The Shadow Watch (excerpt of the published novel)

Chapter One

The Year 322 N.W.

Fifth Year of the Reign of Cyrus Maro

The gallows loomed over them like a slaver's rod as the servants prepared the city square for the chancellor's drafting ceremony. The mighty towers of Maro'El cast long shadows over the square in the fading light, and Tori Burodai's breath hung heavy in the winter air, mixing with flurries of snow that lashed at her face with each gust of the wind. Her fingers felt like they might shatter as she hoisted the wooden beams upon her shoulder. The tips of her gloves were cut off so she could hold the beams in place while Darien Redvar pounded in the spikes. Her fingers were red and swollen, but the pain would end soon enough. The gallows was nearly finished.

Tori rubbed her hands together vigorously, then reached for another beam, muttering curses beneath her breath.

"You froze yet, Tori?" Darien said. He pounded the spikes home with a mallet, which sent jarring aches through Tori's wrists as she held the beam still.

She bit down on her tongue. "I'll survive."

"Your fingers are icicles." Darien stopped her, wrapped her hands with his own, and blew warm breath on them. The sudden heat stung.

"Just half icicles." Tori pulled her hands away. "Look, the sooner we're done, the sooner we'll be beside the commander's fires. Let's just finish this bloody thing."

Tori hoisted another beam from the stockpile, and Darien retrieved more spikes. Darien was stronger—though Tori would never admit it to his face. He ought to have been the one holding the heavy beams upon his strong shoulders. Tori's muscles were firm, and she had always held her own in a scrap, but her body was small and her limbs slender. However, the labor of hoisting the heavy beams warmed her up a little, and besides, she couldn't hold the spikes in place if she couldn't feel them, and the last thing she needed today was for her hand to slip and the mallet to shatter her hands. Darien's hands never faltered. He was a native of the high peaks of Klavash, accustomed to bitter cold, and he pounded the thick nails in with calculated precision.

Tori and Darien had served Commander Scelero faithfully for three years, and for this servitude, they did not complain. Unlike many of the Oshan nobles, Commander Scelero was a decent master. But even he could do nothing when the chancellor required service. Every Lord House was required to send servants to prepare the city of Maro'El for the ceremony.

Tori was glad she and Darien had been sent to the square together. Last year, she'd been forced to work with a whiny housemaid named Ela. The taskmasters had threatened to whip her. It always amazed Tori the way a few months working indoors made the maids think they were somehow above hard labor.

Tori heaved another beam, but Darien paused, gazing up at the overhang that had taken shape.

"You all right?" she asked.

Darien shook his head, but returned to their task. "As if sending us to fight their civil war weren't enough. To make us build the very thing that keeps us in line, it's cruel." Darien had never been summoned for square duty before. There were times Tori worried her friend was too soft for a servant's life. His people were peaceful mountain folk who avoided conflict. Her own people, the Yan Avii, were warriors. They lived in the harsh climate of the Steppe, changing camps whenever the herds had eaten the grass down to dirt, or the weather turned too cold. The Burodai had fought with more than one neighboring tribe during her childhood.

But Tori did not like to think of those days. "That's the whole point. The nobles can make us freeze to stone out here, only to send us to die. And we'll thank them all the same. We've had it worse than this. You know it, and so do they." Tori's years in the Fringes had shown her far crueler faces than those of the Oshan nobles. She had it easy serving in Maro'El, and Darien's talk could land him back in the Fringes in an instant if overheard by a guard looking to gain favor with the nobles.