by Tad Williams
Ferras also thought young Prince Barrick still appeared very ill, although perhaps the boy was just careworn. Whatever the cause, Barrick was certainly not paying the closest attention to the business of the kingdom. As case after case came up before them—the rents on royal lands in need of attention, official embassies of grief and support fromTalleno, Ses-sio, and Perikal to be heard, important property disputes that had come up from the assize courts or the temple courts needing a final decision—the young prince barely seemed to attend the speakers. In most cases he simply waited for Briony to speak, then nodded his head in agreement, all the while rubbing the crippled arm that he held in his lap like a pet dog. Only a question from Lord Nynor the castellan seemed to awaken the boy from his lethargy at last and kindle a light in his eye: Nynor wanted to know how much longer the Hierosoline envoy Dawet dan-Faar would be with them, since the household purse had made allotment for only a fortnight’s stay. But although he was clearly interested, Barrick became, if anything, even more silent and unmoving as Briony answered the question. The princess said that they could not of course hurry a reply to the man who held her father’s safety in his hands, especially at so troubled a time. She seemed almost as distracted as her brother. Ferras Vansen thought that Barrick did not seem to like her answer much, but the prince made no spoken objection and Nynor was left to go grumbling off to rearrange the household finances.
The princess and her brother dispatched several dozen such questions over the course of two hours. The gathered nobles of the council offered suggestions, and on some occasions dissenting opinions as well, but mostly they seemed to be watching the twins at their new task—watching them and judging them. Gailon of Summerfield made none of his usual objections, and in fact seemed to be as absorbed by his own thoughts as the prince and princess were by theirs. When the subject of the envoy Dawet came up, it seemed Gailon might say something, but the moment passed and the handsome duke resumed picking at the leg of the council table with a small ceremonial dagger, barely hiding what was obviously some great frustration, although Ferras Vansen had no idea what its cause might be. For the first time Vansen could see Summerfield’s duke for what he really was, despite all his power and wealth a man younger than Vansen himself, and one with less training in silence and patience as well.
It must have been hard for him with that drunken blowhard of a father. Nobody outside Summerfield Court missed old Duke Lindon very much, and Vansen couldn’t help guessing that there probably weren’t many people in his duchy who missed him either.
The afternoon wore on, bringing nothing more interesting than reports of a sharp increase in the number of strange creatures that seemed to be coming from across the Shadowline. Something with spines and teeth had badly injured some children near Redtree, and a man had been killed by a goat with black horns and no eyes, which the locals had promptly captured, killed, and burned, but most of the reports were of creatures that seemed harmless despite their strangeness, many of them crippled or dying, as though they had not been prepared for the world on this side of the unseen barrier.
At last even the novelty of these tales began to fade. Some of the council members began to ignore the proceedings and talk openly among themselves despite sharp looks from Brone. Vansen was intrigued to see that the lord constable seemed also to have taken up the role of first minister, a position unfilled since the old Duke of Summerfield’s death a year earlier. He wondered if this was part of the reason for the young duke’s disgruntlement. So many things are out of joint since the king went away, he thought.
“And now, if it pleases you, Highnesses,” Avin Brone announced after a long dispute over the construction of a new Trigonate temple had left most of the table yawning, “there is some important business we have saved until last.”
Several of the nobles, slumped and weary, actually straightened up, their attention finally caught Vansen was about to fetch the witness when Brone surprised him by turning his back on him and summoning in two people Vansen had never even seen, a round-eyed man and a young girl. The man was bald as a turtle, although otherwise he seemed of healthy middle years, and even the girl was odd to look upon she seemed to have plucked out her eyebrows entirely, as in the style of a hundred years before, and her hairline began far up her forehead. She wore a skirt and shawl that mostly hid her form, but the man certainly had the bulging chest and long, muscled arms typical of his kind.
Skimmers! Hundreds of the water-loving folk lived within the castle walls, and even though they generally stuck to their own kind and places, Vansen had encountered them often. But seeing them in the highest council chamber did surprise him, especially because he had thought that his own news would be asked for next.
“Highnesses,” Avin Brone declared, “this is the fisherman Turley Longfingers and his daughter. They have something they wish to tell you.”
Barrick stirred. “What is this, the entertainment? Have we put old Puzzle out to graze at last and found some new talents?”
Briony gave her brother a look of irritation. “The prince is tired, but he’s right about one thing—this is unusual, Lord Brone. It feels like a bit of mummery, saved till last.”
“Not last, I am afraid,” responded the lord constable. “There will be more. But forgive the surprise. I did not know whether they would come forth and tell this story until just before the council came to the table. I have been chasing down the rumor for days.”
“Very well.” Briony turned to the fisherman, who was squeezing an already shapeless hood or hat in the clawlike hands that must have given him his name. “He said your name is Turley?"
The man swallowed. Vansen wondered what could make one of the normally imperturbable Skimmers, folk who routinely swam with sharks and killed them with knives when it was needful, look so harrowed. “Turley, yes,” he said in a thick voice. “It is that, my queen.”
“I’m not a queen and my brother isn’t a king. The real king is our father, and he still lives, thank all the gods “ She looked at him closely. “I have heard that among yourselves you Skimmers don’t use Connoric names.”
Turley’s eyes widened. They had very little white around the edges. “We do have our own talk, Majesty, that’s true.” “Well, if you would prefer to use a name like that, you may.”
He looked for a moment as though he might actually bolt the room, but at last shook his gleaming head. “Prefer not, Majesty. Close-held, our names and talk. But no harm done to tell you of our clan. Back-on-Sunset-Tide, we are called.”
She smiled a little, but her brother beside her just looked aggrieved. “A very fine name. Now why has Lord Brone brought you before the council?”
“My daughter Ena’s tale it is, truly, but she was frightened to speak before them as high as yourselves, so came I with her.” The man stretched out his long arm and his daughter moved against him. In her odd way, with her small stature and huge, watchful eyes, Vansen thought the girl almost pretty, but he could not ignore that oddity entirely: the Skimmers carried their strangeness around with them like a cloak. He had never yet talked to one without being reminded several times by his eyes and ears and even his nose that it was a Skimmer he was speaking to and not an ordinary person.
“Very well, then,” said Briony. “We are listening.”
“On the night…What happened, it was on the night before the night of the killing,” said Turley. Briony sat a little straighter. It was so quiet in the room Vansen could hear her skirts rustling. “The killing?” “Of the prince. The one that just was buried.”
Barrick was not slouching anymore either. “Go on.”
“My daughter here, she was… she was…” The hairless man looked flustered again, as though he had been pulled out of a shadowy, safe place and into bright light.”Out when she should not be.With a young man, one of the Hull-Scrapes-the-Sand folk, who should know better.”
“And where is this young man?” asked Briony.
“Nursing some bruises.” Turley Longfingers spoke wi
th a certain dark satisfaction. “He’ll not be taking young girls midnight paddling in our lagoon for a bit.”
“Go on, then. Or perhaps now that your daughter has seen us and heard us, she will be able to tell the story herself. Ena?”
The girl jumped at the sound of her name, although she had been listening to every word. She blushed, and Vansen thought the dark mottling on neck and cheeks robbed her of the momentary beauty she had showed before. “Yes, Majesty,” the girl said. “A boat I saw, Majesty.”
“A boat?"
“With no lights. It slid past the place where I was swimming with… with my friend, it did. All cut-paddled.” “Cut-paddled?”
“Dipping paddle blade sideways-like.” Turley demonstrated. “That’s what we call the stroke when someone tries to be quiet.”
“This was in the South Lagoon?” Barrick asked. “Where?”
“Near the shore at Hangskin Row,” the girl replied. “Someone was waiting for it on the Old Tannery Dock. That’s how we name it. The one closest to the tower what has all the banners on it. They had a light—him on the dock, I mean—but it was hooded. Up the boat went to it, still cut-paddled, and then they gave them something.”
“They?” Briony leaned forward. The princess looked unusually calm, but Ferras Vansen thought he could see something else behind her pale features, a fear she was struggling to hide, and for a moment all the helpless affection he had for her came surging up inside him. He would do anything for Briony Eddon, he realized, anything to protect her, no matter what she thought of him.
A jest, Vansen? He needed no enemies to do it—he could mock himself. Do anything? You already had the protecting of her elder brother and now he’s dead.
“The one in the boat,” the Skimmer girl said, “gave something to the one on the dock. We couldn’t see what it was or who they were. Then the boat went away again, out toward the front seawall.”
“And even after the prince was murdered the next night, you did not come forward?” Briony asked, her face gone hard. “Even after the ruling lord of Southmarch was killed? Are you so used to seeing things like this on the lagoon?”
“Dark boats paddling silent, yes, sometimes,” the girl told her, gaining courage as she went. “Our folk and the fishermen have feuds and people get into trouble, and… and other things happen. But I still thought it meant no good, that shuttered light. I feared saying anything, though, because… because of my Rafe.”
“Your Rafe!” snorted her father. “He’ll be no one’s Rafe if I see him near our dockhouse again. Hands soft as skateskin, and he’s a Hullscraper!”
“He’s kind,” said the girl quietly.
“I think that’s enough.” Avin Brone came forward. “Unless Your Highnesses have other questions… ?”
“They can go,” Briony said. Both she and Barrick looked troubled. Meanwhile Ferras Vansen was working it through in his head and realizing that the tower the girl mentioned must be the Tower of Spring—and that the prince and princess must know that, too.
Queen Anissa’s residence, he thought. But there are other things on that side of the castle as well —the observatory, more than a few taverns, and at least one of our own guardhouses, not to mention the homes of hundreds of Skimmers and ordinary folk. It tells us nothing truly useful. Still, there was something about the idea that tugged at him, so that for a moment he nearly forgot his own pressing errand here.
As Lord Brone’s man-at-arms showed out the two Skimmer folk, the court physician Chaven slipped in past them to stand just inside the council chamber doorway, an unsettled look on his round face.
“Now we have one last piece of business,” said Brone. “A minor thing only, so I think that after such a long piece of talking and listening we might send the extra guards and servants away and let them get on with preparing for the midday meal. Will you indulge me in this, Prince Barrick, Princess Briony?”
The twins gave their assent and within a few moments the chamber was empty of everyone except the councillors themselves, Vansen and his guards, and Chaven, who still lingered beside the far door like a schoolboy waiting for punishment.
“So?” Barrick sounded tired and childishly irritated; it was hard to believe he and Briony were the same age. “Obviously you want to thwart rumors, Lord Brone, so why wait until after the news of this mystery boat has been delivered? Right now half the people you sent out are hurrying to find someone to tell about this.”
“Because that is what we want people talking about, Highness,” said Brone. “It is true about the boat, but at this point it’s also meaningless. It will not frighten people, just intrigue them. Best of all, it will mean that no one will be in a hurry to find out what we are saying here, now.”
“They already know what we’re going to be saying, though, don’t they?” asked Briony. “We are going to discuss what that Skimmer girl saw and whether it means anything.”
“Perhaps,” said Brone. “But perhaps not. Forgive me for playing a deep game, my lord and lady, but I have another bit of news for you, one that would make for much more fearful rumors. Captain Vansen?”
The moment came upon him so suddenly, and with his head still so full of questions about the Skimmers and of thoughts about the princess herself that for a painfully extended moment. Ferras Vansen just stood, not quite hearing. Then he suddenly realized the lord constable was staring at him, waiting, as was everyone else in the council. He leaped toward the door, certain he could hear the prince and princess snickering behind him, and stepped out into the passage to call for the other guards to bring in the young man.
“So you stand before us again, Vansen,” Briony said when he returned to the chamber. “I hope you are not looking for an advancement of your position?”
He waited a few moments to make sure he had control of his voice, would not misspeak. If she hated him, he could not but believe he had earned it. “Your Highnesses, Lords, this man beside me is named Raemon Beck. He has only reached Southmarch this morning. He has a tale you should hear.”
When it was finished and the first rush of amazed questions had gusted itself out, silence fell over the chill, windowless room.
“What does it mean?” the princess asked at last. “Monsters? Elves? Ghosts? It seems an unbelievable tale.” She stared at Raemon Beck, who was shivering as though he had just come in out of a snowstorm instead of a day bright with autumn sunshine. “What are we to do with such news?”
“It is foolishness,” growled Tyne of Blueshore. Several of the other council members nodded vigorous agreement. “Bandits, yes—the roads to the west are not safe even in these days. But this man has been struck on the head and dreamed the rest. That or he seeks to make a name for himself.”
“No!” cried Beck. Tears welled in his eyes. He hid his head in his hands, muffling his voice. “It happened—it is all true!”
“And bandits or boggarts, why did you alone survive?” demanded one of the barons.
Chaven stepped forward. “Your pardon, my lords, but I suspect that this man was merely the one chosen to bear the message.”
“What message?” Small spots blazed on Prince Barrick’s cheeks as though his fever had returned. He seemed almost as frightened as Raemon Beck. “That the world has gone mad?”
“I do not know what the message is,” said Chaven. “But I think I know who is sending it. I have been told by one I know, one I trust… that the Shadowline has begun moving.”
“Moving?” Avin Brone, who had already heard the young merchant’s story, now for the first time looked truly startled. “How so?”
Chaven explained how a Funderling man searching for rare stones in the hills had found the line moved some yards closer to the castle—the first such movement in anyone’s memory. “I had planned to tell you of this, Your Highnesses, but the tragic events that you know of kept me busy, and then I did not wish to burden you when you still had your brother to bury.”
“That was days and days ago,” Briony said angrily. “Why
have you kept silent since then?"
Gailon Tolly saved the physician from having to answer immediately. “What is all this about?” the Duke of Summerfield demanded loudly. “Scholar, you and this Helmingsea lackwit spout nurse’s tales as though you spoke of true places like Fael or Hierosol. The Shadowline? There is nothing beyond it but mist and wet lands too cold to farm and… and old stories.”
“You are young, my lord,” said Chaven gently. “But your father knew. And his father. And your grandfather several times over was one of the men who regained Southmarch and this castle from the hands of the Twilight People.” The small man shrugged, but there was something terrible in the gesture, an entire language of resignation that did not hide the fear. “It could be that after all these years the Quiet Folk seek to have it back.”
The councillors all seemed to begin shouting at once, no one listening to any other. Briony stood up and extended a trembling hand. “Silence! Chaven, you will attend my brother and me at once in the chapel, or somewhere else we can have privacy. You will tell us everything you know. But that is not enough. Dozens of our countrymen have been robbed and perhaps murdered on the Settland Road. We must find out everything we can, immediately, before all trace of the attackers is gone.” She looked at her twin, who nodded, but his face showed his unhappiness. “We must go to the place where this occurred, with force. We must find the track of these creatures and follow it. If they can take men away from the road, they will have left some mark of their passage.” She turned on Raemon Beck, who had sunk to a crouch as though his legs could no longer support him. “Do you swear you have told us the truth, man? Because if I find… if we find that you have made up this story, you will spend the rest of a short and unhappy life in chains.” The merchant could only shake his head. “It is all true!”
“Then we will send a troop of soldiers at once,” she said. “To follow the trail wherever it leads. That at least we can do while we consider what this may mean, what… message we have been sent.”
