Now it was her turn to blush. Shaso had taught her too well: when a hand encircled her arm she threw it off without thinking. The first time they played the scene she had pinched Pilney’s wrist hard enough to make him gasp. She suspected it was one of the reasons he had kept his distance.
“And where is Master Birch? Dowan, I know your knees pain you, but when Volios is struck down by Zmeos, the earth shakes-that is what the stories tell. You cannot let yourself down so carefully.”
The giant frowned, but nodded. Briony felt sorry for him. Perhaps she could find some spare cloth and make him thicker pads for his large, bony knees.
Teodoros went on to change much of the blocking at the beginning of the siege to obscure the fact that Feival and Hewney had to scramble out of their Zuriyal and Zmeos costumes and into armor, then appear from the tiring-room to portray the gods and demigods Perin was leading against the moon god’s fortress. He changed a few of Feival’s lines in the fourth act when the youth portrayed Zuriyal, the goddess who was Zoria’s jailer while her brothers Zmeos and Khors fought against Perin and the besiegers.
Teodoros was also making a few changes to shift the balance in Khors’ death scene away from Pilney, •who had a tendency to grow quietest when he should be loudest, and to give most of the speech to Hewney (who would “milk it as ‘twere a Marrinswalk heifer,” as Teodoros put it) when the tavernkeeper Bedoyas stuck his head out into the alley and inquired whether they were actually going to perform their miserable play, or had they just concocted a complex but novel way to rob him?
“Zosim, Kupilas, and Devona of the Harp, gladden the hearts of those who will watch us,” said Teodoros as he always did, his hands on his chest. “And off we go!”
Things went smoothly enough in the first three acts. The tavern yard was very full but the day was gray and cold, and the torches burning brightly on either side of the stage made it hard for Briony to make out much more of the crowd than dim faces watching from under hoods and hats. From what she could see, they seemed to be a slightly more prosperous group than the company had drawn at other stops, but they were still mostly laboring folk, not lords and ladies. A few companies of youths (prentices of some sort enjoying a drunken afternoon’s roistering) had set themselves up in the front row, where they whistled loudly and shouted rude remarks at Feival, Briony, and anyone else dressed as a woman. The fact that these were holy goddesses they were eyeing so lasciviously did not seem to trouble them much.
Briony herself was doing better than she had feared she would. It was not as hard to remember the lines as she once had thought—simply speaking them over and over, day after day, made them as familiar as the names of people she saw often, and the lattice of other player’s parts helped to hold her together during the few times her memory slipped. And the story itself was exciting—you could see it in the crowd’s reaction, their groans of worry and cheers of pleasure as the action turned first this way, then that. When Perin led his forces against Khors’ great castle—the wagon serving not just as a dressing-room, but as the moon siege itself, with Pilney stand ing atop it shouting defiance—the audience whooped, and a few seemed as though they were considering climbing onto the stage and joining in the assault. When Perin’s son Volios was killed by Khors, and Dowan Birch toppled as heavily as the tree for which he was named, blood running down his belly from between his clasped hands, Briony thought she actually heard a few sobs.
It was in the fourth act, as the virgin goddess stole away from the distracted Zuriyal and escaped the castle, only to become lost in a whirling snowstorm (with fluttering rags on sticks and the moan of the wind-wheel standing in for Nature) that things suddenly went wrong. One moment Briony was speaking her lines,
“The snow! It bites like Zmeos’ cruel bees, And shrinks to pebbled hide my uncloaked skin!
I shall don these clothes the serving boy left.
They shame my maidenhood, source of my woes,
But will keep me quick when cold would kill me ...”
The next instant she found herself staring into a diminishing tunnel of light, the torches and the overcast sky all swirling together as the blackness rushed in from the sides. She swayed, then managed to get her feet under her, and although the world still sparkled queerly, as though fireflies surrounded her, she managed to finish her speech.
“... But warmer though I be, still lost am I, And without food, then—cold or warm,—will die.”
A few moments later, when she should have gently sunk to her knees, she found herself instead doing what Finn had asked of Dowan Birch, crashing to the stage with a thump. Again the world darkened. She could hear nothing, not even the spinning, burlap-covered drum that made the noise of wind, could feel nothing but an overwhelming sensation of being close to Barrick—an awareness more alive than any mere scent or sound, a sense of actually being inside her brother’s frightened, confused thoughts.
Out of the darkness crept a terrible shape, a starvation-thin shadow with a gray, corpselike face. At first, in her frightened bafflement, she thought that it was death itself coming for her. Then she realized she must be seeing something through her twin brother’s eyes—an emotionless mask with glowing moonstone gaze, gliding nearer and nearer. It was not Death, but she knew it was something just as final and much less merciful.
She tried to scream her brother’s name, but as in a hundred nightmares she could not make any real sound. The ghastly gray face came closer, so terrifying that the blackness collapsed on her again.
“Zoria!” said a loud voice in her ear. “Here she lies, my virtuous cousin! Are you dead, sweet daughter of the Skyfather? Who has done this terrible thing to you?”
It was Feival, she realized, standing over her and improvising lines, trying to give her time to get up. She opened her eyes to see the young player’s concerned features. What had happened to her? That deathly, nightmare face ... !
“Can you walk, Cousin?” Feival asked, trying to get an arm beneath her so he could lift her. “Shall I help you?” With his mouth close to her ear, he whispered, “What are you playing at, girl?”
She shook off his hand and clambered unsteadily to her feet. She could feel the tension that had fallen over the company and audience alike; the latter were not certain yet that something was wrong, but they were beginning to suspect. She couldn’t think about Barrick. Not right now. This was like her life back at home, something she knew: she must put on her mask.
“Well, noble . . .” She swayed, took an uneven breath. “Well, noble cousin, kind Zosim,” she began again. “I can walk now that ... that you are here to guide me out from these unfriendly winds.”
She could hear Finn Teodoros sigh with relief at the back of the stage, half a dozen yards away.
The last few bystanders were milling about in the tavern yard, finishing their food and drink. A handful of drunken prentices talked in overloud voices about which goddess they would father kiss. Estir and Pedder Makewell had gone inside with Bedoyas the tavern keeper to sort out the afternoon’s take, while Teodoros, Hewney, and the rest celebrated the success of the afternoon’s production with a few pitchers of ale. Briony still fell shaky. She sat by herself on the edge of the stage, holding a mug without drinking and staring at her shoes. What had happened to her? It had been like nothing she had ever felt before—not even like seeing Barrick in the mirror that time, but like being Barrick. And who or what was that ghastly gray . . . thing?
She felt bile climb into her throat. What could she do about it, in any case? Nothing! She didn’t even know where he was. It was like a curse—she could do nothing to help her own brother! Nothing, nothing, nothing ...
“Well, my lady, I see you took my advice after all.”
For an instant she only stared—the voice was familiar, but although she knew the dark-skinned face, she could not at first recall . . .
“Dawet!” She slid off the stage, almost spilling her ale. For a moment it was such a surprise to see someone she knew that she nearly threw
her arms around him. Then she remembered that they had met because Dawet dan-Faar had come as an envoy from Ludis, to negotiate on behalf of her father’s kidnapper.
He smiled, perhaps at her visible confusion. “So you remember me. Then you may also remember that I suggested you see something of the world, my lady. I did not think you would take my advice quite so much to heart. You have become a stage-player now?”
She suddenly realized others were watching, not all of them from her troupe. “Quiet,” she whispered. “I am not supposed to be a girl, let alone a princess.”
“Passing as a boy?” he murmured. “Oh, I hardly think anyone would believe that. But what are you doing here in such unlikely guise and company?”
She stared at him, suddenly mistrustful. “I will ask the same of you. Why are you not in Hierosol? Have you left Ludis Drakava’s service?”
He shook his head. “No, my lady, although many wiser than me have already done so ...” He looked up and past her, his eyes narrowing. “But what is this?”
The tavern keeper Bedoyas and both Makewells were coming across the tavern yard toward the company, but it was their escort—a dozen guardsmen wearing the crests of city reeves—that had caught Dawet’s eye. For a moment Briony only stared, then realized that she of all of them had the most to lose if captured or arrested for some reason. She eyed the nearest ways out of the yard but it was hopeless: the guards had already surrounded them.
A heavy-faced soldier wearing an officer’s sash across his tunic stepped forward. “You of the players’ company known as Makewell’s Men, you are remanded in arrest to His Majesty the king’s custody.” The captain saw Dawet and scowled. “Ah. You, too, fellow. I was told to look for a southern darkling, and here you are.”
“You would be wise to watch your tongue, sir,” said Dawet with smooth venom, but he made no move to resist.
“Arrested?” Finn Teodoros’ voice had an anxious squeak to it. “Under what charge?”
“Spying, as you well know,” said the captain. “Now you will be introduced to His Majesty’s hospitality, which I think will be a little less to your liking than that of Master Bedoyas. And entertain no thoughts of daring escape, you players—this is no play. I have half a pentecount more of soldiers waiting outside.”
“Spying?” Briony turned to Dawet. “What are they talking about?” she whispered.
“Say nothing,” he told her under his breath.”No matter what happens or what they tell you. They will try to trick you.”
She put her head down and let herself be herded with the others. Estir Makewell and young Pilney were both weeping. Others might have been, but it was hard to tell, because rain had started to fall.
“I’m afraid I cannot go with you,” Dawet said loudly.
Briony turned, thinking he spoke to her. He had drawn himself back against a wall of the courtyard, a knife suddenly twinkling in his gloved fingers. “What are you doing?” she demanded, but Dawet did not even look at her.
“Enough of your nonsense, black,” said the captain. “Were you Hil-iometes himself you could not overcome so many.”
“I swear on the fiery head of Zosim Salamandros that you have the wrong man,” said Dawet. One of the guards stepped toward him, but the Tuani man had the blade up and cocked for throwing so quickly the soldier froze as if snake-addled.
The captain sighed. “Swear by the Salamander, do you?” He stared at Dawet dan-Faar like a householder trying to decide whether to buy a lump of expensive meat that was only going in the stew, anyway. “You two, you heard him,” he said, gesturing to a pair of guards standing nearby, short spears at the ready. “Deal with him. I have better things to do than waste any more time here.”
i
The two heavily-armored men lunged forward and Briony let out a muffled shriek of alarm.. Dawet, handicapped by the much shorter reach of his dagger, feinted as if to throw it, then turned, leaped, and scrambled over the courtyard wall. The two guards hesitated only a moment, then hurried out through the yard’s back entrance. A few other soldiers moved as if to follow, but the captain waved them back.
“Those two are canny fellows,” he told his men. “Don’t worry, they will deal with that Xandy fool.”
“Unless the darkling can fly like Strivos himself, you’re right to call him foolish,” the tavernkeeper Bedoyas chuckled. “That alley’s a dead end.” Briony wanted to hit the man in his fat face.
But to her surprise, the guards appeared a moment later without Dawet. They were smiling nervously, as if pleased by their own failure. “He’s gone, sir. Got clean away.”
“He did, did he?” The commander nodded grimly. “We’ll talk about this later.”
The rest of the guards shoved Briony and the other players back into line again and led them out of the inn, marching them toward the stronghold in the great palace at the city’s center. Bad enough to have lost a throne, but now even her humble, counterfeit life as a player was in ruins. Briony’s eyes blurred with tears, though she tried hard to wipe them away. As they crossed the first bridge it seemed she walked through some place even stranger than the capital of a foreign land.
37. Silence
Thunder and his brothers at last found Pale Daughter wandering lost in the wilderness without her name or her memory. His honor satisfied, Thunder did not think any more upon her, but his brother Black Earth was unhappy with his wife, Evening Light, and their music had strayed out of sympathy. He sent her away and took Pale Daughter to be his wife. He gave her a new name,
Dawn, that she might not remember what had gone before. She was ever after silent, sitting beside him in the dark chambers beneath the ground, and if she remembered her child Crooked or her husband Silvergleam, she did not say.
—from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar’s Book of Regret
WHILE MATT TINWRIGHT PAUSED for breath and mopped his brow, Puzzle played a refrain on the lute. The tune was a little more sprightly than Tinwright would have liked, considering the seriousness of the subject matter, but he had finished his poem so late that the two had found little time to practice.
He nodded to the old jester, ready to begin again. Most of the courtiers, although not all, politely lowered their voices once more.
“At last Surazem came to birthing bed,” Tinwright declaimed, half-singing in the Syannese style now expected at court entertainments,
“As the Four Winds hovered to cool her brow,
Her sister, her semblance, stood at her head
Dark Onyena, bound by a sacred vow
Like oxen traced unwilling to the plow.
On high Sarissa her own infant son
Lay coldly dead ‘neath the pine’s snowy bough
Because Sveros cruelly had decreed that none
Should midwife one twin but the other one ...”
For long moments Tinwright could almost forget what was really happening—that almost no one was listening to the words he declaimed, that the rumble of talk and drunken laughter made it hard for even those few who wanted to hear, and that in any case there were darker, grimmer matters to think about than even the fall of gods—and could revel in the fact that for this moment, at least, he was presenting his verse before the entire royal court of Southmarch. His own verse!
“But now as Perin’s infant head appeared Surazem’s dark twin saw her time, and thieved
From out her sister’s belly, blood-besmeared,
That essence which the world has so long grieved
For Onyena with it three more conceived,
Repaying cruelly the death of her own,
A fated tapestry which first she weaved
As her sister in childbirth’s pain did groan
And thus were the seeds of the gods’ war sown ...”
One of the few people paying attention was the man who had commissioned the poem, Hendon Tolly himself, who frightened Tinwright in ways he had never even imagined possible. Another was the young woman Elan M’Cory, the object of Tinwright’s ow
n painful affection, to whom he had promised to bring poison tonight.