by Tad Williams
Maybe old Hornblende just didn’t want to work with Pumice. Reason enough to have a bad back, perhaps… Less than an hour past dawn and already his head hurt. “Right, you lot. Whatever some of you may think, these are sad times and this is an important chore. So let’s get to work.”
* * *
“I cannot sit through this,” Barrick abruptly declared.
Briony felt ambushed that he should turn on her in front of Avin Brone and the other nobles. “What do you mean?” she whispered. Her voice seemed a sharp hiss like a snake; she could feel the councillors, all men, looking at her with disapproval. “Shaso has not confessed, Barrick. It is not a certain thing that he has killed Kendrick. After all these years, you owe the man something!”
Barrick waved his hand—dismissively, it seemed, and for a moment Briony felt a stab of anger sharp as any Tuani knife. Then she saw that Barrick’s eyes were closed, his face even more pale than usual. “No. I do not… feel well,” he said.
So terrible had this morning been, so topsy-turvy, that despite the clutch at her heart to see his waxy face—so frighteningly like Kendrick’s bloodless, lifeless mask—she still felt a squeezing suspicion. Did Barrick want nothing to do with what was coming next, for some reason? Had Lord Constable Brone and the others been talking to him already?
Her brother staggered a little as he got up One of the guards stepped forward to take his elbow. “Go on,” Barrick told her. “Must he down.”
Another and even more horrifying thought: What if he is not just ill — what if he has been poisoned? What if someone had set on a track of killing all the Eddons? Horrified and frightened, she murmured a quick prayer to Zoria, then dutifully asked the Trigon’s help as well Who would do such a thing? Who could even conceive of such moon-madness?
Someone who wanted the throne… She looked at Gailon of Summerfield, but the duke looked quite normally concerned to see Barrick so sweaty and weak. “Get him straight to bed, and send for Chaven,” she directed the man holding his arm. “No, let one of the pages fetch Chaven now, so that he can meet my brother in his chambers.”
When Barrick had been helped from the room, Briony noted with some approval that her own mask was still in place—the public mask of imperturbability that her father had taught her to make of her features. She had despised Avin Brone for a heartless bully on the night of Kendrick’s murder, but she was grateful to him for reminding her of her duty. She had a responsibility to the Eddon family as well as to her people: she would not give away the truth of her feelings so easily again. But, oh, it was hard to be stiff and stern when she was so frightened!
“My brother, Prince Barrick, will not be coming back,” she said. “So there is no sense in making our guest wait longer. Send him in.”
“But, Highness… !” began Duke Gailon.
“What, Summerfield, do you think I have no wit at all? That I am a marionette who can only speak when one of my brothers or my father is present to work my strings? I said bring him in.” She turned away. Zona give me strength, she prayed. If you have ever loved me, love me now. Help me.
The intensity with which the councillors whispered among themselves would in ordinary circumstances have made Briony very uneasy, but circumstances were not ordinary and they might never be so again. Gailon Tolly and Earl Tyne of Blueshore did not even try to hide their anger at her. These men had seldom had to take an order from any woman, even a princess.
I cannot afford to care what they think, and I cannot even be as forbearing with them as Father. In him, they think it an odd humor. In me, they will be certain to mark it as weakness…
The door opened and the dark man was led in by the royal guard. Guard Captain Ferras Vansen was again pointedly not looking at her—another man, she felt certain, who held her as worthless. Briony had not decided yet what she wanted to do with Vansen, but surely some example would have to be made. Could the reigning prince of the March Kingdoms be murdered in his bed and no more come of it than if an apple were stolen off a peddler’s cart?
At her nod the guards stopped and allowed the man they had escorted to continue by himself to the foot of the dais and the twins’ two chairs, which for the moment stood side by side in front of King Olin’s throne.
“My deepest condolences,” said Dawet dan-Faar, bowing. He had exchanged his finery of a few days before for restrained black. On him, it somehow looked exotically handsome. “Of course there is nothing I can say to ease your loss, my lady, but it is painful to see your family so bereft. I am certain that my lord Ludis would wish me to send his deep sympathies as well.”
Briony scanned his face for some trace of mockery, the faintest gleam of dark amusement in his eye. For the first time she could see that he was not a young man, that he was perhaps only a decade younger than her own father, though his brown skin was unlined, his jaw firm as a youth’s. Beyond that, she saw nothing untoward. If he was dissembling, he did it splendidly.
Still, that is his skill —it must be. Were he not a veteran dissembler and flatterer he would not be an envoy for ambitious Ludis. And there was also the story of Shaso’s daughter, which Barrick had told her—another reason to despise this man. But there was no denying he was good to look upon.
“You are not entirely beyond suspicion yourself, Lord Dawet, but my guards say you and your party did not stray from your chambers…”
“It is gracious of them to speak what is only the honest truth.” The attractive and completely untrustworthy smile that she remembered made its first appearance of the day, but only for an instant, then the seriousness of the matter chased it away again. “We slept, my lady.”
“Perhaps. But murder must not always be committed by the hand of its principal.” She was finding it easier and easier to keep her face hard, her gaze stern and unblinking. “Murder can be bought, just as easily as a pie in a pie shop.”
Now his smile returned. He seemed genuinely amused. “And what would you know of buying things in pie shops, Princess?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “Sadly, I know a bit more of murder, these days.”
He nodded. “True. And a useful reminder that as much as I enjoy bandying words with you—and I do, my lady—there are more sad and serious matters before us. So rather than indulge myself with a great sham of indignation, Highness, let me instead ask you a question. What benefit would it be to me to kill your poor brother?”
She had to bite down hard on her lip to keep the sudden noise of misery from escaping. Only a very short time ago Kendrick had been alive. If only there were some way to reach back into the day before yesterday, like reaching into a house through a window instead of walking all the way around to the door—some way to change those horrible events or prevent them entirely. “What benefit?” she asked, rallying her thoughts. “I don’t know.” Her voice was less firm than she would have liked. Avin Brone and the others were watching closely—mistrustfully, it seemed to her. As if because the man was comely and well-spoken, she would be any the less careful and doubting! Her cheeks grew hot with resentment.
“Let us speak honestly, my lady. This is a terrible time and honesty may be the best friend to us all. My master, Ludis Drakava, holds your father hostage, whatever name we put on it. We await either a vast ransom in gold or a ransom worth even more—because you, lovely princess, will be part of it.” His smile was gently mocking again. But was he making sport of her or something else? Perhaps even himself? “From Hierosol’s vantage, all that your elder brothers death will do is muddy the waters and slow down the paying of that ransom. We have the king and have not harmed him—why should we murder the prince now? In fact, the only reason you even ask me is because I am a stranger in the castle… and not precisely a friend. But I regret the last. I do sincerely.”
She could not let herself be distracted. He was too smooth, too quick— it must be how a mouse felt in front of a snake. But this mouse would not be so easily confused. “Because you are a stranger and no friend, yes. And because, as you may
know, my brother seems to have been killed with a Tuani knife. Like the one on your belt.”
Dawet looked down. “I would take it out to let you see that there is no blood upon it, Princess, but your guard captain tied it tightly in its sheath before I was brought to you.”
Briony looked up to see that Ferras Vansen, who had ignored her earlier, was now staring at her fixedly. But upon catching her eye he colored and turned his gaze to the floor. Is the man mad?
“He would have preferred to take it away entirely,” Dawet continued, “but among my people we do not take off our knives once we have reached the age of manhood. Unless we are in bed.”
Now she was the one to flush. “You speak many words, my lord Dawet, but few to any point. Knives can be washed. Reputations are not so easily made clean and new.”
His eyes widened. “Are we crossing blades again, Highness, testing each other’s style of battle? No, I think I will not engage, for I see rather that you are one of those who trades blows only for a little while, then aims straight for the heart. What do you know of me, Princess? Or what do you think you know of me?”
“More than I care to remember. Shaso told us of what happened to his daughter.”
And now something passed across the high-boned face that surprised her—not shame, or irritation at being caught out, but a real and indignant anger like the god Perin when he awoke on Mount Xandos to find his hammer stolen. “Ah, did he?”
“Yes. And that your cruelty drove her into a temple, and that she died there.”
Now Dawet’s anger turned into something even stranger—a sudden banking of the flame, not unlike the way Shaso often retreated behind his own stony features. Not surprising, perhaps—they were related, after all. “She died, yes. And he said that I am the one who drove her there?”
“Is it not true, sir?”
He let his long-lashed eyes close for a moment. When the lids sprang up again, his eyes fixed on hers. “There are many kinds of truth, my lady. One is that I ruined a girl of a noble house in my own land. Another might be that I loved her, and that the wound done to her reputation by the gossiping of witless women in the palace was greater than any harm I ever did her. And that when her father drove her out of their house, I would have taken her in, would have made her my own, but that she could not bear to have her father and mother cast her out of their lives forever. She hoped— foolishly, I thought—that someday they would take her back. So, instead, she went to the temple. Did she die there? Yes Of a broken heart? Yes, perhaps. But who broke it?” He shook his head and for the first time looked around at the Southmarch nobles. With his gaze no longer on her, Briony realized she had been leaning forward in her chair. “Who broke it?” he said again, quietly, but with a force that suggested he was truly addressing the entire room. “That is a question that even the wisest folk might dispute.”
She sat back, a bit uncertain.The nobles, especially the council members, watched her suspiciously. Nor could she entirely blame them this time- it seemed to her, and must have been very clear to them, that for some time there had been no one in the room but herself and the dark stranger.
“So… so you blame Shaso for his own daughter’s death?”
He gave a kind of shrug. “Wise folk may toy with any contention, my lady, and truth seems sometimes entirely mutable. That is the age in which we live.”
“Which is to say you will not answer that question outright, since you have so prettily painted the picture of it already without having to show yourself mean-spirited. But if you feel that way, I must suppose you would also believe he could be the murderer of my brother.”
Dawet looked a little surprised. “Has he not confessed it? Someone told me that he had. I thought you prodded me about my innocence in your brother’s death only to see whether because I was his countryman I was also his confederate. But I assure you, my lady, find any Tuani beyond infancy and he will tell you of Shaso’s famous hatred of me.” He frowned. “But if it is not proved that he did it—then, no. I would not think him a murderer.”
“What?” Briony’s voice was much louder than she would wish Gailon of Summerfield looked at her disapprovingly. She felt a momentary urge to have the young duke clapped in leg irons or something—queens used to be able to do such things, so why not the princess regent? Despite his other faults, Dawet dan-Faar at least did not frown at her like an old servant just because she had raised her voice. “Do you jest?” she demanded. “You hate the man. It is clear in your every word and glance?"
The emissary shook his head. “I do not love him, and just as he thinks I have done him harm, I think he has done me as much or more. But my disregard does not make him a murderer. I cannot believe he would treacherously kill someone, especially not someone of your family.”
“What do you mean?”
“All know that he owed your father a debt of honor. When my father fought against the last Autarch, Parnad the Unsleeping, Shaso did not return to help because he could not break his oath to your father. When his wife was ill, he also did not return, because he could not break that oath, nor did he return for her funeral. And so now I am asked whether I think he would kill Olin’s son? Drunkenly and treacherously? There may be stiffer spines and more stubborn hearts that have come out of Xand than Shaso dan-Heza’s—but I have not seen one.”
What he said made her feel even more uncertain of things, and not just about Shaso’s guilt. Was this man Dawet a clever monster, or was he misunderstood? People often thought Barrick unpleasant, even cruel, because they did not see the whole of him.
Barrick. A sudden twinge of alarm. He is lying ill in bed. I should go to him In truth, the conversation had made her feel quite disturbed: she would not be unhappy to stop it. “I will consider your words, Lord Dawet. Now you may go.”
He bowed once more. “Again, my condolences, Lady.”
As he left, the councillors still watched her, but their faces were more shuttered than before. She suddenly realized that she had known most of them her entire life, these neighbors and family friends and even relatives, but did not trust a single one.
“Make yourself vulnerable to no one but your family,” her father had once said. “Because that makes a small enough company that you can watch them all carefully.” She had thought at the time he was joking.
But I have little family left, anyway, she thought. Mother and Kendrick are dead. Father is gone and may never come back. All I have is Barrick.
The room seemed full of hateful strangers. Suddenly, all she wanted was to see her twin. She stood up and walked out of the throne room without another word, so quickly that the guards had to scramble to catch up to her.
* * *
“It will not be easy,” Chert told Opal as he finished his soup. “We don’t have enough men to do a proper job, and the guild may not be able to get me more in time—the funeral is to be in five days. So for now we’re just throwing rubble down into the very pits where we were going to be working before the prince died. It’ll all have to be cleared out again afterward.”
“Who could do such a terrible thing?” she said.
For a moment, with his mind full of the task, he could not understand what she meant. “Ah. Do you mean killing the prince?”
“Of course, you old fool. What else?” Her cross expression, mostly for effect, softened. “That family is under a curse. That’s what people were saying in Quarry Square today. The king captured, the younger prince a cripple, now this. And I suppose the children’s mother dying, too, though that was years ago…” She frowned. “But what about the new queen? If something happens to those poor twins, will her baby inherit the throne? Think of that… before it is even born.”
“Fissure and fracture, woman, the twins are still alive—do you wish to bring something down on them? Never give the idle gods anything to think about.” The idea of something happening to the girl Briony, who had spoken to him just as freely and kindly as though he were a friend or family member, made him fearful m a w
ay that a whole day in the royal tomb had not accomplished. “Where is Flint?”
“In his bed. He was tired.”
Chert got up and walked into the sleeping room where Flint’s straw pallet now lay at the foot of their own bed. The boy hurriedly shoved something under the rolled shirt which he used to cushion his head.
“What’s that? What have you got, lad?” An ordinary child would probably have denied everything, Chert thought as he bent down, but Flint only watched with a certain hooded intent as he reached under the shirt and his hand closed around a confusing combination of shapes.
Lifted out and held in the light of the lamp, he saw that they were two separate objects, a small black sack on a cord, which looked a bit familiar, and a lump of translucent, grayish-white stone.
“What is this?” he asked, holding up the sack Whatever it held so snugly was hard and almost as heavy as stone. The top of the bag was sewed shut, but the threadwork on the rest of it was intricate and beautiful. “Where did you find this, boy?"
“He didn’t,” said Opal in the doorway. “He was wearing it when we found him. It’s his, Chert.” “What’s in it?"
“I don’t know. It isn’t ours to open, and he hasn’t wanted to.”
“But this could have I don’t know, perhaps something in it telling of his real parents. A piece of jewelry with his family name on it, perhaps.” Or a costly heirloom that might help pay for his room and board, Chert could not help thinking.
“It is his,” said Opal again, quietly. She knelt beside the boy and stroked his pale hair and Chert suddenly understood that she didn’t necessarily want to find out the boy’s true name, his parent’s names…
“Well,” he began, looking at the sack, but now his attention was caught by the stone. What he had at first thought was only a sedimentary lump polished by rain or sea, or perhaps even just a weathered piece of pottery, was something much stranger. It was a stone, that seemed clear, but as he stared at it, he realized it was of a kind he had never seen before, nor could he even recognize where it fit in the Family of Stones and Metals. A Funderling not recognizing a stone’s family was something like a dairy farmer stumbling across not just a new breed of cow, but one that could fly.
