(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch

by Tad Williams

  Still, it was all Qinnitan could do to stand in the crowd waiting at the alcove on the Seclusion side of the gate when every instinct told her to shove her way through and bolt to freedom—just let them try to catch her! She did her best to slow her breathing, tried to think of what she would do on the other side. Small fingers curled around her hand and she looked down at the boy. Despite his own wide, fearful eyes, he nodded his head and did his best to smile, as if to tell her that all would be well.

  “I don’t know your name,” she whispered. “What is your name?”

  His mouth twisted and she felt cruel—how could he tell her? Then he smiled again and lifted his hands. He laced his thumbs together with the fingers held out on either side, then let the fingers flap like . . . wings.

  “Bird?”

  He nodded happily.

  “Your name is Bird?”

  He frowned and shook his head, then pointed up to the ribbed ceiling. Here, so close to the gate, the remains of nests still stood in some of the shadowed angles. She could see no birds in any of them. “Nest?” He shook his head again. “A kind of bird? Yes? Sparrow? Thrush? Pigeon?”

  He grabbed her hand again and squeezed, nodding vigorously.

  “Pigeon? Your name is Pigeon. Thank you for helping me, Pigeon.” She looked up and discovered they had almost reached the front of the line, which narrowed like a bottle’s neck before a trio of large Favored guards. The Lily Gate was only a few paces away, glowing with the lantern lights of the outside world like something magical from a story. Two of the guards were busy looking through a peddler woman’s cart before releasing her back into the city—dwarfed by them, the peddler wore an expression that was so obviously and carefully no expression that it was almost insolent in itself—but the third guard was all too ready to look over Qinnitan and her companion.

  “Where are you going . . . ?” he began, but was interrupted by Pigeon making grunting noises. “Ah, one of the tongue-less whelps. Whose business?”

  Qinnitan’s stomach lurched. She had worked so hard on her other forged letter that she had completely forgotten she would have to produce some kind of permission to leave the Seclusion as well—slaves, even the relatively select Silent Favored, could not simply wander in and out at will.

  An instant before she would have broken and run, the boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silvery article the size of a finger and showed it to the guard. Qinnitan’s heart climbed into her mouth. If it was Luian’s seal-stick and the word had already gone out . . .

  “Ah, for old Cusy, is it?” The guard waved his hand. “Don’t want to make the Queen of the Seclusion grumpy, do we?” He stepped aside, glancing with idle but focused curiosity at Qinnitan as though he sensed that something about her was not quite right. She dropped her eyes and silently recited the words of the Bees’ Hymn as Pigeon steered her past the huge guard and in behind the peddler woman, who was just being released, apparently innocent of contraband.

  “They say they were lovers once,” one of the guards who had been searching the cart said quietly as he stepped out of the peddler’s way. Qinnitan was startled until she realized he was talking to the other guard.

  “Him? And the Evening Star?” asked his companion, equally quiet. “You’re joking.”

  “That’s what they say.” The guard’s voice dropped even lower, to a whisper—Qinnitan only heard a little of what he said before the pair of guards had fallen too far behind her. “But even if she cared for him still, she couldn’t do him any good now. Nothing between the seas can help him . . .”

  Jeddin? Were they talking about Jeddin?

  Qinnitan felt hollowed, scorched, as though all her feelings had been burned away. The world had seemed mad enough, but today it had spun into realms of lunacy she could not have dreamed existed.

  It was a warm evening and the streets were crowded. Outside the Seclusion the thoroughfare was full of expensive shops and teahouses—proximity to the great palace was almost infinitely desirable, no matter what the trade—and Qinnitan felt such a sense of relief and joy to be free among the loud and cheerful throng that it almost overcame the horror that still gripped her, but the feeling did not last long. Not only had she seen someone close to her murdered, she had now flouted one of the autarch’s gravest laws. Even if by some strange chance she might have been allowed to live despite Jeddin’s and Luian’s crimes and her connection to them, the moment she had passed that door she had sullied herself. The autarch would have no use whatsoever for a sullied bride of unimportant parents.

  I might as well be dead, she thought. A ghost on the desert wind. It was a curious feeling, both empty and exhilarating.

  As they wound their way down through the hanging lamps of the market district and closer to the dark waterfront, the crowds became less friendly, the criminal element less cautious, and the menace increasingly tangible. As they passed down an alleyway between two long buildings, the only light that leaked in from a shabby teahouse at one end with its shutters half raised, she realized fatal misfortune was almost as likely to take them here as in the very heart of the autarch’s palace. She would never have come to such a place in her woman’s clothes, but there were many unpleasant folk who would be just as happy with a pair of comely boys—especially those who presumably could not scream for help.

  Little Pigeon also sensed the danger—it would have taken someone not just mute but blind and deaf to miss it—and he allowed Qinnitan to hurry him along toward the docks. As they stepped out of yet another narrow, dimly lit alley into Sailmakers’ Row, a wide road whose other end touched the shipyards and the nearest part of the docks, they found a tall shape standing in the road as if waiting for them.

  “Hello, wee ones.” The stranger wore sailor’s garb, the pants barely below his knee and a mariner’s cloth wrapped around his head, but his clothes were ragged and his voice shook like a sick man’s. “And what brings you wandering down here at this time of the night? Are you lost?” He took a step toward them. “Let a friendly hand help.”

  Qinnitan hesitated for only a moment—he stood between them and their destination, but the autarch’s wrath was behind them and they could not turn back—then she grabbed Pigeon’s hand and started toward the stranger at speed. The boy hesitated only enough to make a slight drag on her hand, then he leaped forward and ran beside her. The man stood, his arms spread but his dark-sunken eyes wide with surprise. When they hit him, he was knocked onto his back. He rolled there for a moment cursing before scrambling to his feet.

  “You peasecods, you puppies, I’ll have your innards out!” he shrieked. “I’ll spike you and gut you!” He was up and after them now, and although he was at least a dozen steps behind, when Qinnitan looked back over her shoulder he seemed to be closing the distance rapidly.

  “Where are we going?” she gasped, but Pigeon did not know any better than she did, and could only run beside her. The boy was faster than her, she realized, but he paced her, still holding her hand. What did Jeddin’s letter say—a temple, was it? The boat moored across from a temple? But what temple?

  They came down out of Sailmakers’ Row and onto the quay, their pursuer’s steps banging on the boards not far behind them. Qinnitan slowed and almost stopped, daunted by the horrible sight of hundreds upon hundreds of masts, of boats lined in their slips for what looked like a mile, all bobbing in turn as gentle waves from the mild night sea ran down the length of the quay. The footsteps grew louder and she began to sprint again.

  “Little scallops!” the man panted. He seemed almost at their shoulders and Qinnitan reached for her last strength to stay ahead of him. “I eat little scallops!”

  In desperation she began to shout as loud as she could, “Hoy, the Morning Star! Morning Star! Where are you?” until she ran out of breath. There was no reply, although she thought she saw movement on some of the dark ships.

  Now they all ran in silence for a moment, the man behind them wheezing but not slowing. “Morning Star!” Qinnita
n screamed. “Where are you?”

  “Just up a few slips,” someone shouted from one of the boats as they passed.

  Qinnitan stumbled but Pigeon held her up. “Morning Star!” she shouted again, or tried, but her voice seemed quiet and strengthless, her legs soft as cushions. She could barely summon breath. “Morning Star!”

  “Here!” a voice shouted from a short way ahead. “Who’s there?”

  Qinnitan yanked Pigeon up what she hoped was the correct gangplank. The man who had been chasing them stopped, hesitated for a moment, then turned away and took a few staggering steps into the shadows and was gone from sight. Qinnitan leaned on the ship’s rail, gasping as the stars in the sky seemed to drift down and swirl around her like sparks. The masts and rigging were all around her, too, like some kind of forest draped in spiderwebs, but she was able to take in nothing else except burning air.

  A rough hand grabbed her arm and straightened her up, thrusting a lantern into her face. “Who are you? You shout as if you want to wake the dead.”

  “Is . . . this . . . the Morning Star of Kirous?” she gasped.

  “It is. Who or what are you?” She thought she could see squinting eyes and a dark beard behind the lantern, but it was hard to face the light.

  “We come . . . from Jeddin.” Then her knees unlocked and the world spun around, the masts whirling like merrymaking dancers as she fell into first gray, then black emptiness.

  “We were told to expect you—although dressed as a woman, not as a boy slave,” said Axamis Dorza, captain of the Morning Star. He had brought her to the small ship’s tiny cabin. The boy named Pigeon crouched at Qinnitan’s feet, silent and wide-eyed. “We were even told that we might need to take you with us on short notice.” Now he waved the forged letter she’d written in Luian’s chamber and closed with Jeddin’s seal. “We were not told we would leave without Lord Jeddin himself on board. What do you know about this?”

  She breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the Hive and the sacred protection of her beloved bees: apparently the sailors had not heard of Jeddin’s arrest. Now it was time to use the skills of deceit she had been forced to learn in the Seclusion. “I don’t know, Captain. I only know that Jeddin told me to disguise myself and bring this slave here, and to give you this message.” It was important, she reminded herself, not to know what Jeddin’s purported letter said. “I know nothing else, I’m afraid. I am only glad we found you before that man who was chasing us did whatever he planned to do.” She did her best to sound like a queen, regal and sure of herself.

  But I am a queen, aren’t I, at least of a sort? Or I was. But it had never felt that way, not for a moment.

  The captain waved away the unimportant detail of their pursuer. “The docks are full of unnatural scum like that, and others even worse, believe me. No, what I do not understand is why we should leave without Lord Jeddin. I ask you again, do you know anything of this?”

  She shook her head. “Only that Lord Jeddin told me to come to you and go where you carried me, that you and your men would protect me from his enemies.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, glad that she had every excuse for anxiousness. “Please, Captain, tell me what my lord says.”

  Axamis Dorza picked up the letter in his thick fingers and squinted. His eyes were so netted in wrinkles that from the nose up he looked to be a great-grandfather’s age, but she guessed he was considerably younger. “It says only, ‘Take Lady Qinnitan to Hierosol. All other plans must wait. Take her there tonight and I will meet you there.” But meet us where, my lady? Hierosol is only a little smaller than Great Xis! And why cross the ocean to Eion instead of merely shipping to another port down the coast and waiting for him there?”

  “I do not know, Captain.” She suddenly felt as if she might tumble to the floor again in exhaustion. “You must do as you see fit. I put myself and my servant in your hands, as my lord Jeddin wished.”

  The captain frowned and stared at the seal ring that he held in his other hand. “You have his seal as well as the letter. How can I doubt you? Still, it is strange and the men will be restless when they hear.”

  “The palace is an unsettled place just now,” she said with as much quiet meaning as she could muster. “Perhaps your men will be happy to find themselves away from Great Xis for a little while.”

  Dorza gave her a hard stare. “Do you say there is trouble in the palace? Is our lord involved somehow?”

  She had baited the hook; it would not do to pull at the line too hard. “I have no more to say, Captain. To the wise, a single word is as good as a poem.”

  He went out then. Qinnitan fell back on the narrow bed, unable even to find the strength to protest when Pigeon curled up on the hard floor as though he really were her slave. Out of the confusion in her own head, she suddenly heard the oracle Mudry’s voice:

  “Remember who you are. And when the cage is opened you must fly. It will not be opened twice.”

  Was this what the old woman had meant? Qinnitan couldn’t think anymore. She was too weary. I’m flying, Mother Mudry. At least, I’m trying to fly . . .

  Within a few breaths she was asleep.

  She woke for just a few short moments. Above her head bare feet thumped on the planks and voices rose, shouting instructions and singing songs of the hard sea life as the sailors of the Morning Star of Kirous prepared to journey to Hierosol.

  39

  Winter’s Eve

  DANCING FOR WINTER:

  Dust, dust, ice, ice

  She wears the bones for eyes

  She waits until the singing stops

  —from The Bonefall Oracles

  PUZZLE WAS IN SURPRISINGLY fine voice, a slight quaver the only thing to betray the passage of so many years. Otherwise, Briony might have thought time had turned tail, that she was again a little girl sitting on her father’s lap, the wind plucking in angry frustration at the roofs outside while they all sat safe and warm in the great dining hall.

  But those days were gone, she reminded herself. Nothing would bring them back. And if Tyne had really lost the battle, it could be that soon no one alive would even remember those times.

  Puzzle strummed his lute, continuing with the long, sad story of Prince Caylor and the Ever-Wounded Maid.

  “. . . Then did he first glimpse her, the bleeding maid:”

  The old jester crooned, telling of the knight’s entrance into the Siege of Always-Winter, “He thought her sore hurt, e’en dead, and his noble heart

  Did quail with woe to think that such a bloom must fade

  Before e’er it had been tasted by kiss, or figured by art;

  But then opened she her eyes, and, as she saw him there,

  Smiled, though her beauteous face was wan and sad—

  A pearl display’d upon the cushion of her golden hair—

  And he thought no empress of the south could match the loveliness she had.

  Then Caylor’s heart flew like an unhooded hawk, straight to her breast,

  Although the troubled knight did not know whether he were curst or blest.”

  She had to admit she was surprised, not so much to find that Puzzle could still sing, but by the grace of Matty Tinwright’s words. The young poet sat at the end of one of the front tables, near Puzzle’s stool, looking as though he knew he had actually done something worthwhile.

  It was certainly a change from his dreadful, lugubrious paeans of praise to her, his comparisons of her to a virgin deity, full of aching stretches for rhymes—there were not many things that rhymed with “Zoria,” “merciful,” or “goddess,” after all. She was impressed and even pleased. She had given Tinwright a commission as much to irritate Barrick and amuse herself as anything else, but perhaps he would eventually prove a true poet after all.

  Unless, she suddenly thought, he has stolen the whole thing from some obscure source.

  No, it was Winter’s Eve. She would be charitable. She would even say something nice to him, although nothing so fulsome as to fetch him puppy-doggin
g after her all evening.

  “Thus, instanter, Caylor pledged himself her slave,

  Declared that by her token whole worlds would he throw down;

  Yet she only shook her fair head and a reproachful look him gave,

  And raised her hands, white arms reaching from bloody-sleeved gown.

  Then said she, ‘Good knight, worlds shall not woo me, nor words,

  But only and you free me from this wound that steals my life

  Shall I be yours. One year gone I spurned haughty Raven, Prince of Birds,

  And he did my breast pierce with his terrible slow knife.

  All of the physick of my father’s court cannot staunch or even slow

  The wound that dire blade to me gave, nor stop this crimson flow.’ ”

  Briony even smiled at Puzzle, who barely noticed. He was enjoying this moment of attention so much that he seemed to forget it was the royal family to whom he owed his position, not the courtiers, who considered the old man a rather tiresome jest. Still, he was the center of all eyes, or should have been, and he clearly reveled in it.

  The rest of the assembled nobility seemed strange to Briony. Conversation was awkward, many whispering, others speaking too loudly, even after an evening’s indulgence. The Tollys and their allies had made it clear they considered the feast as an insult to Gailon’s memory and had not appeared. Thus, there had been even more drinking than would be expected on Winter’s Eve, mulled wine being sluiced down throats as though many of those present expected the worst and expected it soon—for gossip about the possible fate of Southmarch’s army had sped through the castle all evening, tales of terror and defeat flying to every corner like little white moths rushing out of a long-closed wardrobe. Briony herself had needed to soothe Rose and Moina, both in tears, who were certain that they would be ravished by monsters.