Kevin hardly wanted to return to the squires’ quarters. But where else was there? By now, it was too late to start copying the manuscript. And after D’Krikas’ never-ending list of prohibitions, he hardly dared go exploring! Since Am didn’t seem to be anywhere around, Kevin retraced his steps as best he could, and didn’t get lost more than once or twice.
Dinner, he suspected, wasn’t going to be any brighter than anything else that had happened this day.
It wasn’t. Dinner was a miserable affair served on rough trestle tables set up in the squires’ quarters. Even though the bardling had been assigned a seat among the squires, he’d might as well have been in the middle of a desert, because no one would talk to him. Kevin busied himself in trying to chew the stringy beef, and in trying to convince himself the squires’ coldness didn’t matter; as soon as he’d finished copying that cursed manuscript, he would never have to see any of these idiots again.
Once they had finished eating-and the food scraps and trestle tables had been cleared away, the squires disappeared, still without a word to Kevin. He gathered, from the bits of their conversations he overheard, that they were going off to wait on their knights.
Who are probably just as brainless.
Left alone in the now empty hall, the bardling shivered, grabbing for his cloak. The place seemed even more silent than before, and twice as chilly. Evidently Count Volmar didn’t believe in pampering youngsters, because there wasn’t a fireplace anywhere in the hall.
Never •mind, Kevin told himself. A true hero doesn’t mind a little discomfort.
Or a little loneliness.
The silence was getting on his nerves. The bardling took out his lute and practiced for a long, long while, trying to ignore everything but his music. At last, warmed a little by his own exertions, Kevin put the instrument back in its case and stretched out on the lumpy cot he’d been assigned. The hour, he thought, was probably still fairly early—not that there was any way to tell in here, without so much as a water dock or hourglass. But there wasn’t anything else to do but sleep. The pillow was so thin it felt as though the feathers had been taken from a very scrawny bird. “He one blanket was too thin for real comfort, but by adding his cloak to it, the bardling was almost warm.
He had nearly drifted off to sleep when the squires returned. Kevin heard their whispers and muffled laughter, and felt his face redden in the darkness. They were laughing at him. He knew they were laughing at him.
Miserable all over again, Kevin turned over, and buried his face in the pillow.
Count Volmar, tall, lean and graying of brown hair and beard, sat seemingly at ease in his private solar before a blazing fireplace, a wine-filled goblet of precious glass in his hand. He looked across the small room at the woman who sat there, and raised the goblet in appreciation. She nodded at the courtesy, her dark green eyes flickering with cold amusement in the firelight.
Carlotta, princess, half-sister to King Amber himself, could not, Volmar knew, be much younger than his own mid-forties, and yet she could easily have passed for a far younger woman. Not the slightest trace of age marred the pale, flawless skin or the glorious masses of deep red hair turned to bright flame by the firelight.
Sorcery, he thought, and then snickered at his own vapid musings so that he nearly choked on his own wine. Of course it was sorcery! Carlotta was an accomplished sorceress, and about as safe. for all her beauty, as a snake.
About as honorable, too.
Not that he was one to worry overmuch about honor.
“The boy is safely ensconced, I take it?” Carlotta’s smile was as chill as her lovely eyes.
“Yes. He has a place among the squires. Who, I might add, have been given to understand that he’s so far beneath them they needn’t bother even to acknowledge his presence—that to do so, in fact, would demean their own status. By now, the boy is surely thoroughly disillusioned about nobility and questioning his own worth.”
“He suspects nothing, then? Good. We don’t want him showing any awkward sparks of initiative.” Carlotta sipped delicately from her goblet. “We don’t want him copying his Master.”
Volmar’s mouth tightened. Oh, yes, the Bard, that cursed Bard. He could remember so clearly, even though it was over thirty years ago, how it had been, himself just barely an adult and Carlotta only ... how old? Only thirteen? Maybe so, but she had already been as ambitious as he—More so. Already mistress of the Dark Arts despite her youth, the princess had attempted to seize the throne from her half-brother.
And almost made it, Volmar thought, then corrected that to: We almost made it.
Amber had been only a prince back then, on the verge of the succession. His father had been old, and there hadn’t been any other legal heir; Carlotta, as the court had been so eager to gossip, was only Amber’s half-sister, her mother quite unknown.
