Qinnitan regained her balance and waited until the man took his hand off her to grab at Pigeon, then she turned and ran as fast her unsteady legs would carry her, straight toward the edge of the dock, not slowing even at a shout from her captor. The planks were wet and she almost slipped and tumbled into the water, but managed to stop herself by grabbing at a post. She held onto it, swaying, then raised her hand as the man began to walk toward her, dragging Pigeon behind him.
“No!” she said with as much strength as she could muster, the word a harsh croak in her sea-roughened throat. “No. If you take another step before you hear me out, I’ll throw myself in. I’ll swim for the bottom and drink in so much ocean I’ll be dead before you reach me.”
He paused, the look of rage on his unexceptional face changing to something else, something colder and more calculating.
“I know I can’t get away from you,” she said. “Let the boy go and I’ll do what you want. Try to bring him along and I’ll kill myself and you can take my body to the autarch instead.”
“I make no bargains,” said the nameless man.
“Pigeon, run away!” Qinnitan shouted. “Go on, run. He won’t come after you. Run far away and hide.”
The boy only stared at her, the shock of his injuries changing into something much more heartbreaking. The man still held his wrist. Pigeon shook his head.
“Go!” she said. “Otherwise he’ll only keep hurting you to make me do what he wants. Run away!”
The nameless man looked from the boy to her. He bent and picked up a piece of coarse rope that lay in haphazard loops on the dock like an exhausted snake. “Tie one end around your waist and I will let the boy go.” He flipped a coil of the rope toward her.
“Pigeon, move back,” she said as she bent to pick it up, but the boy only stared at her, his face full of helpless misery. “Move back!” She turned to the man. “When he is at the edge of the dock by those steps, I’ll tie it around my waist. I swear as an acolyte of the Hives of Nushash.”
The man actually laughed, a harsh rasp of amusement. Something was different about him, she realized for the first time—something odd, as though he had lost a bit of his stony outer armor. He was still terrifying, though.
The man nodded. “Go ahead, then.” He called over his shoulder to Pigeon. “Run, child. Once I see that rope tied, if you are still on the dock I will cut off the rest of your fingers.”
Pigeon shook his head again, violently, but Qinnitan thought it was less in negation than in desperation. “Go away!” she shouted. A few people at the other end of the dock turned, their attention finally distracted from the fire in the harbor. “I cannot live with your suffering, Pigeon. Please—it’s the best thing you can do for me. Go!”
The boy hesitated half a dozen heartbeats longer, then burst into tears and turned and ran away across the broad dock, his bare feet banging on the planks. Qinnitan considered throwing herself into the cold green water again, but whether it was the horror of nearly drowning earlier or the feeling that she had somehow changed what lay before her, if only a little, she tied the rope around her waist and then let herself be pulled toward the nameless man. Pigeon, she was relieved to see, was no longer in sight.
The only person left in this world who loved me, she thought. Gone now. Qinnitan let the man lead her off like an animal going to holy sacrifice, away from the sparking chaos of the harbor and back into the shadowed alleys that ran between the narrow buildings clustered beside the docks of Agamid.
19
Dreams of Lightning and Black Earth
“One Deep Ettin killed with hot oil and dragged from its tunnel at Northmarch was more than twice the height of a man. King Lander later brought the bones back to Syan as a trophy.The monster’s hand was said to have been as large as Lander’s great shield.”
—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”
SHE WAS DIGGING DESPERATELY through dark earth, but every time she caught a glimpse of her twin brother’s pale, sleeping face he sank farther into the soil and out of her reach.
Once or twice she actually managed to touch his garments before he slid deeper into the ground, but no matter how hard she worked or how fast she threw aside the dirt she could not catch up to him. Barrick seemed alive but unaware of her, writhing as though trapped in a frightening dream. She called to him over and over but he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer.
She touched something at last and her fingers curled in the damp cloth of her brother’s shirt, but when she braced herself and pulled up hard, what appeared out of the black loam like the cap of a mushroom was not her brother’s pallid features but those of Ferras Vansen. Shocked and startled, she let go, but as the soldier disappeared back into the dirt the earth beneath her abruptly collapsed as well. She fell down into smothering, gritty dark.
She was in a tunnel, bits of white roots worming down from the rocky soil above her head. A flash of silver now appeared ahead of her—just a glimmer, but enough for her to recognize the thing she had chased before . . . in another . . .
When? She couldn’t remember. But she knew it was true, and knew that the silvery thing had eluded her once more. She was determined it would not happen again. Still, although she scrambled after it as quickly as she could, she was not meant for traveling on all fours while the thing she chased clearly was: it remained always a turn ahead of her, giving her only glimpses of a pale, fluttering, brushlike tail.
Then she stumbled and bumped against the wall. The tunnel fell in on her and Briony Eddon woke up.
She shook her head, disconcerted to find she was wearing a heavy headdress—why would she wear such a thing to bed? Briony opened her eyes to find herself in her sitting room. Her ladies were sewing and talking quietly among themselves. She had fallen asleep sitting up, in midday, and probably drooled on herself as well like some ancient crone.
Her friend Ivgenia was watching her with a little smile on her face. Briony hurriedly wiped at her chin. “How terrible I am, how rude!” she said, sitting up straight. “I must have dozed off. Why do you look at me so, Ivvie? Did I say something terrible in my sleep?”
“Oh, Highness, no.” The smile widened. “Poor thing. Too many late nights.”
“You’re teasing me. It was only one late night—and it was the last night of Greater Zosimia. You are the one always telling me I should go out and be seen by the people of the court.”
“And you were seen. And you even danced! No one will ever again criticize you for holding yourself aloof, my dear.”
“Danced? ” Briony winced a little. She had intended no such thing, but the revelries had come at the end of a long, tiring day and she had clearly taken at least one cup of wine too many. “You make it sound terrible. Did I make a fool of myself ?”
Ivvie smiled again. “You attracted much attention, but it was the sort many of the other girls envied, I think.”
“Stop. You are cruel.”
“We shall see. Your secretary has a few things for you to look at.”
“What? ” She really did feel terribly thick-headed. These nights of poor sleep and strange dreams—forests, digging, dark tunnels full of roots—were clearly taking a toll on her. Still, that was no excuse for playing the fool.
Feival Ulian had been standing in the doorway with his arms folded on his chest. He had taken to court life very quickly: no other secretary or cleric in Broadhall dressed so well or so colorfully. “Have we finished our little beauty nap?” he asked. “Because there are several messages awaiting your reply—and a few other things as well.” He rolled his eyes. “One of the packages is addressed to ‘The Lovely Dancing Princess’—I suppose that’s you.”
“Oh, dear. You’d better let me see it.” She took the small fabric-covered box from Feival. “What is it?”
Ivgenia giggled. “You goose! Open it and find out.”
“Is it a gift? It says it’s from Lord Nikomakos.” She fiddled it open and drew out a small velvet bag.
?
??He’s an earl’s son—the one with the yellow hair you spent so much time dancing with last night.” Ivgenia laughed. “Surely your Royal Highness didn’t drink so much wine that you can’t remember him at all?”
“I do remember. He reminded me of Kendrick, my . . . my brother. But he wouldn’t stop talking about his hawks. Hawk, hawk, hawk . . . Why should he send me . . .”—she lifted it out of the bag—“Zoria preserve me, why should he send me a gold bracelet?” It was a lovely thing, if a trifle gaudy, the kind of ornate work that she seldom wore by choice—a twining white rose, the blossoms picked out in pale gems. “Oh, merciful goddess, are those diamonds? What does he want from me?” She was horrified—she would never drink wine in public again. Instead of sounding out the nobles who might be sympathetic to her family’s cause and could help put gentle pressure on King Enander, as she had meant to, she had apparently made a spectacle of herself to shame the worst provincial.
“Are you really such an idiot, Highness?” Ivvie demanded.
“I mean, certainly I know what he wants, and I suppose I’m flattered, but . . .” She stared fretfully at the bracelet. “I must send it back.” She thought she could actually hear Feival pursing his lips in disgust. “Are all of these gifts from him?”
“From him and others,” her friend said.
“Then I must send them all back.”
“Truly? All of them? ” Ivgenia held out a large parcel wrapped in cloth. “Even this one from Prince Eneas himself . . . ?”
Briony took it and opened it. “It’s a book—A Chronicle of the Life of Iola, Queen of Syan, Tolos, and Perikal. Of course—the prince and I spoke of her the other day.”
“How romantic,” Feival said with a certain asperity.
“So are you going to keep it?”
“It is a very thoughtful gift, Ivvie—he knows I am interested in such things. Iola lived in secrecy for several years when young because her family had been usurped during the War of Three Favors.”
“Which means you want to keep it, Princess. What of the bracelet? Do you still mean to send it back?”
“Of course. I hardly know the man.”
“So you will keep a book and send back a jeweled bracelet? Do you wonder why half the court thinks you have set your cap at Eneas and the other half thinks you mad?”
It stung. There was something in what Ivvie said, of course—Briony did have some feelings for the prince, and it had been clever of him to give her such a gift instead of something merely pretty. Eneas understood that she was not like other girls.
Which made what she planned to do to him even more terrible.
“What about these others? There are half a dozen more letters and gifts.” Ivgenia held out a carved wooden box. “This is pretty.”
“I don’t want any of these.” Briony shook her head. “You open it.”
“Truly? May I keep what’s in it . . . ?”
“Ivvie! You are terrible! Very well, I might as well know—what is it?”
“It’s . . . empty,” said her friend, but her voice sounded odd. “Oh. I’ve hurt myself. On the clasp.” Ivgenia held up her finger to show Briony a single drop of blood like a carnelian bead. A moment later the girl swayed and then fell heavily to the floor.
Briony didn’t like the formality of Broadhall’s Great Garden at the best of times, but today it felt utterly barren and oppressive.
It wasn’t the size, although it covered many acres, but the tamed, controlled nature of the place. None of the hedges or ornamental trees were taller than a person’s head, and most were far shorter; between them lay only geometric arrangements of low box hedges and careful, concentric flower gardens. You could stand in any part of the gardens and see almost all the rest, including who shared the garden with you. Perhaps the Tessians liked it that way, but she preferred a little more solitude, especially now, when it felt like malicious eyes watched her everywhere she went. The much smaller residence garden back home had several little hills and stands of tall trees that effectively divided the space into many separate locations—a world in miniature, as her father had once called it. (He was talking sourly of how parts of it had been allowed to go to seed, but what he said was still true.)
“I am sorry to keep you waiting, Princess.” As Eneas emerged from the back of the scriptorium Briony had a momentary view of a legion of beetle-black scribing priests sitting side by side at the long tables, hard at work. “And even more sorry to keep you waiting at such an unhappy time. There is no way I can express my sorrow and shame that such things should happen in my father’s court—and twice! Please, how is the Lady e’Doursos?”
“She will live, thank the gods, that is what the physician told me . . . but she will be a long while getting better.” Briony fought back tears for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last few hours. She was so tired she felt as though she were made from frail glass. “It was a near thing. I sat up with her all the night as she passed in and out of her fever. I thought many times we would lose her, but it seems the sharpened piece of the clasp only barely pierced her, or it might have been the poison was weak.” Briony still could not guess who had tried to murder her this time. Surely Jenkin Crowel had been frightened out of trying such tricks again, but if it hadn’t been the Tollys’ envoy then who could be behind it?
“We must praise the Three Brothers for that blessed bit of good fortune, then.” Eneas offered Briony his arm. “Will you walk with me? I am mightily tired of the sound of pens scratching. I have been sending letters to every garrison between here and Hierosol about the autarch’s attack. A damnable amount of work.” He colored a little. “Not that I had to do all the copying myself, thank the gods!” He was speaking swiftly now, as though afraid to let silence fall. “I must get one of those writing machines the pamphleteers and poets use—or stamping machine, I suppose it should be called, for they work by stamping out letters and words as a royal seal stamps signs into wax. It would certainly speed the giving of orders to our field commanders . . .” He shook his head. “Listen to me, prattling on when you have just survived an attack on your life!”
“An attack that harmed me not at all.”
He frowned. “You say that as though you wish it had succeeded.”
Briony shook her head, although even such small movements felt nearly beyond her strength. “I don’t wish that, Prince Eneas, of course I don’t. But I feel terrible that others should suffer on my behalf.”
“You are an admirable woman, Briony Eddon. I promise that I will do everything I can to keep you safe. I will send more of my guards. There are no more loyal men in all Syan.”
“I’m sure of that, Highness,” she said. “But even the finest soldiers are scant protection against poison.”
He seemed more upset than Briony was herself. “Still, we must do something. This is an outrage, Princess—a deadly insult to my father’s name and throne. Here in our own court!” He turned then, stopping them in the middle of the path, and took her right hand in both of his. “And it is especially disheartening to me, Briony Eddon, because I hold you in such high regard. There is nothing I would not do for you.”
She blinked. His hands were warm. He had taken his gloves off.
“Surely you are not surprised.” The prince looked troubled. “Was I so foolish as to be completely wrong when I supposed you might also have some feelings for me?”
Briony held her breath for a moment. She had been working toward this moment for weeks, but now she was confused. Eneas was admirable, kind, and clever. Everyone knew he was brave. And, as she looked at him now, she saw his strong, even features and knew that although he was no godlike beauty, any woman would be glad to have him even were he not the prince and heir of mighty Syan. But he was. And she needed his position and his power desperately to save her people, her family’s throne. So why did she suddenly feel confounded and tongue-tied?
“I have struck you silent, Princess. You are not the type to be silent in the presence of men. I fear that I have
offended you in some way.”
“No. No, your Royal Highness—Prince Eneas—you have done me great honor.” For a moment her imposture and the truth of her heart were so close she could not tell one from the other. “I think a great deal of you. I think you are the most admirable man in this whole great kingdom . . .”
He gently tugged his hand away from her, disguising his unhappiness a little by pushing his dark hair back from his forehead. “ ‘But,’ you are about to say. But there is someone else to whom your heart has already been given—maybe your troth even plighted in the temple.”
“No!” But it wasn’t completely untrue—she did have feelings for someone else, as confusing and inappropriate and even ridiculous as those feelings might be. But that person could not save her kingdom. Eneas could—if any human agency could perform such a task. “No, it’s not that. It’s just that . . . I cannot let myself have feelings for anyone, even someone like you, though you are the dream of any sensible woman. I cannot.” She tried to pull away, caught in the moment like a leaf scudding on the wind.
“But why?” Eneas would not let her go. He was strong. He would be masterful for anyone, she sensed—especially any woman—who wanted to be mastered. “Why can’t you let your heart lead you?”
She had planned just such a moment—imagined it almost gleefully, as a hunter might dream of the moment the stag stood exposed and unaware on a hillside, breast vulnerable to the killing shaft. Now that it had come, though, it filled her with unease. How could she take advantage of a good man this way, even to save her family’s throne? How could she pretend to love him just to gain his help?
Even worse, what if she was not pretending?
“I . . . I must think,” she said. “I had not expected anything like this. I had hoped to find allies here in your father’s court against my family’s enemies, the usurping Tollys. I had not expected to f ind . . . someone I could care for. I must think.” She looked off across the ordered rows of the garden. Distant figures acted out their own dramas, too far away to be recognized—each of them, herself included, as helpless in their actions as characters created out of air and smoke by Nevin Hewney or Finn Teodoros, ideas committed to paper and performed for the price of a night’s food and lodging. How had she come to such a strange pass? Was she the player or the thing being played?