overtures. Within two days, as the hall’s avid sportsmen learned not to waste silver on Lysaer’s opponents, the Sunwheel officers jockeyed to cultivate him as a recruit.
Their target smiled with disarming candour. Folded into their circle, he consented to spar with the elite dedicates in their company.
Ever discreet, Dace brought dry towels as bidden. He fetched water, not amused by the performance of youthful innocence. Lysaer risked lethal stakes, blindsiding Miralt’s most devout professionals. How long before veteran sword-play sussed out the experienced ripostes Lysaer withheld from his side of the practice match?
A week passed without incident. Too personable to seem devious, Lysaer masqueraded a talent too raw to clinch a decisive bout. Dace watched male vanity played without shame to side-step social restraints. A hired valet must support the brash act, while the back-slapping, over-confident victors swept their glum loser along to the bath.
There, hot water eased battered muscles, and more: amid rosy intimacy and veiling steam, Lysaer’s guile gave teeth to the statesman’s weapon of neutral silence. Loosened conversation echoed into the dressing-room where, meekly waxing his master’s boots, Dace watched the ploy of green innocence inveigle the dedicates’ confidence.
“… be fighting aplenty, lad. Not only against unbelievers, but the worst breeding enclaves of black practice. Opportunity’s ripe! The move against clanblood opens up a rare chance for early promotion.”
A mumbled answer, then somebody’s laugh, punched through by a derisive comment, “Well, who said an engagement with free-wilds barbarians gilds a man’s prowess with honour?”
Through splashes, a gravel voice added, “A campaign led by head-hunters? No detail for faint hearts. It’s like stalking beasts at perilous risk, rife with horrors and gutless wickedness.”
“Ah, lad, don’t be cozened,” a risen tenor cut through. “D’you suppose we’d give warning in jest? The pestilent creatures lay traps that can butcher an armed man like a noosed animal.”
Another’s grumble capped that salacious comment, “… not unjustified … the High Temple’s order dispatched The Hatchet to slaughter them to their last woman and child.”
Metallic chinks from across the dressing-room betrayed the sullen mood of the temple novices assigned to polish the dedicates’ harness. They clumped like inquisitive ferrets, adolescent heads shaved and toothpick limbs clothed in white tunics. Most had been sworn to the Light since their birth. Others were street orphans, inducted as penance for thievery. Past question, their strict sensibilities disapproved of the gossip bandied between their superiors.
Dace played blind and deaf. He reinspected his morning’s handiwork. The packed kit at his feet was immaculate, the brushed clothing hung, with fresh towels readied for the moment his liege emerged from the communal pool. Yet Dace could not shake a sharp onset of chills, or dismiss the overt reproach the acolytes nursed at his back.
A servant could not bridle his master’s audacity, while the northland days passed one by one and assumed the cadence of habit.
The master arose before dawn. Shaved and dressed, he sat for his breakfast, then left on his own, clad informally. Chores left Dace no recourse to track what transpired in the misty streets. He tidied the bed, dropped yesterday’s clothes at the laundress, fetched those cleaned, and made purchases at the market. Back by daybreak to attend daily practice at arms, he carried his liege’s light armour and sword. After the Light’s officers dispersed to their duties, Lysaer ordered a meal at one of the wine-shops frequented by the idle rich. A servant was privy to their casual talk though he was forbidden to sit at table. Dismissed to lug his master’s kit back to the boarding-house, Dace fetched water, cleaned harness, and freshened the clothes chests, wash-basin, and towels.
His liege retired in the early afternoon, closeted with his correspondence. The letters were never left at large, unsealed. Lysaer hired the couriers himself. The wax for his cover sheets was frugal brown, impressed with a flourished initial, but use of the red wax tucked in the drawer suggested a second seal, nested inside, the weightiest dispatches signed under the Lord Governor’s cartouche. Those would be destined for recipients linked into the network allied to Etarra. Exiled under alias at Miralt Head, Lysaer kept in touch with his informants elsewhere.
Dace never rifled the missives or pried in his master’s absence. The exemplary servant knew trust must be earned.
Meanwhile, the dread wracked him, deep in the night and through the agonized days while the sun baked the roof-tiles outside the dormer. His facade masked the turmoil of uncertain thought and strained ears constantly listening. To the pulse of temple processions and prayer bells, Dace memorized the back alleys and by-lanes, and tracked the overheard talk within the walled courtyards. Under noon heat, and the limp flap of the Sunwheel banners, he walked wary, past the hypnotic chants of the priests. He observed idlers, striped azure in afternoon’s shade, where dicers and craftsmen mingled over beer for the latest news from the port.
His hours of solitude could have dragged, awaiting his master’s whim. But Dace seized the chance to polish his expertise. He thoroughly knew how to maintain a wardrobe but redressed his inability to barber hair. A seamstress taught him to turn hems like a tailor. He practised the poise of a genteel valet, then callused his hands buffing buttons and boots until the temple’s burnished-gold spires dimmed against the citrine sunset. Lysaer always returned when the bell towers shivered the air with the evening carillons.
His Lordship expected his bath and a change of wardrobe. Immersed in the finicky details, Dace saw his master dressed in style for Miralt’s elite society. Whether his liege stalked the ball-rooms, or pursued the High-Temple’s secretive policy amid the crush of the aristocrats’ wine parlours, the servant who botched his personal appointments would receive short shrift and dismissal.
Grateful the close air masked his sweating nerves, Dace laced and tied off silken-cord points and blessed the simplicity of summer attire. Dagged sleeves, starched cuffs, and velvet doublets were not fashionable until autumn. Left at leisure, he could eat his frugal meal, then wash before he emptied the bath.
“You needn’t wait up,” Lysaer always said, arisen to leave in the shadow of dusk.
“My lord is too gracious.” Ever deferent, Dace clicked the door shut after his liege’s departure.
Yet he never retired to his cot in the closet under the eaves. Dace sat wakeful by the open casement and lit the lamp when his master’s tread mounted the outside stair. Silent as Lysaer undressed, he received and hung the used clothes, gleaning sparse clues from the fabric: often the musk of temple incense, combined with the dampness of tensioned sweat, or the whiff of acrid smoke ingrained from the taverns. Watchfulness gauged his master’s mood, and accounted the hours of restless sleep from Lysaer’s crumpled sheets come the morning.
The frisson of Dace’s instincts led to clenched teeth to keep his own counsel. He smothered the impulse to flinch when the pigeons winged aloft, bearing temple messages over distance.
Lysaer s’Ilessid refused to confide. A spirit bent on a vengeful mission, he acted, implacably fuelled by royal justice, and shame, haunted guilt, and the pattern of inward self-loathing. The grievance of Sulfin Evend’s demise would be driving his deep-set recrimination. To stir the poison would undermine hope and destroy what must be a precarious bid for requital.
Summer’s height brought the shimmering heat of a glass furnace, and no crack in the shield of propriety. The master pursued his pitched course, while the servant recorded the creeping change: slight differences, adequate cause for alarm as Lysaer altered his style on the practice floor, extending himself just enough to decisively win a few matches. Dace observed the most astute veterans shift their outlook, snapped short by an unforeseen depth of experience. Fair-haired and serene, Lysaer fielded their surprise. He smoothed over the stinging transition from arrogant superiority with cool wit, while a stunned hush fell over the officers’ bath, and the faces of the attendant novices resharpened to salacious suspicion.
There came the late night under candlelight when Dace found a mark scorched by Light