The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

with bobbins as slender and graceful as the pattern she worked. The lace spilling off the bolster was the first design she’d given him. Other skilled women in the factory also worked the pattern. But they used a fine linen thread suitable for export. Katrina used Tambrin, as the design demanded.
    She didn’t know how Brunix acquired the thread or who purchased her lace. Did his Rover clan smuggle them in and out of SeLenicca? She didn’t want to know, for if the palace ever discovered a factory using Tambrin, the owner would forfeit his license to make any lace at all.
    The faintest whisper of sound reached her ears. Her eyes widened in alarm as she searched the shadows for signs of her mother’s ghost.
    “Don’t you ever sleep?” the watchman asked directly behind her.
    “Oh!” she gasped a little too loudly. “You frightened me.” His presence always startled and intrigued her.
    “Sorry, Mistress Kaantille. You are Katrina Kaantille aren’t you?”
    “I am mistress of nothing. Didn’t Brunix tell you I am a slave?”
    “He told me. Your father told me you were to be accepted as an apprentice at the palace and allowed to retain the family home. He wouldn’t have sold himself to King Simeon otherwise.”
    “P’pa? You’ve seen my P’pa?” Wild relief and bitter anger roared through her heart, vying for dominance. Carefully she closed down all those confusing emotions, just as she had numbed herself the night she was forced into the owner’s bed.
    “Fraank Kaantille sends you his love. He wasn’t well enough to come with me, but I’ll take you to him when I’ve finished my mission here in the city.”
    “Then P’pa survived his years in the slave ships. I wondered if he would return when his servitude ended. That isn’t supposed to be for another two years.”
    “Slave ships? Fraank and I met in the mines. And his sentence was life. If we hadn’t escaped, he’d be dead with the mine rot by now. As it is, he’s probably dying.”
    “The mines!” She shuddered. A long and bitter death. In her mind, Fraanken Kaantille had been dead for three years already. The reality of his condition brought new tears and a lump to her throat.
    “King Simeon can’t be trusted, even with his own laws.” Her eyes blurred. Anger, born of three years of bitterness, covered her vision with red mist. Simeon was an outlander, just like Brunix and this new watchman. She couldn’t trust any of them.
    Neither said anything for a moment. She shouldn’t see or speak to this dark-eyed outlander. She ignored the impulse to open her thoughts and emotions to him well beyond the realm of safety.
    Katrina bent her head to the pillow, pointedly ending the conversation.
    “Is this thread Tambrin?” the watchman changed the subject abruptly. His fingers came close to the finished length of lace, as if to examine it more closely. Then he jerked his hand away.
    “What difference does it make?” she returned rather than answer with a lie.
    “A great deal of difference if you work at night, in secret, with a thread that is forbidden.”
    “Hadn’t you better go back to your job, guarding the warehouse?” She stared at him, willing him away.
    “If you are worried about another theft, don’t. No man will get past my . . . er . . . traps.”
    “You have been forbidden to speak to me. Go back to your work and let me continue with mine.”
    “Or what? What can you do to me?”
    “Report you to Owner Brunix. You will be dismissed, if he doesn’t kill you first.”
    “But I am not a slave he can murder without question. You shouldn’t be either. How did this come about?”
    “Go!” She couldn’t relive that humiliating night when The Simeon gave her a choice between slavery and a torturous ritual. Nor could she allow this outlander to discover all that went on between her and Brunix.
    Perhaps he already knew. They were both dark-eyed outlanders. Only Brunix would dare hire another outlander when there were so many true-bloods out of work and homeless.
    “Ssshh!” the watchman hissed. He extinguished her candle with a pass of his hand. “Stay here,” he said so quietly Katrina wasn’t certain she actually heard him or merely understood from the press of his hand against her shoulder.
     
    Jack listened with all of his senses for the faint sound of movement. Nothing. Puzzled, he crept back down the stairs to the warehouse level.
    He’d left Corby perched on top of a stack of crates in the corner, a ball