was wasting hours with the royal breeder, which was what he seemed to enjoy most of all. Nothing nefarious had hatched so far.
The doors were at the wide end of the egg. Anyone coming in was first faced with a big wooden chair, almost a throne, elaborately carved, high-backed and winged and imposing. That was Shadow's seat. The arrangement was deliberate. A would-be assassin who had eluded the guards outside would certainly be in a hurry and probably nervous, and he would see that chair and an occupant dressed like the king--chances were, he would strike there in error. That would give the real quarry a little extra time.
To see the king it was necessary to step around that chair, for the royal desk and a group of flanking chairs stood at the far end of the hall, the narrow end, a long way from the doors.
There were other exits from that room, two of them, behind the desk: hidden doors. One led up to a makeshift aerie on the roof. Aurolron never used it and had had it netted over, but some of his predecessors had kept birds there. Another exit led down to the labyrinth of secret passages which wormed through the palace like giant termite tracks.
Five kilodays as Shadow--it was time now to give him an honorable retirement, a better peerage, an estate, and the royal thanks. Any decent monarch would have done so long since, but not Aurolron. And Shadow did not dare suggest it. A hundred times he had almost broached the subject, and always he had backed away. He feared that his retirement would be arranged to a wooden box.
He knew too much.
And he knew a lot more than the king thought he knew.
He was not a brave man. He often wondered what he would do if he saw the flash of the sudden stiletto, whether he could ever find the courage in that split second to move in front of it. If he had time to think, then he probably could, for when a king of Rantorra died by violence, then Shadow was guilty of high treason and the penalty for that was much worse than a stab wound.
The king made a joke, and his companions laughed heartily.
There were eight windows along both sides of that big room, carefully slanted so that the sun did not shine in directly but caught instead the sides of the deep embrasures and illuminated the room by reflection. The king could see out the windows from his desk; a visitor coming in saw no windows, only the royal dais glowing brightly ahead of him, subtly magnified by the taper of the egg shape. Whoever had designed this place had been full of little tricks like that.
Shadow was standing on the darkward side, staring up at the mountains behind Ramo. He had a good view of the palace aerie and the birds that came and went constantly. Horrible, savage monsters!
Ironically, it was his very dislike of the brutes which had landed him in his terrible job. Almost five kilodays earlier his immediate predecessor had died in an attack by one of those terrors--not a wild, even, but one of the royal stock which had escaped from the aerie and then launched a deliberate attack on the royal party returning from a hunt. With a peculiar irony, it had chosen the king himself for its target, almost as though it knew. Shadow-- the previous Shadow--had acted in the heroic tradition of his line, blinkering his mount and steering it into the attacker's path. His bird had fallen with a broken wing, and the fall had broken his neck.
The court had been loyally horrified at the attack and loudly joyful that His Majesty had escaped. Baron Haunder--there! he had thought that name--Baron Haunder had rejoiced with the rest of them and had been discussing the matter with a group of friends when he had been summoned to the Presence.
The king had been badly shaken. Never before or since had Shadow seen him show fear, but that day he had been trembling.
Baron Haunder had begun his congratulations on the royal good fortune; the king had cut him off with the terrible words: 'You are to be Shadow now.'
He thought briefly of that eager, fresh-faced kid who had been made Prince Shadow less than seventy days ago. He had looked ready to die of shock. He wondered if his face had looked like that. Probably.
'But why me?' the horrified baron had demanded.
'Because you know how to keep your mouth shut,' the king had said.
In his terror, he had argued. 'I have never flown a bird, Majesty!'
'And we never shall again,' the king had said. 'It is an unsafe practice for a reigning monarch. If Shadow cannot fly, then we cannot, so we shall not be tempted to change our mind.' He had meant it, too. Before that day he had been a keen skyman, but thereafter he had confined his interest in the eagles to their care and breeding. He had flown no more.
Baron Haunder had been heard of no more. Only Shadow.
The royal breeder was gathering up the papers--the schedules and the genealogies and the lists. The audience was almost over then, and Shadow wondered who came next. Perhaps now he would discover what unsavory matter had provoked the king's choice of the cabinet for this day's session. He walked across and sat himself quietly in his high-winged chair.
'...progress in pairing SaltSkimmer and RockEater?' the king asked.
Shadow knew one secret which the king did not. Any word spoken at that royal desk was clearly audible in Shadow's chair at the far end of the hall. It was another of the clever tricks built into that room, a brilliant use of freak acoustics stemming from the curves of the walls. Perhaps it had been an accident and some long-dead Shadow had discovered it and suggested putting a seat for himself in that exact spot. More likely it had been deliberate and the kings had once known of it. Aurolron certainly did not, and if he ever discovered that he had been overheard there for five kilodays, then there would be a new Shadow within the hour.
The conversation about pairing droned on.
What sort of a man had he been, King Shadow wondered, when he had been a man and not merely a shadow? Not like that dashing young trooper the prince had chosen, that was certain. Not handsome, even then, when he had had hair. A politician, an impoverished noble with a minor title and a real need for a favorable marriage, a schemer. He had lacked looks and charm to win such a marriage by romance--women had never liked him. To be honest, he had been planning a little blackmail as soon as he found the right key. A great collector of gossip, a fair manipulator, he would have worked his way up in the murky world of court politics quite well, given a little more time. One day he would have found a suitable heiress with a suitable secret, and then he would have proposed and been accepted.
Five kilodays! Any decent king would now retire him with a better title and an estate and marry off one of the royal wards on him, some supple maiden aged about six, with firm little conical breasts.
Once he had recovered from the initial shock of being appointed Shadow, he had rather fancied himself as chief of the secret police. If the king never flew, then Shadow's duty must be to become familiar with the palace jungle and know what stirred in the undergrowth.
Wrong! He had quickly discovered that there was already a chief of the secret police: the king himself. His knowledge and the extent of his spy network had astounded Shadow. Two assassination attempts had been made on Aurolron early in his reign, but none since. Would-be conspirators were invariably outconspired by their intended victim and died to the dirge of their own screams and the savory smell of themselves cooking. Shadow was merely the last possible line of defense, the human shield, and his longevity had been due to Aurolron's skill, not his--the dangers had never reached so near.
Little white spider.
The royal breeder and his deputy retired at last, bowing. They did not even glance at Shadow as they opened the door and went out.
He got a clear view of the anteroom through the doors, and he knew at once who was next. The equerry came in, stepped around the chair, and bowed.
'Your Majesty, His Royal Highness Prince Jarkadon awaits your pleasure.'
Shadow turned his head. In the prisms hidden in the wings of the chair he could see the king at the far end of the room, and he saw the royal nod. The king did know of those spy holes; indeed, it had been he who pointed them out to Shadow. Any visitor would believe himself unobserved when he was beside the king's desk--if Shadow was in his chair, as he usually was, out of sight and mind. But the visitor would not be unobserved, so no silent overpowering could succeed.
Jarkadon stepped in, jauntily dressed in green and blue, a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed younger version of the king. He paused for a moment as the doors were closed behind him, and he eyed Shadow thoughtfully as one might eye a watchdog or a drawbridge. Shadow decided he was tense and trying not to show it. Then he walked around
