Ah, Barrick, where are you . . . ?
“Princess? I am sorry, should I come back some other time?”
She opened her eyes to see Hierarch Sisel doing his best to look patient. If nothing else, having Hendon Tolly as a master had made the hierarch and other members of the aristocracy more cautious about angering their ruler.
So I suppose that’s one I owe you, dead man. “No, Eminence, no,” she said out loud. “It is my fault, not yours. Please, ask me again.”
“It is just that we cannot put off your father’s funeral much longer and there is much to decide. The Eddon family chapel is ruined, and the great temple in the outer keep has been badly damaged as well. ...”
“Then we shall have his rites beneath the sky, Eminence. I think he would have preferred it that way.”
“I will arrange it, Princess,” Eneas said, heading off any objections from Sisel. “If you will permit me, of course.”
She nodded. “That is kind of you, Prince Eneas.” But his willingness to help troubled her, too. She could not lean on him too much: she still owed him an answer. “Now, what else? I find myself muddleheaded, and I fear I am not the best judge of things this moment. Nynor? It is good to see you back, my lord. What do you wish to say?”
The old man had been struggling to rise, but let her wave him back into his seat. “How could I stay away when my lady needed me? And your father was one of my dearest friends, a gem among princes, an example to ordinary men ...”
Briony was trying to hide her impatience. Didn’t people understand there was no time now for such formalities and pretty words? Things had to be done. The March Kingdoms, especially Southmarch itself, were in a shambles. Bodies still lay in the ruins as well as in the caves and tunnels beneath the castle, and they were starting to stink. The living needed to be fed, and Tolly had emptied the treasury. Briony doubted he could have spent everything—more likely he had shipped gold and jewelry back to his family home in Summerfield, so on top of everything else she had to contemplate waging war on her relatives to retrieve her own exchequer.
Nynor was still enumerating the ways in which the current state of finances—and in fact the entire day-to-day administration of Southmarch—was a disaster unseen since the days of the Great Death: “ . . . And who will stand witness against the malefactors?” he complained, wagging a knobby finger. “It is virtually impossible to know for certain which of the people supported Tolly and which stayed loyal ...”
Briony did her best to disguise a sigh as a change of position. Why was she tired all the time, every day? “That is not of chiefest importance, my lord,” she told Nynor. “How could the men and women of Southmarch know what to do except support the throne and whoever sat on it?” She had thought about this a great deal on her way back from Syan, all those long days riding through what had been her father’s orderly kingdom but had now, like a deserted farm, begun to go back to nature. “It is not up to us to punish them if they cast in their lots with Tolly, it is up to us to show them the way forward. Unless they used Tolly’s rule as an excuse for crimes and cruelty! Then I will be as hard as steel.”
Whispers passed between the courtiers and nobles and others gathered in the large tent, many of whom were wondering anxiously how their own actions over the last two years might weigh on such a scale. Good, she thought. I will be fair, and even more merciful than some might, but I do not want the wicked to think their deeds will go unnoticed and unpunished. But it pained her to think of all the work to come. And without her father, without many of the old advisers, and even more painfully, without her brother. . . .
“Where is Avin Brone?” she asked suddenly, interrupting Nynor in the middle of a disquisition about grain stores. “Why isn’t he here?”
Nynor’s wrinkled face flushed at the neck and cheeks. “Lord Brone said . . . he said he will come at your summons, Princess Briony. At any time of the day or night.”
“But he does not feel obliged to be here at the time of our greatest need?”
Nynor cleared his throat. “He . . . he said you did not seem to need or want his help, so he would wait. He said he is at peace with the gods and his ruler, and will do as you wish.”
She stared at the old courtier, wondering how he would feel if he knew the things she did. “I will see him, then. Tomorrow or the next day.” She smiled in a way that made a few of the courtiers wince, even though they didn’t know the reason for it any more than Nynor did. “Tell him it should be at his convenience, by all means.” She turned to Prince Eneas. “And of course there are still a hundred or more of Tolly’s men gone to ground in Funderling Town like rats under the rushes. Captain Vansen and your Lord Helkis will be occupied there some days, I think.”
Eneas nodded. “As long as the traitors get no support from the Kallikans living there.”
“Funderlings,” she said a little more sharply than she had intended to. “They are called Funderlings and they are as loyal as any men.”
“Yes, Princess, of course, Funderlings.” Eneas did his best to smile.
“Forgive me,” she said hurriedly. “I have a beastly ache in my head. I did not mean ...”
“Forgiven and forgotten, Princess.” He would have said more, but Briony’s attention was drawn to a very arresting figure in the doorway being kept there by anxious soldiers. “I think we have an embassy to attend to,” she said. “Guards, this visitor is welcome here.”
The gray-skinned woman was now the center of all eyes. Some among the assembly only knew the Qar as the creatures that had tried to kill them; these stared at her with open dislike. Some even scurried back from the tall, slender figure. Others, like Sisel, who had escaped the castle before the siege began and had weathered the worst days on his family lands, watched her with less fear and more interest. But nobody, Briony felt certain, least of all herself, could look at the newcomer without mixed feelings.
“I am Aesi’uah, counselor to Barrick Eddon, the Lord of Winds and Thought.” The fairy-woman had skin the color of a dove’s breast and bowed like a willow in the wind. “I bring his greetings and his gratitude.”
As the courtiers whispered at this, Briony stared at the woman, trying to see past her skin and robin’s-egg eyes. “My brother seems to have found a home among your folk. I am pleased for him—it was not always easy for him here, surrounded by his family and people.”
“You seem angry, Princess Briony,” Aesi’uah said.
“Angry that I have scarcely seen my brother since we all nearly died?” For a moment it was all she could do to contain herself. She took a breath. “Yes, you are right. I cannot help wondering why he does not come to see me, or at least pay his last respects to his own father, who will be buried soon.”
Aesi’uah nodded. “These are strange days, Princess. It is . . . difficult for him.”
Briony could not help looking doubtful. “Do you think so?”
“Please, Highness, you sent a summons. Your brother did not answer it himself, but he sent me. Let me answer any other questions you have, and your brother will make the rest of his thoughts clear to you soon.”
Briony looked at the confusion and fear on the faces of those around her. A little less than a month ago Southmarch had been at war with these same Qar. She did not want that fear to return—conditions were too volatile. She softened her voice. “Of course, Lady Aesi’uah. Your words make sense. I understand your folk are camped beneath us, on the outskirts of Funderling Town.”
“Until the rest of your enemies are driven from Funderling Town, we thought it best that we remain there, yes. Along with our Funderling hosts, we have made certain your enemies cannot escape into the tunnels, especially those that lead up to the mainland.”
“It is appreciated. And after these last enemies are captured? What will your people do then?”
“We will return to our country in the north. Many of our survivors left families behind all over the shadowlands, and Qul-na-Qar, the great house of our people, is almost deserted.
We are too few now to remain scattered.”
“Another question, one that must be asked—will there be peace between us?”
“I think in this one thing I can safely speak for your brother. Yes, there will be peace, if mankind will leave us in our freedom and our isolation.”
The whispers began again; Briony ignored them. “If my brother is truly your leader I will need to hear that from his own lips before I ...” she turned guiltily toward Prince Eneas, “ . . . before we could promise to honor such a pact on behalf of our peoples.”
The eremite bowed her head. “As you say.”
Briony took another deep breath, reminding herself that the business of caring for her people would always be a matter of compromises. “Thank you, Lady Aesi’uah. That eases my mind somewhat. Now, let us speak of other things. What happened down below the castle—I scarcely know how to talk about it. I’ve heard many stories, but I still don’t entirely understand them. That . . . thing . . . the giant ...”
“It was Zosim the Trickster, the lord of words and wine and fire. Zosim the Deathlord’s son. Zosim the god.”
The whispers became more urgent, more fearful.
“Forgive us if we doubt,” Eneas said abruptly. “But this flouts everything we Trigonates believe.”
“You need not take my unsupported word as truth, Prince Eneas,” said Aesi’uah. “There are more than a few of Briony’s own subjects who still live, and who saw much of what happened.”
“Little people,” said Eneas unhappily. “Kallikani.”
“They are still my subjects, Prince Eneas,” Briony said as politely as she could. And Ferras Vansen, too, she thought, but he will not talk to me. Scarcely a day passed after Vansen collapsed at her feet before he had gone off to join the Funderlings in hunting for Durstin Crowel and the rest of Tolly’s partisans under the castle. “Even so, Lady Aesi’uah, it is hard for those of us who weren’t there to understand. What happened to . . . Zosim?”
“He is gone, Princess. Even the oldest and wisest of our race who survived cannot tell for certain what that means. He is an immortal and immortals are, by definition, hard to kill, but it might be possible when they take mortal form. We can feel no trace of him in the waters that roil now beneath us—the inrushing sea quenched his blaze. Where is fire when it ceases to burn? That is where Zosim is.”
“So you are telling me he . . . it . . . cannot come back? That we are safe?”
Aesi’uah’s expression was strange—almost a smile. “None who draw breath are safe, Highness.”
Briony checked her temper. It took a moment to answer. “Thank you for this report, Lady Aesi’uah. Have you anything more to tell me?”
“Nothing except that we regret the damage done to your people as well as ours.”
“But it was you fairies who did much of that damage . . . !” said one of the nobles and the undercurrent of discontent threatened to break the surface and become a true wave.
“Murderers,” called another, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Demons!”
Briony was angry at this, but she knew that many of her own people supported her only because of her family name, and others solely because of the prince of Syan and his soldiers. She could not afford to give her impatience full rein.
“Please,” she said, holding up her hand to still the growing clamor. “Lady Aesi’uah is our guest. Whatever happened before, in the end the Qar fought as our allies and many of them died defending this city and stronghold. Do not forget that.” She turned to the eremite. “But as you can see, our folk are not quite ready to extend the open hand of forgiveness—and who can blame them?”
Aesi’uah inclined her head. “As you say, who can blame them?”
It seemed to Briony there was a mocking undercurrent to the reply, and that decided her. She did not like smugness coming from these creatures, however justified. “Since we still have much to discuss,” she announced, “and my brother will not come to me, then I will go to him.”
She was satisfied to see something like surprise on the eremite’s slender face. “Highness . . . ?”
“My apologies—was I not clear? I will go to speak to your Barrick, lord of fog and wind or whatever his grand new title is.”
“But, Your Highness, it is . . . he is surrounded by ...” Aesi’uah was clearly at a loss.
“He is what? He is my brother, yes. He is on the sovereign territory of Southmarch, capital of these March Kingdoms. He is surrounded by fairy folk, whom you have just promised me regret any damage they have done to my people. So why should there be any difficulties?”
Eneas was startled, too. “Briony . . . Princess . . . I don’t think this is wise.”
“But I do, Prince Eneas. More, I think it a grave necessity. The people with whom we were recently at war are encamped beneath our feet, within a short distance of miles of tunnels we know almost nothing about. If we are finding it difficult to root out a simple annoyance like Crowel, can you imagine what a hornet’s nest it would be to try to do the same with the Qar should things go badly between us?” She turned and saw, as she had hoped, that all eyes in the capacious tent were on her. “Of course I shall go.” She raised her hand to forestall the prince’s next words. “Alone but for a few guards—this is a parley between allies, after all. Lady Aesi’uah? You may go and inform Barrick that I will come to him today, before sunset.”
Briony sat back in her makeshift throne as the eremite rose and made her graceful, unhurried way out of the tent. Her head was still throbbing but she felt a little better. At least she would finally have a chance to see her brother, face-to-face.
Tinwright crouched in the indifferent shade of a dying yew tree in the commons before the royal residence and watched Princess Briony march past with her retinue of guards. A group of nearby laborers also saw her and raised a ragged cheer. Tinwright hoped she hadn’t noticed him. Only Elan M’Cory swearing to the princess that Tinwright had resisted Tolly long after others would simply have murdered Briony’s infant brother had kept Tinwright from going back to a stronghold cell—or more likely to the headsman’s block.
But was it really true, he wondered—what would he have done if things had been different? Would he have thrown away his own life, or would he have done what Tolly ordered?
Matty Tinwright had just finished his jug of wine and all he could think of now was that he wished he had been able to afford more. Prices were very high, and all the best things went to the Syannese soldiers—as it was, Tinwright had needed to steal coppers out of his mother’s jewelry box so that he could get drunk and quiet the pain in his chest, which hurt every time he took a deep breath. Still, he supposed he should be grateful he was alive. If he had not had the Zorian prayer book in his breast pocket he would be having this drink in Heaven—or at least not in Southmarch.
“Who would ever think a book could save a man’s life?” the Syannese soldier-surgeon who bandaged his wound had said. Tinwright had been in chains at the time so he had not agreed with the man about his luck. He was free now but didn’t feel much better about things.
And there went the princess, he thought, less than a hundred paces away from where he sat, but it might as well have been a hundred miles. He could only watch as she and the soldiers made their way along the commons path toward the Raven’s Gate—watch and wonder how things had gone so very wrong for Matt Tinwright, Royal Poet.
Elan M’Cory did not love him. She had made that plain. She had thanked him for helping to keep her alive and hidden from Hendon Tolly, but that, she had told him, was gratitude, not love.
“Duke Gailon needs me,” she had said, pointing again at the hideous thing she had spent the last three days nursing. “He nearly died—he thought he was dead! How could I desert him now?”
Even had Tinwright not resented the man for the fortunate accident of his birth, he would have found it painful to have her prefer such a blighted creature to his relatively unblemished self. Gailon Tolly’s face was a mass of open wounds and
pocked with dirt and worse things beneath the skin, so that he seemed ravaged by plague. Still, Elan had told him that she wanted only to devote the rest of her life to nursing Gailon back to health. What could be clearer than that? Tinwright himself was of no further interest.
Love, he thought. Subject of so many sweet verses, and yet it stinks like ordure.
He levered himself to his feet and staggered across the green, which now was little more than mud and broken bits of rubble pierced by a few strands of dried, dead grass.
A map of my heart, Tinwright thought.
Would I have done it? Would I have killed the child to save myself—no, to save Elan? It was hard to say now—hard to remember anything except the confusion and terror of that moment. He stared down from wall the and across the outer battlements to the unending roll and crash of the sea. The looming Tower of Summer covered him in cool shadow. Tinwright’s own thoughts on that night were as lost to him as something from the depths of history. How could anyone ever say with certainty what such and such a hero said, or thought, or felt? Tinwright had been in the middle of great events . . . although he had to admit his part had been a minor one . . . and could scarcely remember a moment of it except for Hendon Tolly’s mad face glaring like a festival mask. Like something from a play . . .
He looked up at the sound of footsteps. A slender figure was coming toward him along the top of the wall, an old woman by her face, although she walked with strength and ease. Tinwright realized he was staring and looked out over the water again. The waves, whipped by early summer winds, spat froth as they raced toward the castle wall.
“Ah.” The woman had seen him. “Forgive me. I will leave you alone and find another spot.”