Banner of the Damned by Sherwood Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

saw her profile: she had the round cheeks and clear brow of seventeen. Her complexion was the prized shade we called russet—honey-brown with rose underneath it. Her blue eyes were framed by dark lashes and crowned by elaborately dressed silver hair.
    She moved like a cloud, her little court steps soundless, her gait so smooth that her ribbons streamed in a long arc, never bouncing or jiggling.
    The second person to draw my eye was Lady Carola Definian, just arrived at court for her first presentation.
    Three mornings I observed Lady Carola as she crossed in a deliberate pattern, arm in arm with her cousin Lady Tatia, who was yew-branch thin, her best feature thick curling hair colored blue-white.
    I was training to be observant, so it frustrated me that I could not identify why the subtleties of the princess’s manner called to my mind the drift of a cloud in a summer sky, but Lady Carola—so petite, so beautiful she seemed more doll than human—her manner reminded me of softly falling snow.

     
    The third person excited the most whispers of all. He became my first lesson in the tension between rank and social hierarchies.
    I heard about Lord Vasalya-Kaidas Lassiter long before I saw him. In rank he was merely the heir to a ruined barony. The Lassiters were notorious for their gambling, sports-madness, and not so long ago for their duels, before a succession of three strong queens convinced their courtiers that wit was preferable to the messiness caused by steel. Any who reverted to the bloody customs of their ancestors could go home and live on their ancestral estates for the remainder of their lives. Consequently courtiers wore embroidered slippers, not boots, and no man or woman marred the elegance of their robes with steel implements. Their former sanguinary nature was confined to their nail colors, varying shades of crimson. The lords moved sinuously, rather like cats, except for the Lassiter heir with his impatient, quick stride and the negligent way he kicked up the hems of his robes.
    In a court where control was prized in all things, to be known as carefree was risky: so “carefree” became “uncouth” or even vulgar.
    Lord Kaidas Lassiter was tall, well made in the way those who are active can be, with a face all planes and a broad smile that creased his lean cheeks down to his well defined jaw. His hair was long—longer than most—indicating carelessness rather than affectation because he rarely changed the shade from a serviceable silver and never had it dressed, just tied back with a long ribbon that matched his clothes. The courtiers called his style The Fresh Arising, a jest that I didn’t understand for a couple of years. Few dared to emulate it, except in private.
    I soon perceived that the courtiers crossed and recrossed in patterns that appeared to be random but were not. Some lingered, sitting on the edge of the fountain, talking and trailing their fingers in the scented water as they covertly observed the hallways leading off.
    Lady Carola appeared with other young ladies that third morning at the Hour of the River, then stilled, her light gaze reaching beyond her companions.
    And there was Lord Kaidas Lassiter in company with two other young lords, one of whom twirled his fan in laughing challenge at the ladies as they passed by. The ladies and lords acknowledged each other with graceful dips of heads, except for Lady Carola, whose profile tracked Lord Kaidas’s journey in the revealing long gaze of The Garden Arch, named for the arc a flower makes in following the sun. She watched him all the way across the chamber, until he vanished down a hall.

     
    The last day of my service at that post, my fourth important person appeared: tall, pale-faced, awkward King Jurac of Chwahirsland, his black hair undyed, invariably wearing, in dark green velvet, a semblance of their military uniform. He was newly arrived on his diplomatic tour of Colend, walking on the arm of Princess Lasva, whose lovely