Free The Bone Doll's Twin by Lynn Flewelling

there, watching for my father’s return.
    A tall, square watchtower jutted from the back of the keep, next to the river. I used to believe the demon lurked there, and watched me from the windows whenever Nari or the men took me outside to play in the courtyards or the meadow below the barracks house. I was kept inside most of the time, though. I knew every dusty, shadowedroom of the lower floors by the time I could walk. That crumbling old pile was all the world I knew, my first seven years—my nurse and a handful of servants my only companions when Father and his men were gone, which was all too often.
    And the demon, of course. Only years later did I have any inkling that all households were not like my own—that it was unusual for invisible hands to pinch and push, or for furniture to move about the room by itself. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on Nari’s lap as she taught me to bend my little fingers into a warding sign—

Chapter 6
    T obin knelt on the floor in his toy room, idly pushing a little ship around the painted harbor of the toy city. It was the carrack with the crooked mast, the one the demon had broken.
    Tobin wasn’t really playing, though. He was waiting and watching the closed door of his father’s room across the corridor. Nari had closed the door when they went in to talk, making it impossible to eavesdrop from here.
    Tobin’s breath came out in a puff of white vapor as he sighed and bent to straighten the ship’s little sail. It was cold this morning; he could smell frost on the early morning breeze through the open window. He opened his mouth and blew several short breaths, making brief clouds over the citadel.
    The toy city, a gift from his father on his last name day, was his most treasured possession. It stood almost as tall as Tobin and took up half of this disused bedchamber next to his own. And it wasn’t just a toy, either. It was a miniature version of Ero itself, which his father had made for him.
    “Since you’re too young to go to Ero, I’ve brought Ero to you!” he’d said when he gave it to him. “You may one day live here, even defend it, so you must know the place.”
    Since then, they’d spent many happy hours together, learning the streets and wards. Houses made from wooden blocks clustered thickly up the steep sides of the citadel, and there were open spaces painted green for thepublic gardens and pasturage. The great market square had a temple to the Four surrounded by traders’ booths made of twigs and bright scraps of cloth. Baked clay livestock of all sorts populated the little enclosures. The blue-painted harbor that jutted from one side of the city’s base outside the many-gated wall was filled with pretty little ships that could be pushed about with a pole.
    The top of the hill was flat and ringed with another wall called the Palatine Circle, though it wasn’t exactly round. Inside lay a great clutter of houses, palaces, and temples, all with different names and stories. There were more gardens here, as well as a fish pool made from a silver mirror and an exercise field for the Royal Companions. This last interested Tobin very much; the Companions were boys who lived at the Old Palace with his cousin, Prince Korin, and trained to be warriors. His father and Tharin had been Companions to King Erius when they were young, too. As soon as Tobin had learned this, he wanted to go at once but was told, as usual, that he must wait until he was older.
    The biggest building on the Palatine was the Old Palace. This had a roof that came off, and several rooms inside. There was a throne room with a tiny wooden throne, of course, and a tiny tablet of real gold beside it, set in a little wooden frame.
    Tobin lifted this out and squinted at the fine words engraved on it. He couldn’t read them, but he knew them by heart: “So long as a daughter of Thelátimos’ line defends and rules, Skala shall never be subjugated.” Tobin knew the legend of King Thelátimos