by Tad Williams
But, of course, Chaven was also very, very clever—when he could be bothered.
“Yes?” he said impatiently, glancing in their direction. The physician had lived in the marchlands so long he had scarcely a trace of accent. “Do you seek someone?"
The twins had been through this before. “It’s us, Chaven,” Briony announced.
A smile lit his face. “Your Highnesses! Apologies—I am much absorbed with something I have just received, tools that will help me examine a star or a mote of dust with equal facility.” He carefully lifted one of the plates, which proved to be made of solid glass, transparent as water. “Say what you wish about the unpleasantness of its governor, there are none in all the rest of Eion who can make a lens like the grinders of Hierosol.” His mobile face darkened. “I am sorry—that was thoughtless, with your father a prisoner there.”
Briony crouched down beside the case and reached a tentative hand toward one of the circles of glass, which gleamed in an angled beam of sunlight. “We have received something from this ship as well, a letter from our father, but Kendrick has not let us read it yet.”
“Please, my lady!” Chaven said quickly, loudly. “Do not touch those! Even the smallest flaw can spoil their utility…” Briony snatched her hand back and caught it on the clasp of the wooden case. She grunted and lifted her finger. A drop of red grew on it, dribbled down toward her palm.
“Terrible! I am sorry. It is my fault for startling you.” Chaven fussed in the pockets of his capacious robe, producing a handful of black cubes, then a curved glass pipe, a fistful of feathers, and at last a kerchief that looked as if it had been used to polish old brass.
Briony thanked him, then unobtrusively pocketed the dirty square of cloth and sucked the blood from her finger instead.
“So you have received no news yet?” the physician asked.
“The envoy is not to see Kendrick until noon.” Barrick felt angry again, out of sorts. The sight of blood on his sister s hand troubled him. “Meanwhile, we are running an errand Our stepmother wishes to see you.”
“Ah.” Chaven looked around as though wondering where his kerchief had got to, then shut the lenses back in their case. “I will go to her now, of course. Will you come with me? I wish to hear about the wyvern hunt. Your brother has promised me the carcass for examination and dissection, but I have not received it yet, although I hear troubling rumors he has already given the best parts of it away as trophies.” He was already bustling toward the door, and called back over his shoulder, “Shut the roof, Toby. I have changed my mind—I think it will be too cloudy tonight for observation, in any case.”
With a look of pure, weary despair, the young man began turning the huge crank. Slowly, inch by inch, with a noise like the death groan of some mythological beast, the great ceiling slid closed.
Outside, the twins’ four heavily armored guards had reached the observatory door and had just stopped to catch their breath when the trio appeared and hurried past them down the stairs, bound for the Tower of Spring.
* * *
A girl no more than six years old opened the door to Anissa’s chambers in the tower, made a courtesy, then stepped out of the way. The room was surprisingly bright. Dozens of candles burned in front of a flower-strewn shrine to Madi Surazem, goddess of childbirth, and in each corner of the room new sheaves of wheat stood in pots to encourage the blessing of fruitful Erilo. A half dozen silent ladies-in-waiting lurked around the great bed like cockindrills floating in one of the moats of Xis. An older woman with the sourly practical appearance of a midwife or hedge-witch took one look at Barrick and said, “He can’t come in here. This is a place for women.”
Before the prince could do more than bristle, his stepmother pulled aside the bed’s curtains and peered out. Her hair was down, and she wore a voluminous white nightdress. “Who is it? Is it the doctor? Of course he can come to me.” “But it is the young prince as well, my lady,” the old woman explained.
“Barrick?” She pronounced it Bah-reek. “Why are you such a fool, woman? I am respectably dressed. I am not giving birth today.” She let out a sigh and collapsed back out of sight.
By the time Chaven and the twins had crossed the open floor to the bed, the curtains were open again, tied up by the maid Selia, who gave Barrick a quick smile, then caught sight of Briony and changed it to a respectful nod for both of them. Anissa reclined, propped upright on many pillows. Two tiny growling dogs tugged at a piece of cloth between her slippered feet. She was not wearing her usual pale face paint, and so looked almost ruddy with health. Barrick, who unlike Briony had not even tried to like his stepmother, was certain they had been summoned on a pointless errand whose real purpose was only to relieve Anissa’s boredom.
“Children,” she said to them, fanning herself. “It is kind of you to come. I am so ill, I see no one these days.” Barrick could feel Briony’s tiny flinch at being called a child by this woman. In fact, seeing her with her dark hair loose, and without her usual paint, he was surprised by how young their stepmother looked. She was only five or six years older than Kendrick, after all. She was pretty, too, in a fussy sort of way, although Barrick thought her nose a little too long for true beauty.
She does not compare to her maid, he thought, sneaking a glance, but Selia was looking solicitously at her mistress. “You are feeling poorly, my queen?” asked Chaven.
“Pains in my stomach. Oh, I cannot tell you.” Although she was small-boned and still slender even this close to giving birth, Anissa had a certain knack for dominating a room. Briony sometimes called her the Loud Mouse.
“And have you been faithfully taking the elixir I have made up for you?”
She waved her hand. “That? It binds up my insides. Can I say this, or is it impolite? My bowels have not moved for days.”
Barrick had heard enough of the secrets of the sickbed for one day. He bowed to his stepmother, then backed toward the door and waited there. Anissa held his twin for a moment with impatient questions about the lack of news from the Hierosoline envoy and complaints that she had not been given Olin’s letter before Kendrick, then Briony at last made a courtesy and edged away to join him. Together they watched Chaven kindly and quickly examine the queen, asking questions in such a normal tone of voice that it almost escaped Barrick’s notice that the little round doctor was folding back her eyelid or sniffing her breath while doing so. The other women in the room had gone back to their stitching and conversation, excepting the old midwife, who watched the physician’s activities with a certain territorial jealousy, and the maid Selia, who held Anissa’s hand and listened as though everything her mistress said was pure wisdom.
“Your Highnesses, Briony, Barrick.” Despite the fact that he had one hand down the back of the queen’s nightdress, Chaven had managed to take the small clock he wore on a chain out of the pocket of his robe. He held it up for them to see. “Noon is fast approaching. Which reminds me—have I told you of my plan to mount a large pendulum clock on the front of the Trigon temple, so that all can know the true time? For some reason, the hierarch is against the idea.
The twins listened politely for a moment to Chaven’s grandiose and rather baffling plan, then made excuses to their stepmother before hurrying out of the Tower of Spring they had a long way to go back across the keep. Their guards, who had been gossiping with the queen’s warders, wearily pushed themselves away from the tower wall and trotted after them.
* * *
The crowd that was gathered in the huge Hall of the March Kings—only the Eddon family called it “the throne room,” perhaps because the castle was their home as well as their seat of power—looked a much more serious group than the morning’s disorganized rout Briony again felt a clutch of worry. The castle almost appeared to be on war-footing half a pentecount of guardsmen stood around the great room, not slouching and talking quietly among themselves like the twins’ bodyguards, but rigidly erect and silent Avin Brone, Count of Landsend, was one of the many nobles who had app
eared for the audience Brone was Southmarch Castle’s lord constable and thus one of the most powerful men in the March Kingdoms. Decades earlier, he had made what turned out to be the shrewd choice of giving his unstinting support to the then child-heir Olin Eddon after the sudden death of Olin’s brother, Prince Lorick, as King Ustin their father had been on his own deathbed, his heart failing. For a while, civil war had seemed likely as various powerful families had put themselves forward as the best protectors of the underage heir, but Brone had made some kind of bargain with the Tollys of Summerfield, Eddon relations and the chief claimants to a greater role in the governance of Southmarch, and then, with Steffans Nynor and a few others, Brone had managed to keep the child Olin on the throne by himself until he was old enough to rule without question. The twins’ father had never forgotten that crucial loyalty, and titles and land and high responsibilities had fallen Brone’s way thereafter. Whether the Count of Landsend’s loyalty had been completely pure, or driven by the fact that he would have lost all chance for power under a Tolly protectorate was beside the point everyone knew he was shrewd, always thinking beyond the present moment. Even now, in the midst of conversation with the court ladies or gentlemen, his eye was roving across the throne room to his guard troops, looking for sagging shoulders, bent knees, or a mouth moving in whispered conversation with a comrade.
Gailon Tolly, Duke of Summerfield, was in the Great Hall as well, along with most of the rest of the King’s Council—Nynor the castellan, last of Brone’s original allies, the twins’ first cousin Rorick, Earl of Daler’s Troth, Tyne Aldritch, Blueshore’s earl, and a dozen other nobles, all wearing their best clothes.
Watching them, Briony felt a flame of indignation. This ambassador comes from the man who has kidnapped my father. What are we doing, dressing up for him as though he were some honored visitor? But when she whispered this thought to Barrick, he only shrugged.
“As you well know, it is for display. See, here is our power gathered!” he said sourly. “Like letting the roosters strut before the cockfight.”
She looked at her brother’s all-black garb and bit back a remark. And they say we women are consumed with our appearances. It was hard to imagine a lady of the court wearing the equivalent of the outrageous codpieces sported by Earl Rorick and others of the male gentry—massive protrusions spangled with gems and intricate stitching. Trying to imagine what the women’s equivalent might be threatened to set her laughing out loud, but it was not a pleasant feeling. The fear that had been gnawing at her all morning, as if the gods were tightening their grip on her and her home, made her feel that such a laugh, once started, would not stop—that she might end by having to be carried from the room, laughing and weeping together.
She looked around the massive hall, lit mostly by candles even at midday. The dark tapestries on every wall, figured with scenes of dead times and dead Eddon ancestors, made her feel close and hot, as though they were heavy blankets draped over her. Beyond the high windows she saw only the gray limestone prominence of the Tower of Winter with a blessed chink of cool sky on either side. Why, she wondered, in a castle surrounded by the water was there nowhere in that great hall that a person could look out on the sea? Briony felt suddenly out of breath. Gods, why can’t it all start?
As if the heavenly powers had taken pity on her, a murmur rose from the crowd near the doorway as a small company of armored men in tabards decorated with what looked from this distance to be Hierosol’s golden snail shell took up stations on either side of the entrance.
When the dark-skinned figure came through the door, Briony had a moment of bewilderment, wondering, Why is everyone making such a fuss for Shaso? Then she remembered what Summerfield had said. As the envoy came closer to the dais and Kendrick’s makeshift throne, which he had set in front of his father’s grander seat, she could see that this man was much younger than Southmarch’s master of arms. The stranger was handsome, too, or Briony thought he was, but she found herself suddenly uncertain of how to judge one so different. His skin was darker than Shaso’s, his tightly curled hair longer and tied behind his head, and he was tall and thin where the master of arms was stocky. He moved with a compact, self-assured grace, and the cut of his black hose and slashed gray doublet was as stylish as that of any Syannese court favorite. The knights of Hierosol who followed him seemed like clanking, pale-skinned puppets by comparison.
At the last moment, when it seemed to the entire room as though the envoy meant to do the unthinkable and walk up onto the very dais where the prince regent sat, the slender man stopped One of the snail-shell knights stepped forward, cleared his throat.
“May it please Your Highness, I present Lord Dawet dan-Faar, envoy of Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hierosol and all the Kracian Territories.”
“Ludis may be Protector of Hierosol,” Kendrick said slowly, “but he is also master of forced hospitality—of which my father is a recipient.”
Dawet nodded once, smiled. His voice was like a big cat rumbling when it had no need yet to roar. “Yes, the Lord Protector is a famous host. Very few of his guests leave Hierosol unchanged.”
There was a stir of resentment in the crowd at this. The envoy Dawet started to say something else, then stopped, his attention drawn to the great doors where Shaso stood in his leather armor, his face set in an expressionless mask. “Ah,” Dawet said, “I had hoped to see my old teacher at least once more. Greetings, Mordiya Shaso.”
The crowd whispered again. Briony looked at Barrick, but he was just as confused as she was. What could the dark man’s words mean?
“You have business,” Kendrick told him impatiently. “When you are finished, we will all have time to talk, even to remake old friendships, if friendships they are. Since I have not said so yet, let it be known to all that Lord Dawet is under the protection of the March King’s Seal, and while he is engaged on his peaceful mission here none may harm or threaten him.” His face was grim. He had done only what civility required. “Now, sir, speak.”
Kendrick had not smiled, but Dawet did, examining the glowering faces around him with a look of quiet contentment, as though everything he could have wished was assembled in this one chamber. His gaze passed across Briony, then stopped and returned to her. His smile widened and she fought against a shiver. Had she not known who he was, she might have found it intriguing, even pleasing, but now it was like the touch of the dark wing she had imagined the day before, the shadow that was hovering over them all.
The envoy’s long silence, his unashamed assessment, made her feel she stood naked in the center of the room. “What of our father?” she said out loud, her voice rough when she wished it could be calm and assured. “Is he well? I hope, for your master’s sake, he is in good health.”
“Briony!” Barrick was embarrassed—ashamed, perhaps, that she should speak out this way. But she was not one to be gawked at like a horse for sale. She was a king’s daughter.
Dawet gave a little bow. “My lady. Yes, your father is well, and in fact I have brought a letter from him to his family. Perhaps the prince regent has not shown it to you yet… ?”
“Get on with it.” Kendrick sounded oddly defensive. Something was going on, Briony knew, but she could not make out what it was.
“If he has read it, Prince Kendrick will perhaps have some inkling of what brings me here There is, of course, the matter of the ransom.”
“We were given a year,” protested Gailon Tolly angrily Kendrick did not look at him, although the duke, too, had spoken out of turn.
“Yes, but my master, Ludis, has decided to offer you another proposition, one to your advantage Whatever you may think of him, the Lord Protector of Hierosol is a wise, farsighted man. He understands that we all have a common enemy, and thus should be seeking ways to draw our two countries together as twin bulwarks against the threat of the greedy lord of Xis, rather than squabbling over reparations.”
“Reparations!” Kendrick said, struggling to keep his voice level. “Call it what
it is, sir. Ransom. Ransom for an innocent man—a king!—kidnapped while he was trying to do just what you claim to want, which is organize a league against the Autarch.”
Dawet gave a sinuous shrug. “Words can separate us or bring us together, so I will not quibble with you. There are more important issues, and I am here to present you with the Lord Protectors new and generous offer.”
Kendrick nodded. “Continue.” The prince regent’s face was as empty as Shaso’s, who was still watching from the far end of the throne room.
“The Lord Protector will reduce the ransom to twenty thousand gold dolphins—a fifth of what was asked and what you agreed to. In return, he asks only something that will cost you little, and will be of benefit to you as well as to us.”
The courtiers were murmuring now, trying to make sense of what was going on. Some of the nobles, especially those whose peasantry had grown restive under the taxes for the king’s ransom, even had hope on their faces. By contrast, Kendrick looked ashy.
“Damn you, speak your piece,” he said at last—a croak.
Lord Dawet displayed an expression of carefully constructed surprise. He looks like a warrior, Briony thought, but he plays the scene like a mummer. He is enjoying this. But her older brother was not, and seeing him so pale and unhappy set her heart beating swiftly. Kendrick looked like a man trapped in an evil dream. “Very well,” Dawet said.
“In return for reducing the ransom for King Olin’s return, Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hierosol, will accept Briony te Meriel te Krisanthe M’Connord Eddon of Southmarch in marriage.” The envoy spread his big, graceful hands. “In less high-flown terms, that would be your Princess Briony.”
Suddenly, she was the one who was tumbling into nightmare. Faces turned toward her like a field of meadowsweet following the sun, pale faces, startled faces, calculating faces. She heard Barrick gasp beside her, felt his good hand clutch at her arm, but she was already pulling away. Her ears were roaring, the whispers of the assembled court now as loud as thunder.
