Shadowplay

  “Ah, now it is you who feigns innocence, Your Grace. You asked to speak to Avin Brone, but you must know that he has . . . retired. That his duties have all been taken up by me and Lord Hood, the new lord constable. Our dear Brone has worked so hard for Southmarch—he deserves his rest. Thus, I thought I might save him the unnecessary work of trying to solve whatever problem you ladies might have by volunteering my own attention to it, instead.” His smile looked like it had been drawn with a single stroke of a very sharp pen.

  “That is truly kind, Lord Havemore,” said Merolanna, “but in truth we wanted—/wanted—to see Lord Brone only out of friendship. For the sake of old times. Why, I daresay Avin Brone and I have known each other longer than you’ve been alive!”

  “Ah.” Havemore, like many ambitious young men, did not like being reminded of allegiances that predated his own arrival. “I see. So there is nothing I can do for you?”

  “You can remember your kind offer to share yourself more with the rest of us castle folk, Lord Havemore.” The duchess smiled winningly. “A man of your learning, a well-spoken man like you, should put himself about a bit more.”

  He narrowed his eyes, not entirely sure how to take her remark. “Very kind. But there is still a question, Your Grace. I can understand your desire to reminisce with your old friend Lord Brone, but what brings Sister Utta along on such a mission? Surely she and Brone are not also old friends? I had never heard that old Count Avin was much on religion, beyond what is necessary for appearances.” Havemore smiled at this little joke shared among friends and for the first time Sister Utta felt herself chilled. This man was more than ambitious, he was dangerous.

  “I do consider Brone a friend,” Utta said suddenly, ignoring Merolanna’s flinch. “He has been kind to me in the past. And he is a man of good heart, whether he spends much time in the temple or not.”

  “I am glad to hear you say that.” Tirnan Havemore now looked at Utta closely. “I worked for him for many years and always felt his best qualities were ignored, or at least underappreciated.”

  Merolanna actually took a step forward, as if to stop the conversation from straying into dangerous areas. “I asked her to come with me, Lord Havemore. I am ... I am not so well these days. It makes me easier to have a sensible woman like Utta with me instead of one of my scatterbrained young maids.”

  “Of course.” His smile widened. “Of course, Your Grace. So great is your spirit, so charming your manners, that I fear I’d forgotten your age. Of course, you must have your companion.” It was almost a leer now.

  What is he thinking? Utta did not want to contemplate it for long.

  “By all means, go and see your old friend, Count Avin. I’m afraid he has changed his chambers—I needed more space, of course, so I took these old ones of his over. When Brone is not at home in Landsend you will find him in the old countinghouse next to the Chamber of the Royal Guard. He still comes in, although he has little to do these days.” The smile had changed into something else now as Havemore rose, something that celebrated an enemy well and truly dispatched. “You will come see me again? This has been such a delight.”

  “For us all,” Merolanna assured him. “We are honored by your interest in two old women like ourselves, Lord Havemore, now that you’ve become such an important man in Southmarch.”

  * * *

  “Were you not perhaps spreading the fat a little thick?” Utta asked as they made their way across the residence garden, hoods pulled low against the chilly rain. “You do not need to make an enemy of him.”

  Merolanna snorted. “He is already an enemy, Utta, never doubt that for a moment. If I weren’t one of the only people left related to Olin, I’d lie gone already. The Tollys and their toadies have no love for me, but they can’t afford to see me off—not yet. Perhaps if they get through the winter they’ll start thinking about how I might be encouraged to die. I’m very old, after all.”

  Startled, Sister Utta made the sign of the Three. “Gods protect us, then why did you suggest to him that you were in ill health? Give them no ex-cuse!

  “They will kill me when they want to. I’m convinced now that they had something to do with Kendrick’s murder, too. By reminding Havemore, I was just reassuring him that whatever I got up to, I wouldn’t be around to make trouble much longer.” She stumbled and caught at Utta’s arm. “And I’m not all that well these days, in truth. I find myself feeble, and sometimes my mind wanders ...”

  “Hush. Enough of that.” Utta took the older woman’s elbow and held it tightly. “You have frightened me with all this . . . intrigue, Your Grace, all this talk of threats and plots and counterplots. I am only a Zorian sister and I’m out of my depth. Besides, I need you, so you may be neither ill nor feeble, and you certainly may not die!”

  Merolanna laughed. “Talk to your immortal mistress, not to me. If the gods choose to take me, or simply to make me a doddering old witling, that’s their affair.” She slowed as they entered the narrow passage between Wolfstooth Spire and the armory. The paint had faded, and tufts of greenery grew in the cracks in the walls. “By the grace of the Brothers, I have not been to this part of the castle in years. It’s falling apart!”

  “A suitable place, then, for those who are no longer necessary—Brone, and you, and me too.”

  “Well said, my dear.” Merolanna squeezed her arm approvingly. “The more worthless we are, the less anyone will suspect what devilry we’re up to.”

  “Your Grace, this is . . . this is quite a surprise.” Brone’s voice was a bit thick. Other than a pair of young, wary-looking guardsmen who acted more like they were watching a prisoner than protecting an important lord, the countinghouse was empty. “And Sister Utta. Bless me, Sister, I haven’t seen you for a long time. How are you?”

  “Fine, Lord Brone.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t get up.” He gestured at his bare left leg, propped on a hassock, the ankle swollen like a ham. “This cursed gout.”

  “It’s not the gout, it’s the drinking that’s keeping you in that chair,” Merolanna said. “It is scarcely noon. How much wine have you had today, Brone?”

  “What?” He goggled at her. “Scarcely any. A glass or two, to ease the pain.”

  “A glass or two, is it?” Merolanna made a face.

  In truth, he looked much the worse for wear. Utta had not seen him for some time, so it was possible the new lines on his face were nothing odd, but his eyes seemed sunken and dark and the color of his skin was bad, like a man who has been weeks in a sickbed. It was hard to reconcile this bloated, pasty creature slumped like a sack of laundry with the big man who only a short time ago had moved through the castle like a war galleon under full sail.

  Merolanna rapped on the table and pointed at one of the guards. “Lord Brone needs some bread and cheese for the sake of his stomach. Go fetch some.”

  The guard gaped at her. “Y-Your Grace . . . ?”

  “And you,” she said to the other. “I am old and I chill easily. Go and bring a brazier of coals. Go on, both of you!”

  “But . . . but we are not supposed to leave Lord Brone!” said the second guard.

  “Are you afraid the Zorian sister and I will assassinate him while you’re gone?” Utta stared at him, then turned to the count. “Do you think we’re likely to attack you, Brone?” She didn’t give him time to reply, but took a step toward the guards, waggling her fingers like she was shooing chickens out of a garden. “Go on, then. Hurry up, both of you.”

  When the baffled guards were gone, the count cleared his throat. “What was that about, may I ask?”

  “I need your help, Brone,” she said. “Something is gravely amiss, and we will not solve it without you—nor in front of Havemore’s spies, which is why I sent those two apes away.”

  He stared at her for a moment, but his eyes failed to catch light. “I can be no help to you, Duchess. You know that. I have lost my place. I have been . . . retired.” His laugh was a rheumy bark. “1 have retreated.
”

  “And so you sit and drink and feel sorry for yourself.” Utta cringed .at Merolanna’s words, wondering how even a woman like the duchess could talk to Avin Brone that way, with such contemptuous familiarity. “1 did not come here to help you with that, Brone, and I will thank you to sit up and pay attention. You know me. You know I would not come to you for help if I did not need it—I am not one of those women who runs weeping to a man at the first sign of trouble.”

  The specter of a smile flitted across Brone’s face. “True enough.”

  “Things may have seemed bad enough already,” Merolanna said, “with Briony and Barrick gone and the Tollys riding herd over us all—but I have news that is stranger than any of that. What do you know about the Rooftoppers?”

  For a moment Brone only stared at her as though she had suddenly started to sing and dance and strew flowers around the room. “Rooftoppers? The little people in the old stories?”

  “Yes, those Rooftoppers.” Merolanna watched him keenly. “You really do not know?”

  “On my honor, Merolanna, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Look at this, then, and tell me what you think.” She pulled a sheet of parchment from out of the bodice of her dress and handed it to him. He stared at it blankly for a moment, then reached up—not without some discomfort—to take down a candle from the shelf on the wall behind him so he could read:

  “It’s ... a letter from Olin,” he said at last.

  “It was the last letter from Olin, as you should know—the one that Kendrick received just before he was murdered. This is a page from it.”

  “The missing page? Truly? Where did you find it?”

  “So you know about it. Tell us.” Merolanna seemed a different woman now, more like the spymaster Brone used to be than the doddering old woman she called herself.

  “The entire letter was missing after Kendrick s murder,” he said. “Someone put it among my papers some days later, but a page was missing.” He scanned the parchment with growing excitement. “I think this is the page. Where did you find it?”

  “Ah, now that is a story indeed. Perhaps you had better have another drink, Brone,” Merolanna said. “Or maybe some water to clear your head would be better Understanding this is not going to be easy,and this is only the beginning.”

  “So the Rooftoppers ... are real?”

  “We saw them with our own eyes. If it had been only me you might be able to blame it on my age, but Utta was there.”

  “Everything she says is true, Lord Brone.”

  “But this is fantastic. How could they be here in the castle all these years and we never knew . .. ?”

  “Because they didn’t want us to know. And it is a big castle, after all, Brone. But here is the question. How am I going to find that piece of the moon, or whatever it is? Sister Utta thinks it is Chaven the little woman was talking about, but where is he? Do you know?”

  Brone looked around the small, cluttered room. There was no sign of the guards returning, but he lowered his voice anyway. “I do not. But I suspect he is alive. It would be easy enough for the Tollys to trump up some charge against him if all they wanted was an execution. I still have a few ... sources around the castle, and I hear Hendon’s men are still searching for him.”

  “Well, tell your sources to find him. As swiftly as possible. And it would not hurt to inquire into this moon-stone or whatever it is, either.”

  “But I don’t understand—why did these little people ask you? And you said they wanted to bargain with you. How? What did they offer?”

  “Ah.” Merolanna smiled, and it was almost fond this time. “Once a courtier, always a courtier, I see. Do you not believe they might have come to me because they recognized me as a person of kindness and good will?”

  Brone raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re right. They told me they would give me news of my child.”

  Avin Brone’s eyes went wide as cartwheels. “Your . . . your ... ?”

  “Child. Yes, that’s right. Don’t worry about Utta—she’s been told the whole dreadful story.”

  He looked at her with a face gone pale. “You told her . .. ?”

  “You’re not speaking very well, today, Brone. I fear the drink is doing you damage. Yes, I told her of my adultery with my long-dead lover.” She turned to Utta. “Brone already knows, you see. I have few confidantes in the castle, but he has long been one of them. He was the one who arranged for the child to be fostered.” She turned back to Brone. “I told Barrick and Briony, also.”

  “You what?”

  “Told them, the poor dears. They had a right to know. “You see, on the day of Kendrick’s funeral, I saw the child. My child.”

  Brone could only shake his head again. “Surely, Merolanna, one of us is going mad.”

  “It isn’t me. I thought for a time it must be, but I think I know better now. Tell me, then—what are you going to do?”

  “Do? About what?”

  “All of this. About finding Chaven and discovering why the fairies took my little boy.” She saw the look on Avin Brone s face. “Oh, I didn’t tell you about that, did I?” She quickly related the words of Queen Upsteeplebat and the oracular Ears. “Now, what are you going to do?”

  Brone seemed dazed. “I ... I can inquire quietly again after Chaven’s whereabouts, I suppose, but the trail has probably long gone cold.”

  “You can do more than that. You can help Utta and myself make our way to the camp of those fairy-people, those ... what are they called? Qar? We’ve always called them the Twilight Folk, I don’t know why everyone has to change. In any case, I want to go to them. After all, they are only on the other side of the bay.”

  Now it was Utta’s turn to be astonished. “Your Grace, what are you saying? Go out to the Qar? They are murderous creatures—they have killed hundreds of your people.”

  The duchess flapped her hands in dismissal of Utta’s concern. “Yes, I’m sure they are terrible, but if they won’t tell me where my son is then I don’t much care what they do with me. I want answers. Why steal my child? Why put me through year upon year of torture, only to send him back as young as the day he was taken? I saw him, you know, at Kendrick’s funeral. I thought I’d truly gone mad. And why should this happen now? It has something to do with all this other nonsense, mark my words.”

  “You’re .. . you’re really certain you saw him?” Utta asked.

  “He was my child.” Merolanna’s face had gone chilly, hard. “Would you fail to recognize your revered Zoria if she appeared in your chapel? I saw him—my poor, dear little boy.” She turned back to Brone. “Well?”

  He took a deep, ragged breath, then let it out. “Merolanna . . . Duchess . . . you mistake me for someone who still wields some power, instead of a broken old warhorse who has been beaten out to pasture.”

  “Ah. So that is how it is?” She turned to Sister Utta. “You may go, dear. If you will do me the kindness of coming to my chambers this afternoon perhaps we may talk more then. We have much to decide. In the meantime,

  I have a little—persuasion to do here.” She tinned a sharp eye toward Brone. “And tell that page waiting in the hall outside that when I’m done, his master will need a bath and something to eat. The count has work to do.”

  Utta went out, awed and a little frightened by Merolanna’s strength and determination. She was going to bend Brone to her will somehow, there seemed little doubt, but would that force of character be enough when it came time to deal with all their enemies—with cruel Hendon Tolly, or the immortal and alien Twilight People?

  Suddenly the castle seemed no longer any kind of refuge to Utta, but only a cold box of stone sitting in the middle of a cold, cold world.

  “Don’t I know you?” the guard asked Tinwright. He took a step closer and pushed his round, stubbled face close to the poet’s own.”Wasn’t I going to smash your skull in?”

  Matt Tinwright’s knees were feeling a bit wobbly. As if things weren’t bad
enough already, this was indeed the same guard who had objected to Tinwright having a little adventure with his lady friend some months back in an alley behind The Badger’s Boots. “No, no, you must be thinking of someone else,” he said, trying to smile reassuringly. “But if there’s anything else I can do for you, other than having my skull smashed . . .”

  “Leave him be,” said the other guard with more amusement than sympathy. “If Lord Tolly’s got it in for him, they’ll do worse to him soon than you could ever imagine. Besides, he might want this fellow unmarked.”