Shadow's End (Light & Shadow) by Moira Katson Read Free Book Online Page B

rebellion—secrets, riches, power. The Merchant swore that Aron had served him for years, but still I watched him. The one thing I felt sure of was that he was not Temar’s spy; Temar would never choose someone he knew I would see at once.
    That left the question of who Temar would choose, and when they would join our ranks. I could hardly doubt that Temar would send a spy here to search for us—of everyone, he would know where it was that we had gone, just as he would be the most likely to know that we had left of our own volition. Whatever Temar felt for me, he hated Miriel, and he suspected both of us. But with each new recruit I saw, I became more and more sure that I would know Temar’s spy when I saw him. Whatever his reasons, Temar had not sent anyone yet.
    Indeed, none of the new men seemed to care about me or my past at all, beyond what I could teach them. Though I must pretend to be a boy—difficult enough for these men to accept being taught by a citydweller, let alone a girl—I found that despite myself, I was at ease in their company. If I thought their manners crude and their idealism uninformed, well, I had learned at the Court that a well-taught noble could be as great a fool as a peasant. I kept my head down and only blushed at some of the stories they told, and they roared with laughter to see my face, and told me I had much to learn about the world.
    For a few hours each day, I could forget that Miriel continued to struggle with politics and rival factions , and forget the dire news from the east as well. I lost myself in the pleasant exhaustion of hard work. My muscles, which had atrophied in the tedium of life at the Winter Castle, grew accustomed to combat once more. I dropped into bed each night with scrapes and bruises, and the pain and tiredness, the pure feeling of hard work. Doubt that had plagued my waking hours since Miriel and I had left Penekket—only exhaustion could drive the fear away during the day.
    But sleep brought no true respite: I dreamed of Roine, sad dreams where she told me that she missed me, and that she feared for me. I saw her worry that she did not know where I laid my head at night, and that she did not know if I had been kidnapped, and was in danger, or if I had chosen to leave her without saying goodbye. I would wake curled into a ball, tears wet on my cheeks, knowing that, for another day, I would know that she feared for me, and yet I would not send word.
    Worse, I dreamed of Temar, and I awoke feeling a loneliness I had never experienced before. I felt like the otherworldly creatures in the fairy tales Roine had once told me, doomed to wander the earth without ever seeing another of my own kind. Miriel might be my other half, my only true friend, but she was not a companion in the darkness and shadow, just as I could not be her companion in the glare of the Court. We both dreamed, I saw, and we both woke with a sadness in our hearts, pulling us back to the place that had so twisted us. My sparring could not banish those feelings, but it was enough to distract me for a time, and I welcomed that, just as Miriel threw herself into her work on the treaty.
    And then, in the second month, the game changed. Jeram himself came to the field where I was teaching spear work, and called me away from the drills, insisting that I come at once. I left the men to practice in pairs, and hurried along in Jeram’s wake, afraid to ask what his scowl might mean. When we entered the Merchant’s study, I found the Merchant examining a scroll, and Miriel pacing worriedly.
    “We’ve received a message from the King,” Jeram said to me. “The Lady insisted that you should be present for our deliberations.” I blinked; the Lady was a woman with golden hair and hard eyes, red-painted lips, a face scored by disappointment—she was not Miriel, with kindness in her gaze and the hope of a better world. But Jeram would not know that. He was scowling at including another person in their