“I was told you wished to see me, Master,” I said, crouching lower. There was still no pain.
“Why are you back so early?”
“Swordmaster Ranne said I need not train any more,” I said carefully.
“You should not be in here. Especially not now. The energies are too strong.” He stood up in a single practiced movement, the frayed silver embroideries on his tunic flaring in the sun. “Come, we must leave now.”
He held out his hand. I hurried forward and extended my arm, bracing myself as he leaned on me and stepped off the platform.
He paused, still holding my arm. “Do you feel them?” he asked.
I looked up into his gaunt face, the prominent bones made even starker by his shaved skull. “Feel them?”
“The energies.” Irritation edged his voice.
I bowed my head. “I can feel the flow of water energy to the viewing platform,” I said.
He flicked his fingers. “A novice could feel that. Is there nothing else?”
“No, Master.” It was not the truth, but how could I explain the heat of an imagined shadow? Or the soft unraveling that was the absence of pain.
He grunted. “Then perhaps we have succeeded.”
He turned and walked quickly toward the house. I followed two paces behind, concentrating on keeping my footing on the shifting pebbles. For once, each step did not jar with pain. We passed a simple moon altar—a smooth concave stone resting on two smaller rocks—surrounded by a shallow amphitheater of cut marble. Ahead, the pebble path widened in front of another viewing platform that also served as a step up to the house. Two carved doors stood open, allowing a view of floor-to-ceiling scroll boxes, a cabinet, and a dark wood desk. My master’s library—another area forbidden to me. Until now. I paused, staring at the shelves of scrolls. My master had drilled me in my letters, and I’d read all of the classics and Dragoneye texts, but I longed to read about other things.
“Don’t just stand there gaping like a fool,” my master said, holding out his hand.
I helped him onto the platform as Rilla, Chart’s mother and my master’s body servant, stepped out of the library and knelt at the doorway. For the first time I noticed the swirls of gray hair in the neat loop of her “unmarried” braid. It was meant to be her disgrace, but she wore it with quiet dignity. My master extended his foot and she slid off his scuffed silk slipper, then the other, placing them neatly on a small woven mat.
“We are not to be disturbed,” my master ordered. He held out his hand and I helped him over the lip of the threshold.
Rilla looked up at me and raised her eyebrows. I twitched my shoulder into a shrug, then hurriedly pulled off my woven straw sandals, grabbing the doorframe for balance. Black dirt striped my feet around the pattern of the straps. I licked my fingers and rubbed the top of each foot, but the dirt just smeared into streaks.
“Stay still,” Rilla said softly. She took a cloth out of her pocket and wiped my left ankle.
“You don’t need to do that,” I said, trying to pull my foot away. No one had touched my bad leg since the splints had come off three years ago.
She held my foot still. “A Dragoneye has servants,” she said. “Best get used to it.” She scrubbed my other foot clean. “Now give me your sandals and go in.”
Four years ago, when I came to my master’s house—a half-starved drudge willing to become a boy for food and warmth—Rilla was the only person who showed me any care. At first I thought it was because I was a cripple, like her son, but later I realized she desperately needed my master to have a successful candidate. “No one else will have us in their house,” she once told me, stroking Chart’s dusty hair. “I’ve seen a lot of boys come through here, Eon, but you’re our best chance. You’re special.” At the time I thought she had guessed the secret, but she hadn’t. And even if she did know, she would never say anything. Rilla was bound too tightly to my master, his tolerance of Chart a hundred times more compelling than any bond of indenture.
I handed her the sandals, smiling my thanks. She shooed me into the library.
“Close the doors, Eon,” my master said. He was standing at the cabinet sorting through the keys he wore around his neck on a length of red silk.
I pulled shut the doors and waited for further instruction. He looked up and nodded at the visitor’s chair in front of the desk.
“Sit down,” he said, shaking a key free.
Sit down? In a chair? I watched him insert the key into the lock. Had I heard correctly? I crossed the soft, thick carpet and gingerly laid my hand on the back of the chair, waiting for a reprimand. Nothing. I glanced across at my master. He had a leather pouch and a small black ceramic jar in his hands.
“I said sit down,” he ordered, closing the cabinet doors.
I perched on the very edge of the leather seat, my hands tight around the carved armrests. I had always imagined a chair would be comfortable, but it was hard against my rump bones and made my hip ache again. I shifted around, trying to recapture the warm ease I’d felt in the garden, but it was gone. I looked at the closed double doors, imagining the stark landscape outside. Did the garden take my pain? Did its moon energies call to my hidden self? I shivered. My master was right; I could not afford to enter it again. Not so close to the ceremony.
On the desk in front of me were two small black-lacquered death plaques. I tried to read the names carved into the wood, but I could not make sense of the upside-down characters. I quickly looked away from them as my master sat in the chair opposite me. He placed the leather pouch and jar next to the two memorials.