Dagger's Edge (Shadow series) Read Online Free

clothes, will you, and when we’re done, you can join us for supper and I’ll have a few new stories to tell you.”
    “Yes, Aunt Shadow.” Jael sighed and sat down on the bed.
    Shadow paused in the doorway, then turned back.
    “And don’t let your mother catch you on the walls,” Shadow said sternly, belying her tone with a grin and a wink. “Yes, Aunt Shadow,” Jael said solemnly, stifling an answering grin.
    As soon as Shadow was gone, Jael slipped back out the hidden door to the castle grounds. At the west end of the north wall was another hiddendoor, this one opening to astairway. The stairway took Jael to the second level of the castle; another passageway took her to the uppermost walk, and Jael quickly slipped out onto the parapets.
    From the upper parapets Jael could easily work her way down to the balcony of an empty room on the third floor of the castle. Jael had used that balcony many times before; she took the knotted rope from its hiding place at the bottom of a huge stone urn, tied one end to the base of that same urn for anchoring, and slid down the rope to the second-floor parapets. From there she had only to edge quietly to her listening spot, a comfortable niche outside her parents’ sitting-room window. From here Jael could carefully, if rather awkwardly, twist around to peer through the ivy framing the window so that she had a reasonably full view of the room.
    High Lady Donya, still robed in her surcoat for council, was fussing while she poured Shadow a mug of wine.
    “Sorry you were worried, Doe,” Shadow said, leaning back in her chair to put her feet up on the table. “But it takes time to find merchant caravans coming north.”
    “You could have taken a boat,” Donya said exasperatedly. “The Brightwater joins up with the Wirrilind not far south, and that flows straight down to the south coast. You could’ve been back here in less than two weeks.”
    “Boats.” Shadow grimaced. “Fortune blight the leaky things. If elves were meant to float around on the water they’d have webbed feet like a duck.”
    “Well, I was worried!” Donya scolded. “And I would certainly think that in an emergency you’d—”
    “All right, Doe,” Shadow said mildly, but Jael and Donya both knew that particular tone; it meant that Shadow wasn’t in the mood to take much more.
    “I’m sorry.” Donya sighed raggedly. “I had a rough time in council this afternoon. Argent’s still there, talking to a few people separately.” She opened her jewel box and took out a ring, handing it to Shadow. “Here’s the signet back.”
    Shadow shook her head as she slipped the ring back onto one slender finger.
    “Didn’t realize what a lead rope I was tying around my neck when I agreed to keep this with me,” she said wryly. “Do you know what I was doing when this thing vanished off my finger?”
    “I can imagine,” Donya said, chuckling.
    “So tell me,” Shadow said, gulping her wine, “did I hopefully miss the crisis, or did my getting dragged out of my lover’s very arms have anything to do with your nasty council session, and maybe why you didn’t send Jael to the forest this summer?”
    Donya shook her head amusedly.
    “Gods, Shady, I suppose you know all about the temple, too?”
    Jael’s ears twitched. That must be the Temple of Baaros; that particular temple figured prominently in many of Mother and Father’s late-night discussions, when they didn’t concern Jael herself.
    “Temple?” Shadow asked, raising her black eyebrows. “Don’t tell me the sprout’s gone and joined one of those strange new celibate sects, and the elves are so disgusted they won’t let her visit?”
    “Oh, Shady, don’t be ridiculous,” Donya chided. “No, the Temple of Baaros doesn’t have anything to do with Jaellyn— not directly, that is.”
    “Well, start from the beginning, then,” Shadow said resignedly. “There’s plenty of wine. But try not to make it too long; I’ve had nothing but a