Free Lord of Snow and Shadows by Sarah Ash Page A

fast growing up”?
    All these years he had believed his father had taken no interest in him. He had even secretly wondered if his father had abandoned his mother because of him. Some men were like that, Elysia said, moving on to the next conquest when the demands of domesticity became too constricting.
    Now he saw that his father had kept his picture here in his bedchamber, the first thing he saw when he awoke each morning, the last before he closed his eyes to sleep.
    Tears suddenly pricked his eyes, stingingly hot.
    “Father,” he whispered.
    But if he had hoped to find some further connection with the father he could not remember, he had found none. There was nothing here but a void.
    He must escape. As soon as it was light he would begin to make his plans, observing, watching for any weakness, no matter how small, in the defenses Kostya had set up “for his own safety.”
    Gavril slowly undid the buttons on his jacket and shrugged it off, letting it lie on the floor where it fell. Then he snuffed out the oil lamp and crawled onto the bed. The flickering fireshadows gradually dimmed as the glowing coals crumbled to ash, and he slept.
             
    The diamond-paned windows of the Drakhaon’s bedchamber looked out not over the inner courtyards of the kastel, but over swathes of moorland and brooding forest stretching far into the hazy distance where the horizon was crowned by jagged mountains, half-wreathed in swirling cloud. Beneath the fast-scudding cloud, Gavril caught a shimmer of fresh snow on the peaks.
    He unhooked the catch. Opening one window, he felt the fresh air cold on his face, faintly tinged with the aromatic fragrance of oozing pine sap.
    No way of escape here; there was a sheer drop of twenty feet or more to the yard below. Stories of prisoners knotting sheets together to improvise a way of escape came to mind. He might reach the ground, but at the entrance of the courtyard he could see guards patrolling the walls; he would never get past his own bodyguard.
    There came a sharp rap at the door.
    “Lord Gavril? Are you awake?” Bogatyr Kostya’s voice was powerful enough to carry across a parade ground. Gavril hastily closed the window.
    A key turned in the lock and servants came in, bowing and murmuring greetings, one bearing a bowl of hot water, another a tray of food.
    “Lord Volkh always took his first meal here,” Kostya said, “while we discussed the day’s arrangements.”
    Gavril looked at the breakfast tray: a bowl of a thick porridge; a pewter mug filled with strong spiced ale; and a hunk of coarse bread with a slice of hard-rinded, pungent yellow cheese. Soldiers’ rations. He was used to croissants and a bowl of hot chocolate, with maybe a fresh apricot or two picked from the espaliered trees in the villa gardens. His stomach had still not recovered from the unfamiliar food last night. He turned away from the tray.
    “I sent word to Azhgorod of your arrival last night,” said Kostya. “The lawyers are on their way here for the reading of your father’s will. As soon as you are ready, my lord, you must authorize the reopening of the Great Hall.”
             
    The walls leading to the Great Hall were lined with hunting tapestries. Gavril saw scene after gory scene of blood and slaughter: the lolling heads of butchered stags, bears, and wolves filled each stitched canvas.
    Kostya halted before a pillared doorway. The way was barred with planks of wood nailed across the doors. Two of the
druzhina
stood on guard outside.
    “Open the doors,” said Kostya.
    The warriors glanced at each other—the first time Gavril had seen any of the
druzhina
hesitate to execute a command—then took their axes to the planks, levering and hacking until, with a splintering crack, the wood came away and the doors swung open.
    “Now the shutters,” Kostya said.
    Gavril watched with a growing sense of unease. That queasy feeling of dread had returned, like a cold, sick fever. He did not