough, I knew, he would find us.

I
lay awake, watching the door fearfully, but I must have drifted to sleep at last, for in the dead of night, we were awakened by someone scratching at the door. When I approached it cautiously, I heard the voice of the innkeeper’s wife.

“It’s Allena,” she whispered. “Jeram sent me to take you to your lodgings tonight. He wants you hidden away before the lady’s uncle finds her.” I opened the door and peered out at her, and saw only frightened honesty in her eyes, and so we packed our things as quietly as we could in the dark, and followed her out into the spring night.

“Why did he want us to move tonight?” I asked, as we picked our way over a frozen field. “And where are we going?”

“There’s a
merchant in town who’ll keep you,” Allena said. “And Jeram trusts no one—there’s a reward out for finding the both of you, did you know? No? Well, there is. And there’s no saying who might think it’s worth more than the rebellion is.” I remembered the sly gleam in one man’s eyes, and thought that Jeram was right to be cautious.

“Why does he trust you, then?” Miriel asked.
I stiffened at the blunt words, but Allena was not offended.

“I am his twin,” she said. “I am the only one Jeram trusts. He knows that even blood is not always enough.” In the dim light, she looke
d over at the two of us. “So you’re not really brother and sister, then,” she guessed. “I told my husband I thought as much. You don’t look much alike.” I hesitated, but Miriel reached over and took my hand. She shook her head at the woman.

“We’re twins, too,” she said easily.

Chapter 4

We were gre
eted by the Merchant, master of the house himself, wrapped in a brocade robe and surrounded by his riches. He was courteous to a fault, clasping our hands warmly in his own and offering any amenity his house might provide. Nothing, he assured us, was too dear for the saviors of the rebellion. I, having been raised as an overlooked servant, found such titles patently ridiculous, but Miriel, who had spent the past years either showering such praise on the favorites of the court, or being feted as one herself, accepted his flowery language with her best court manners.

“Yo
u do us too much credit,” she said warmly, to cover my snort of disbelief. As he gestured towards his study, she did not precede him, but threaded her arm through his own, smiling sweetly up at him as he guided us.

“Oh, no, my Lady,” he assured her, shaking his head at her demurral.
“The rebellion has long needed one like you.” He ushered her to a couch and settled himself into his own great, carved chair. After a moment, entirely forgotten, I sat on the edge of the couch as well. The Merchant did not mind; he was staring off into space, looking troubled.

“The rebellion is…di
vided,” he said finally. “I understand that politics makes for strange bedfellows, that I do, but I tell you truly, many of the men who flock to the rebellion are nothing more than savages, looking to avenge the wrongs of their station. I think that where I have failed to caution them, you may succeed.”

“Are
you the leader of the uprising in this town, then?” Miriel asked. She was probing for the fault lines of the rebellion, disconcerted by the Merchant’s talk of infighting. Jeram had presented the movement as one force, and now, seeing cracks in the show of unity, she must know at once how deep the division ran. The Merchant’s face darkened; she had found the first sign of resentment.

“No. I might say that it should be,
for I am a learned man, but my wealth—although honestly gotten—makes me an outsider among the rebels. I send my servant in my stead, to speak for me.” He gestured to a man at a nearby desk, a clerk who was busy at work on ledgers, and took a breath to steady himself. “No, the leader of the rebellion in Norvelt is Jeram. A good man, to be sure, honest. Devoted. Uneducated…but they listen to him.” His tone was bitter.

“Often, a leader is no more than a figurehead,” Miriel observed. “While it is the rest who are the of the truest benefit to
the cause.” The Merchant nodded, his ruffled feathers soothed, and I thought for the thousandth time that it was far better for Miriel to be the Light, than me. Her pleasant smile, her Court smile, had not once wavered in the face of this man’s petulance. She brightened. “You will have heard that we are drawing up a treaty for the King to sign, yes? Tomorrow, you must tell me your thoughts.”

“Oh, I will,” he assured her. “My Lady, let me say again how glad I am that you have come to us. The men will surely calm themselves for love of you. But now, you must rest! Such a long journey, and I hear you were sleeping in an inn! Ah, not a life for one such as you. My servant will show you to your rooms. Aron?”

I looked over at the desk, and as the man raised his head I stifled an exclamation. There was the same sly gleam in his eye as I had seen at the meeting, the careful flick of his eyes over my clothing, lingering on my boot to see if I carried a dagger there. It was all gone in an instant; he made a bow to Miriel and gestured to the door.

“My Lady, if you will follow me.”

We walked quietly through hallways of rich carpets and priceless works of art, and when we were alone in our room, Miriel frowned at me.

“What was that? Your face, just then.”

“I don’t trust him,” I said shortly. I expected her to brush it off with a laugh, and tell me that we were amongst friends, the allies she had spoken of so confidently during our escape, but she only nodded. The Merchant’s words, Jeram’s insistence on an army—those had worried her. She was no longer the calm, self-assured girl she had been. Her confidence had disappeared in a moment.

“Good,” she said shortly. “Don’t trust anyone.” She began to peel off her homespun gown and wrinkled her nose. “Another thing…”

“Yes?” I frowned.

“Tomorrow, we both need baths.”

On the morrow, after a thorough scrubbing in a big copper tub, we set to work in earnest. The Merchant was quick to send for anything we might need for our work, and eager to suggest things that would make our stay more comfortable. He slyly murmured to me that a young man might enjoy the company of one Kerelle, a young lady of the town, if I knew what he meant, and I—having decided that life would be simpler if the rebels continued to think I was a young man—tried not to blush, and thanked him with as much good cheer as I could muster.

“Yes,” Miriel said wickedly, when I told her. “We should see you married, Catwin. A nice country girl, who you can trust to raise your children with strong populist values.” She grinned up at me from where she was writing a list of supplies for the rebel arm
y, and when I shot her a glare, she bit back a laugh and went back to her work. There was no saying who might be listening in this warren of a house, and so we communicated as we had in the palace: with eyebrow raises, glares, and the occasional grin.

It became clear that we would see
each other very little during the days; I had fretted at that, but Miriel was insistent that we were amongst friends, and she did not need constant protection. When I reminded her that she herself had told me to trust no one, she only shrugged helplessly.

“What else can we do? We cannot be always toge
ther if you are training the men and I am helping to draw up the treaty. We’re safe for half a year. Until then, no one will want to attract notice, not when they know the Council is distracted. What with the Ismiri….” Her chin trembled a bit, and I reached out awkwardly to pat her shoulder.

The unrest that had swirled around us as we left Voltur had only grown more pronounced.
We had known that matters were grave when half of the soldiers that had arrived with our travel party had stayed to guard the Winter Castle; they had brought supplies, well-used weapons, and royal orders. The raids had attracted notice in Penekket, and it was not only the Duke who worried; the King was fortifying the border, and as we had ridden away from the Winter Castle, the Warden standard had been flying above the battlements.

Even in the Norstrung Provinces,
far from the Ismiri and the constant wariness of the mountains, the men in the taverns spoke of war, and said that Garad’s treaties were crumbling. The Peacemaker himself was dead, and a young Warlord in his place, facing down a war-hungry Council on the one hand, and Kasimir on the other. We heard tell that Dusan’s health was failing, and he no longer attempted to curb his heir. They said he had given his own troops into Kasimir’s command. Men whispered that the raids were not militia now, but the Ismiri army itself, and how long could it be until Wilhelm tired of it and sent troops for an invasion, to crush the Ismiri forever?

The unrest might mean that the Council was blessedly distracted from the rebellion, that a large detachment of soldiers would not be sent to the Norstrung Provinces, but Miriel could take little pleasure in that. I knew that despite her relief at being free of the Court, she yearned to be in Penekket, advising Wilhelm on renewing the peace treaties. She passionately resented the fact that it was Marie de la Marque sitting at Wilhelm’s right hand,
offering opinions and sharing his trials.

And worst of all
, the unrest meant that Miriel’s mother, and her homeland, would be the first to fall when the attack came. It had been one thing to be in Voltur ourselves, seeing the guards bruised and bloodied, hearing the sounds of weaponry and the war cries, but then we had been in shock, the two of us. We faced the border raids not with fear, but dull acceptance; we had seen our king slain, and our world turned dark and uncertain. It was now, in the relative safety of the southern summer, that the horror of the war seemed so much sharper.

I could only give thanks, silently, that Roine, and Temar, and Donnett were safe in the capital, but
when I thought of the peasants living in the village of my birth, my blood ran cold. Both Miriel and I had read the histories—we knew what happened to the common people when war broke out.

And so we
were both glad enough to lose ourselves in our work. Miriel spent hours hunched over scraps of paper, scratching out phrases, writing in the margins, arguing late into the night with Jeram and the others. She had always been passionate about the rebellion, and that passion was her shelter now. When I saw the stacks of notes she had written, I wondered if her philosophical tract, abandoned in our rooms at Penekket, had been the early drafts of just such a treaty.

I, having
less genuine conviction about the rebellion itself, was at least easily convinced that this work was far nobler than anything I had done at Court. The men had been contemptuous of me at first, noting—in loud whispers—my thin arms and my city hands. But after some bouts of sparring, not only bare-fisted but with spears and short swords and daggers, the men had learned a grudging respect. They laughed and called me the Weasel, but they listened when I spoke, and bought me rounds of ale after our days of work. They were eager to learn, these country men who had never held weapons of their own, how a spear or blade might be wielded properly.

We drilled each day with weapons, the men coming in shifts so that the work on their farms and in their shops would not cease. Every d
ay, there were a few new faces. To my disquiet, news of Miriel had spread far. Men arrived from other towns, claiming that they had heard a real uprising was afoot at last, led by an angel, and they would be part of it. My only comfort was that each of them withstood Jeram’s questioning. I heard of one or two, “city men” who had gone to the inn for a meeting with Jeram and never emerged, and I applauded his relentless suspicion even as it chilled me to the bone.

The first few weeks passed easily, but
I dreaded teaching these men the mechanics of troop warfare, and I delayed as long as I could. The truth was that with every few men who arrived to complement the crowd in the Merchant’s courtyard, the more I realized how paltry our little army was. I had known Miriel’s words for truth, when she told Jeram that his men could never defeat the royal forces, but it was another thing entirely to see it. This ragtag group was fully inadequate to the task of standing against the Royal Army, not only by size but also by training. I could teach these men basic troop formations and drill them every day for the next half year, but even I, who had never seen a battle, knew that it was far different to lower spears into formation in a courtyard than withstand the charge of a thousand horsemen.

I spoke openly of these troubles only to Jeram, confiding in him that we could not expect to mount an invasion
on the city of Penekket itself. The best we could hope for would be to repel an invading army, and even then, we had best resort to less direct tactics: cutting supply lines, spoiling food stores, picking off the men a few at a time. But however logical the man might be, however practical, he had set his sights on winning a battle with the army, and nothing would do for him but that his men be trained. In the face of his cold-eyed stare, knowing this to be the last refuge for Miriel and myself, I bit my tongue on further arguments and kept at work, hoping that Miriel might have more luck with the treaty than I was having with the men, and that my own discouragement would not discourage her.

I did not need to worry—Miriel
, determinedly ignoring news of the war, grew more confident in her treaty by the day. Her early uncertainty, spurred by the divisions within the movement, had been restored by her own research, by the simple act of moving forward. When she questioned Jeram as to what guidance he received from Jacces, he had only stared at her blankly. The High Priest, it seemed, had continued to be only an inspirational leader; he had sparked the rebellion with his letters, but he hung back, offering no guidance as to how the movement might come to fruition, and Miriel took this as a very good sign, indeed—with no lines of communication between the leaders in the towns, and the High Priest himself, we might well accomplish something before he learned of it, and took exception.

I marveled at all of it: the men, drilling each day in the courtyard, lending their thoughts for the treaty, leaving their families and devoting their lives to this
. The rebellion had been begun by the wealthy, the educated—those with much wealth and much time to waste, as I had once cynically thought—but it was now carried on the backs of the poor, men who worked hard from sunup to sundown and then gathered in taverns to speak of rights and injustices.

“What do they know of philosophy?” I asked Miriel skeptically, and she shook her head.

“Philosophy is nothing but a mask,” she said, surprising me. “It’s only pretty words for grand concepts. But at its core, it’s no more than yearning for justice. You don’t have to be educated to understand that—these men feel injustice as much as any priest or scholar.”

Odd as it was to hear her, of all people, dismiss philosophy, I believed her. She had spent the first weeks of our stay listening to the Merchant and to Jeram for hours, and calling the men in from the tavern so that she could hear to their opinions as well; she would sit silently, hardly moving, marking everything they said, learning their hopes and their anger alike. While Jeram thought that she was merely learning what they would accept for a treaty, and I had first thought that she was only drawing out their thoughts to gain their trust, I now knew that her reasons ran deeper: Miriel was busy learning the undercurrents of the rebellion, searching out the points that could fracture it all. Before we arrived, there had been no plans for a treaty—the men had been bound together only by their dislike of nobles and kings. Now, Miriel must forge a treaty pleasing to a group that had, as it happened, wildly disparate beliefs as to how the kingdom
should
be run.