The Queen's Secret (The Queen's Secret #2) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,11
knew, but he couldn’t see her. He was alerted to her presence by the stomping of her personal royal guards, ringing their queen to protect her from the eyes of common soldiers. Such was the racket in the yard, he couldn’t even hear the clacking of staffs when Lilac took on one of the Guild fighters. All he could hear was the grunting and huffing of this sad band of new recruits, country lads who resent being dragged away from the harvest. Most are terrified at the prospect of marching north. The stories from Stur grow wilder by the day.
Just this morning Cal overheard one youth telling another that when lightning flashed there, it revealed a picture of the queen’s face—her mouth twisted as though she were cackling like a witch. He dragged the stupid oaf out of the line himself, shoving him toward the captain of the guard for punishment. Gossip was one thing. Sedition was another.
Rhema, one of his latest recruits, was Lilac’s trainer today. Cal only realized this when he saw Rhema walking away from the queen’s guards, red-faced and looking pleased with herself. She’s a smart young woman, Rhema, and never happier than when she’s in action. Cal likes her work ethic as well as her skills as a fighter, and he also likes that she’s always respectful and attentive to Jander. Some of the apprentice assassins have too much swagger and see meek, quiet Jander as nothing more than a boy and a stable hand. They have no idea of his history and his knowledge. They have no idea what he has witnessed and survived.
They have no idea of the curse on his head, placed by King Phras so many centuries ago, condemning Jander to an eternal life, trapped in a boy’s body.
The ranks in the courtyard clear for a moment, and Cal glimpses Lilac disappearing into the royal apartments, flanked by her personal guard. Maybe she hasn’t seen him out here. It’s chaos—marching, shouting, training. Recruits are leaping from the battlements onto bales of hay, practicing the best ways to fall and roll. Some dolt has managed to shoot an arrow into a commanding officer’s shoulder, and the braying and bellowing from that part of the courtyard is as loud as cattle stampeding across a field.
Wandering in an oblivious way through all this dirt and racket is the Chief Scribe, a plump and pale elderly man, scattering linseeds for the crows. The birds waddle and leap toward him, eager for the food. More swoop down from their perches on the walls, or from the narrow ledge of the chapel’s small window. The scribe’s blue robe scrapes the dirty stones of the yard, and a bag of seed embroidered with a pattern of delicate feathers swings from his girdle. Why he’s feeding the birds now rather than at a quieter time in the courtyard, Cal doesn’t know.
The scribe’s name is Daffran, and he’s lived in the castle all his life. Cal sees him at Small Council meetings, writing down proceedings in a looping hand, or in the courtyard, feeding the birds. The rest of Daffran’s days are spent in his small, high-ceilinged library in the tower, working on his chronicle of Montrice.
Daffran shuffles in Cal’s direction, giving him an uncertain smile.
“Morning.” Cal nods at him.
“Good morning, Holt,” the Chief Scribe says in a wavering voice, then clears his throat. “I wonder if I might trouble you, if you have a moment?”
“Is something wrong, sir?” Cal asks. Daffran rarely addresses him directly. He’s always suspected that the scribe is a little afraid of assassins.
“Perhaps—in private?”
“I’ll walk with you.” Cal’s glad for the opportunity to leave the recruits to their own pathetic devices for a few moments. He accompanies Daffran, at a frustratingly slow pace, back to the tall stone tower linked to the hall keep by a covered passage. On the lowest floor is the chapel, which Lilac visits every few days, and the vestry where her priest, Father Juniper, studies. The scribes’ library is two floors up. The young assassins jokingly call the tower Old Man’s Leap, because only elderly men live and work there. Even the junior scribes have white hair, or no hair at all.
Outside the main door Daffran pauses, as though he’d changed his mind about entering. Cal stands with him in the portico, puzzled. What is so important that the scribe sought him out? Is all this training of troops interfering with the bird feeding?