***
Emelia straightened the pressed pinafore she had put on top of her tunic and skirt, still feeling self-conscious as she ascended the final flight of steps. It had been several months since she had journeyed so high in the Keep. Most of Emelia’s days as a maid were spent in the lowest floors: in the kitchens, the cellars and the sewing rooms. On occasional days she was sent to attend to some minor task amongst the city garrison. The garrison was stationed on the three floors of the Keep that rose from street level. The bawdy welcome that female servants received meant Mother Gresham usually dispatched the more robust girls, like Gellia or Sandila. So it was with some trepidation that Emelia had embarked on her errand.
Predictably the journey through the garrison’s floors had been replete with teasing. Most comments revolved around crude observations that Emelia had changed from a gawky adolescent to a young woman in what seemed only a few months.
Emelia turned the corner of the stairwell and was startled to see a hunched figure on the stairs ahead. He was a broad lad, although two or three years younger than her. Soft sobs echoed against the hard stone.
She made to approach him then hesitated. It was unforgivable to dally on the way to serve the lord. Yet the lad was new and she felt a surge of pity in her heart.
“Are you all right?”
The boy jumped, drying his eyes.
“Are you crying?”
“No!” he said. He stood to leave. Emelia saw his scalp had a reddened area and his long blond hair was patchy.
“All right, sorry. Are you hurt then? My name’s Emelia. I’m one of the kitchenmaids.”
The boy stopped and looked at her. He was fair and very well built.
“Are you of the people of Asha?” he asked.
“Well I was before I got brought here, an Islander that is,” Emelia said nodding. “Now I think I’d faint if I ever saw the sea. You?”
“I came from Clifftop House near Port Helien four days ago. I can still smell the brine on my skin.”
“Hold onto your memories whilst you can. So ‘Island Boy’, why are you sitting in the stairwell? Shouldn’t you be down in the kitchens or in the scullery?”
“I was sent up to attend Lord Uthor but I got … waylaid by the soldiers,” he said. Leaning forward, hesitantly, he showed his bloodied scalp.
“They cut it with a knife?”
“They said footmen with long hair carry lice.”
Emelia looked away, shaking her head. The pair stood in silence for a minute.
“C-can I ask, are you the one they call Star Eyes?” Emelia started as he switched to their native tongue to speak her other name. It was risky speaking anything other than Eerian.
The lad stared at his feet as he spoke.
It had not been until her ninth year that Emelia had seen herself in a mirror. She had accompanied a chambermaid named Halgar to the rooms of Lady Erica, the Ebon-Farr’s daughter. Erica’s vast chambers, located on the floor above her parents, were jammed with mirrors to such a degree that it felt as if you were in but one of an endless row of rooms that stretched away to infinity.
Emelia had looked with fear at the looking glasses as Erica was dressed and pampered by Halgar. It had been a moment of discovery as she gazed upon her face and in it saw a pair of glittering eyes, quite unlike those of anyone she knew.
“Yes, that’s right. Star Eyes,” she said in Eerian. “What else do the boys say?”
“I- I wouldn’t know. I don’t listen. They are different to me—they are from other lands… lands like the Isle of Thieves.”
“Probably best not to listen anyway.”
“Yes. Look, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean anything by it. I think they’re… well they’re beautiful. They’re like a mermaid’s eyes.”
That day in the mirror she had seen eyes of the palest blue, so diluted as to be near white. She had turned her face and they glittered like the frost of the winter’s dawn.
“So it would seem. Mother Gresham told me one night that one of my ancestors must have lain with a Subaquan. If I’d inherited something useful such as the ability to swim away from the Preparatory House when I was six I’d have been happier.
“Anyway, I really need to get to the upper Keep or I’ll be caned senseless. Look, come with me, won’t you? I’ll make sure you don’t get de-loused on the way to Lord Uthor this time.”
The boy laughed in spite of himself, before setting off after Emelia as she moved up the stairs.
They reached the lord’s corridor. To the right the stairs continued upwards for another two stories until they emerged in one of the four turrets on the roof. The boy hesitated for a moment. A lone soldier stood guard on the landing. His chainmail was well oiled and covered partly by a dark red tunic. The silver emblem of the eagle, symbol of the Coonor city guard, adorned its front. He held a spear. A slim sword was strapped to his side. Emelia glanced at the boy, nodding that he should keep going.
Emelia smiled at the soldier and he nodded gruffly in return. She thought his name was Sarik and she recalled that Gedre was sweet on him. The boy and she slipped past and down the long corridor towards the lord’s chambers.
Daylight streamed into the corridor through a large window at the far end. Tapestries, old shields and swords adorned the walls. The Keep had stood in some form or another for a thousand years and with that came an endless source of antiques and tarnished weapons for the servants to dust and polish. Adjacent to the door to the lord’s chamber was a narrow sideboard and a small alcove—the opening of one of the numerous dumb waiters that ascended in the stone of the Keep.
“The door you need is at the bottom on the right,” Emelia said. “Just be careful. Lord Uthor can be…”
“I have heard. ‘The Jackal.’ Thank you. You won’t say anything about me… crying?”
“No. We all need our secrets in this place. Something that’s just ours.”
The boy nodded and slouched off down the corridor. He neared the door, turned and whispered hoarsely.
“I’m Torm, by the way,” he said, then added in the Island tongue. “From Ruby Isle.”
Emelia smiled and her hand drifted to the rough texture of her shell pendant; it was one of her nervous habits. Her scalp was itching with the ash and grease.
In an attempt to ease her nerves her gaze drifted to the tapestry above the sideboard. It was faded like most of the Keep, its once bright colours leached by the sunlight to match the depressing hue of the stone. Emelia could make it out as a battle scene, maybe from the time of the Eerian Empire. A dominant figure to the right was commanding a vast army of conquering Eerians. Above him flew a dozen griffon-borne knights and overlooking the scene was the great god Merciful Torik and to his side, the elemental race of the air, the feathered Netreptans.
Emelia’s mind wandered back to nights full of tales in the kitchen as Mother Gresham had regaled them with stories of knights, Netreptan archers and handsome bards. She had recounted fables of dashing princes of faraway lands, who cowered before the short lived might of the first Empire. She had told of sun-kissed Feldor, of the splendid Knights of Artoria and of gallant Thetoria with its duelling barons. Magical lands that she would never see, save in her dreams.
Emelia savoured every instant of dreaming, for in her dreams she could sometimes find freedom instead of fear. In these dreams, she was a dancing princess, entrancing a handsome traveller who would inevitably turn out to be a brave prince. There were castles in the clouds and griffons that would fly them to the four moons and back. In her dreams she was a magnificent and regal lady, not a housemaid sold by her parents in the Scattered Isles with nothing but a pair of freakish eyes.
The clatter of the arriving tray jolted her from her daydream. The platter was laden with alcas bread, jams, butter, sweetmeats and tongue. Her stomach rumbled and then tightened. The odours swam in her head and for a moment she feared her nerves might make her vomit. Emelia took several slow deep breaths and rapped on the door before lifting the tra
y. She paused for a moment and looked down the corridor— the boy, Torm, was long gone. Emelia grinned to herself and pushed open the oak door. She’d definitely got the better deal of the pair.