She’d learned how to climb up here when she was five or six; at nine now, she barely fit. A few more inches, and she wouldn’t be able to squeeze in behind the pile anymore. That meant she probably wouldn’t be able to steal any further glimpses of the training, so she had resolved to take full advantage of every opportunity that came along now.
‘Thank you, my lord,’ Jared replied expressionlessly. ‘But it was you, my lord, who gave me the training, and saw to it that I was well matched. It was you who placed me in charge of training the others. I had only the raw ability. You saw to its honing, and made use of it.’
‘True, true … still, you’re a remarkable beast, Jared. Over a hundred duels, and never a loss.’ Dyran stepped back and regarded his slave with a critical eye, his head tilted a little to one side. ‘I daresay you could still take any one of these youngsters, and win. Would you care to try? A real duel, I mean, not just a practice.’
Serina knew her father well enough to know that Dyran’s ‘offer’ shook him to the bone. A ‘real’ duel – that meant to the death. Jared, against one of the young men he’d trained himself. Jared’s experience against a younger man’s strength and endurance – Jared fighting someone who knew what his moves were going to be before he made them.
‘It would be an interesting proposition, my lord,’ Jared said slowly, so slowly that Serina knew how carefully he was thinking before he replied. ‘But I must point out that it could mean the loss of your chief trainer. It would mean the loss of your chief trainer for a month or so, no matter what. I’m not as spry anymore that I can avoid every stroke, and I’m too old to heal in a hurry.’
Serina waited, holding her breath, for Dyran’s response.
He threw back his head and laughed, his long hair tossing, and both Serina and her father heaved identical sighs of relief. ‘I couldn’t risk that, old man,’ he said, slapping Jared on the back, exactly as Serina had seen him slap a horse on the flank; with the same kind of proprietary pride. ‘Not with a half dozen duels scheduled for this month alone. No, we’ll keep the losses among those we can replace, I think. Carry on.’
Dyran strolled away, still chuckling, as Jared marched his men back towards their quarters –
The bright lights of the arena … How many times had she stood under them? The lights illuminated the audience as relentlessly as the fighters, for the elven lords came to the duels to be seen as well as to be spectators themselves. And they never disputed her presence there, however much it was against custom. They had seen how Dyran wanted her there, and none of them dared challenge Dyran on his home ground. She had made herself indispensable, but it had taken more work than any of them guessed, for no other concubine had dared to do the things she had done …
No other but me, she murmured to herself, her mind and body floating somewhere strange and bright. None but me.
Serina had learned early how to keep up with Dyran’s long, ground-eating strides without looking as if she were hurrying. She would never, ever allow herself to look less than graceful. One slip, and she might find herself replaced.
But this was an important part of her plan to make herself Dyran’s permanent favorite. She went anywhere with him that she could, provided she was not specifically forbidden to accompany him. Rowenie had never left the harem; Rowenie had never lifted a finger for herself, much less waited on her Lord.
So Serina followed Dyran everywhere, and waited on him with her own hands. Not adoringly, no – invisibly. So that he never noticed who was serving him unless he looked straight at her. Which he had done in the first few months of her ascendancy, and been surprised to find her there, with the goblet, the plate, the pen and tablet. And never did he see her looking back at him with anything other than a challenging stare: Dispute my right to be here, if you dare! Yes, he had been surprised. Then amused at her audacity, at her cleverness. Now he depended on her, on her ability to anticipate his needs, something he’d evidently never had before.
That she could surprise an elven lord was a continual source of self-satisfaction for her. A lord like Dyran had seen nearly everything in his long span, and to be able to provide him with the novelty of surprise would make her the more valuable in his eyes. Or so she hoped.
And I have ample cause for pride, she thought, gliding in his wake, taken for granted as his shadow. If nothing else, this self-appointed servitude was far more entertaining than staying in the harem, trying to while away the time with jewels and dresses and the little intrigues of the secondary concubines.
Today Dyran’s errand took him to a part of the manor she’d never visited before; outside, in fact, to a barnlike outbuilding with white-washed walls, a single door, and no windows, just the ubiquitous skylights. She hesitated for a moment on the threshold; blinked at the unaccustomed raw sunlight in her eyes; felt it like a kind of pressure against her fair skin, and wondered faintly how the field-workers ever stood it. She had been outside perhaps a handful of times in her life – when she was taken from her parents and the training building and barracks and moved to the facility for training concubines, again when she became a concubine and was taken to the manor itself – and most of those times she had been hurried along in a mob of others, with no time to look around. She found herself shrinking inside herself at the openness of it all. And the sky – she hadn’t seen open sky since she was a child. There was just – so much of it. So far away – no walls to hold it in –
She fought down panic, a hollow feeling of fear as she gazed up, and up, and up –
She closed her eyes for a moment to steady herself, then hurried after Dyran. She wasn’t certain how much more of this she was going to be able to bear …
But they were back under a roof soon enough. She paused behind Dyran as he waited for a moment in the entry. She welcomed the sight of the familiar beams and skylight – the gentle, milky light – feeling faint with relief. So much so, that she did not notice, at first, what it was that Dyran had come to inspect, not until Dyran cleared the doorway and she got a clear view of the room beyond.
Children? Why would he need to see children?
There were at least a hundred children of both sexes, mostly aged about six or thereabouts. All of them wore the standard short tunic and baggy pants of unbleached cloth, the garb of unassigned slaves, the same clothing Serina had worn until she was taken to be trained at age ten. The elven overseer had ordered them in ragged lines of ten, and they stood quite still, in a silence unusual for children of that age. Some looked bewildered; some still showed traces of tears on their chubby cheeks, some simply looked resigned. But all were unnaturally, eerily silent, and stood without fidgeting.
‘My lord.’ The elven overseer, garbed in livery and helm, with a face so carefully controlled that it could have been carved from granite, actually saluted. ‘The trainees.’
The trainees? Now Serina was very puzzled. What on earth was he talking about?
‘Have you tested them?’ Dyran asked absently, walking slowly towards the group of children, who one and all fixed their enormous eyes on him with varying expressions of fear. ‘It wouldn’t do to send Lord Edres less than the very best.’
Lord Edres? What did he have to do with children?
‘Yes, my lord,’ the overseer replied, never moving from his pose of attention. ‘Reactions, strength, speed, they’re the top of their age-group. They should make fine fighters.’
Now Serina understood, and understood the references to Lord Edres. Dyran’s ally and father-by-marriage
