Chapter 6 - Observer in the Shadows

  “The pieces do not see the board, nor the hand that moves them.”

  —Excerpt from ‘Meditations of Adenar di Aquince’

  Amonvae’s footsteps made no noise on the rush-strewn floor. Still, the cold stone seemed to catch and amplify every movement. The hallways of Duke Jargev’s keep bent beneath winter’s grip. Drafts pushed at the tired tapestries, ruffling the soft wood of carvings worn by damp; every surface held the ache of hard seasons. By the dim stutter of ntern-light, she moved as a patch of deeper darkness—her presence a cut in the tedium, unnoticed only by those who believed themselves above notice.

  Her rooms y buried at the keep’s northernmost crook—a suite reserved for “distinguished guests,” though the smell of old illness still clung to the woodwork. Amonvae paused just inside the threshold, eyes scanning from moth-pocked tapestry to the battered chest at the foot of the bed. She counted off the amenities with the care of one tallying debts—a thickness to the bnkets, a cracked window tch, dust gathering on the far bookshelf, and shadows in the corners where secrets might be stored for ter use.

  It would have been called luxury by the local gentry—two thick coverlets, an ewer glossy with foreign gze, a small bookshelf whose uppermost volumes wore a skin of dust the color of soldered pennies. But to Amonvae, the room remained the echo of comfort, not its presence. The air stank faintly of tallow and dry gray mold, over which her own effects had imposed subtler notes: rosewater, pressed ink, a snatch of vetiver looted years ago from the satchel of a fallen rival. She moved to the windowseat, let fingers ghost across the frost-warped sill, and listened—truly listened—to the bones of the old keep settle above and beneath.

  She had arranged her satchel’s contents at measured intervals; each tool and talisman marked the stops along her life’s path: a sheaf of ciphered letters—scratched in Adenar’s own angur script—tucked beneath a book of Rainnd proverbs; a small beaten copper vial, sharp with the scent of burnished yew sap; a shard of mirror, its back scored with ward-signs, turned to the wall. Every piece held a story, and all together, they sketched the map that was her journey from scribe’s daughter to the Arch-Mage’s watcher. In the far corner, a drift of her own clothes betrayed finer weaves and deeper dyes than any tailor in Winter Cw had ever wrought, yet nothing so bright as to trip suspicion.

  It served. For now.

  Amonvae drew her thumb along the spines of the borrowed books, half-listening to the murmur beyond her shutter. Each note was catalogued—her mind a ledger as tidy as the Duke’s, albeit more honest about what was kept and what was owed.

  From the yard below came the rattle of boots—soldiers changing post—and a snatch of quarrelling from the kitchens. Somewhere deeper, the faint metallic whine of the pulley at the well, wound past its prime. Everything here was tired, stretched—formality hung on like a beggar with threadbare gloves. Voices tried for pride; in the lulls, the silence cut in, cold and honest as a bde.

  She set a taper in the iron sconce, fme guttering, and let the hush settle—a ritual, this: slow breathing, muscle by muscle, the slow withdrawal of mask after a day of being watched while appearing the one who watches. She was here to observe, as Adenar would have it; her true work done in these interludes when no eyes pressed against her shape.

  Adenar’s voice lingered, wyerly and chill:

  Do not direct, observe. Do not form alliances, do not disrupt. The board is not yours to arrange, only to read. From the hem of the world, even small shifts are sharpest felt.

  She had repeated his words too often, scraping herself thin against their certainty. There had been a time—long and lost—when the title of “Observer” tasted exotic, promising. Now it felt more like the key turned on a cage well built but windowless.

  Still, hunger for more gnawed inside her, as constant as toothache. What use maintaining bance, she thought, if the whole scale is weighted against those beneath it? But such rebellion was dangerous—ambition, in any form, was quickly mapped, circled, and stamped out by the hand of one’s supposed benefactors. Adenar had raised her from daughter of bankrupt scribes to his agent, trained her tongue, cloaked her in knowledge; yet the coin’s other side always pressed cold against her palm.

  She focused on work. Always, the work.

  By midmorning, the keep had acquired its own peculiar menace: too many servants moving too quickly, the rder inventoried thrice in as many hours, guards shifting posts in nervous counterpoint to the slow grind of vilge trouble accreting outside.

  Amonvae entered the small breakfast room—once a sor, now mostly a drafty stack of mismatched chairs. She seated herself without fanfare, hands folded, the very picture of practiced indifference. Across from her, a scullery maid—red knuckled, hair drawn up in an uneven net—stood uncertain, a tray of bread trembling like a scale before a verdict.

  “Sit, if you will,” Amonvae said, indicating the opposite stool with the gentle authority of one who expects, and is used to getting, her word heeded.

  The girl hesitated only a breath, then sat, head ducked, eyes fixed on the table’s scarred grain.

  “I hope you slept,” Amonvae ventured. “The snow was restless st night.”

  A shrug—defensive, bone-deep. “Aye, midy. The cold’s naught we’ve not felt before.”

  “Yet folk are uneasy. I hear talk of the old fears—the Shroud, dead in the ne, shadows flitting where no track should run. Superstitions?”

  A careful pause, the girl’s eyes flicking up, then away. “People talk, midy. Winters like this, shadows py tricks. You hear things—folk start whispering just to fill the dark.”

  Amonvae let the silence linger—an old trick; nerves poured truth into any gap not shored up quick enough. The girl’s hands fretted with her apron.

  “My father says to keep the salt round the doors. Says if you see eyes in the window, you wait ‘til dawn before stepping out. ‘Tis just things old ones say, I reckon. But folk are scared enough to make such stories bigger.”

  She nodded. “Is it such stories that worry His Grace, or is he troubled by the living more than the dead?”

  A quick fsh of something—fear, perhaps loyalty. “The Duke listens. He has to. King’s men sniff round his ledgers like hounds after bone. Winter’s hard; the tally’s harder. Some say he’ll bleed the vilge dry and still owe come spring.”

  “That is one way famine arrives—slow, quiet, in the wake of honest men’s bor.”

  The girl risked another gnce, searching Amonvae’s face for a sign. “You know the world, then, midy. Guess you’ve seen worse than this?”

  “I have seen worse,” Amonvae answered, voice low, “and better. Both kinds leave marks.” She rose, slow and deliberate. “Thank you for your candor. Tell your father to bank his fire high tonight, and to count his blessings, not his debts.”

  The servant fled with relief—and, Amonvae hoped, the sense that some eyes saw without the usual appetite for punishment.

  Noon bled across the keep in watery smears of light. The great hall, stripped of comfort, offered only chill stone and the hollow echo of old grandeur. Tapestries—once a riot of color, now dulled to a pall of tangled greens and grays—hung in defeat. At a battered table near the hearth, Duke Jargev hunched, fingers pinched white along the knife edge of a letter.

  Amonvae approached. She had the measured walk of a penitent careful not to disturb the altar—but there was calcution stitched into every move.

  “My lord. You summoned?”

  Jargev looked up, eyes rimmed with the fatigue of a man outnumbered by both weather and duty.

  “Sit, if you please, Amonvae.” His tone cked grace, but not urgency. “We have corresponded, you and I, but now the King demands I show myself proactive. That means you beneath my roof—not out riding the bounds as I’d prefer. What counsel can I cim you bring?”

  She sat, arranging her robes, letting the pause do its work. “I am here to observe—at the Arch-Mages’ behest. Advice, when warranted. My specialty is the reading of patterns invisible to the hurried or overburdened.”

  A thin smile, cut sharp at the edges. “Patterns? You’ll note the pattern here is one of dwindling stores and mounting obligations. The snow’s reflected in every eye, from the rder girl to the oldest crone. Tell your masters we are well acquainted with scarcity.”

  “I do not doubt the burden. But not all patterns are writ in cold or ledgers. There are stories in every silence, in every path untaken.” She cocked her head, studying him. “You seem a man beset not only by the King’s need, but by something more immediate.”

  He slid the letter aside, baring the knuckles he’d scraped raw on a morning’s ride. “Folk out there are scared. A month ago, they grumbled. Now they watch the woods at night, as if the trees held answers or threats I cannot name. I bleed my own to feed the capital, and the spare for my own men. But the numbers thin, the dead accumute, and always the shadow of punishment looms. You know what they say? That I’d trade their sons to the snow for a night’s favor at court.”

  “And would you?” Her tone made it a curiosity, not accusation.

  He studied her, gaze flicking—sizing the depth behind eyes he mistrusted. “A king’s favor is fleeting. The snow’s teeth are not. I do what I must.”

  Amonvae did not smile. “The tally grows bloodier than any war ledger. Systems make monsters of men, as I have seen elsewhere. When the rules cannot be bent, folk break around them.”

  He grunted, sagging back so the fire painted hollows beneath brow and cheek. “My system is a chain, midy. I may own a link, but another always holds the master’s lock.”

  She let that sit a moment, quiet as snowfall on old wood.

  “I have heard,” she said at length, “that sometimes chains rust through, especially when pced for too long in winter’s mouth.”

  He blinked, suspicion flickering. “Are you here to judge, or to warn?”

  “I am here to watch how men act when cold and hunger become rivals to duty. The Shroud haunts the vilge, but I have learned fear walks faster, and in finer boots than any specter.” She rose. “If you wish to talk beyond your ledgers, I am always at hand.”

  He said nothing, but his eyes trailed her until she vanished past the tattered tapestry, the pattern of his worry unchanged, but now richer by a single, vivid thread.

  Night again, coiling close. Amonvae sat at her writing table, ink pooled blue-bck in the hollow of her signet. She fingered Adenar’s test letter, reading between its measured lines. His voice ran through her, subtle as a knife:You will not act, only catalog. You will not meddle; you will trust nothing but the written record, and send all that matters by trusted hand.

  She considered the cipher he favored—six turns, each one a twist meant to mask intent as much as content. He would notice omissions. He always did. Her quill paused above the parchment, fingers tense. Better to record only what was necessary—she’d learned that much.

  The vilge is unstable. Local authorities test the edge of loyalty; their fear breeds discord. Sickness rends the weak. Rumor spreads—of the Shroud, of discontent, of failures subtle and gross. Intervention may soon be required; methods uncertain.

  She hesitated, staring at the ink’s shine, the silence heavy about her. Her thoughts kept circling, sharp and noisy—like the crows that haunted the vilge midden at dusk—never letting her settle.

  Adenar, who had lifted her from mud and hunger, but only to assign her another yoke. The Arch-Mages‘ so-called bance—never for those who starved, only for the shape of kingdoms on distant charts. How often had she wanted to see one small act shift the pattern, consequences be damned?

  She closed the letter unsealed, setting it aside. Across the room, the little copper vial glinted—a reminder of her own power, such as it was, and of the unseen debts that trailed every gift.

  Amonvae looked to the barred window, where snow traced runes onto bck gss, and mused—quiet and bitter—that the pieces seldom see the board, nor the hand that moves them. Not peasants in the frost-numbed fields, not the Duke with his ledgers, not even the observers in their borrowed luxuries.

  But what of the hand? she wondered, and in that wondering, found both fear and a taste of mutiny—sharp, promising, and very much alive beneath the calm.

  She drew the heavy drapes, set her shoes by the door—always toes outward, as vilge wisdom instructed. Then she y on the stiff bed, eyes open to the dark. The stones creaked overhead; somewhere deep in the walls, water trickled. The keep settled around her, wan breath rising with each shudder of wind through the cracks—a lulby of old wood and colder air.