Dagger's Edge (Shadow series) by Anne Logston Page A

would have given it to her himself.
    Jael reached for the box. It seemed to take hundreds of tiny motions before she grasped it. The design on the lid was strange; then Jael recognized it as the coat of arms that Lord Urien had worn on his surcoat. A gift from Lord Urien! Jael smiled delightedly as a familiar scent reached her nose—the black tea from Lord Urien’s own private stock.
    Jael opened the box. The tea was in small blocks, each block stamped with Lord Urien’s coat of arms and wrapped in thin parchment. The sweet, heady fragrance made Jael’s mouth water, and she lifted the small blocks out, admiring their precise edges. To her surprise, however, under the first layer of blocks of tea, at the center of the box, was a small pouch. Jael opened it, then gasped.
    What spilled from the pouch was a small pendant of the exquisite whorled gold work Jael had seen in the dining hall, in an unusual glyphlike shape. At the center of the pendant was one of the purple-red stones, this one as large as the nail on her first finger. Little flashes of bloodred light shone from the gem. The pendant hung on a long, breath-fine gold chain.
    The pendant had to be worth a small fortune. Jael smiled as she realized why Urien had hidden the pouch in the box of tea; Mother and Father, who worried when the lord paid attention to their child, would no doubt have made a positively legendary outcry if Lord Urien had given their daughter such a gift. Jael hurriedly lifted the chain over her neck, slipping the pendant into the front of her shirt and grinning to herself. Two special gifts, and in just a few days! It almost made up for the way Mother and Father had been treating her.
    Jael lay back on her bed, enjoying the floating feeling in her head. Quite a fashion in Calidwyn, eh? Hopefully it would become a fashion here, too.
    She poured herself a mug of water and lay sipping it.
    Perhaps she’d just stay up all night enjoying this wonderful watery looseness in her muscles, the feeling that her mind would drift right up through the ceiling. Yes, she’d just stay up all night and—
    Jael blinked as sunlight dazzled her eyes.
    “Huh?” she muttered.
    “I said, Mist is here,” Donya said irritably from the doorway. “Really, Jaellyn, you’re old enough to take your finery off yourself before you go to sleep. Change your clothes and come down to the dining hall.”
    Jael groaned and crawled out of bed, stumbling to the washbasin. The water in the pitcher was icy cold and shocked her face, and Jael realized that she was chilled through; sometime during the night the fire had died, and she hadn’t even roused enough to crawl under the covers. Her nose was already running.
    Something fell from the bed to the floor, and Jael picked it up, scowling puzzledly at the half-melted, twisted mass of metal in her hand. Surely it couldn’t be the mug she’d been drinking from. Had she gotten up and somehow dropped it in the fire, then later raked it out? Well, no time to wonder now. Shivering, Jael pulled on clean clothes and trotted down the halls. Fortunately, the fires in the dining hall had been lit long before, banishing the last of the chill from the huge room.
    Mist was sitting with Shadow and Celene, chatting animatedly over bread, cheese, and fruit. Jael smiled to herself. Apparently Aubry had been indulging his forest cousin’s vanity in the market; Mist was garbed handsomely in new pale green silks that contrasted beautifully with his pale skin and hair. Mist grinned proudly as he saw Jael noticing his clothes, but he rose and came to embrace her warmly.
    “Good morn, little fawn,” Mist murmured into her hair. “I missed you in the forest this summer.”
    Jael sighed and leaned her head on Mist’s shoulder, for a brief moment at peace.
    “I missed the forest, foster father,” she said. “But I missed you more.”
    Donya, looking profoundly uncomfortable, cleared her throat awkwardly. Argent chuckled and patted her arm as Mist