Silver Silence

He's So Nice

Gillian despised the adults. They plucked her ideas from the air before her mouth and passed them as their own. They did nothing for her – except for the talking. Other adults listened to them. So Gillian allowed the ex-servant Jerome Brackson to "head" the rebellion, while she and her friends did the leg work. Nobody listened to teenagers, but they did talk to them.

Lucy talked the most. She talked like someone who hadn't found a receptive ear for years. Gillian nodded as if she understood, and that was all she needed. Today, her words flowed steadily like a river, masked from unwanted listeners by the din of the marketplace. The winter crowds pressed closer than they had in the summer now that the food within the stalls had become a precious commodity. Gillian couldn't have afforded the fruits of the royal city even if she had come to the marketplace to shop. They came from the magician farms, where the weather remained perfect year-round.

"Have you heard? There's a new king!" Lucy hugged herself, pulling her elbows close so that the crowd would flow around her. Her eyes shone with excitement, but her smile remained tight and nervous.

Gillian had heard about the new king. The soldiers that prowled her town's streets had announced the news with a flair of fireworks and bravado, as if the commoners cared which face commanded the troops that destroyed their livelihood. If they were lucky, the new king would only raise the taxes slightly. Their hopes remained at ground level, however. Life had reserved luck for the magical.

"What's he like?" Gillian asked. She struggled to maintain an interested expression. Now that the discussion group had become a rebellion, the interviews had become work. Every new piece of information brought the rebellion closer to action – closer to the cold dark of the unknown. People would die if it didn't work. People would die if it did work. Whatever the outcome, life would never be the same.

"He's..." Lucy shuddered, scanning the crowd for watching eyes. She was optimistic compared to the other castle servants Gillian had come across; if something made her nervous, it was serious. "He can control minds. You can feel it happening, but you can't do anything about it. It's..." She trailed off. "But the Queen's Shadow, his shadow now, he keeps him under control. He made the King release me." She paused and her smile returned. "He's so nice."

Gillian frowned. "He's the one who saved your life, isn't he?"

Lucy nodded. "He respects the servants much more than the other magicians. I think I know why, now." Her smile grew wider. Gillian tried not to show her impatience; with each marketplace visit, the servant girl became more of a storyteller, dragging the conversation along for her own amusement rather than getting to the point.

"Why?" Gillian played her part.

Lucy leaned forward. "His parents were commoners." Gillian sighed. Many magicians' parents were commoners. The soldiers simply removed them from their parents at a young age, just as they had with Sonia's older brother. Those five or fewer years of poverty never changed the way they viewed commoners. But Lucy continued: "He lived near the border until the Queen invaded when he was seventeen." Seventeen. He wasn't like Sonia's brother at all. Gillian nodded, anxiously waiting for Lucy to continue. Lucy squinted in thought. "Let me try to remember this right... I think he said his mother was a bookbinder and his father was a farmer. Or maybe it was the other way around."

A bookbinder. Gillian hadn't met many of those, though they served no purpose in the commoners' towns given that they weren't allowed to own books in the first place. She frowned. "How did you learn this?" It seemed oddly personal, especially given that the King's Guard didn't talk to Lucy. If he had, she would have bragged about it.