Free The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala by Jeffe Kennedy Page B

remember your mother, the Queen. She was kind to me. Her death grieved us all.”
    “Did you know she was . . .”
    “Tala?” Lady Mailloux squinted at the shelves as she drew on a pair of soft leather gloves. With nimble and unbearably gentle fingers, she pulled a scroll down and laid it on the table. She kept working, finding and laying out for me books and parchments organized according to some arcane system of her own. “Yes, I knew. Not everyone did, I don’t think. High King Uorsin, even during the Great War, didn’t like it to be discussed. But because I grew up here, bordering the Wild Lands before the war, I knew more than most. I remember my father saying that the Tala and Uorsin both had made a deal with the devil.”
    “You said you grew up here—at Ordnung?”
    She cocked that eyebrow at me. “At Castle Columba, on whose ruins Ordnung was built.” Her gaze wandered over the old walls. “In some ways, I never left home.”
    She drew down a large and dusty tome, reverently setting it on the table. “I built this collection from my family’s library. If you were one of the young scholars come in here, I’d threaten to break your fingers if you so much as smudged a page.” She studied me, chewing her lip.
    I held up my hands. “I value my fingers. May I borrow your gloves?”
    Lady Mailloux smiled, drew them off, and handed them to me. “I’d like to sit here with you and guide your research, but I’d best oversee my staff—and make sure your sentries don’t feel the need to check on you. This”—she pointed to the huge tome—“is an annotated history of the Tala. It’s quite dense and would take you weeks to get through. I suggest you use it as a reference. There’s an index in the back. For recent events, look through these scrolls. They’ll give you tales of Tala during the Great War.”
    “What about any . . . contracts or legal treaties that might have been . . . drafted, here and there?” I picked my way through the question, but she raised her brows with a look that told me she knew exactly what I asked after.
    “Derodotur keeps all treaty documents in the King’s study, Princess.” She had her formal demeanor back now. “You would have to apply to him or Lady Zevondeth for that information.”
    “Zevondeth? Why would she have the information?”
    “Why, Princess Andi”—Lady Mailloux widened her eyes, all innocence—“I thought you knew that Lady Zevondeth arrived here as your mother’s attendant. Indeed, she was your mother’s most devoted companion and was at her side even unto her death.”
    My world shifted again, realigned.
    “I’m indebted to you, Lady Mailloux.”
    “Dafne. Call me Dafne, Princess.”
    “Thank you. I’d tell you to call me Andi, but I imagine you won’t.”
    Dafne glanced around the confines of the little room. “In here I will, Andi.” She turned to go. “It means a great deal to me that someone will see these documents. I want you to know—” She hesitated, made a decision. “No matter what you may read or hear, your mother was not evil. Nor do I believe the Tala are demons. Salena was . . .” Dafne trailed off, considered me.
    “Sometime I’d like you to tell me more about her. I remember her as kind.”
    Dafne laughed a little. “Oh, she had a temper; don’t mistake that. But she loved life, in this brilliant, passionate way, before she declined. And she loved you. She would be proud of you.”
    That brought me up short. I’d thought before about making my father proud, and Ursula—though I had never really succeeded with either of them. But my mother?
    “Proud? I’ve done nothing with my life.”
    “Actions may speak who we are, but first we have to be that person. She would be proud of who you are. I suspect she would be proud of what you will do, too.”
    “Hide in the castle and let armies die for me while I read books?”
    She sobered. “Is that your plan?”
    “In point of fact, I have no plan. Nobody seems to