Free The Servant's Heart by Missouri Dalton

The Servant's Heart
    By Missouri Dalton
     
    Rain tapped against the window panes, the candles reflecting light against them. You could smell the mud and the wet of the grass. At least there was no lightning -- it would've driven me to distraction, wanting to be outside to greet it. The gray sky loomed over the entirety of the palace, but this room at least seemed cheerful. The floral bedding and soft lavender upholstery played gentle counterpoint to the warm wood and gurgling fire.
    I set the tea tray down on the mosaic table next to milady's chair and bowed. "Your tea, milady," I said softly.
    She turned in her chair to look at me and smiled, the firelight catching in her auburn hair. "Thank you, Terence."
    I bowed again. "Is there anything else I can do, milady?"
    "No, thank you. Although I'm sure Jasper will want a drink and something to eat when he gets back from his ride."
    "Yes, milady." I backed out of the room and shut the door. I had time before his highness got back from his afternoon ride, even in this weather. The man had very little in the way of common sense. He was very brave, though -- well praised by his father the king during the war. I'd never seen him fight myself, and it wasn't as though anyone asked my opinion of him. The prince didn't pay much attention to me other than to tell me to bring him more wine.
    His lady did. His lady was kind. Which was all right by me, but I'd prefer she ignored me like the others did. I didn't want to be noticed. Her ladies ignored me, but then, they were proper noble girls; they wouldn't talk to me unless they needed something fetched or carried. For someone who preferred to be ignored, even by other servants, this suited me fine.
    I rushed down the back stairs to the kitchens -- a vast place with three roaring fires and a bustle of activity -- to snag something to eat. The long table against the back wall was generally filled with things for the household servants to grab on their way; we generally only sat down for dinner, our masters were always calling for this or that the rest of the time. The servants of the kitchen didn't notice me as I passed, not an unusual phenomenon. I could be exceptionally unremarkable when I so chose. Being unremarkable was a skill servants acquired, along with other more clandestine professions.
    I snagged a pair of eggs and some apple slices -- tucked away in a bowl of water to keep from spoiling -- before ducking into the low ceilinged hall just off the kitchens where the servants’ quarters were. I had my own room by virtue of serving her ladyship and his highness -- some jealousy had spawned initially, but most of those who'd voiced such opinions had long tired of doing so. They didn't get a rise out of me, and without my temper being lost, there was little sport in it for them. There was no lock on my door, but the simple application of my stool against the bottom was solution enough to warn me when someone entered while I slept.
    I sat down on my cot to eat and read a few pages of the single book I owned. It was in no language the house spoke, but in my home tongue, something I didn't speak here -- not ever. I didn't look foreign; I had no accent they could hear, so they assumed I was from no further away than the next county. Far from it, Jorian had not always been my home. The book was called, The Virtue of War , I'd read it twenty four times and was on my twenty fifth. The title had little to do with the contents.
    It was a book someone dear to me had given -- a relic of a family I barely recalled with certainty. The last legacy of a family gifted in the arts of the arcane. I could only use a handful of the spells in those pages, the destructive ones mostly. The ones attuned to lightning and storms.
    On a page near the back I had drawn a portrait, just from memory. A smiling girl. I stroked her cheek gently with one hand before going back to the page I'd been reading from.
    My apple and eggs finished, I replaced the scrap of ribbon