Vengeance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 1 Page 2

  Apparently, she knew me too. I’d spent my life in secrecy and seclusion, changing my name and my guardian every year to avoid detection. When did I get famous? And how did I not know that not only did the White Queen and the Dark Queen look identical, they each looked like they could be my mother?

  ‘Emer!’ the rebel Queen shouted, ‘get to the Portal! I’ll hold her back!’ I scrambled to my feet in time to hear her to shout, ‘And don’t let go of Elisabeth!’ just as I grabbed my sister’s hand.

  We ran towards the deepest part of the Library. A quick glance over my shoulder showed two small armies fighting and the Queens casting magic at one another so fast the air around them blurred with light and wind whipped their cloaks into a frenzy. And behind them, struggling to pass behind the mass of fighting soldiers, was Maldwyn.

  I didn’t look back again.

  We reached the inner chamber. I didn’t even slow down. I jumped over a fallen column and dragged Elisabeth with me. She barely made it without tripping. I heard her say my name, but it would have to wait until we were on the other side of the Portal. We ran up the stairs to the dais and I leapt into the Portal.

  The colours overwhelmed me, colours and darkness and lightning, brief glimpses of faces and rooms. I pulled Elisabeth behind me, but a sudden jerk pulled her hand from mine. I twisted, even where I was suspended in the swirl of colours and only had time to glimpse Elisabeth as she was pulled away from me. The White Queen held Elisabeth’s other hand and as I struggled to change direction, the two of them retreated out of my sight.

  Chapter Two

  The next thing I knew, I was falling, landing flat on my face and busting my nose, my cheekbone, my jaw, against the stone steps as I fell. I didn’t even have time to feel sorry for myself or scream for Elisabeth. Hands grabbed my arms and jerked me up until I found my feet. I could barely see for the blood that spurted from a cut on my forehead.

  I heard lots of people around, crying out in surprise and alarm. I could practically hear them storing it all up for gossip later. I heard people shouting for guards – and, more welcome, shouting for a healer.

  I couldn’t tell if I was thrust into a hospital room or a prison cell. I was propelled backwards onto a stone bench and pressed to lie down. I managed to get my eyes open for a second when I wiped away the blood and got a good look at the man crouching in front of me. He had his hands on my shoulders to hold me down in case I made a break for it.

  I’d never seen him before, or a uniform quite like it, but I recognised the symbol on his shoulder. I couldn’t help my response. I was done with the creepyguardian order once and for all. And I really didn’t like being held down.

  I tried to get up, but he shoved me back onto the bench. I screamed and he spared a hand to clap over my mouth. I responded with a burst of magic as strong as I was capable of. Lighting didn’t just crackle from my fingertips. It arced from every pore of my skin, every tiny hair on my arms, even from my eyebrows and eyelashes.

  The man who held me fell to the floor, his body burned all over. I knew he was dead. I’d made sure of it.

  A dozen other people spilled into the room. They all played a part in holding me down. I fried a few of them, too, before an older man with silver eyes threw a cloak over me. All of a sudden, my magic didn’t work. It was like trying to breathe in and finding my lungs suddenly didn’t work. I’d had magic all my life. Reaching for my magic not being able to find it was utterly foreign. I screamed and screamed, and eventually when I breathed in to scream again, the air tasted funny. A moment later I was unconscious.

  Unconscious, I dreamed of the bird that Umbra became in the myth that every creepyguardian had told us, massive wings beating over the ocean. I dreamed of feathers falling until I was surrounded by them, suffocated by them.

  I woke up, covered in feathers.

  I sat up and tried to brush the feathers off my arms, but they seemed sticky. I even had tiny downy feathers all over my hands. I tried to brush them off, but they were stuck fast. I was covered in feathers, a strange mix of colours and textures that looked mottled and sickly rather than sleek and beautiful like a bird. I shook myself, rubbed my hands over my arms, but the feathers stayed fast over my clothes and hands. Frustrated, I decided to remove the feathers one by one, picking one of the feathers on my sleeve and pulling on it.

  The small sting of pain was a shock; it made my cry out in surprise. It felt like I’d pulled a hair out by the roots.

  I dropped the feather and looked closely at the sleeve beneath… although, it didn’t look like a sleeve. It looked like my skin. I ruffled my hands through the feathers that covered my arms, my legs. It was like they were growing out of my skin.

  A sarcastic, long-suffering voice behind me said, ‘Don’t pull them out, you’ll get a rash.’

  I looked up. I’d been so worried about the feathers I hadn’t even known there was someone in the room.

  I couldn’t see his face. He wore a cloak with a hood pulled so low over his face that he couldn’t possibly see where he was going. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  In the shadow of the hood, in the brief part of his face that was visible, I saw the hint of a smile.

  ‘Justice,’ he replied. ‘Here to see that you’re punished for your crimes, Emer. Now, come. It is time for your trial.’

  I stood. The feathers came with me, like a skin that covered my own and encased my hair in a feathered net. The man walked slowly, probably because he couldn’t see in that stupid hood, and I followed obediently. Eighteen years with the creepyguardians had taught me a lot. I’d learned to be obedient. I’d learned to be afraid. And I’d learned to be angry. As soon as I was out under the moon and my magic was regenerated by its light, I was going to show this hooded fool about justice.

  The courtroom, if it was even really a courtroom, wasn’t large. There were only three people sitting on one side of a wide table, facing me. Mr Hood left me standing in the centre of the room and joined them in the empty seat at the end of the table.

  I recognised one person sitting at the table. It was the man with silver eyes who’d thrown the feathers over me. All three of them looked at me with barely concealed distaste and fear. A man with a big beard knocked his fist against the table.

  ‘Come to order,’ he said, as though the other three, sitting silently, had been rowdy. ‘Young lady, you are accused of murder. There are numerous witnesses, one of whom is Master Darragh,’ he indicated the man with silver eyes, ‘whose testimony as a Master Librarian is unimpeachable. The featherskin will remain until Master Darragh chooses to remove it. You will not be able to use magic while wearing the featherskin.’

  A woman with grey hair sat beside him. ‘We have no use for a featherskin, Master Garbhan. Why should we feed and house a convicted criminal when we have apprentices a-plenty who yearn for the privilege of serving in the Library of Cairnagorn?’

  ‘Cairnagorn?’ I gasped. ‘How can I be in Cairnagorn?’ I looked around, not that there was much to look at. There were no windows. The room was lit by witch light and the walls were hewn of solid stone. It had to be true. ‘But Cairnagorn was destroyed by the dragons years ago!’

  The man in the hood chuckled, but flicked his hand towards me. A blast of power knocked me off my feet. I was smart enough to make heavy weather of getting up. He wanted to see that he’d hurt me. If I tried to be brave it would only be worse. I should know.

  The woman glared at him, though. She hadn’t liked that laugh any more than I had. He simply leaned back and put his feet up on the table, crossing his arms across his chest.

  She spoke with tight lips. ‘Master, this is not the time or place to discuss your premonitions. The featherskin needs to be executed.’ She stood up. ‘Please see to it.’

  ‘No!’ Hood sat up straight and whipped his feet off the table. ‘No, she might be of use to us. She showed powerful magic. We could put her under the moon and harvest her. And…
she might know… where even greater magic may be found.’

  ‘We have limited resources. I will not account to the Council for the cost of keeping this prisoner alive. Send her to the palace in Rheged, if you must. Call her a gift for the Empress.’

  The Empress? The Empress hadn’t ruled the Thousand Counties for twenty years, not since the White Queen stole the throne.

  Hood chuckled again. ‘The Empress might like that. She seems to have difficulty in keeping servants alive. Master Darragh, how would you like to take our young friend here to the palace? I’m sure the Empress would appreciate your insight into the minds of the leaders of the Camiri rebellion.’

  Master Darragh simply inclined his head. He had no more power in this conversation than I did. His silver eyes met mine and I shivered. He was even angrier than I was and he was going to make someone pay for it. He had no power to hurt the others, so I suspected that the person who was going to get hurt was me.

  They took me in a cage to the city of Rheged. I’d been here before. We’d never lived here, because the creepyguardians wanted to keep us a secret, but we’d come here once or twice over the years.

  By now I was certain that I was in the past. Probably about twenty years’ back, if that conversation the Librarians held was any indication. The Empress ruled and the Camiri slaves were in the middle of a rebellion. What would happen in the coming months would change the course of history for the Thousand Counties.

  In my time, Rheged was a wreck. It had been badly damaged in the battle of the Bach Chwaer and the dragons and had never quite recovered. The White Queen focussed her energies on the war with the Dark Queen and was busy building fortifications in the west and building her new capital city at Cairastel. Rheged, the old capital city, was allowed to remain half a ruin.

  Now… I’d had no idea it had been so magnificent. The walls were white and gleaming. Towers soared at intervals along the wall. The roads going into the city thronged with people. I’d never seen so many people, brightly dressed and prosperous.

  There was a clear divide among the people, though, and I’d read about this, on those long days when I’d had plenty of time to spare and the whole of Cairnagorn to explore. Many of the people were well dressed, but most of them were accompanied by slaves. In my time there were no slaves in Meistria. The White Queen had killed them all.

  These were the Camiri I’d read about, dressed in brown, barefoot and three steps behind their masters. The Meistri kept the Camiri for house slaves, for hard labour, but the vast majority of the Camiri were bred for the army. I didn’t see anything happen, in the few minutes I was among the crowds passing through the gates and into the city, but I knew from my reading that a rebellion was brewing. A hero was about to lead these people to freedom. And a few months after that, the White Queen would ascend the throne and slaughter every last one of them.

  I was barely among the crowds for more than a few minutes. No one looked through the bars at the feathered thing that peered so greedily at them, not even the Camiri. The Librarian driving the cart, sitting next to Master Darragh, was quick to turn off the main roads and take a quieter route to the palace.

  It was still impressive, built of heavy stone that would even, in a few months, withstand the flame of a dragon. The gates were heavy and imposing, more than impressive. As they closed behind us, it was hard not to clutch the bars and howl like the beast they’d turned me into.

  Master Darragh escorted me to the servants’ quarters himself. I wasn’t especially surprised when we had to stop and ask directions more than once. I let myself be herded, but his grip on my arm was cruelly tight.

  When we reached the lower levels, he shoved me away from him. I fell to the floor and tore the skin of my hands open, breaking loose a few feathers for good measure. I glared up at his back from my position on the floor. If I’d been able to reach my magic in that moment, he would have been dead by now.

  He had words with a servant, a middle-aged woman who was dressed in a serviceable grey gown. I recognised that type of gown and I recognised the busy, bustling walk that turned an easy task into a complicated one. So, I was to be a servant ‒ well, worse things had happened to me, and only recently, too.

  Master Darragh turned and walked away, without a backward glance at me. I wondered briefly how many people he would have to ask before he could find his way back to the public areas of the palace.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ I asked the woman. There was no point carrying on in self-pity. If I was down here in the basement, I’d have duties and I might as well get started.

  The woman bustled past me and didn’t even break stride. ‘What else is a featherskin good for? You can’t wash dishes or do laundry or cook. Your brooms and scrubbing brushes are in that cupboard. Your number is seventeen. Nothing that doesn’t have a seventeen on it doesn’t belong to you. Start at the top of the castle and work your way down. Then you go back up to the top and scrub all the floors again and don’t let me catch you slacking.’ That last was thrown over her shoulder as she exited the room.

  I followed the jut of her head. To be sure, there was a cupboard that looked like it contained enough scrubbing brushes for a whole castle. Each was labelled clearly with the number seventeen.

  I looked down. There was a bloodstain on the flagstones beneath me, little feathers stuck in the blood. My hands hurt when I got up and went to the broom cupboard but what could I do? I might as well get started. So, my first job in the castle was washing my own blood off the floor.

  I wasn’t the only one who was new. That night, when I went to the dormitory where all the lowest female servants slept, I was allotted a bed in a dark corner. I looked longingly at the window. I’d already spent far too much time underground or in the dark and I longed to be under the moon, even if I couldn’t reach my powers.

  The other girl, who had already made friends, woke up screaming. The women cooed over her and I tried not to feel the sting.

  ‘She’s going to take my soul!’ the girl cried. She looked over at me and gasped, ‘A monster!’

  Now, look, I’d gotten out of bed to see what the screaming was about like all the others, but it’s not as though the girl had woken to find me standing over her with a knife. And damn it all, every woman clustered around the poor little darling didn’t have to turn around and eyeball me.

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ I cried, holding up my hands innocently. ‘What would I do with her soul?’ They kept looking at me, one or two pursing her lips. ‘I’m not about to steal her soul, alright?’ I snapped. ‘Where would I keep it? It’s only mine if it’s got a seventeen on it.’

  Fortunately, ‘The moon,’ the girl wept and the others stopped leaning away from me quite so much. ‘I didn’t realise that the moon would shine on this bed. If the moon shines on my face she will steal my soul and turn me into a monster!’

  I wasn’t the only one in the room who rolled her eyes. I pushed myself forward. This shit was probably my domain. ‘Look, I’ll sleep in that bed,’ I offered.

  ‘Yes,’ Suron, my immediate senior, said. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Watch you don’t have something to worry about,’ I shot back over my shoulder, sick of this shit. I turned back to the girl. ‘I’ll sleep in this bed,’ I told her, putting the nearest I could do to a commiserating hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m not afraid of the moon. You can have my bed.’

  ‘But I can’t sleep on your sheets.’

  I sighed. I’d gotten myself in for more than I’d bargained for. ‘We’ll swap the sheets, then,’ I said, ‘but that damn well better be it. I’m tired and I want to go to bed and I, personally, don’t care whose it is.’

  Come to think of it, I was swearing a lot more than I ever had. Maybe it was due to the fact that I spent most of my time working in a stressful environment with a bunch of women. Maybe it’s because women give birth. They need to know all these swearwords ready for when the big day comes. Up until then they just practice and don’
t let on when they meet a guy who thinks they’re a wilting flower of femininity who wouldn’t know a four-letter word if it fell on their foot.

  We swapped the beds around, too, moving the cumbersome palliasses from one bed frame to the other. Everyone else was asleep by the time we were finished and my back hurt from moving the mattresses and swapping both sets of sheets. Eventually the girl was in her new bed.

  ‘Done?’ I asked, not feeling at all charitable by this point. If she wanted me to go through the drawers and take everything with a seventeen on it over to the other chest, then I was going to move her back into her old bed under the moon, palliasse, sheets and all.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered and damn it all, I felt a little sorry for her. It must be terrible to think that your soul is going to be stolen by something as common as the moon. It must make nighttime a ferocious place.

  ‘Just go to sleep,’ I said, turning.

  ‘One thing?’

  I halted. If she wasn’t careful, they were going to find her cold, dead body in my bed at dawn, which wasn’t that far away! ‘What?’ I asked through gritted teeth, looking over my shoulder.

  ‘I’ve never fallen asleep in a room so big,’ she confessed in a very small voice.

  Damn it. I sighed, then sat on the chair next to the bed that served as both a bedside table and something to sit on when we wanted to put on our shoes without rumpling the bedclothes.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked, making my voice softer than it might otherwise have been, given the mood I was in.

  ‘Could you sing me to sleep? My nanny used to sing me to sleep.’

  ‘Are you a princess in disguise?’ I asked.

  The girl giggled. Giggled, I say. She was only a baby. How did a baby like her end up a slave in a place like this? She made me think of Elisabeth. It hurt to think of my Sparrow. She’d filled something inside me that was gaping and I liked to think that I’d done the same for her. I had no idea what the White Queen was doing to her. The only thing I could do for Elisabeth right now was to worry about her, so I did.