Free The Soul Mirror by Carol Berg Page B

someone tapped on the door. “Come,” I said, stuffing the packet back in my case, blotting away tears so as not to make a spectacle of myself.
    “A bit of supper, damoselle.” The chambermaid carried in a lighted candle and a tray draped with white linen serviettes. She looked about in dismay, first at the luggage blocking her way, and then at me, stumbling to my feet, red-eyed and sniffling. Lianelle was entirely wrong about me being strong.
    “Here,” I said, “let me move this.” I shoved my clothes bag into the corner beside a blanket chest and threw the book satchel onto the bed. As the girl squeezed through and set the tray on the table, I rescued the wobbling candle. “Tell me, what’s your name?”
    Eyes averted, she dipped her knee. “Ella, if you please.”
    Though a handspan taller than I, she could be no more than fifteen. Freckles sprinkled her face, and the wisps of hair that peeked out from under her ruffled white cap were orange-red. In the past hour she had inked a green witchknot below one ear. Perhaps she thought it might protect her from the Great Traitor’s daughter.
    On our way up from the steward’s office, I’d noted several other people wearing witchknots or chevrons on temples or cheeks—warding sigils one saw among country people from time to time. The practice was akin to burying a lock of a rival’s hair under a thorn tree to afflict her with pustules, or kissing your altar stone whenever you had a wicked thought about a dead relative, lest the kinsman’s shade send a daemon to make you soil the bed. To see servants in a royal residence displaying such open superstition was astonishing.
    No matter trepidation, Ella whisked the candle from my hand and returned it to my supper tray. With brisk competence, she checked the untouched water pitcher, then unlatched an old-fashioned painted armoire and pulled open every drawer, leaving them ready to receive my things.
    “If that’s all, then . . .” She dipped a knee and headed for the door.
    “No! Wait. Please!” Perhaps the fear so palpable in city and palace had infected me, or perhaps it was only that my emotions had been so thoroughly wrung out, but this efficient child suddenly seemed like an anchor of reason.
    “No one’s told me what I’m to do here.” An entirely inappropriate comment to address to a palace chambermaid, who would be taught to display no evidence whatsoever of possessing a mind. “I’ve no idea where I’ll be expected tomorrow.”
    The girl glanced up briefly. “If you like, t’morning, after I’ve seen to the other young ladies, I’ll fetch you where you’re to be.”
    “That would be very kind. Thank you, Ella.”
    “Will you be needing aught else, damoselle? Help with your unpacking?”
    “No, I’ve not so much.” The leather case with its precious contents glared at me from the bed. “Not unless you could tell me where I might keep a few valuables out of the common eye.” Duplais would come hunting Lianelle’s trinkets. And Antonia . . . was it ridiculous to imagine she’d been snooping about my belongings?
    The girl cocked her head, as if considering whether I was trying to trick her. “Might could,” she said at last. “I’ve cleaned a few of these older closets.” She poked around the ancient armoire, tapping on splintered moldings and fumbling under drawers and behind shelves.
    “Hah!” She slid a scalloped corner piece aside to reveal a small drawer and even produced a tarnished key from inside it. “None but a chamber girl like me’s going to figure where that is. I’m sure I’ll forget it myself.”
    She dropped the key back in the drawer. Her white cap bobbed, and she was out the door, so quiet and quick in her movements that once she was gone, I wasn’t sure she’d even been there. For the first time in days, I was smiling.
    My mother’s jewelry went into the hidden drawer. Lianelle’s packet would go in as well, once I’d read the letter one more time. I sat