Read Online Ash and Silver by Carol Berg - Free Book Online

this corruption of our way. I believed Damon put you here for a purpose, and whether or not you recognized him, I believed you to be working toward that purpose. That may yet be so. The sheer number ofenchantments in the armory makes it impossible to be overheard. Thus, no one would hear as I beat you until you told me the truth.”
    â€œThat’s not as easy as it was when I arrived,” I blurted. Foolishly.
    â€œTry me, paratus. And as you bleed, you will still have to walk the seaward wall for the first quarter tonight and the next thirty nights you reside in the fortress, as punishment for your lies.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    F ortress Evanide’s seaward wall. Had anyone ever devised so miserable a place to stand watch? As if one could actually
watch
anything while facing the Western Sea in the pitchy dark after midnight. As if any boat would dare approach the sheer cliffs of Evanide’s western face at any hour, come to that. The sea would smash it to splinters in an eyeblink.
    The seaward watch was one of Inek’s favored reminders of failure, this time exacerbated by his hatred of lies. He had assigned me a quarter’s watch each night. Six hours. The normal duration of the seaward watch was two, because a moment’s lapse of attention could send the unwary guard plummeting into the boiling black water below. The walk itself was forever slick from spray, fog, or rain, and narrow enough two men could not pass. That those who built the damnable shelf had seen no virtue in a parapet more than calf-high did nothing for a man’s anxiety. And, of course, full mail was required. The weight of chausses, thigh-length habergeon, pauldron of plate, and all the sodden padding underneath added to one’s weapons ensured death from a fall would be quick, though perhaps preferable to six continuous hours of aching back, neck, and legs, and unceasing wet, cold, and salt spray.
    On top of normal training—sparring, running, unending study and practice with ever more complex magic—and four hours of dead sleep if I was lucky, my punishment ensured I had no time to ponder Curator Damon’s purposes or fret over how I might investigate the Danae mystery. Indeed, those hours taught me to shove all distracting questions deep, as Inek commanded.
    Raimo, the second armorer, helped me choose what spellwork was the most useful to affix to my silver bracelets. He insisted I do the work, of course, which was quite fine with me as long as I could keep awake. It wouldn’t do if I got in a pinch and forgot that I’d linked a veil to the spiral sigil on the
left
bracelet and instead produced a gout of fire from the spiral sigil on the right.
    On the morning after my third night on the seaward wall, I returned to my cell to shed the cursed mail—and wipe it down with oil, of course—find something dry to wear, and stumble to the Hall to see if anything was left from breakfast. I had made it as far as the wiping down when the curtain in my doorway flew aside. A dark-haired paratus in a mail shirt leaned easily against the doorframe. His grin flashed through his gray mask, warming even my cold skin.
    â€œAh, Greenshank, I thought I counseled you never to get on Inek’s wrong side. Thirty nights on the seaward wall . . . Did you curse his forgotten mother?”
    There was only one possible response to Cormorant, Evanide’s paratus-exter, the next to be knighted. I grinned back.
    â€œAn omission is the equivalent of a lie,” I said, quoting Inek’s first and most serious lesson to any tyro. “Perhaps when you beat that into me with such exquisite care, you managed to beat it right back out again.”
    Honorable, generous, supremely gifted, Cormorant had been my paratus-mentor when I was a tyro, soothing the constant pain and terror while teaching me innumerable skills.
    â€œOf all things, you idiot!” he groaned. “Perhaps