Chapter 2

              The muffled whispers of the maids were almost musical.  An incessant twittering that reminded Issi of the birds that lived in the orchard she’d grown near.  

                Like the birds, the maids sang the same songs over and over. 

                Gossip about the Athijan nobles, the youngest prince’s latest tryst, the last zealot hung in the market square, the newest treat at the bakery.  Rumors, secrets, promises, the maids picked them up like sweets from all over the palace.

                Her master had fired most of the private maids moons ago, the new ones rotated through in batches of five.  Issi had hoped that meant they’d gain a little more variety in their set of interests, but all that had changed was the timbre of their voices and her ability to track their names.

                A maid with green eyes played absently with Issi’s door, swinging the flowers to and fro, “The Athijans are a very tall people, don’t you think?”

                Issi contemplated the merits of banging her head against her table. 

                “They are, aren’t they?  I just saw one in the atrium.  Very tall.”

                Dear gods above, anything but this, “Why do you think they’re here?”

                The women paused at her interjection.  New maids always did, like they were surprised she could speak, or maybe at how she sounded.  The words tumbled from her mouth in Qashan fair enough, but she didn’t sound Qashan.   

She held onto vowels too long, swallowed the wrong set of consonants which twisted the jagged tones of their language into something else entirely.  Egrean, which was the joke of it.

A Chousalian with an Egrean accent, living in Qasha.  She supposed it was enough to give anyone pause.

The disgust that crossed their faces felt a bit unfair, but she was used to that too.

The one on the right, a quiet woman with a propensity for shrinking away whenever someone so much as sneezed out of turn spoke up, “Well…miss Anders, they’re diplomats and it’s almost time for the King’s Dinner, so I suppose they’re here to watch.”

That was true enough, but it didn’t really answer the question.  The King’s Dinner was a biannual affair, used to establish who had risen ranks or fallen out of favor in the rapidly changing landscape that passed for the king’s court. 

However, it was usually an internal affair and from the rumors that circled, they didn’t seem to be doing anything at all.  If it was information they wanted, they certainly didn’t have to stay in the castle year-round to get it.

 “And why are they watching?”

The maid shared a look of concern with her green-eyed companion, “Well, it’s not our place to worry about such things.”

Issi bit back a retort, everyone in the palace was trying to figure out precisely what they were doing there. 

She wasn’t the only one bored within the walls.

 “Well, this is nice and clean,” the green-eyed maid stepped in, though what this was, was beyond Issi.  The woman had feigned swiping at the doorframe, before she offered Issi a lackluster bow, “If you’ll excuse us, we’ve other things that need doing.”

They didn’t wait for her dismissal.  The title was in name only after all.

At least she wouldn’t have to listen to how tall the visitors were for the next bell.   

She counted down the moments on her alchemy clock as she tore the sheets off her bed, revealing that the mattress underneath had stained too.  She folded the fabric, setting it in a heap before promptly running out of things to do.

Maybe scaring the maids off had been a bad idea after all.  She paced around her cage, and then out of her cage to pace the rest of the room before going back inside. 

The knock at her door was almost cathartic.

“Ner,” Issi’s face lit and the maid’s darkened as she looked her over.

“You’re not planning to—”

 “Oh, but I am,” Issi swiped a few of the bloody scarves off her table and stuffed them hurriedly into her pocket.  Gods, what was a reasonable number for her to have bled through?  Was five too much?

“You look tired,” the smell of breakfast trailed after the maid as she walked through the room.  Warm flatbreads with a spiced cimmeona jam and an assortment of fruit rattled on the breakfast tray she carried.  Issi’s stomach twisted.  Was she supposed to eat or not when she lost this much blood?

Issi moved the rest of the cloths to make room for the maid to set down her burden, “I am tired,” she shook one of her scarves, the pattern obscured by a dark stain that’d gone well on its way to brown, “busy night.”

Ner frowned, honey colored eyes showing disapproval, “Again?”

Issi dipped her finger into the jam, her eyes widening at the sweetness of it.  Sugar.  That was what she wanted.

“Issi, how bad was it?” the maid prompted.  Issi pointed her chin to the pile she’d collected while spreading jam over bread.

The maid tutted, counting the scarves and noting the size of the stain on her sheets, “Are you feeling alright?”

Issi had just stuffed the entirety of the flatbread into her mouth, as if the near decade of etiquette lessons hadn’t taught her a damned thing.  She chewed quickly, covering her mouth with her unscarred hand as soon as speaking became feasible, “Sorry…hungry, just very, very…hungry.”

“Well, you’ve got an appetite,” the maid smiled and reached to touch Issi’s head.

Issi lurched back and unbalanced herself, she had just enough time to curse before she banged into the not-bars and the world snuffed out for a fraction of a heartbeat.  In the darkness something called her.  Or it felt like something.  When she opened her eyes, the maid loomed over her, pulling the dirtied fabric from Issi’s pocket.

Her painted lips pursed to form butterfly wings as she shook out the fabric, “Really?  Is this how we’re going to do this today?”

The world swam, rocking side to side like it fancied itself on a pendulum.  Issi blinked trying to think past the pain that turned her thoughts to ash.  She gasped and said the first words that came to mind, “You were to stopping me,” she frowned, that was wrong, “Going to stop me.”

“Because what you were planning was stupid.”

Issi struggled to sit up.  The maid watched her, but blessedly, decided against offering a hand.

Ner frowned counting the stained scarves, “Did he send for a healer?”

“I’m bored, Ner, I was only going to borrow a couple of bells,” she complained, “two at the most.”

“That’s a no then.”

“I even waited for you so I could eat first.  Do you know what the other maids were prattling on about?  They said the Athijans were tall,” outrage forced Issi’s voice into peaks, “It was going to be their entire conversation, I could feel it.  They would have filled an entire bell just comparing their heights to other less tall things until they managed to get the proportions just right.”

“And you’re off again,” the maid set to gathering the copious amount of stained fabric.

“I’m not asking for a lot, Ner, but a nice piece of actual gossip would have been lovely.”

“Finish your breakfast. I’ll bring more water, you need fluids,” she said as she started through the cage’s doorway.

“I need you to be adventurous,” Issi groused as she tore into the fruit.

The young maid didn’t justify that with a response.  Issi tapped her fingers against the table contemplating how much of a lecture would await her if she up and left anyway.

She felt along the seam of her sleeves until her fingers brushed against something hard just a bit bigger than the nail on her small finger. She bit back a yelp of excitement, Ner hadn’t found this one yet.  A few moments of graceless flailing resulted in a small wooden tablet depositing itself neatly into her open palm.

The front was covered in painstakingly carved notches and lines while the rear was a red brown color that closely matched that of the stained scarves the maid had hurried off with.

Issi ran her hands through her hair trying to detangle what she could without raising her arms above her neck.  She gathered unruly strands and bound them together with a ribbon from her wardrobe and studied herself in the mirror.

The meal had done wonders.  She felt, not quite alive, but well on her way to it.  She looked mildly unkempt, but no more than was to be expected if someone lived a life for purposes other than preening and looking pretty.

                Her alchemy clock informed her it was a half-bell before nine, her master wasn’t fond of mid-morning or lunch visits so that meant she usually had this time to herself.  Full bells dedicated to not going mad with the conversations from the maids, or drawing the same stupid set of flowers, or doing the same embroidery, or practicing the dozens of pieces waiting to be brought to life on her violin.

                And, about two or three times a moon, sneaking out of her master’s wing. 

It’d been easier when there were students about.  The entire wing had been livelier, and nobody questioned the existence of a student leaving in the middle of the day.

                Now, things were a bit more precarious.

                She slipped on a pair of plain slippers and nudged the door to her room open, peeking through the crack.  Ner was nowhere in sight.  She went back into her cage and retrieved a sketchbook and a dainty bag of charcoal.

                Summoning an air of propriety was the most difficult part.  

Issi left and hurried down the hall, passing the green-eyed maid and her mousy companion who spared her the barest glances before returning to their work.  From the edges of their whispers, it seemed they were trying to determine if the Athijans were better measured in hands, like horses, or in terms of the giant stones that formed the supports for the palace’s outer wall.

The stairwell she paused before was an awkward twisting structure better used by children and mice than a person of even Issi’s stature, much less the servants it was intended for.  Issi ignored the way the walls pressed in around her and forced her way to the ground floor.  The stairway deposited her between the door to the garden and another corridor that’d lead her straight to a myriad of halls, one of which led to the outside of her master’s suite.

She stopped in the garden first. 

It was worse up close.

From her window she could force everything into order, see which greenery belonged to which plant and haphazardly map the structure.  Now all she knew was that there was a branch in her face, and another branch that nearly struck her after she cleared the first.

There wasn’t much need for hiding her things.  She lay them at the base of a gnarled tree and trusted that no one had been this far in the garden for nearly half a year.  That, and the fact that nobody had found the box filled with small copper pieces she’d simply placed near the wall some moons ago.

She took six small plated coins from the box and slid them into her pocket before pulling out the marked wooden tablet.

She pressed her thumb against the carved surface.  The air filled with the scent of spices, and aggerlon oranges.  Her eyes widened as the world snapped into focus and her skin disappeared beneath a layer of olive tone that along with a handful of minor alterations would make her appear passably Qashan.

A hiss escaped between her teeth as she tied the pendant around her neck and tucked it between her breasts. 

A creak dragged Issi’s gaze upwards.

She backed hurriedly towards the building as Ner thrust open the window to her room.  Through the leaves of an overgrown shrub Issi spied the maid’s form tipping through the opening.  Her grey uniform billowed against the blue of the sky.

“Issi, you better be down there, or I swear on the honor of—”

Well, that was going nowhere good.  Issi slipped back through the doorway before the rest of Ner’s promise made itself apparent.

It was a blessedly quick walk to the front of the wing.  Issi stopped just short of bursting through the doors, startling the guards on duty.

“Kings, Del,” the one on the right, recovered faster, “I thought something was wrong.”

Issi smiled and worked to slow her breathing.  Sometimes it felt like Ner was better at sniffing her out than the royal dogs, “Oh, I would never dream of making you work.”

Nalav straightened, according to some of the maids, he was a handsome man.  Issi supposed she could see it.  He had a confidence about him and a deceptively delicate face.  It was almost a shame that, that confidence came from a rather interesting gambling habit that had him forever dipping into the pockets of his companions for that last scrap of copper.

Almost.

His colleague, on the other hand, Issi didn’t recognize. 

Another guard change.

“You know her?” the new guard, a woman with close cropped hair, spoke up.

Nalav grinned and wrapped an arm around his companion’s neck, his free hand gesturing grandly to Issi, “This is Del, the last of the Grand Mage’s students.”

Issi offered a shallow bow, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, miss—?”

“Ari, you can call me Ari,” she studied Issi skeptically, “I didn’t hear about you.”

Obviously.

Issi frowned, “Don’t tell me you believe the rumors about the Grand Mage dismissing all the students.”

A blush brought out the smattering of freckles that danced across the woman’s cheeks, “Well, that is—”

Issi laughed, “That’d be insane, he still needs an assistant, you know?”

The blush deepened, “Well, of…of course.  It’s just you weren’t mentioned.”

Nalav let the woman go his grin tugging higher on the right side as he fought back laughter, “Do you really you’ll learn everything from a morning briefing?”

Ari’s eyes darted to the floor.  Issi felt a pang of pity, but this was what made Nalav so very perfect.  And a godsawful gambler. 

He never questioned convenience.

Issi’s existence made sense.  Her master’s sudden dismissal of all the students and gardeners and maids had been concerning at best.  If he’d kept even a single student, just for assistant work, well that painted a nicer picture.  It meant he hadn’t completely lost it in the face of illness.

And that was more than enough for Nalav to stop thinking about it.  He convinced nearly everyone else to do the same.

“To be young,” he scoffed, “Del has been here forever.”

Some days, it really felt that way, “I’m off for breakfast, do you want anything?”

“I couldn’t—” Ari began.

“I saw the Northern Tribeswoman bringing cimmeona jam,” Nalav interrupted, “Could you get your hands on that?”

Issi shifted, “Well, that’s a bit…”

“Come on,” he prodded, “A small jar?”

She pursed her lips, glancing nervously at the door, “I’ll get what I can.”

She hurried away with a wave before her luck ran out.

The servant’s corridor swallowed her.  The only light came from the smokeless blue flame provided every dozen paces or so by torches of mage’s fire.