by Tad Williams
“And never once paid any of them what they’re worth,” growled Pedder Makewell.
“It’s only because there are so many of them around,” said Feival. “Too many cobblers drives down the price of shoes, as everyone knows.”
“So then why did we...did you, I mean...come here?” asked Briony. “Would there not be places to go where players would be a rare and greatly appreciated thing?”
Hewney looked at her, his eyes narrowing. “You speak very well for a servant girl, our Tim. How did you learn to turn a phrase so nimbly?”
Finn Teodoros cleared his throat loudly. “Are you boring the child again with your history of stagecraft, Nevin? Suffice it to say that the Syannese love our art, and there is a sufficiency of people here who will be glad to see us. And now we have something new to show them, as well!” She frowned. “What?”
“You. Our dear, sweet little goddess. The groundlings will water at the mouth when they see you.”
“You’re a pig, Finn!” Feival Ulian laughed, but also seemed a little hurt—he was the company’s stage beauty, after all. “Don’t mock her.”
“Oh, but Tim here is special,” said Teodoros. “Trust me.”
Half the time I don’t understand what these people are talking about, Briony thought. The other half the time, I’m too tired to care.
The town of Ardos Perinous sat on a hilltop. It had once been a nobleman’s fortress, but the castle was now occupied by no one more exalted than a demi-hierarch of the church, a distaff relative of the Syannese king, Enander. Briony’s ears had pricked up when she heard that— Enander was the man whom Shaso had thought might help her, if only for a price.
“What’s he like, the king of Syan?” Briony asked Teodoros, who was walking beside the wagon for once, sparing the horse having to carry his weight up the steep road. She had never met King Enander or any of his family except a few of the more distant nephews and nieces—the lord of Syan would never send his own children to a place as backward and remote as Southmarch, of course—but she knew of him by reputation. Her father had a grudging respect for Enander, and no one disputed the Syannese king’s many deeds of bravery, but most of what she had heard were tales from his younger days. He must now be past sixty winters of age.
The playwright shrugged. “He is a well-liked monarch, I believe. A warrior but no great lover of war, and not so crazed by the gods that he beggars the people to build new temples, either. But now that he is old I have heard that some say he is disinterested in anything except his mistress, a rather infamous Jellonian baroness named Ananka—a castoff of King Hesper’s, it is said, who somehow found an even better perch for herself.” His forehead wrinkled as he thought about it. “There is a play in that, if one could only keep one’s head on one’s neck after performing it—The Cuckoo Bride, perhaps...”
Briony had to struggle to concentrate on what Finn was saying—she had been distracted by the mention of Hesper of Jellon, the traitor-king who had sold her father to Ludis Drakava. He was another one she wanted desperately to have at the point of a sword, begging for mercy... “And there is the heir, too—Eneas, a rather delicious young man, if a bit mature and hearty for my tastes.” Teodoros showed his best wicked grin. “He waits patiently. They say he is a good man, too, pious and brave. Of course, they say that about every prince, even those who prove to be monsters the instant their fundaments touch the throne.”
Briony certainly knew about Eneas. He was another young man on whom her girlish fancies had once fixed when she had been only seven or eight. She had never actually seen him, not even a portrait, but one of the girls who watched over her had been Syannese (one of Enander’s disregarded nieces) and had told her what a kind and handsome youth Eneas was. For months Briony had dreamed that someday he would come to visit her father, take one look at her, and declare that he could have no other bride. Briony had little doubt she would look on him differently now.
They were nearing the top of the hill. The walls of the castle loomed over them like the shell of some huge ancient creature left behind by retreating tides. It was a strange day: although the weather was winter-cold, the sun was clear and sharp overhead, yet the sky just above the river valley was shrouded with thick clouds. “How long until we reach Tessis?”
Teodoros waved his hand. He was breathing heavily, unused to such exercise. “There,” he gasped.
“What do you mean?” she said, staring up at the stone walls she had thought belonged to the keep of Ardos Perinous. “Are you saying that’s Tessis?” It seemed impossible—it was far smaller than even Southmarch Castle, whose growing populace had spilled over onto the mainland centuries earlier.
“No,” said the playwright, still fighting to get his breath back. “Turn...around, fool child. Look...behind you.”
She did, and gasped. They had climbed up above the treeline and now she could see what had been blocked by the bend of the river. Only a few miles ahead the valley opened out into a bowl so wide she could not see its farthest reach. Everywhere she looked there were houses and more—walls, towers, steeples, and thousands of chimneys, the latter all puffing trails of smoke into the sky so that the entire valley lay under a pall of gray, like a fog that only began a hundred feet in the air. Channels led out from the Esterian River in all directions and crisscrossed the valley floor, the water reflecting in the late light so that the city seemed caught in a web of silver.
“Merciful Zoria,” she said quietly. “It’s huge!”
“Some say Hierosol is bigger,” Teodoros replied, wiping at his streaming forehead and cheeks. “But I think that is not true anymore.” He smiled. “I forgot, you haven’t seen Tessis before, have you?”
Briony shook her head, unable to think of anything to say. She felt very small. How could she ever have felt that Southmarch was so important—an equal sister to nations like Syan? Any thought of revealing herself to the Syannese and asking for help suddenly seemed foolish. They would laugh at her, or ignore her.
“None other like it,” Teodoros said. “‘Fair white walls on which the gods themselves did smile, and towers that stirred the clouds,’ as the poet Vanderin put it. Once the entire world was theirs.”
“It...it looks as though they still own a good share,” said Briony.
By all the gods, she thought as they rolled down the wide thoroughfare, jostled and surrounded by dozens of other wagons and hundreds of other foot travelers, Finn says this is not even the biggest street in Tessis—that Lantern Broad is twice the size—but it’s still wider across than Market Square!
She had never before in her life felt so much like—what had Finn called her that first day? “A straw-covered bumpkin just off the channel boat from Connord.” Well, she might have been annoyed at the time, but it had turned out to be a fair assessment, because here she was gaping at everything like the ripest peasant at his first fair. They were still at least a mile from the city gates—she could see the crowned guard towers looming ahead like armored giants out of legend—but they were already passing through a thriving metropolis bigger and busier than the heart of Southmarch.
“Where are we going to stay?” she asked Teodoros, who was happily ensconced in the wagon again, watching it all pass by.
“An agreeable inn just in the shadow of the eastern gate,” he called down. “We have stayed there before. I have made the arrangements for a tennight’s stay, which will give us plenty of time to smooth the wrinkles out of Zoria before we go looking for a spot closer to the center of town.”
Feival Ulian wandered back. “You know, Finn, I know the fellow who built the Zosimion Theater near Hierarch’s College Bridge. I heard that he’s having trouble finding anyone to mount some work—a feud with the Royal Master of Revels or some such. I’ll wager it’s free.”
“Good. Perhaps we shall move there after the inn.” “It might be free now...”
“No!” Teodoros seemed to realize that he’d been a bit harsh in his refusal. “No, I’ve just...I’ve made the arrangem
ents, already, good Feival. At the inn in Chakki’s Hole. We would not get our money back.”
Feival shrugged. “Certainly. But should I see if I can find out, for later...?”
“By all means.” Teodoros smiled and nodded, as if trying to make up for his earlier loud refusal.
Briony was a little puzzled by Finn’s vehemence, but she had other things on her mind. She was merely floating, she realized—letting herself be swept along this road and through this foreign land like a leaf on a stream. In fact, she had been swept along ever since meeting the demigoddess Lisiya—only some three dozens day ago, yet already it seemed like a dream from her distant childhoold. She reached into her shirt and patted the charm Lisiya had given her, stroked the small, smooth bird skull. What should she do now? The demigoddess had only pointed her toward the players, but had told her nothing of what she should do or where she should go next. Briony suspected Lisiya wanted her to make her own decisions, that in some way she was being tested—wasn’t that what gods did to mortals?
But why? No one ever explained that curious whim. Why should the gods care whether mortals are worthy of anything? It was a bit like a person walking around in a stable, testing all the animals to see which were pure of heart or particularly clever, so they could be rewarded and the other beasts punished. She supposed people might do that to find which were the most obedient animals—was that the gods’ reasoning?
See, here I am, drifting again, she chided herself. What is Briony Eddon going to do now, that’s the question. What’s next? Before his death in the fire, Shaso had talked about raising an army, or at least enough men in arms to protect her when she revealed herself, a force to defend her from the Tollys’ treachery. He had talked of appealing to the Syannese king for troops and here she was in Syan. Most of all she wanted to go to Hierosol where her father was prisoner—she ached to see his face, to hear his voice—but she knew it was a foolish idea, that at best she would only join him in captivity. Shaso would tell her to cast her dice here, among old allies.
But would that be a good suggestion, or would it simply be Shaso, the old soldier, thinking as old soldiers did—no other way to reclaim a kingdom except by force of arms?
Thinking of the old man scalded her heart, the terrible injustice she and her brother had done him, caging him like an animal for months and months...And now he is dead. Because of me. Because of my foolishness, my headstrong mistakes, my...my... “Tim? Tim, what’s wrong?” It was Feival, his handsome face full of surprised concern. “Why are you weeping, pet?”
Briony wiped angrily at her cheeks. Could it be possible to act more like a girl? It was a good thing all the players knew her secret. “Just...just thinking of something. Of someone.”
Feival nodded wisely and turned away.
The tavern called The False Woman—a somewhat illomened name, Briony couldn’t help feeling, considering her own nested impostures—crouched in the corner of an old, beaten-down market in the northeastern part of the city, a neighborhood known as Chakki’s Hole after the Chakkai people from the mountains of south Perikal who had come to the city as laborers and made this maze of dark streets their new home. The Hole, as inhabitants often called it, was so close to the high city walls that even just past noon on a clear day the winter sun was blocked and the whole neighborhood in shade. One of the city’s dozens of canals neatly separated it from the rest of the Perikalese district.
The sign hanging above the tavern doorway showed a woman with two faces, one fair and one foul, and a pointed hat of a type that hadn’t been worn in a century or more. The taverner, a stout, mustached fellow named Bedoyas, ushered them through into the innyard with the air of a man forced to stable someone else’s animals in his own bedroom. “Here. I’ll send my boy around for the horses. You will drive not a single nail into my wood without my permission, understood?”
“Understood, good host,” said Finn. “And if anyone is asking for us, send them to me. My name is Teodoros.”
When Bedoyas had stumped off to see to other guests (not that he seemed to be overwhelmed with custom this winter) Briony helped the company begin setting up a stage—the most permanent they had built since she had been with them, because they would now be at least a tennight in one place. Several of the men were in truth more carpenters than performers, and at least three of the shareholding players, Dowan Birch, Feival, and Pedder Makewell himself, had worked in the building trades.
Hewney claimed he had as well, but Finn Teodoros loudly suggested otherwise.
“What rubbish are you spouting, fat man?” Hewney was helping Feival and two of the others lash together the barrels that would be pillars for the stage. They did not bother to bring their own, since most inns had more than a few empties to spare, and The False Woman was no exception. “I have built more houses than you’ve eaten hot suppers!”
“You must have set up Tessis by yourself, then,” said Pedder Makewell. “Look at the size of our Finn!”
“It would be a more telling jest, Master Makewell,” Teodoros replied a touch primly, “if your own greatly swollen sack of guts were not falling over your belt. As it is, the nightsoil digger is suggesting that the saltpeter man stinks.”
Briony did not know why she found that so funny, but she did; she nearly fell over laughing despite (or perhaps because of ) Estir Makewell’s sour look. She and Makewell’s sister were shoveling sand into the barrels to make them stronger supports under the middle of the stage. Estir still did not really like the person she thought of as “Tim”—she would never like adding another hungry mouth to the troop, which reduced the income of the shareholdings—but she had softened toward Briony a bit.
“Leave it to a child,” said Estir, rolling her eyes, “to find such a jest so laughable.” She scowled at the others. “And you men are just as bad. You would think you were all still babies, soiling your smallclothes, to see you get such pleasure out of dribble, fart, and ordure.”
This started Briony laughing all over again—it was the same thing her prim and squeamish brother Barrick had often said about her, although her twin had obviously never blamed it on her being a child.
It was cold out and her hands were chapped and aching already from the rough handle on the shovel, but Briony felt oddly content. She was almost happy, she realized—for the first time in too long to remember: the miseries that dogged her thoughts were not by any means gone, but for the moment she could live with them, as if she and they were old enemies grown too weary to contend.
The men brought out the pieces of the stage and joined them together in one large rectangle, then set it on top of the barrels and lashed the whole thing together. Briony herself, as one of the lightest, was sent to stand on top of it to test its resilience. When she had bounced up and down on it vigorously enough to assure everyone, they continued preparing the rest of their makeshift theater. The smaller of the two wagons was rolled into place at the back of the stage where it would serve as a tiring-room for entrances, exits, and quick changes, as well as a wall on which to hang painted backdrops. They lifted up the hinged top of the wagon, folding it upward so that it could serve as a kind of wall or tower-top from which actors could speak their lines or, as gods, meddle in the lives of callow mortals from on high. Briony could see the persimmon-colored sunlight of fading afternoon on the uppermost peaks of the mountains southeast of Tessis and wondered if the gods were truly up there as she had been taught, watching her and all the other petty mortals.
But Lisiya said they were...what? Sleeping? They can hear us, she said—but can they still see us?
It was strange to think of the gods being blind and only faintly aware of the existence of Briony’s kind, like vastly aged grandparents snoring in their chairs, barely moving from the beginning of one day to its end.
No wonder they long to come back to the world again, as Lisiya said. She was immediately chilled, although she could not quite say why. She bent and returned to bracing the wagon wheels with stones.
The morning meal, a surprisingly hearty fish stew the tavernkeeper Bedoyas had served them in a big iron pot, with a spicy tang that Finn told her came from things called marashis, was not lying quietly in her stomach. It was no fault of the tavern’s cook, though: Briony was fretful. The tavern yard was already starting to fill, even though the play would not begin until the temple bells rang in Blessed Lady of Night to call the end of afternoon prayers, which was most of an hour away. She had never performed in front of more than a few dozen people in any of the villages or towns along the way, but there were twice that many here already and the yard was still half empty.
What are you frightened of, girl? she asked herself. You have fought a demon, not to mention escaped a usurper. You have stood before many times this number and acted the queen in truth—or at least the reigning princess —a far more taxing role. Players don’t lose their heads when they fail to convince, as I almost lost mine. She thought of Hendon Tolly and a little shudder of rage passed through her. Oh, but I would glory to have his head on a chopping block. I would take up the ax myself. Briony, who although rough and boyish in some ways, as her maids and family had never ceased pointing out, was not or bloodthirsty, but she wanted fiercely to see Tolly humiliated and punished.
I owe it to Shaso’s memory, if nothing else, she thought. I can’t make amends for imprisoning him, but I can avenge him.
Shaso had been innocent of her brother’s murder, but she still did not know who exactly was guilty, beyond the obvious. Who had been the guiding hand behind a murder by witchcraft? Hendon Tolly, however dark his heart and bloody his hands, had seemed genuinely surprised at Anissa’s maid’s horrific transformation—but if the Tollys had not had her brother murdered, then who was to blame? It was impossible to believe the witch-maid had conceived and executed such a scheme on her own. Could it have been one of Olin’s rival kings? Or the distant autarch? Perhaps even the fairy folk, reaching out somehow from their shadowy land, a first blow before their attack? In truth, the lives of the Eddon family had been completely shaken to pieces in a matter of months by magic and monsters. Why had any of this happened?
