“Princess,” said Eneas when she had made her way over, “I am glad you’ve come. Weasel has an interesting tale to tell.”
Weasel, who was nearly as small as a boy and had the dark hair and complexion common to the southern islands below Devonis, did not look like an interested man so much as a worried and unhappy man who was doing his best to hide it. His fellow scouts, who, like him, wore shabby clothes so that together they looked more like a band of poachers than anything military, sat and listened silently as their chief reported.
“Dreadful many of them,” said Weasel. “Thousands, I would guess—ten thousand and perhaps more, and that does not count those who are barracked in the city itself. There are dozens of ships in the Southmarch mainland harbor, everything from cogs to three-masted, square-rigged warships, and several more galleases in the bay. They have besieged the castle—in the time we watched yesterday afternoon and early evening the cannons were firing almost continuously—and have breached the outwall at least twice, from the looks of it, but the defenders have made repairs. The cannons—by Volios Strongarm, what monsters they must be! We could not see them from where we stood, but they flamed like Mount Sarissa and made a sound like the end of the world.”
“And it is the autarch’s army?”
Weasel nodded. “The cursed Xixy falcon is everywhere, Highness. We never thought to see so many—it is like what was said of Hierosol.”
“And the Qar?” Briony asked.
“No sign of them.” The chief scout turned to his men. They nodded their agreement. “Perhaps those we saw were a wing of a retreating army.”
Eneas looked troubled. “Perhaps. But it makes little difference in any case. Ten thousand Xixians!”
“More, if the scouts are not mistaken,” said Lord Helkis. “If they are barracked in the town, perhaps as many as twice that. How many men could be billeted in the mainland town, Princess Briony?”
“Many.” How could Southmarch hope to stand up to so large an army? And if the autarch now controlled Brenn’s Bay, the last source of supply to the castle was closed off as well. “Were they fighting back?” she asked. “The castle folk?”
“Hard to tell, Ma’am.” Weasel couldn’t bring himself to look right at her, but spoke halfway between her and the prince. “We saw a few trails of smoke from the walls but they must have been small-bore guns. Nobody fool enough to be up there making a target of themselves just to shoot a few arrows, that’s certain.”
It was all Briony could manage not to ask questions to which she already knew the answers: if the autarch had so many men and so many weapons, the castle could not hold out for very long. Merolanna, Briony’s own lady’s maids Rose and Moina, Sister Utta, grumpy old Nynor—all of them were in terrible danger.
“We cannot hope to defeat such a force, Prince Eneas,” Helkis said. “The men will follow you anywhere you lead them, but their courage deserves better than a pointless death—even for the honor of ...” he gave Briony a carefully emotionless look,” . . . such a lady.”
“It is not my honor that brings me here, sir,” she began angrily, but Eneas lifted his hand.
“Peace, both of you. I promised Princess Briony my help and of course she will have it. But she does not expect me to be foolish with it, do you, Highness?”
“Of course not.” But she didn’t like the implication very much. Eneas and Lord Helkis seemed to have agreed already that there was nothing they could do against the autarch’s superior force.
Briony was too angry to stand listening attentively while the prince and his noble officers began to discuss what they would do next, most of which seemed to be no more than making a secure camp. It was clear that they would do nothing of any importance today, and maybe not for longer than that—if ever. She couldn’t blame them for not engaging the autarch’s forces directly, but surely they could begin planning to go around the southern army somehow. Surely there must be some way to relieve the castle?
She was standing before her tent, angrily sharpening her Yisti knives, when a tall young soldier approached her with worry obvious on his face. She waited, but he did not speak even when he had stopped only a few steps away.
“Yes?”
He swallowed. For all his size, he looked scarcely older than Briony herself. “Your pardon, Highness,” he said, which seemed to empty his lungs of air. He stood for another long moment before he had breath enough to begin again. “Someone . . . there’s someone . . . who wants to speak with you. Your Highness.”
She gave him a look that should have told him she wasn’t interested, but he was either too stupid or too frightened to understand. She sighed. “Who? Who would want to speak with me that I would also want to hear?”
Panic crept over his face as he tried to make sense of this.
“Oh, for the love of Zoria, just tell me what it is, soldier. Who wants me?”
“The merchant, Highness. Dard, the merchant.”
It took her a moment to remember who that was. “Ah. And how is it that you are carrying messages for a prisoner? For a servant of the autarch, no less?”
He swallowed again, hard. “Servant of ...?”
“How is it that you come bearing his messages? Did he slip you a coin?” She raised her eyebrow. “Ah. He did, didn’t he? I can’t imagine Eneas will think much of that.”
The boy’s eyes bulged with alarm. “My father’s dead,” he began, almost stuttering in his hurry to explain, “and my sister can’t be married without . . .”
She sheathed the blade she had been polishing and lifted her hand. “Enough. I do not much care, to tell the truth. Keep your coin and lead me to him.”
When the little merchant saw the tall soldier approaching the stockade with a companion, he walked away from the other prisoners and then made his way to the fence with the casual air of a man in no hurry.
“All right, soldier, you can go on your way,” Briony said. “Just tell me your name.”
“M-my n-n-name?” The stutter was quite serious now.
“I’ll keep silent about you taking money from a prisoner, but I may need a favor from you in return some day. What’s your name?”
“A-Avros. They call me ‘Little Avros.’ ” He shrugged. “Because I’m tall.”
“I see. Go on, then.”
The soldier was long gone by the time Dard reached the fence. Briony pulled out her smaller knife and began to clean her fingernails. “You bribed a soldier,” she said. “The prince won’t like that.”
“Surely you won’t tell,” Dard replied. “That poor lad, with his ugly sister trying to raise a dowry ...”
“Enough. What do you want?”
“I recognized you.”
Briony raised her eyes to look at him for a flat moment, then returned to examining her nails. “Everyone in this camp knows who I am. Did you waste my time just for that?”
“No, Princess, truly I didn’t. I want to bargain with you.”
“Bargain?” She looked from side to side. “Eneas now owns everything you had, merchant. What could you possibly have to bargain with? Especially with me?”
“Information.” He smiled. He did not have all his teeth, but those he had were very white and shiny. She was not impressed. “I know something that I think you would like to know.”
“And why should I not have Prince Eneas squeeze it from you like water from a cleaning rag?”
Dard was not intimidated. “Because you might not want him to know about it. But if you want me to tell him first, of course, I will ...”
She took a moment to finish cleaning under the nail of her smallest finger, then slipped the knife back in its hidden sheath. “And what do you want in return for this information, merchant?”
“Freedom. I can make back the money I lost on this venture in half a year—but not if I am a prisoner. Eneas can put the mercenaries to work, but he has no need for me and my colleagues. I was only trying to make a living, not take sides in a war.” He shrugged. “And I do not think this
will be a safe place to be for very long.”
Briony considered the man. What could he know that she would not want to share with Eneas? The fact that she could not think of anything did not make her feel more secure. “But even if I wished to make such a bargain, I have no power to do so. The prince of Syan is the master here.”
“Can you not . . . persuade him?” White teeth or no, his leer was disgusting.
Briony turned and walked away.
“Wait! Wait, my lady, I am sorry! I mistook the situation! Please, come back!” She turned and looked at him. Dard the Jar had sunk to his knees and now let his desperation show: “Please, Princess, I was a fool—forgive me. Just give me your word that you will do your best to honor our bargain and I will trust you. Will you do that? If my information helps you, promise you will speak to Eneas about my release and I will be satisfied. Your word is good enough for me.”
She was half-frightened, half-curious to hear what he considered information good enough to bargain with a princess. “Very well,” she finally said. “I promise that, if what you say is useful, I will speak with Eneas on your behalf.”
“Soon. Before there is any more fighting.”
“Soon, yes. Now, what is this news of yours?”
He looked from side to side, although there was not another soul within several dozen paces, then leaned close to the stockade fence. Briony moved as close as she could while staying out of the merchant’s reach—she was not going to be tricked into being anyone’s hostage.
“On the other side of the hills,” he said, “on the shore of Brenn’s Bay, lies the autarch’s camp.”
“I know that, merchant ...”
“But what you don’t know is that he has a prisoner—a royal prisoner.” Watching her face, he must have felt he had guessed right, because his expression became more confident. “Ah, I see you did not know. That prisoner is your father, Princess Briony—the autarch has your father, King Olin of Southmarch.”
12
Willow
“They traveled to Perikal and Ulos and even savage Akaris, where they saw Xandian wind-priests in the marketplace and heard the whine of their pagan song, but the Orphan stopped his ears and eyes against such godless hymns ...”
—from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”
SOMETIMES IT SEEMED that the guns would never stop again. After days of a curious, unexpected peace, the Xixian attack had finally begun and had not stopped since. The southern ships slipped up and down Brenn’s Bay, their cannons blasting the tops of the city walls and smashing rooftops and spires into a deadly rain of whirling rubble that killed people from above as suddenly as Perin’s lightning. Much of the roof of Wolfstooth Spire, the city’s tallest tower, was already gone. Larger Xixian guns hammered away at the outer wall all day long from their emplacement on the hill behind mainland Southmarch, and once or twice every hour the autarch’s mightiest cannons, the Crocodiles, roared their terrible roars. The Crocodiles fired cannonballs so big it took dozens of men just to lift one, carved boulders which could punch holes in even the thickest ramparts with just a couple of landed shots. Southmarch’s defenders had to rebuild the most critical parts of the great outer wall every night, gangs of men working feverishly in near-darkness before the autarch’s cannons came back to fiery life in the morning and began the assault all over again.
It was obvious even to Sister Utta, who knew very little of war, that the castle could not resist the assault for very long—hundreds of Southmarch folk had already died, and many hundreds more lay wounded. Already Xixian soldiers in conical helmets were running boldly at the base of the walls, shrieking up at the defenders like mad things, daring them to waste precious arrows and rifle-balls. At some point there would be too few hands available to rebuild the broken sections of wall and the autarch’s soldiers would come pouring through. Utta knew she would have to make a final decision on whether to let herself be taken or to violate the Zorian order’s prohibition against suicide—she certainly did not expect to be treated as gently by the Xixian soldiers as she had been by the Qar.
Utta made the sign of the Three as she stepped out of the covered passage into the long colonnade that ran along the western side of the residence gardens. The morning sun was nearly visible above the ramparts, which meant that the lull in the cannonade would end soon and the thunderous, smashing attack would begin anew. It was never entirely safe now anywhere in the castle, but in these small, temporary silences there was at least the illusion of lessened danger. Utta was happy to grasp at whatever kindly untruths she could find, since even the most obviously false hopes were in scant supply these days.
Avin Brone had set himself up in a suite of chambers beside the guard barracks. The Zorian sister walked across the open spaces as quickly as possible, trying to stay away from the taller buildings, often the first targets of the morning barrage because they were the first things that caught the light. The ruins of the Tower of Winter gave testimony to that: it had been largely destroyed less than a tennight ago and the upper half of it still lay across the buildings crushed in its fall like the corpse of some serpentine monster.
It was a sort of miracle in itself, Utta recognized, that Avin Brone was still free, let alone taking a major part in the castle’s defense. In other circumstances, it would have been interesting to note how the power ebbed and flowed in Southmarch: Berkan Hood and the castle’s other defenders had begun to realize that they were largely on their own, that Hendon Tolly was not going to step up and lead the resistance to the siege, so Brone was useful again.
She found him in the chamber he had made his meeting room, his painful leg up on a stool. Brone was attended by three or four worried-looking guardsmen—none of them old enough to be wearing armor, Utta thought disapprovingly, let alone risking their lives in defense of Hendon Tolly. But after the destruction in the farmer Kolkan’s field and the murderous fight against the Qar, perhaps as few as a thousand men remained in the castle who were even capable of lifting a weapon.
“Lord Brone,” she said. “May I have a moment?”
He looked up at her, frowning. His guards, or squires, or whatever these spotty-faced boys were supposed to be, did their best to seem perturbed by her intrusion as well. “What?”
“I’m Sister Utta, Lord Brone. Do you remember? We have met before.”
His beard was almost completely gray now, although some of that might have been the ubiquitous dust from shattered stone and plaster that filled the air these days. It took a moment before he recognized her, then his preoccupied frown turned into another kind of frown altogether.
“Yes, Sister. Forgive me, but I am grievously occupied. What can I do for you?”
“Not for me, Lord Brone. For the duchess. She asks you to come to her.”
“Merolanna? But ...” He shook his head in irritation. “I cannot walk—not well. And in case you and the duchess have not noticed, we are at war with a cruel enemy. Ask her to forgive my discourtesy, Sister, but it is not convenient just now.” He tried to turn back to the maps of the city spread on the table before him, but a residue of guilt made him look up. “Truly, it just cannot be. Not today.”
“I will tell her that, Lord Brone. She will be disappointed, of course. She said to tell you that she wishes to talk to you of a matter that you alone know about. That you alone know about.” Utta had no idea what this was supposed to mean, but the duchess had been very firm.
“Don’t let him say no,” Merolanna had told her. “He will try. Don’t let him.”
“Truly, I cannot, Sister. It is not the right time,” Brone said, but with less certainty than before. He looked flushed and weary, and certainly no one would argue that he was in the best of health himself. Utta felt bad for him, but not so bad that she did not bring up her next weapon.
“Very well, but I fear to give her this news,” she said. “She is not very strong.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Merolanna? I have
never heard that said of her before.”
“You have not seen her since we were held prisoners by the Qar. She is not the woman she was.”
“The man I sent to interview you both on your return said nothing of this.” But he looked stricken. What kind of lord constable could he have made, Utta wondered, with such a soft heart? Or was she mistaking one emotion for another?
“Come and see for yourself, Lord Brone. She is not well. Our captivity was hard on her, and she is not a young woman.” Utta did not feel too bad about applying this pressure to the count of Landsend. She only wished that she were not telling the truth.
He groaned. “I will need a sedan chair.”
She tried to be firm, although seeing the swollen sausage of his foot she was feeling a little sorry for him. “You are an important man, Count Avin. I am sure even in such days as these, one will be made available for you. Or Merolanna could send you her carriage, if a way can be cleared through the rubble.”
Merolanna had propped herself up in her bed, but she truly did not look well. The new physician had taken out several of her teeth, which had gone rotten during her captivity—Kayyin the half-fairy had offered to get her help, but the thought of one of the Qar poking in her mouth had horrified Merolanna, and she had refused. Now her cheeks were sunken, something even the thorough application of rouge could not disguise. Her hair, concealed now under a simple white linen coif, had grown quite thin as well, and the hands that clutched bedclothes to breast were bony and mottled. Only her eyes retained much of what she had been even a year ago. Her gaze was still sharp, and it fixed on Brone as he hobbled into the room.
“So you did come.” Her voice quavered just a little.