THE SILENT SHIELD

CHAPTER 4

The library at Ravensgate is my favorite room and my least favorite room at the same time. The ceiling's so high you could lose a kite up there, there are ladders on wheels, and thousands of books that smell like rain on dust. Mom used to read to me there every Sunday. It's also where my uncle Wendell hides when he doesn't want to be found.

I found him anyway.

He was at the big oak table with his glasses pushed up into his grey hair, buried in maps. Uncle Wendell is my father's younger brother, thin and gentle, with ink on his fingers and a cane he doesn't really need but carries around like a friend. He's the only person in the palace who still treats me like I have a brain.

"Liora." He smiled, then looked past me, and the smile slipped a little. "And you've brought company."

"Dad's idea." I dropped into a chair. "Torin, sit if you want."

Torin didn't sit. He went to the shelf by the door and stood with his back to the wall, eyes on the windows. Uncle's gaze went over him once, quick, like a man checking a clock, and then he politely looked away.

He poured me tea, and I told him almost everything: the nightmares, the guard, the fight with Dad. I left out the page. He listened the way he always does, with his whole face, and when I finished he took off his glasses and rubbed his nose.

"Your father's afraid," he said. "That's all this is."

"Afraid of what?"

"Losing the only thing he has left." He paused. "And of the next forty days."

I sat up. "Why forty days? What happens at the ball that's so scary?"

He spread a map across the table. There was Marenhall, a little green thumb poking out into the sea, with three bigger kingdoms around it: Dunmere to the north, Valcrest to the east, and Orsa across the water.

"We're poor, my dear," he said quietly. "Our farms are thin and our harbor's in debt. Dunmere has been paying our loans for six years, and they're getting tired of waiting. The northern villages haven't had clean water since spring. Some men on the Council say there's only one way out."

"Let me guess. Me."

"On your eighteenth birthday you become Crown Princess by law. You get a seat on the Council, a voice and a signature. And every ruler at that ball will be watching to see who you choose as a partner." He didn't look at me when he said it. "A good alliance could feed ten thousand families. Prince Leopold of Dunmere is the favorite. He's clever, rich and well-mannered, or so they say."

"So I'm supposed to marry a stranger so we can pay our bills."

"You're supposed to think about it. That's all I'm asking."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you say no. But you say it knowing what it costs, and who pays." He wasn't pushing me, and somehow that made it worse.

My chest felt tight. I thought about my parents. Mom was a baker's daughter from the south when she met Dad, and he was a young prince who got lost in the rain and ducked into her father's shop for a cup of tea. They fell in love over burnt toast, or that's how the story goes. Nobody made them. They chose each other, and I wanted that so badly it hurt.

But the spring before she died, I'd gone with Mom to hand out blankets in one of those northern villages, and a girl about my age had shown me her family's well. It was a deep dry hole with a rope still hanging down into it. I still think about that rope.

"What does my heart matter if people are thirsty?" I asked.

"It matters a great deal," Uncle said, which surprised me. "A queen who marries without love ends up wearing two crowns. One on her head and one on her chest."

I couldn't decide whether to hug him or throw my tea at him. Both seemed fair.

He slid a thick folder across the table. "There's something else. The Chancellor wants you to read this before the ball. A lease on the harbor, ninety-nine years. A company from overseas would pay to run the port at Highmere, and we'd get a big sum up front. Rufus says it'll fix everything."

Rufus. My skin prickled.

I weighed the folder in my hands. Ninety-nine years is longer than either of my grandparents lived. The first page said HARBOR LEASE AGREEMENT in bold letters, and at the bottom was a space for a signature. Dad's, I guess, or mine after my birthday. A line above it said the lease only counted once the Crown confirmed that the hereditary Wardenship of the harbor had died out with its last family. I flipped to the last page, and a tiny pencil note in the margin caught my eye. A date, and next to it, M.V. refused.

M.V. Marian Vance. My mother.

She'd said no to this paper. I won't sign his paper. Her own words.

"Uncle." My voice wasn't steady. "Did Mom see this lease?"

His hand stopped on his teacup. The pause was a beat too long. "She did. She had concerns."

"What kind of concerns?"

"She never told me, only that it wasn't safe." He looked at me closely. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason." I closed the folder. I hated lying to him, but I didn't know yet whose side anyone was on.

He smiled sadly. "You're so much like her. She asked a hundred questions too."

He stood up, leaning on his cane, and I thought we were done. Then his eyes landed on Torin, who hadn't moved a muscle, and Uncle Wendell stopped.

"That's odd," he said slowly. "I know that way of standing."

Torin's shoulders went stiff.

"Feet apart, chin level, hands behind the back, left over right." Uncle took a step toward him. "I only ever saw one man stand like that. He trained half the Royal Guard. He taught your father how to fight."

"Who?" I asked.

My uncle didn't answer me. He was staring at Torin like he was looking at a ghost. "Who trained you, son?"

He'd called him son, and I don't think he noticed.

Torin didn't blink. But I could hear his breathing, quick and shallow, behind the mask.

"His name was Hadrian," Uncle said quietly.

The room tilted. Hadrian. The name from my mother's page.

"Hadrian who?" I whispered.

Uncle Wendell's face shut like a door. "A man we don't speak of in this house. Not for ten years, not since the day he died in prison as a traitor."

The library was so quiet I could hear dust settling. I looked at Torin. His right hand was pressed so hard against the bookshelf that the wood creaked.

Then, for the first time since he'd arrived, Torin broke the rule he never broke. He left his post. He turned and walked out of the library without looking at me, and the door swung shut behind him.

That left me alone with my uncle, and Uncle Wendell, who never raises his voice, reached across the table and gripped my wrist.

"Liora, listen to me," he said, in a voice I'd never heard from him. "Your father hired that man. Did he tell you where he came from?"

"No."

"Then your father is hiding something from both of us. Because Hadrian's family was supposed to be dead."