Banner of the Damned by Sherwood Smith Read Free Book Online

folding pretty finger-scrolls about dances and picnics and all that. I confess I like the idea of danger. Not a lot, but some.”
    Once again, that sense of question, more felt than seen.
    I turned my palms out in Do Not Cross My Shadow. “Not me. I hate the idea of danger.”
    Birdy spun around in an awkward circle, then out came the juggling bags, arcing high in the air. As usual, he dropped one almost at once; while bent down, he turned his face up toward me and laughed. “Ah-yedi! I am so happy! Though she warned me that this first assignment, where we’re to go now, is the definition of tedium.”
    “You’ve been sent for? You go to the Grand Seneschal?”
    “Yes.”
    We walked together. The herald scribe who awaited us said, “Since the court is just beginning to arrive for the season, we give this first month to you youngsters for your first public appearance. You’ll be monitoring the coming and going of courtiers in specific chambers from the Hours of Leaf to Stone, which is when they gather in the conservatory for the Queen’s Rising.”
    He paused, but we were too schooled to react beyond making the Peace with our fingertips, showing that we understood.
    He smiled. “This is not make-work, tedious as it sounds. The Grand Seneschal reports to the queen on how the rooms are used, which dictates next year’s changes.”
    When he saw our comprehension, he went on, “At first, you count the courtiers as they come and go. As you learn names, note them down. If you discern patterns in their movements, good. If any of them sends you on an errand, you see to it, but return as quick as you can. If you see a page and can hand off the errand, do it. They’re used to it.”
    The salon I was given to monitor had been built around a central fountain carved of ice-white marble in the shape of twined lilies, the sprays arching up to plash in a pool with lily pads. Most of the room was white marble, except for insets of polished black stone that outlined thetriple ogee arches, and the ceiling vaults. Argan trees grew in marble pots with gilt rims in stylized leaf patterns. The trees’ silvery leaves turned toward the light in the triple-set trefoil windows far above.
    Surrounding the fountain, the semi circles of marble benches bore black satin cushions, their tassels hanging to the floor. Everything clean, the air moving in slow breezes with the faintest scent of spice.
    My first glimpse of courtiers in their complicated layers of robes made me nervous and self-conscious. Like the layers of their clothes, their modes and manners were far more complex than ours: they grew up knowing how something as simple as the turning of the wrist, and where that hand is poised in relation to one’s head, can change the meaning of everything said, heard, and displayed. And that was before they learned the silent communication of their fans.
    I soon observed the truth of what we’d been told, that courtiers had little interest in anyone but one another. To intrude on their notice if they did not require you was to find yourself summarily removed from public service.
    To strive for invisibility was to remain safe.

FIVE
     

T HE D ANGERS
OF AN U NGUARDED S MILE
     
    W

hile serving as monitor in the fountain chamber, I first observed four of the six important people whose lives crossed mine and brought me here to my prison cell.
    Contrasts were the fashion then, and cool-toned, frosty shades of white hair against the warm browns of skin were prized as well as contrasts in clothing and in the lacquer on one’s nails.
    The first thing I noticed about Princess Lasva was her laugh. Laughter was a matter of a smile, sometimes half-hidden by a fan, and any utterance no more than a soft fall of notes. It could sound as artificial and artful as a cascade of silken flowers, but when there was genuine humor in it, like Princess Lasva’s, laughter was charming.
    She entered, trailing young courtiers like a comet’s tail. For a heartbeat I