Prequel Update, In the Shadow of the Palace

I’ve written over two thousand words today. The only problem is that I’ve been working on the “wrong” project… the prequel story that’s been brewing in my mind for a while. (I gave you the first chapter here a while back.)

The good news is that I also wrote over two thousand words yesterday on Soldier of Dorsa, putting my manuscript total at 132,120 words. For reference, Princess of Dorsa is about 136,000 words, but I suspect I have about 70,000 more words to write before Soldier is done. Remember, the goal for the month of November is to hit 148,000 words, or about 20,000 words for the month. I think it’s doable. I’m also thinking January is a realistic month for finally publishing. Cross your fingers!

Anyway, in this post, I present to you

Chapter 2 of In the Shadow of the Palace (I think that will be the title of the prequel)

[ Keep in mind that the below is completely unedited and rough ]

It took about three weeks to get the right papers — not that Cara understood what “papers” had to do with anything.  The only papers she knew anything about were the pages inside the books she pilfered from Wise Man Walter.  When Xalanna delivered the scroll triumphantly to Cara at the beginning of a week, Cara didn’t understand what it was at first.  She stared at it mutely, then stared up at Xalanna.

Xalanna gave an impatient huff.  “Well, it’s not like I can read, now is it?  So open it already and tell me what it says.”

“Cara?” came Mother’s voice from the room behind her, slurred from a long night of smoking and no sleeping.  “Who’s at the door, love?”

“No one — just Xalanna.”

“Come in or come out.  But close it already.  You’re letting in such a draft,” Mother whined.

Cara stepped into the dirty hallway, closing the door softly behind her.  

“Have you told her yet?” Xalanna asked in a low voice.  

Cara shook her head.  After talking to Wise Man Rewan, they’d found out that Cara could indeed be hired on as a chambermaid, but that they’d need to pass her off as Rewan’s great niece from Everly.  At first, the notion made Cara nervous, since she didn’t think she could play a noble girl.  But Xalanna reassured her that Rewan’s family wasn’t noble, anyway.  However, if she was going to say she was from Everly, she couldn’t go home each night to the whorehouse.  She would have to take on quarters at the palace.  

Which meant leaving Mother.

“Well, maybe she’ll surprise us all,” Xalanna said, but Cara could tell her friend’s confident tone was false.  

At best, Mother would be furious that Cara was leaving the whorehouse; at worst, she would be devastated.  Cara was nearly fifteen summers, after all — the same age Mother had been when she ran away from home and made a new home with Asher.  Cara knew Mother’s nagging about turning coin would turn into demanding as soon as she passed her birthing day.  Leaving her now would be a slap in the face, a clear declaration that she would not be following in Mother’s footsteps.

“Maybe,” Cara answered doubtfully.

They both hesitated.  Then Xalanna gestured impatiently at the scroll.  

“Come on, then,” she said.  “Open it already.”

“Right.”

Cara untied the ribbon around it and unrolled the parchment, careful to be gentle with it.

“What’s it say?” Xalanna asked.

“It says…  Yes, alright, it says I am the daughter of Wise Man Rewan’s nephew… I’m from Everly… His nephew is struggling to feed his children… and I’m a hard-worker, good-tempered, well-mannered given my humble station — what’s station mean?”

Xalanna shrugged.

“Are you really sure Wise Man Rewan is a commoner?  He talks just like a nobleman.”

“I promise you, darling — he’s about as common as they come,” Xalanna said.  “Not as common as we are, of course, but common.”

Cara nodded.  She supposed it didn’t matter anyway; she just always assumed Wise Men — especially the haughty ones like Rewan — must be highborn.  

“Read the rest,” Xalanna pressed.

“So… yes, he finishes by asking would the head chambermaid be so kind as to employ me?  I won’t be any trouble, and if I am he will deal with me personally.”  Cara looked up at her friend.  “What d’you think that means — that he’ll deal with me personally?”

Xalanna pursed her lips, which today were painted a garish bright purple.  “Do ye plan to be any trouble?”

“I — no, ’course not.”

“Then it doesn’t matter, does it?”

#

Cara left for the palace the next morning just before dawn.  She hadn’t planned on leaving so early, but she still didn’t know what to say to Mother and wanted to leave before the woman woke.  It felt wrong to leave Mother with no explanation like this, but on the other hand, it would feel worse to see the hurt in her eyes when Cara finally told her that she was leaving.

She thought about writing her mother a letter, the way nobles did when they had much to say to another but distance or circumstance prevented them from doing so.  Then she realized that idea was silly, since neither her mother nor Asher nor Philip nor anyone else in the whorehouse but her could read.  Mother could have Wise Man Walter read it to her, but his visits had become less frequent of late, and besides, Asher didn’t like it when conversations got personal between his customers and his employees.

Cara closed the door to the room she shared with mother and smoothed her dress — she wasn’t one to typically wear dresses, she preferred boys’ trousers most of the time because they were more comfortable to her, but she figured she had best present herself as the well-mannered, well-behaved, and well-dressed great niece of Wise Man Rewan.  Not that the plain brown frock was particularly nice, but it was probably the best clothing she owned.  The rest of the things she would be taking with her — two books she’d taken from Wise Man Walter; a folding knife Asher had given her as a Midsummer’s gift a few years ago; her meager supply of undergarments, trousers, and tunics; a small, half-empty jar of lip paint she had stolen from Xalanna — not to use it herself, of course, but to remember her friend by; and a bracelet of real pearls she found three years earlier under Mother’s bed.

Xalanna had called Cara a mouse once — a small creature who stayed in the corners of places, gathering shiny baubles to line her nest with.  She teased Cara about that, but she probably wouldn’t have been so jovial if she knew that Cara had stolen the lip paint.  It wasn’t that Cara hadn’t been taught that stealing was wrong, but it was something most people at the whorehouse did, and at least she did it for good reasons.  She had the books because it was the only way for her to practice her reading; she took the lip paint because it made her feel connected to her friend; and since Mother never mentioned losing the bracelet or seemed to be looking for it, Cara decided keeping it would be practical.  It was literally the only object of any value that she possessed, and if she ever faced dire circumstances in which she needed money, she could always sell the bracelet for at least a silver penny, maybe even more.

She shouldered her small sack of belongings, drew in a deep breath, and walked quietly towards the stairway that would take her to the building’s lower level.  Walls and doors were thin at the whorehouse, and she could hear the familiar rhythms of its inhabitants — Doran’s rumbling snoring, the wheezy breathing of Quirasa the Terintan, the incessant muttering of Widow Rebecca, who talked in her sleep.  She paused in front of Xalanna’s door, who tended to snort in her sleep sometimes, accidentally waking herself before settling back asleep.

Cara had never wanted to be one of the women who turned coin, and yet still, she would miss this place.  The whorehouse was the only home she had ever known; its residents were the closest thing she had to aunts and sisters and cousins — even sourpuss Doran was a brother to her.  For a moment, standing in front of Xalanna’s door, she thought about turning back, crawling back into bed beside Mother before her absence had ever been noted, ripping up the letter of introduction Wise Man Rewan had written her.

But no.  This was her chance.  A chance Xalanna had worked hard to get for her.  She wouldn’t throw her chance away, no matter how scary leaving might be.

Cara crept softly down the staircase, doing her best to avoid stepping on all the spots that tended to creak.  Sunlight was just beginning to filter into the main room, where evidence of the prior night’s festivities — overturned mugs, a forgotten cloak, and even a passed out sailor slumped in one corner — were still on display.

“Leaving without goodbyes, are we?” came a familiar voice from one shadowy corner.

Cara froze, breath catching in her throat.  She didn’t want to go towards Asher’s voice, because she was afraid he would force her to stay if she did.  But ignoring or running from Asher was not something one did.  Not here.

So she swallowed and changed direction, walking towards him instead of the front door.

He sat in a shadowy booth to the side of the hearth, stacks of coins neatly laid out before him, a ledger open with each employee’s mark written down one side of the page, numbers written down on the other.

“Good morning, Asher,” Cara said, dipping into a slight curtsy.

He looked her up and down, spinning his charcoal pencil between his fingers.  “Clean and in a dress, for once.”

Cara said nothing.

“Does your mother know you’re leaving for this chambermaid job at the palace?”

She shook her head, butterflies suddenly swarming her stomach.  Asher knew her plans?  How?  Cara hadn’t told anyone, and she assumed Xalanna hadn’t, either.

“Philip told me a fortnight ago,” Asher said, answering Cara’s silent question.  And that made sense.  Philip wasn’t one to keep things from Asher, especially if sharing something he knew might win him favor with the whorehouse owner.

“I — I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.  I didn’t… I thought you might…”

“You thought I might try to stop you.”  Asher gave a disinterested shrug.

Cara nodded, dropping her gaze to the pencil that he still toyed with.  That was Asher — his hands were always busy.  

“Like his mind,” Xalanna had told Cara once.  “People mistake him for nothing but street trash, and he may indeed be street trash, but he’s smart street trash.  Smarter than those who underestimate him ever will be.”

“I would never force you to turn coin if you didn’t want to, Cara,” Asher said, his tone shifting into something that was almost sympathetic.  She looked up, found him watching her.  “This life isn’t for everyone, and being born into it doesn’t make it right for you.”

Relief washed through her.  Asher understood.  Maybe he even approved — and his approval shouldn’t really matter to Cara, but it did.  If Xalanna and Mirabelle were the sisters she’d never had, Doran her brother, and Quirasa the Terintan and Mother Reina and Philip were aunts and uncles, then Asher was the closest thing Cara had to a father.  She didn’t know who her real father was, of course.  And it wasn’t that Mother had withheld the information from her so much as she probably didn’t know who Cara’s father was herself.  Even if she did know, it wouldn’t have mattered.  Who did matter was Asher.

“You’ll do well at the palace, I think,” he said after a moment’s thought.  “You’re clever in all the best ways, and they’ll see that.  Play things right, Cara, and you’ll be more than a chambermaid one day.”

Cara folded her lips inward, biting them to prevent the broad smile that wanted to burst forth.  Asher wasn’t one to give out compliments — he wasn’t one to give out anything.  That was one of the reasons why the folding knife he’d given her at Midsummer three years earlier was so dear to her; it was the only thing he’d ever given to her.  In fact, it was the only Midsummer gift he gave to anyone that year.  Now he’d given her two things — a folding knife and his confidence in the form of a compliment.  Of the two, Cara knew she would never, ever misplace the latter. 

“Th-thank you,” she stammered.

“One last thing, before you go,” he said.  Asher glanced down at his ledger, the pencil spinning over his knuckles.  “Your mother… she’s well behind on what she owes me for the month.  I assume they’ll be paying you at the palace?”

Cara hesitated.  She could lie to him, but lying to Asher was never a good idea.  As Xalanna had told her, he was smart, and he was street trash.

“Yes,” she said after a moment.  “Eight copper pennies a week, plus room and board.”

He nodded, and finally the pencil stopped spinning.  Glancing down at the ledger again, he tapped the pencil’s end rhythmically against one employee’s mark — Mother’s, Cara guessed.

“Ten copper pennies a month should do it,” Asher said.  “If you want your mother to still have a room here.”

Cara nodded, surprised.  She’d expected him to demand more than that — sixteen copper pennies, at least.  Gods knew Mother smoked away at least that much of her quota each month. 

Asher turned away from the ledger, placing the full strength of his gaze upon Cara.  “And… perhaps not your first month, but once you settle in, there’s something else I want.”

Cara tried to stop the confusion from showing on her face.  What else could she possibly bring Asher that would be of value?

“I want you to bring me information.”

“…Information?” Cara repeated.

“Yes.  Information.”

“But… what kind of information?”

He raised one eyebrow, an unmistakable look of disappointment crossing his face.  “Cara.  Put that clever mind of yours to work.  Where will you be?”

“In the palace,” she said, and as soon as the words left her mouth, she realized how naïve she sounded.  

She was to be a chambermaid, a mute girl cleaning the bedchambers of the most important family in the Kingdom of Dorsa; she would be cleaning up after the royal family itself.  And not only the royal family.  She knew from listening to the Wise Men talk that the King had recently instituted a council of lords that was to meet once every season — spring, summer, autumn, winter.  Those lords stayed in one of the newly constructed guest wings of the palace when they came, which meant they would also require a chambermaid to empty their chamber pots, clear away their meals, tidy their beds.  Just as Cara had learned to hear things at the whorehouse, she could learn to hear things at the palace.

“What if I don’t hear any information that’s useful?” she asked.

Asher leaned back in his booth, sending the pencil spinning across his knuckles again.  “Like I said.  You’re a clever girl.  And you can read, too, which no one will expect of a mouse of a chambermaid.  You’ll find something useful.  So long as you never get caught snooping, you’ll be fine.”

The glee Cara had felt earlier, when she’d received not only Asher’s blessing to go but also his compliment, curdled into something sour and bitter in her stomach.

She thought that by leaving, she would be free from the whorehouse.  Free from turning coin, free from Mother’s decline, free from Asher’s control.  But now she knew she would never be free.  Not really.  Some said the gods wrote each person’s fate before they were ever born.  Wise Man Walter dismissed that as mere superstition, but what did he know about fate?  He claimed each person’s fate was up to them, but he was the third son of a nobleman, wore the robes of the House of Wisdom, and served in the palace.

Cara’s fate had been written before she was born.  She was the illegitimate, fatherless daughter of a whore, and that was a fundamental truth that she could never escape.