A Court of Muses Page 7

  Errol could hardly believe his luck. It all seemed too good to be true. That usually meant it was.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Guard Duty 101

  In a hushed tone, Errol told his sister about his training as she worked in the kitchen. He sat at the bench across from her while other maids scurried about doing their duties. Many of them were so intent on their gossip they hardly paid him any mind. It was unlikely they had any interest in hearing about his muse-magic abilities when they were busy discussing whom Princess Aldreda’s husband had found her in bed with or the name of Prince Beorhtsige’s latest mistress and the scandalous attire she’d worn to dinner.

  At one point, the head cook stomped over and shoved a potato into his hand and set a knife on the table. “If you’re going to be here, you might as well do something useful.”

  Errol didn’t mind the chores. He peeled as he spoke to Alma.

  “I hope your superiors are paying you extra for all this work,” she said as she peeled a potato of her own. “It isn’t right they make you work so hard without some kind of compensation.”

  “I will be compensated—by a promotion if I please my superiors.” If he made more than he did now, he would be able to make up for Alma’s lost dowry from when Sarah had taken it. He might even be able to save up for his own future household, though it was hard to imagine he would ever be in a position to provide for the both of them.

  He would ensure she married happily before he attended to his own future.

  “It’s worth the extra,” he said.

  Alma shrugged. “If you say so.”

  Errol didn’t like the doubt in her tone.

  She made a face. “But none of the girls want a man who works so much he doesn’t have time for her.”

  Errol laughed at Alma’s foiled matchmaking, and then he sobered, remembering why he’d come in the first place. He lowered his voice so the other maids wouldn’t overhear. “Do you have any of these abilities the captain and general spoke with me about? Do you have any skills others don’t?”

  He hadn’t lived under the same roof with his sister since he’d been six. He didn’t know what her magic was like.

  “I have plenty of skills.” Alma finished peeling the potato and held up the spiral of skin. “I can peel a potato or apple skin without it breaking. And they like me to make the bread because the dough always rises, and the bread never splits while it’s baking.”

  “Don’t even speak of it!” The head cook shouted from across the room where she’d been tasting a broth.

  It was supposed to be a bad omen if the bread split, but Errol thought that was hogwash. Cooks were more superstitious than a lot of sailors.

  “I mean the real magic, not kitchen magic,” Errol said.

  “Oi! Don’t you put down my profession!” Alma punched him in the shoulder. “I don’t question whether predicting if it’s going to rain is really magic or not. Nor do I tell you how useless it is to make the wind blow or to glamour your face.”

  One of the maids giggled from where she washed dishes.

  Errol rolled his eyes in exasperation. He doubted anyone could deny those were useful skills that took true magic, but he could see he had offended her.

  “That wasn’t what I meant. I just wondered if you might have any abilities that came from our mother’s side of the family.” He lowered his voice again. “Can you taste creativity? When the cook gets a new idea, can you smell it in the air?”

  “Just so!” Alma inhaled deeply. “Can you smell that mutton stew she thought up as an appetizer for tonight? All I ever smell is food, and it’s all mighty delicious.”

  Errol inhaled the rich aroma of lamb and vegetables. Probably the kitchen was always too full of cooking food to ever indicate creativity was at work the way he’d sensed it.

  “For thinking food is so delicious, you don’t look like you eat enough of it,” the cook said. “You’re all skin and bones.”

  “I am not!” Alma said indignantly.

  The cook was an especially round woman, almost as wide as she was tall.

  “All you girls are too thin. A man likes a woman with meat on her bones.” The cook looked to Errol and winked. “Am I right?”

  “Um. . . .” Errol didn’t want to get caught up in this argument.

  “If you stopped taking so many tastes of everything, you might not be so fat,” one of the maids called from across the kitchen where she was arranging a tray for tea, indicating their conversation was anything but private.

  “I’m not fat! I’m voluptuous,” the cook said. “At least I don’t have a horse face like someone I know.”

  He suspected the cook’s perception might be skewed about Alma being too slender. His sister had filled out from her days of being a skinny stick of a girl. She was curvy, with an hourglass figure that drew the notice of gentleman suitors. Errol could only guess this would lead to trouble.

  * * *

  Errol trained for over a month, his captain pairing him up to learn glamours after long days of practicing combat and guard duty. Effective skills in defense and offense were a must in hand-to-hand fighting as well as magic. If the kingdom’s greatest enemy, the Raven Court, ever attacked, they had to be ready. Errol worked hard, not wanting to disappoint his king. He owed his sovereign the best he could give him.

  Captain Helga wasn’t his commanding officer, but she was a glamour expert in stealth and showed Errol how to see through illusions.

  They sat in her office, a spartan room the size of a closet, just large enough to hold a couple of chairs and a desk. Errol could see a unit of cavalry training on the grounds below from her window.

  Captain Helga’s Scandinavian accent was slight, almost imperceptible except when she grew vexed.

  “There are three different levels of glamour,” she told him. “The simplest are visual illusions, the next level includes other senses. These combine olfactory, auditory, and tactile illusions—usually to trick an enemy. The highest-level glamours mirror reality close enough that the glamour isn’t as much of a mirage, but an artificial construct that mimics the material world. Do you follow me?”

  Errol didn’t. “That last one doesn’t sound like a glamour at all. It’s more like bending the fabric of reality to suit one’s needs.”

  She grunted at that. “The latter is the hardest to see through and the most difficult to create.” A smile twinkled in her brilliant blue eyes. “Now I’m going to create an illusion, and you’re going to use whatever pathetic training you received in the navy to try to see through it.”

  Captain Helga was no-nonsense and direct. He liked her businesslike attitude. She was a merciless tutor and pushed him to his limits. Her expectation of discipline and diligence helped distract him from how buxom and comely she was with her long blonde hair and Viking warrior-woman build. She was the only female officer in the royal guard, and she was as graceful as a Valkyrie—and as ruthless as the most battle-hardened warriors.

  He also learned she had a soft spot for warm biscuits when Alma brought him some.

  “I like your sister,” Captain Helga said after Alma had departed with an empty plate.

  Once Errol had mastered seeing glamours, he practiced creating them. He’d been taught how to manifest minor illusions to trick an attacking enemy into thinking his ship was on fire with flames of seraphim—which were quite difficult to extinguish—and an illusion of them was even more impossible to put out if one didn’t realize it was an enchantment.

  Errol mastered each task set before him. When Helga flashed a set of blazing wings of gold behind her, Errol was temporarily blinded. He couldn’t tell whether the light emanating from the wings was sunlight or gleaming metal.

  “What kind of glamour is this?” she asked, a little smirk lacing her mouth.

  Errol prodded at the wings with his awareness. The wings felt real.

  The vision faded away.

  “Well?” Helga asked.
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br />   Errol continued tasting the magic in the air, trying to make sense of what he’d seen and what he still felt. Even with the wings gone, he sensed where they’d been, a bright shadow in their place. Camouflaging that feeling was a glamour to mask the wings, rather than a glamour to create them.

  Errol said as much.

  Helga inclined her head in agreement. “Good. You are skilled enough I cannot trick you.”

  “Do you mean you actually possess wings?” Errol asked.

  She frowned, which made her look formidable. “I once was a Valkyrie in the Northern Court.”

  “But now you are in the employment of the Silver Court. Why would you leave?”

  She shrugged. “When Odin fell and his sons took over, squabbling amongst themselves about who would rule and waging endless wars against each other, I no longer had any heart left for my kingdom. All that remained of the Northern Court was tiresome battles and family feuds. I immigrated to the Verde Court, and when I found I was considered ‘less’ of a warrior for being female, I left and came to the Silver Court.”

  “Our royal guard is superior to the Verde Court’s,” Errol said with pride.

  “Not by much.” She snorted in disgust. “They made an allowance because I’m a Valkyrie. I thought I could convince these lease-mongering quisbies to allow more women into the royal guard, but after pestering them for a couple hundred years, I finally realized I was mistaken in my belief that I could change the world.”

  Many other people had immigrated from the Northern Court to the Silver Court territory five hundred years before when Odin had died. Even Errol’s father was descended from Fae folk of the Northern Court. That meant Helga had to be over five hundred, though she didn’t look a day over thirty.

  “How do you stay so young? Is that a glamour too?” he asked.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to ask a woman whether she glamours her face? It’s bad manners.”

  “Oh,” Errol said. “My mother died when I was six. Excuse my mouth for running away from me.”

  Helga flicked her long braid over her shoulder. “How are you holding up on duty when His Majesty works his muse magic with you in the room?”

  “Fine, I think.”

  So far, he’d been on duty in the king’s presence thrice since the day with Paega. The last time had been the strangest. A Morty painter had been invited to paint Queen Anwynn Le Fay as the king watched.

  Errol hadn’t expected her to be nude for the painting. Prickles of white light that tasted of pining and taffy stretched to its limits wafted up from the queen and drifted onto the artist. Even though he was glamoured to be invisible, Errol tried not to stare at the queen’s exposed flesh. Instead, he watched the exchange of energy between the artist and the king.

  The painter was an old man with a gray beard and wore a black cap on his head. King Viridios sat in a chair, a glass of wine in his hand, though he scarcely touched it. The painter’s magic tasted of minerals and earth, lamb’s fat, and the notes of a harpsichord. The more feverishly the man painted, the more intense the king’s magic grew. Both the king and the queen drank him in.

  Errol tried to be aware of the hunger in his own body; that empty void wanted to inhale the energy the artist emanated and keep it all for himself.

  “He is a genius. A visionary.” Queen Anwynn’s voice came out as a breathy sigh. “His artistry tastes exquisite.”

  Errol thought so as well, but he did his best not to imbibe in the nectar of creativity. His superiors had warned him this feast was for the royal family to enjoy, not a lowly guard, even if a relative in his family’s lineage was some duke or prince’s bastard offspring. Even so, some forgotten sense awaked inside him and hungered for the inventive energies of this artist.

  Queen Anwynn writhed on the mound of furs where she posed.

  “Per favore! Your Majesty, stop moving! I beg you.” The painter tugged at his beard, looking as though he might tear it out.

  The queen smiled coquettishly and undulated her hips.

  “Have a care to be kind to our guest,” King Viridios said. “I won’t have you drive another artist insane and waste his brilliance. You must stay still no matter what.”

  “Ah, but he is the one who drives me mad. I can feel everywhere his paintbrush touches on the canvas as though he touches me with his fingertips.” The queen stroked the length of her body suggestively. “It is so hard not to move.”

  “No, I will tell you what’s hard.” The king rose from his seat and stooped to kiss his wife. He unbuckled his belt.

  Heat flushed to Errol’s cheeks. He realized he was staring again and turned his eyes away. The artist didn’t seem to notice. He moved as though in a frenzied trance.

  Errol studied the other guard. Now that he could see through simple facades of glamour, Errol noticed how the other man stared openly. He wasn’t effective at his duty if he was distracted by the royal family’s exploits.

  It was difficult for Errol to concentrate as the king chastised his wife. “No squirming, remember? You will drive Caravaggio mad.” The king commenced ravishing his wife in front of the painter and the royal guards.

  It was uncomfortable to be in the same room with them, but they were royalty, and it wasn’t Errol’s privilege to question his sovereign’s ways. His muse-inspired passion wasn’t even the strangest part of the duty.

  It was the shadow goblins getting loose that stunned Errol and terrified the other guard.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Shadow of Oneself

  Errol had been warned when he’d first been transferred about the shadow goblins. He’d occasionally witnessed them ferrying human guests through the servants’ passages and had been warned to stay out of their path.

  Yet he’d never seen more than five at once, and even that was rare. As the king and queen were busy with their recreational activities, the candlelit room dimmed. The shadows danced and separated. Small, impish creatures with limbs that resembled gnarled twigs more than arms and legs crawled out from under tables and behind chairs. They clambered over the king and queen, who took no notice in their ardor, nor did the artist when they clawed at his beard and threw his cap to the floor. The goblins tugged at his clothes, though Errol noticed they were very careful not to interfere with his painting.

  The whispers of the shadow goblins resembled the rustling of wind through tree branches and the snapping of twigs. There were moments when their clicks and hisses resembled words that Errol could almost understand, but not quite.

  Errol edged back from the goblins, but they scrambled up his legs and crawled over him like rodents. He tried to shake them off, but they held on. They were annoying, but as far as he could tell, they weren’t there to harm anyone. The creatures absorbed the king’s magic and were made stronger as they danced to a beat only they could hear.

  Private O’Sullivan, the other guard, wasn’t as complacent as Errol. He tried to pry them off his uniform, and he slapped at them. They returned in kind. One pulled at his nose, and another grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked.

  O’Sullivan yowled. Guards typically used a soundproofing ward so that their movements would go undetected by those they safeguarded, but this was a minor enchantment used to camouflage the sounds of coughing, whispering, or the rustle of fabric. O’Sullivan’s panicked scream rose past what the ward could mask.

  Errol rushed over to the other soldier, goblins clinging to him.

  “Quiet!” Errol whispered.

  “Get them off me!” O’Sullivan shouted. He clawed at them, and they raked gouges into the flesh of his face and neck.

  The king briefly looked toward O’Sullivan. He frowned but didn’t call off his shadow goblins, and he carried on with his business absorbing artistic creativity and having his way with the queen.

  Errol shoved O’Sullivan out of the room and into the next chamber. Fewer shadow goblins clung to O’Sullivan as they put distance between the
mselves and the king. Ever since his training, Errol had become more attuned to glamours. It was easier for him to identify the place in the wall that served as an open portal for guards to silently travel from one room to the next. Errol pushed O’Sullivan out of the room and into a servants’ passage beyond. The remaining shadow goblins melted away into the darkness.

  O’Sullivan shook and sobbed, continuing to smack at his clothes as if the goblins were still there. His magic tasted like that of a Witchkin, and he was a young one at that, no more than eighteen years old.

  Errol took the lad by the shoulders. “Look at me. You’re all right now. The shadow goblins are gone, but you’ve got to pull yourself together.”

  O’Sullivan nodded. He wiped at his tears with the back of his gloved hand, smearing blood across the pristine fabric. Errol escorted O’Sullivan around to the front entrance of the king’s sitting room. Two guards stood watch. Their eyes went wide, taking in the sight of O’Sullivan.

  He pointed to one of the privates. “Chaperone O’Sullivan to the infirmary and get the captain to send someone to fill in for him.”

  Errol returned to his post, hoping he wasn’t going to get in trouble for leaving it. If any of the privates said anything about it to the captain, Kasen made no mention of it.

  * * *

  When Helga warned Errol about what he might encounter at the king’s upcoming salon for artists, he suspected she meant something like the last duty.

  “There will be shadow goblins?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “And. . . .” He paused. “Debauchery?”

  “That’s one way to put it.” She snorted in a very unladylike way. “This will be your first salon?”

  “Just so.”

  “It won’t only be painters. There will probably be sculptors as well as musicians, poets, and actors. It’s going to be like what you’ve experienced before but on a grander scale.”