Shadowmarch

1. A Wyvern Hunt

The belling of the hounds was already growing faint in the hollows behind them when he finally pulled up. His horse was restive, anxious to return to the hunt, but Barrick Eddon yanked hard on the reins to keep the mare dancing in place. His always-pale face seemed almost translucent with weariness, his eyes fever-bright. “Go on,” he told his sister. “You can still catch them.”

Briony shook her head. “I’m not leaving you by yourself. Rest if you need to, then we’ll go on together.” He scowled as only a boy of fifteen years can scowl, the expression of a scholar among idiots, a noble among mud-footed peasants. “I don’t need to rest, strawhead. I just don’t want the bother.”

“You are a dreadful liar,” she told her brother gently. Twins, they were bound to each other in ways as close as lovers’ ways.

“And no one can kill a dragon with a spear, anyway. How did the men at the Shadowline outpost let it past?”

“Perhaps it crossed over at night and they didn’t see it. It isn’t a dragon, anyway, it’s a wyvern—much smaller. Shaso says you can kill one with just a good clop on the head.”

“What do either you or Shaso know about wyverns?” Barrick demanded. “They don’t come trotting across the hills every day. They’re not bloody cows.”

Briony thought it a bad sign that he was rubbing his crippled arm without even trying to hide it from her. He looked more bloodless than usual, blue under the eyes, his flesh so thin he sometimes looked almost hollow. She feared he had been walking in his sleep again and the thought made her shudder. She had lived in Southmarch Castle all her life, but still did not like passing through any of its mazy, echoing halls after dark.

She forced a smile. “No they’re not cows, silly, but the master of the hunt asked Chaven before we set out, remember? And Shaso says we had one in Grandfather Ustin s day—it killed three sheep at a steading in Landsend.”

“Three whole sheep? Heavens, what a monster!”

The crying of the hounds rose in pitch, and now both horses began to take fretful little steps. Someone winded a horn, the moan almost smothered by the intervening trees.

“They’ve seen something,” She felt a sudden pang. “Oh, mercy of Zoria! What if that thing hurts the dogs?" Barrick shook his head in disgust, then brushed a damp curl of dark red hair out of his eyes. “The dogs?" But Briony was truly frightened for them—she had raised two of the hounds, Rack and Dado, from puppyhood, and in some ways they were more real to this king’s daughter than most people. “Oh, come, Barrick, please! I’ll ride slowly, but I won’t leave you here.”

His mocking smile vanished. “Even with only one hand on the reins, I can outride you any hour.” “Then do it!” she laughed, spurring down the slope. She was doing her best to poke him out of his fury, but she knew that cold blank mask too well only time and perhaps the excitement of the chase would breathe life back into it.

Briony looked back up the hillside and was relieved to see that Barrick was following, a thin shadow atop the gray horse, dressed as though he were in mourning. But her twin dressed that way every day.

Oh, please, Barrick, sweet angry Barrick, don’t fall in love with Death. Her own extravagant thought surprised her—poetical sentiment usually made Briony Eddon feel like she had an itch she couldn’t scratch—and as she turned back in distraction she nearly ran down a small figure scrambling out of her way through the long grass. Her heart thumping in her breast, she brought. Snow to a halt and jumped down, certain she had almost killed some crofter’s child.

“Are you hurt?”

It was a very small man with graying hair who stood up from the yellowing grass, his head no higher than the belly-strap of her saddle—a Funderling of middle age, with short but well-muscled legs and arms. He doffed his shapeless felt hat and made a little bow. “Quite well, my lady. Kind of you to ask.”

“I didn’t see you…”

“Not many do, Mistress.” He smiled. “And I should also…”

Barrick rattled past with hardly a look at his sister or her almost-victim. Despite his best efforts he was favoring the arm and his seat was dangerously bad. Briony scrambled back onto Snow, making a muddle of her riding skirt.

“Forgive me,” she said to the little man, then bent low over Snow’s neck and spurred after her brother.

The Funderling helped his wife to her feet. “I was going to introduce you to the princess.”

“Don’t be daft.” She brushed burrs out of her thick skirt. “We’re just lucky that horse of hers didn’t crush us into pudding.”

“Still, it might be your only chance to meet one of the royal family.” He shook his head in mock-sadness. “Our last opportunity to better ourselves, Opal.”

She squinted, refusing to smile. “Better for us would mean enough coppers to buy new boots for you, Chert, and a nice winter shawl for me. Then we could go to meetings without looking like beggars’ children.”

“It’s been a long time since we’ve looked like children of any sort, my old darling.” He plucked another burr out of her gray-streaked hair.

“And it will be a longer time yet until I have my new shawl if we don’t get on with ourselves.” But she was the one who lingered, looking almost wistfully along the trampled track through the long grass. “Was that really the princess? Where do you suppose they were going in such a hurry?”

“Following the hunt. Didn’t you hear the horns? Ta-ra, ta-ra! The gentry are out chasing some poor creature across the hills today. In the bad old days, it might have been one of us!”

She sniffed, recovering herself. “I don’t pay heed to any of that, and if you’re wise, neither will you. Don’t meddle with the big folk without need and don’t draw their attention, as my father always said. No good will come of it. Now let’s get on with our work, old man. I don’t want to be wandering around near the edge of Shadowline when darkness comes.”

Chert Blue Quartz shook his head, serious again. “Nor do I, my love.”

The harriers and sight hounds seemed reluctant to enter the stand of trees, although their hesitation did not make them any quieter. The clamor was atrocious, but even the keenest of the hunters seemed content to wait a short distance up the hill until the dogs had driven their quarry out into the open.

The lure of the hunt for most had little to do with the quarry anyway, even so unusual a prize as this. At least two dozen lords and ladies and many times that number of their servitors swarmed along the hillside, the gentlefolk laughing and talking and admiring (or pretending to admire) each others’ horses and clothes, with soldiers and servants plodding along behind or driving oxcarts stacked high with food and drink and tableware and even the folded pavilions in which the company had earlier taken their morning meal. Many of the squires led spare horses, since it was not unusual during a particularly exciting hunt for one of the mounts to collapse with a broken leg or burst heart. None of the hunters would stand for missing the kill and having to ride home on a wagon just because of a dead horse. Among the churls and higher servants strode men-at-arms carrying pikes or halberds, grooms, houndsmen in mud-stained, tattered clothes, a few priests—those of lesser status had to walk, like the soldiers—and even Puzzle, the king’s bony old jester, who was playing a rather unconvincing hunting air on his lute as he struggled to remain seated on a saddled donkey. In fact, the quiet hills below the Shadowline now contained what was more or less an entire village on the move.

Briony, who always liked to get out of the stony reaches of the castle, where the towers sometimes seemed to blot out the sun for most of the day, had especially enjoyed the momentary escape from this great mass of humanity and the quiet that came with it. She couldn’t help wondering what a hunt must be like with the huge royal courts of Syan or Jellon—she had heard they sometimes lasted for weeks. But she did not have long to think about it.

Shaso dan-Heza rode out from the crowd to meet Barrick and Briony as they came down the crest. The master of arms was the only member of the gentry who actually seemed dressed to kill something, wearing not the finery most nobles donned for the hunt but his old black leather cuirass that was only a few shades darker than his skin. His huge war bow bumped at his saddle, bent and strung as though he expected attack at any moment. To Briony, the master of arms and her sullen brother Barrick looked like a pair of storm clouds drifting toward each other and she braced herself for the thunder. It was not long in coming.

“Where have you two been?” Shaso demanded. “Why did you leave your guards behind?”

Briony hastened to take the blame. “We did not mean to be away so long. We were just talking, and Snow was hobbling a little…”

The old Tuani warrior ignored her, fixing his hard gaze on Barrick. Shaso seemed angrier than he should have been, as though the twins had done more than simply wander away from the press of humanity for a short while. Surely he could not think they were in danger here, only a few miles from the castle in the country the Eddon family had ruled for generations? “I saw you turn from the hunt and ride off without a word to anyone, boy,” he said. “What were you thinking?”

Barrick shrugged, but there were spots of color high on his cheeks. “Don’t call me ‘boy.’ And what affair is it of yours?”

The old man flinched and his hand curled. For a frightening moment Briony thought he might actually hit Barrick. He had dealt the boy many clouts over the years, but always in the course of instruction, the legitmate blows of combat; to strike one of the royal family in public would be something else entirely. Shaso was not well-liked—many of the nobles openly maintained that it was not fitting for a dark-skinned southerner, a former prisoner of war as well, to hold such high estate in Southmarch, that the security of the kingdom should be in the hands of a foreigner. No one doubted Shaso’s skill or bravery—even once he had been disarmed in the Battle of Hierosol, in which he and young King Olin had met as enemies, it had taken a half dozen men to capture the Tuani warrior, and he had sail managed to break free long enough to knock Olin from his horse with the blow of a hammering fist. But instead of punishing the prisoner, the twins’ father had admired the southerner’s courage, and after Shaso had been taken back to Southmarch and had survived nearly ten years of unransomed captivity, he had continued to grow in Olin’s estimation until at last he was set free except for a bond of honor to the Eddon family and given a position of responsibility. In the more than two decades since the Battle of Hierosol, Shaso dan-Heza had upheld his duties with honor, great skill, and an almost tiresome rigor, eclipsing all the other nobles so thoroughly— and earning resentment for that even more strongly than for the color of his skin—that he had advanced at last to the lofty position of master of arms, the king’s minister of war for all the March Kingdoms. The ex-prisoner had been untouchable as long as the twins’ father sat on the throne, but now Briony wondered whether Shaso’s titles, or even Shaso himself, would survive this bleak time of King Olin’s absence.

As if a similar thought passed through his head as well, Shaso lowered his hand. “You are a prince of Southmarch,” he told Barrick, brusque but quiet. “When you risk your life without need, it is not me you are harming.”

Her twin stared back defiantly, but the old man’s words cooled some of the heat of his anger. Briony knew Barrick would not apologize, but there would not be a fight either.

The excited barking of the dogs had risen in pitch. The twins’ older brother Kendrick was beckoning them down to where he was engaged in conversation with Gailon Tolly, the young Duke of Summerfield. Briony rode down the hill toward them with Barrick just behind her. Shaso gave them a few paces start before following.

Gailon of Summerfield—only half a dozen years senior to Barrick and Briony, but with an uncomfortable formality that she knew masked his dislike of some of her family’s broader eccentricities—removed his green velvet hat and bowed to them. “Princess Briony, Prince Barrick. We were concerned for your well-being, cousins.”

She doubted that was entirely true. Barring the Eddons themselves, the Tollys were the closest family in the line of succession and they were known to have ambitions. Gailon had proved himself capable of at least the appearance of honorable subservience, but she doubted the same could be said for his younger brothers, Caradon and the disturbing Hendon. Briony could only be grateful the rest of theTollys seemed to prefer lording it over their massive estate down in Summerfield to playing at loyal underlings here in Southmarch, and left that task to their brother the duke.

Briony’s brother Kendrick seemed in a surprisingly good mood considering the burdens of regency on his young shoulders during his father’s absence. Unlike King Olin, Kendrick was capable of forgetting his troubles long enough to enjoy a hunt or a pageant. Already his jacket of Sessian finecloth was unbuttoned, his golden hair in a careless tangle. “So there you are,” he called. “Gailon is right—we were worried about you two. It’s especially not like Briony to miss the excitement.” He glanced at Barrick’s funereal garb and widened his eyes. “Has the Procession of Penance come early this year?”

“Oh, yes, I should apologize for my clothes,” Barrick growled. “How terribly tasteless of me to dress this way, as though our father were being held prisoner somewhere. But wait—our father is a prisoner. Fancy that.”

Kendrick winced and looked inquiringly at Briony, who made a face that said, He’s having one of his difficult days. The prince regent turned to his younger brother and asked, “Would you rather go back?"

“No!” Barrick shook his head violently, but then managed to summon an unconvincing smile. “No. Everyone worries about me too much. I don’t mean to be rude, truly. My arm just hurts a bit. Sometimes.”

“He is a brave youth,” said Duke Gailon without even the tiniest hint of mockery, but it still made Briony bristle like one of her beloved dogs. Last year Gailon had offered to marry her. He was handsome enough in a long-chinned way, and his family’s holdings in Summerfield were second only to Southmarch itself in size, but she was glad that her father had been in no hurry to find her a husband. She had a feeling that Gailon Tolly would not be as tolerant to his wife as King Olin was to his daughter—that if she were his, he would make certain Briony did not go riding to the hunt in a split skirt, straddling her horse like a man.

The dogs were yapping even more shrilly now, and a stir ran through the hunting party gathered on the hill. Briony turned to see a movement in the trees of the dell below them, a flash of red and gold like autumn leaves carried on a swift stream Then something burst out of the undergrowth and into the open, a large serpentine shape that was fully visible for the space of five or six heartbeats before it found high grass and vanished again. The dogs were already swarming after it in a frenzy.

“Gods!” said Briony in sudden fear, and several around her made the three-fingered sign of the Trigon against their breasts. “That thing is huge!” She turned accusingly to Shaso. “I thought you said you could kill one of them with no more than a good clop on the head.”

Even the master of arms looked startled. “The other one… it was smaller.”

Kendrick shook his head. “That thing is ten cubits long or I’m a Skimmer.” He shouted, “Bring up the boar spears!” to one of the beaters, then spurred down the hill with Gailon of Summerfield racing beside him and the other nobles hurrying to find their places close to the young prince regent.

“But… !” Briony fell silent. She had no idea what she’d meant to say— why else were they here if not to hunt and kill a wyvern?—but she suddenly felt certain that Kendrick would be in danger if he got too close. Since when are you an oracle or a witching-woman? she asked herself, but the worry was strangely potent, the crystallization of something that had been troubling her all day like a shadow at the corner of her eye. The strangeness of the gods was in the air today, that feeling of being surrounded by the unseen. Perhaps it was not Barrick who was seeking Death—perhaps rather the grim deity, the Earth Father, was hunting them all.

She shook her head to throw off the swift chill of fear. Silly thoughts, Briony. Evil thoughts. It must have been Barrick’s sorrowing talk of their own imprisoned father that had done it. Surely there was no harm in a day like this, late in Dekamene, the tenth month, but lit by such a bold sun it still seemed high summer—how could the gods object? The whole hunt was riding in Kendrick’s wake now, the horses thundering down the hill after the hounds, the beaters and servants bounding along behind, shouting excitedly, and she suddenly wanted to be out in front with Kendrick and the other nobles, running ahead of all shadows and worries.

I won’t hang back like a girl this time, she thought. Like a proper lady. I want to see a wyvern. And what if I’m the one who kills it? Well, why not?

In any case, her brothers both needed looking after.”Come on, Barrick,” she called. “No time to mope. If we don’t go now, we’ll miss it all.”

“The girl, the princess—her name’s Briony, isn’t it?” Opal asked after they had been hiking again for a good part of an hour.

Chert hid a smile. “Are we talking about the big folk? I thought we weren’t supposed to meddle with that sort.”

“Don’t mock. I don’t like it here. Even though the sun’s overhead, it seems dark. And the grass is so wet! It makes me feel all fluttery.”

“Sorry, my dear. I don’t like it much here either, but along the edge is where the interesting things are. Almost every time it draws back a little there’s something new. Do you remember that Edri’s Egg crystal, the one big as a fist? I found it just sitting in the grass, like something washed up on a beach.”

“This whole place—it’s not natural.”

“Of course it’s not natural. Nothing about the Shadowline is natural. That’s why the Qar left it behind when they retreated from the big folk armies, not just as a boundary between their lands and ours, but as a a warning, I suppose you’d call it. Keep out. But you said you wanted to come today, and here you are.” He looked up to the line of mist running along the grassy hills, denser in the hollows, but still thick as eiderdown along the hilltops. “We’ve almost reached it.”

“So you say,” she grunted wearily.

Chert felt a pang of shame at how he teased her, his good old wife. She could be tart, but so could an apple, and none the less wholesome for it. “Yes, by the way, since you asked. The girl’s name’s Briony.”

“And that other one, dressed in black. That’s the other brother?”

“I think so, but I’ve never seem him so close.They’re not much for public show, that family. The old king, Ustin—those children’s grandfather—he was a great one for festivals and parades, do you remember? Scarcely a holy day went by.

Opal did not seem interested in historical reminiscence. “He seemed sad, that boy.”

“Well, his father’s being held for a ransom the kingdom can’t afford and the boy’s got himself a gammy arm Reasons enough, perhaps.”

“What happened to him?”

Chert waved his hand as though he were not the type to pass along idle gossip, but it was only for show, of course. “I’ve heard it said a horse fell on him. But Old Pyrite claims that his father threw him down the stairs.”

“King Olin? He would never do such a thing!”

Chert almost smiled again at her indignant tone for one who claimed not to care about the doings of big folk, his wife had some definite opinions about them. “It seems far-fetched,” he admitted. “And the gods know that Old Pyrite will say almost anything when he’s had enough moss-brew…” He stopped, frowning. It was always hard to tell, here along the edge where distances were tricky at the best of times, but there was definitely something wrong.

“What is it?”

“It’s… it’s moved.” They were only a few dozen paces away from the boundary now—quite as close as he wanted to get. He stared, first at the ground, then at a familiar stand of white oak trees now half smothered by mist and faint as wandering spirits. For the first time he could remember, the unnatural murk had actually advanced past their trunks. The hairs on the back of Chert’s neck rose. “It has moved!”

“But it’s always moving.You said so.”

“Slipping back from the edge a wee bit, then coming up to it again, like the tide,” he whispered. “Like something breathing in and out That is why we find things here, when the line has drifted back toward the shadow-lands.” He could feel a heaviness to the air unusual even for this haunted place, a heightened watchfulness: it made him feel reluctant even to speak. “But from the moment two centuries ago when the Twilight People first conjured it up, it’s never moved any closer to us, Opal. Until now.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s come forward.” He didn’t want to believe it but he had spent as much time in these hills as anyone. “Like floodwaters coming over the banks. At least a dozen paces ahead of where I’ve ever seen it.”

“Is that all?”

“Is that all? Woman, the Twilight People made that line to keep men out of the shadowlands. No one crosses it and returns, not that I’ve ever heard of. And before today, it hasn’t moved an inch closer to the castle in two hundred years!” He was breathless, dizzy with it. “I have to tell someone.”

“You? Why should you be the one to get tangled up with this, old man? Aren’t there big-folk guards that watch the Shadowline?”

He waved his hands in exasperation. “Yes, and you saw them when we went past their post-house, although they didn’t see us, or didn’t care They might as well be guarding the moon? They pay no heed to anything, and the task is given to the youngest and greenest of the soldiers. Nothing has changed on this foggy border in so long they don’t even believe anything could change “ He shook his head, suddenly troubled by a low noise at the edge of his hearing, a tremble of air. Distant thunder? “I can barely believe it myself, and I have walked these hills for years. “The dim rumbling was growing louder and Chert finally realized it wasn’t thunder. “Fissure and fracture!” he swore. “Those are horses coming toward us!”

“The hunt?" she asked. The damp hillside and close-leaning trees seemed capable of hiding anything. “You said the hunt was out today.”

“It’s not coming from that direction—and they would never come so far this direction, so near to “ His heart stumbled in his chest. “Gods of raw earth—it’s coming from the shadowlands!”

He grabbed his wife’s hand and yanked her stumbling along the hill away from the misty boundary, short legs digging, feet slipping on the wet grass as they scrambled for the shelter of the trees. The noise of hooves seemed impossibly loud now, as though it were right on top of the staggering Funderlings.

Chert and Opal reached the trees and threw themselves down into the scratching underbrush Chert grabbed his wife close and peered out at the hillside as four riders erupted from the mist and reined in their stamping white mounts. The animals, tall and lean and not quite like any horses Chert had ever seen, blinked as though unused to even such occluded sunlight. He could not see the faces of the riders, who wore hooded cloaks that at first seemed dark gray or even black, but which had the flickering sheen of an oily puddle, yet they too seemed startled by the brightness of this new place. A tongue of mist curled about the horses’ feet, as though their shadowy land would not entirely let them go.

One of the riders slowly turned toward the trees where the two Funderlings lay hidden, a glint of eyes in the depths of the shadowed hood the only indication it was not empty. For a long moment the rider only stared, or perhaps listened, and although Chert’s every fiber told him to leap to his feet and run, he lay as still as he could, clutching Opal so tightly that he could feel her silently struggling to break his painful grip.

At last the hooded figure turned away. One of its fellows lifted something from the back of its saddle and dropped it to the ground. The riders lingered for a moment longer, staring across the valley at the distant towers of Southmarch Castle. Then, without a sound, they wheeled and rode their ghostwhite horses back into the ragged wall of mist.

Chert still waited a dozen frightened heartbeats before he let go of his wife.

“You’ve crushed my innards, you old fool,” she moaned, climbing up onto hands and knees. “Who was it? I couldn’t see.”

“I… I don’t know.” It had happened so quickly that it almost seemed a dream. He got up, feeling the ache of their clumsy, panicked flight begin to throb in all his joints. “They just rode out, then turned around and rode back…” He stopped, staring at the dark bundle the riders had dropped. It was moving.

“Chert, where are you going?”

He didn’t intend to touch it, of course—no Funderling was such a fool, to snatch up something that even those beyond the Shadowline did not want. As he moved closer, he could not help noticing that the large sack was making small, frightened noises.

“There’s something in it,” he called to Opal.

“There’s something in lots of things,” she said, coming grimly after him. “But not much between your ears. Leave it alone and come away, you. No good can come of it.”

“It’s… it’s alive.” A thought had come into his head. It was a goblin, or some other magical creature banished from the lands beyond. Goblins were wish-granters, that was what the old tales said. And if he freed it, would it not give those wishes to him? A new shawl… ? Opal could have a queen’s closet full of clothes if she wished. Or the goblin might lead him to a vein of firegold and the masters of the Funderling guilds would soon be coming to Chert s house with caps in hands, begging his assistance. Even his own so-proud brother…

The sack thrashed and tipped over Something inside it snarled.

Of course, he thought, there could be a reason they took it across the Shadowline and tossed it away like bones on a midden. It could be something extremely unpleasant.

An even stranger sound came from the sack.

“Oh, Chert.” His wife’s voice was now quite different. “There’s a child in there! Listen—it’s crying!” He still did not move. Everyone knew there were sprites and bogles even on this side of the Shadowline that could mimic the voices of loved ones in order to lure travelers off the path to certain doom. Why expect better of something that actually came from inside the twilight country?

“Aren’t you going to do anything?”

“Do what? Any kind of demon could be in there, woman.”

“That’s no demon, that’s a child—and if you’re too frightened to let it out, Chert of the Blue Quartz, I will.”

He knew that tone all too well. He muttered a prayer to the gods of deep places, then advanced on the sack as though it were a coiled viper, stepping carefully so that in its thrashing it would not roll against him and, perhaps, bite. The sack was held shut with a knot of some gray rope. He touched it carefully and found the cord slippery as polished soapstone.

“Hurry up, old man!”

He glared at her, then began cautiously to unpick the knot, wishing he had brought something with him sharper than his old knife, dulled by digging out stones. Despite the cool, foggy air, sweat had beaded on his forehead by the time he was able to tease the knot apart. The sack had lain still and silent for some time. He wondered, half hoping it was so, whether the thing inside might have suffocated.

“What’s in there?” his wife called, but before he had time to explain that he hadn’t even opened the cursed thing, something shot out of the heavy sack like a stone from the mouth of a culverm and knocked him onto his back.

Chert tried to shout, but the thing had his neck gripped in clammy hands and was trying to bite his chest through his thick jerkin. He was so busy fighting for his life that he couldn’t even make out the shape of his attacker until a third body entered the fray and dragged the clutching, strangling monstrosity off him and they all tumbled into a pile.

“Are you… hurt… ?” Opal gasped.

“Where is that thing?” Chert rolled over into a sitting position. The sack’s contents were crouching a short distance away, staring at him with squinting blue eyes. It was a slender-limbed boy, a child of perhaps five or six years, sweaty and disheveled, with deathly pale skin and hair that was almost white, as though he had been inside the sack for years.

Opal sat up. “A child! I told you.” She looked at the boy for a moment. “One of the big folk, poor thing.”

“Poor thing, indeed!” Chert gently touched the scraped places on his neck and cheeks. “The little beast tried to murder me.”

“Oh, be still You startled him, that’s all.” She held out her hand toward the boy. “Come here—I won’t hurt you What’s your name, child?” When the boy did not reply, she fumbled in the wide pockets of her dress and withdrew a heel of brown bread. “Are you hungry?”

From the fierce glint in his eye, the boy was clearly very interested, but he still did not move toward her. Opal leaned forward and set the bread on the grass. He looked at it and her, then snatched the bread up, sniffed it, and crammed it into his mouth, scarcely bothering to chew before swallowing. Finished, the boy looked at Opal with fierce expectancy. She laughed in a worried way and felt in her pocket until she located a few pieces of dried fruit, which she also set on the grass. They disappeared even faster than the bread.

“What’s your name?” she asked the boy. “Where are you from?”

Searching his teeth with his tongue for any fragments of food that might have escaped him, he only looked at her. “Dumb, it seems,” said Chert. “Or at least he doesn’t speak our…”

“Where is this?” the boy asked.

“Where… what do you mean?” said Chert, startled.

“Where is this… ?” The boy swept his arm in a circle, taking in the trees, the grassy hillside, the fogbound forest. “This… place. Where are we?” He sounded older than his age somehow, but younger, too, as though speaking were a new thing to him.

“We are on the edge of Southmarch—called Shadowmarch by some, because of this Shadowline.” Chert gestured toward the misty boundary, then swung himself around to point in the opposite direction. “The castle is over there.”

“Shadow… line?” The boy squinted. “Castle?”

“He needs more food.” Opal’s words had the sound of an inarguable decision rendered. “And sleep You can see he’s nearly falling over.”

“Which means what?” But Chert already saw the shape of it and did not like it much at all. “Which means we take him home, of course.” Opal stood, brushing the loose grass from her dress. “We feed him.” “But… but he must belong to someone! To one of the big-folk families!”

“And they tied him in a sack and left him here?” Opal laughed scornfully. “Then they are likely not pining for his return.”

“But he came… he came from…” Chert looked at the boy, who was sucking his fingers and examining the landscape. He lowered his voice. “He came from the other side.”

“He’s here now,” Opal said. “Look at him. Do you really think he’s some unnatural thing? He’s a little boy who wandered into the twihght and was tossed out again. Surely we, of all people, should know better than to believe everything that has to do with the Shadowline is wicked. Does this mean you plan to throw back the gems you’ve found here, too? No, he probably comes from some other place along the boundary—somewhere leagues and leagues away! Should we leave him here to starve?” She patted her thigh, then beckoned.”Come along with us, child. We’ll take you home and feed you properly.”

Before Chert could make further objection Opal set off, stumping back along the hillside toward the distant castle, the hem of her old dress trailing in the wet grass. The boy paused only to glance at Chert—a look the little man first thought was threatening, then decided might be as much fear as bravado—before following after her.

“No good will come of it,” Chert said, but quietly, already resigned through long expenece to whatever complex doom the gods had planned for him In any case, better some angry gods than an angry Opal. He didn’t have to share a small house with the gods, who had their own vast and hidden places. He sighed and fell into step behind his wife and the boy.

The wyvern had been brought to bay in another copse of trees, a dense circle of rowans carpeted with bracken. Even through the milling ring of hounds, wild with excitement but still cautious enough to keep their distance, perhaps put off by the unusual smell or strange slithering movements of their quarry, Briony could see the length of the thing as it moved restlessly from one side of the copse to the other, its bright scales glimmering in the shadows like a brushfire.

“Cowardly beasts, dogs,” said Barrick. “They are fifty to one but still hold back.”

“They are not cowards!” Briony resisted the urge to push him off his horse. He was looking even more drawn and pale, and had tucked his left arm inside his cloak as though to protect it from chill, though the afternoon air was still sun-warmed. “The scent is strange to them!”

Barrick frowned. “There are too many things coming across the Shadowline these days. Just back in the spring there were those birds with the iron beaks that killed a shepherd at Landsend. And the dead giant in Daler’s Troth…”

The thing in the copse reared up, hissing loudly. The hounds started away, whining and yipping, and several of the beaters shouted in terror and scuttled back from the ring of trees. Briony could still see only a little of the beast as it slipped in and out through the gray rowan trunks and the tangled undergrowth. It seemed to have a head narrow as a sea horse’s, and as it hissed again she glimpsed a mouth full of spiny teeth.

It almost seems frightened, she thought, but that did not make sense. It was a monster, an unnatural thing there could be nothing in its dark mind but malevolence.

“Enough!” cried Kendrick, who was holding his frightened horse steady near the edge of the copse. “Bring me my spear!”

His squire ran to him, face wan with dread, looking determinedly at anything except the hissing shape only a few paces away. The young man, one of Tyne Aldritch’s sons, was in such terrified haste to hand over the spear and escape that he almost let the long, gold-chased shaft with its crosshaft and its heavy iron head fall to the ground as the prince reached for it Kendrick caught it, then kicked out at the retreating youth in irritation.

Others of the hunting party were calling for spears as well With the kill so close, the two dozen immaculately coiffed and dressed noblewomen who had accompanied the hunt, most riding decorously on sidesaddles, a few even carried in litters—their awkward progress had slowed everyone else quite a bit, to Briony’s disgust—took the opportunity to withdraw to a nearby hillock where they could watch the end from a safe distance Briony saw that Rose and Moina, her two principal ladies-in-waiting, had spread a blanket for her between them on the hillside and were looking at her expectantly. Rose Trelling was one of Lord Constable Brone’s nieces, Moina Hartsbrook the daughter of a Helmingsea nobleman. Both were good-hearted girls, which made them Briony s favorites out of what she thought of as a mediocre stable of court women, but she sometimes found them just as silly and hidebound as their older relatives, scandalized by the slightest variation from formal etiquette or tradition. Old Puzzle the jester was sitting with them, restringing his lute, biding his time until he could see what food the ladies might have in their hamper.

The idea of withdrawing to the safety of the hill and watching the rest of the hunt while her ladies-in-waiting gossiped about people’s jewelry and clothes was too painful. Briony scowled and waved at one of the beaters as he staggered past with several of the heavy spears in his arms. “Give me one of those.”

“What are you doing?” Barrick himself could not easily handle the long spears with only one arm, and had not bothered to call for one. “You can’t go near that creature Kendrick won’t let you.”

“Kendrick has quite enough to think about Oh, gods curse it.” She scowled. Gailon of Summerfield had seen and was spurring toward them.

“My lady! Princess!” He leaned out as if to take the spear from her, and only realized at the last moment that he would be overstepping. “You will hurt yourself.”

She managed to control her voice, but barely. “I do know which end points outward, Duke Gailon.”

“But this is not fitting for a lady… and especially with such a fearsome beast… !”

“Then you must make sure and kill it first,” she said, a bit more gently but no more sweetly. “Because if it reaches me, it will get no farther.”

Barrick groaned, then called the bearer back and took a spear for himself, clutching it awkwardly under one arm while still holding the reins.

“And what are you doing?” she demanded.

“If you’re going to be a fool, strawhead, someone has to protect you.”

Gailon Tolly looked at them both, then shook his head and rode off toward Kendrick and the hounds.

“I don’t think he’s very happy with us,” Briony said cheerfully. From somewhere back along the hillside she heard the master of arms shout her name, then her brother’s. “And Shaso won’t be either. Let’s go.”

They spurred forward. The dogs, surrounded now by a ring of men with spears, were beginning to find their courage again. Several of the lymers darted into the copse to snap at the swift-moving, reddish shape. Briony saw the long neck move, quick as a whipcrack, and one of the dogs yelped in terror as it was caught in the long jaws.

“Oh, hurry!” she said, miserable but also strangely excited. Again she could feel the presence of invisible things swirling like winter clouds. She said a prayer to Zoria.

The dogs began to swarm into the copse in numbers, a flood of low shapes swirling in the dappled light beneath the trees, barking in frightened excitement. There were more squeals of pain, but then a strange, creaking bellow from the wyvern as one of the dogs got its teeth into a sensitive spot. The barking suddenly rose fiercely in pitch as the beast fought its way through the pack, trying to escape the confinement of the trees. It crushed at least one of the hounds under its clawed feet and gutted several others, shaking one victim so hard that blood flew everywhere like red rain. Then it burst out of the leaves and moving shadows into the clear afternoon sunlight, and for the first time Briony could see it whole.

It was mostly serpentine body, a great tube of muscle covered with glimmering red and gold and brown scales, with a single pair of sturdy legs a third of the way down its length. A sort of ruff of bone and skin had flared out behind the narrow head, stretching even wider now as the thing rose up on those legs, head swaying higher than a man’s as it struck toward.

Kendrick and the two other nobles closest to it. It had come on them too quickly for the men to dismount and use their long boar spears properly. Kendrick waited until the strike had missed, then dug at the creature’s face with his spear. The wyvern hissed and sideslipped the blow, but as it did so one of the other men—Briony thought it might be Tyne, the hunting-mad Earl of Blueshore—drove his spearhead into the thing’s ribs just behind its shoulders. The wyvern contorted its neck to snap at the shaft Kendrick seized the opportunity to drive his own spear into the creature’s throat, then spurred his horse forward so that he could use its force to pin the wyvern against the ground. The spear slid in through a sluice of red-black blood until the crosshaft that was meant to keep a boar from forcing its way up the shaft stopped it. Kendrick’s horse reared in alarm at the thing’s agonized, furious hiss, but the prince stood in his stirrups and leaned his weight on the spear, determined to keep the thing staked to the earth.

The dogs swarmed forward again; the other members of the hunt began to close in too, all anxious to be in at the kill. But the wyvern was not beaten.

In a sudden, explosive movement the thing coiled itself around the spear, stretching its neck a surprising distance to bite at Kendrick’s gloved hand. The prince’s horse reared again and he almost lost his grip on the spear entirely. The monster’s tail lashed out and wrapped around the horse’s legs. The black gelding nickered in terror. For a brief moment they were all tangled together like some fantastical scene from one of the ancient tapestries in the castle’s throne room, everything so strange that Briony could not quite believe it was truly happening Then the wyvern tightened itself around the legs of Kendrick’s horse, crushing bones in a drumroll of fright-eningly loud cracks, and the prince and his mount collapsed downward into a maul of red-gold coils.

As Barrick and Briony stared in horror from twenty paces away, Sum-merfield and Blueshore both began to jab wildly at the agitated monster and its prey. Other nobles hurried forward, shouting in fear for the prince regent’s life. The crush of eager dogs, the writhing loops of the injured wyvern’s long body, and the thrashing of the mortally injured horse made it impossible to see what was happening on the ground. Briony was lightheaded and sick.

Then something came up suddenly out of the long grass, speeding toward her like the figurehead of a Vuttish longboat cutting the water—the wyvern, making a desperate lunge at escape, still dragging Kendrick’s spear in its neck. It darted first to one side, then to the other, hemmed in bv terrified horses and jabbing spears, then plunged through an opening in the ring of hunters, straight at Briony and Barrick.

A heartbeat later it rose before them, its black eye glittering, head swaying like an adder’s as it measured them. As if in a dream, Briony lifted her spear. The thing hissed and reared higher. She tried to track the moving head, to keep the point firmly between it and her, but its looping motions were quick and fluidly deceptive. A moment later Barrick’s spear slipped from his clumsy, one-handed grasp and banged sideways into Briony s arm, knocking her weapon out of her hands.

The wyvern’s narrow jaws spread wide, dripping with bloody froth. The head lunged toward her, then suddenly snapped to one side as though yanked by a string.

The monster’s strike had come so close that when she undressed that night Briony found the thing’s caustic spittle had burned holes in her deer-hide jerkin it looked as though someone had held the garment over the flames of a dozen tiny candles.

The wyvern lay on the ground, an arrow jutting from its eye, little shudders rippling down its long neck as it died. Briony stared at it, then turned to see Shaso riding toward them, his war bow still in his hand. He looked down at the dead beast before lifting his angry stare to the royal twins.

“Foolish, arrogant children,” he said. “Had I been as careless as you, you would both be dead.”

2. A Stone in the Sea

This was one of Vansen’s favorite spots, high on the old wall just beneath the rough, dark stone of Wolfstooth Spire, and also one of the most satisfying things about his given task: he had good reason to be up here in the stiff breeze that flew across Brenn’s Bay, with nearly all of Southmarch, castle and town, arranged beneath him in the autumn sun like objects on a lady’s table. Was it shameful that he enjoyed it so?

When he was a child in the dales, Ferras Vansen and the boys from the next croft had liked to play King on the Hill, each trying to hold a singular place at the top of some hummock of soil and stone they had chosen for their battleground, but even in those instants when the others had gone tumbling down to the bottom and Ferras had stood by himself, master of the high place, still the foothills had loomed over them all, and beyond those hills the northern mountains themselves, achingly high, as if to remind young Ferras even in triumph of his true place in life. When he had grown older, he had learned to love those heights, at least those he could reach; at times he had purposely let the sheep wander off, trading one of his father’s sometimes violent punishments for the pleasure of following the straying herd into the high places. Until his manhood, he knew no greater pleasure than a stretch of afternoon when he could clamber up to one of the crests and look out over the folds of hillock and valley that lay before him like a bunched blanket—deep, dark places and airy prominences that no one else in his family had ever seen, although they lay less than a mile from the family croft.

Vansen sometimes wondered if this hunger for height and solitude the gods had put in him might not be stronger now than ever, especially with the much greater number of people around him in Southmarch, swarms of them filling the castle and town like bees in a hive. Did any of them, noble or peddler, soldier or serf, ever look up as he did and wonder at the loftiness of Wblfstooth Spire, a black scepter-shape that loomed over even the castle’s other towers as the distant snowcapped mountains had dominated the hills of his boyhood country? Did any of the other guardsmen marvel at the sheer size of the place as they walked the walls, these two great uneven rings of stone that crowned Midlan’s Mount? Was he the only one secretly thrilled by the liveliness of the place, the people and animals streaming in and out through the gates from sunup until sundown, and by its grandeur, the antique splendor of the king’s hall and the massive residence whose roofs seemed to have as many chimneys as a forest had trees? If not, Ferras Vansen couldn’t understand it: how could you spend every day beneath the splendid season-towers, each of the four a different shape and color, and not stop to stare at them?

Perhaps,Vansen considered, it was different if you were born in the midst of such things. Perhaps. He had come here half a dozen years ago and still could not begin to grow used to the size and liveliness of the place. People had told him that Southmarch was as nothing compared to Tessis in Syan or the sprawling, ancient city-state of Hierosol with its two-score gates, but here were riches to spare for a young man from dark, lonely Daler’s Troth, where earth and sky were both oppressively wet most of the time and in winter the sun seemed scarcely to top the hills.

As if summoned by chill memory, the wind changed, bringing needles of cold air from the ocean that pierced even Vansen s mail shirt and surcoat. He pulled his heavy watch-cloak more tightly around him, forced himself to move. He had work to do. Just because the royal family and, it seemed, half the nobles in the March Kingdoms were across the water hunting in the northern hills did not mean he could afford to spend the afternoon lost in useless thought.

That was his curse, after all, or at least so his mother had once told him: “You dream too much, child Our kind, we make our way with strong backs and dosed mouths “ Strange, because the tales she had told to him and his sisters in the long evenings, as the single small fire burned down, had always been about clever young men defeating cruel giants or witches and winning the king’s daughter. But in the light of day she had instructed her children, “You will make the gods angry if you ask for too much.”

His Vuttish father had been more understanding, at least sometimes. “Remember, I had to come far to find you,” he liked to tell Vansen’s mother. “Far from those cold, windy rocks in the middle of the sea to this fine place. Sometimes a man must reach out for more.”

The younger Ferras hadn’t completely agreed with the old man, certainly not about the place itself—their croft in the hills’ dank green shadows, where water seemed to drip from the trees more than half the year, was to him a place to be escaped instead of a destination—but it was nice to hear his father, a onetime sailor who by habit or blood was a man of very few words, talk of something other than a chore young Ferras had forgotten to do.

And now it seemed Vansen had at last proved his mother wrong, for he had come to the city with nothing, and yet here he was, captain of the Southmarch royal guard, with the north’s greatest stronghold spread before him and the safety of its ruling family his responsibility. Anyone would be proud of such an achievement, even men born to a much higher station.

But in his heart Ferras Vansen knew his mother had been right. He still dreamed too much, and—what was worse and far more shameful—he dreamed of the wrong things.

“He’s like a hawk, that one,” a soldier at the residence guardhouse said quietly to his companion as Vansen walked away, but not so quietly that Vansen didn’t hear. “You don’t ever want to rest for a moment because he’ll just drop down on you, sudden-like.” Vansen hadn’t even punished them when he found them with their armor off, playing dice, but he had made his anger bitingly clear.

Vansen turned back. The two guardsmen looked up, guilty and resentful. “Next time it might be Lord Brone instead of me, and you might be on your way to the stronghold in chains. Think about that, my lads.” There was no whispering this time when he went out.

“They can like you or they can fear you,” his old captain Donal Murray had always said, and even in his last years Murroy had not hesitated to use his knobby knuckles or the flat of his hand to reinforce that fear in a soldier who was insolent or just too slow in his obedience Vansen had hoped when he was promoted to Murray’s place that he could substitute respect for fear, but after nearly a year he was beginning to think the old Connordman had been right. Most of the guards were too young to have known anything except peace. They found it hard to believe that a day might come when stealing a nap on duty or wandering away from their posts might have fatal consequences for themselves or the people they protected.

Sometimes it was hard for Vansen himself to believe it. There were days here on the edge of the world, in a little kingdom bounded by misty, ill-omened mountains in the north and the ocean almost everywhere else, where it seemed like nothing would ever change but the wind and weather, and those would only be the familiar small changes—from wet to slightly less wet and then back to wet again, from swirling breeze to stiff gale—that so wearied the inhabitants of this small stone in the shallows of the sea.

Southmarch Castle was ringed by three walls the huge, smooth outwall of gray-white southern granite that circled the mount and whose foundations in many places were actually beneath the waters of Brenn’s Bay, a skirt of fitted stone which, along with the bay itself, made the little sometimes-lsland into what had been for centuries a fortress that could resist any siege, the New Wall, as it was called (though no one could remember a time before it had existed), that surrounded the royal keep and touched all the cardinal towers except the one named for summer, and the Old Wall that bounded the inmost heart of the keep, and within whose protective shadow lay the throne hall and the royal residence These two edifices were as riddled with hallways and chambers as anthills, so old and vast and beset by centuries of intermittent neglect that they both contained rooms and passages that had not been entered or even remembered for years.

The smaller buildings that surrounded them made the lower castle just as intricate a maze as the residence and throne hall, jumble of temples and shops, stables and houses, from the high-timbered mansions of the nobility nestled inside the Old Wall to the stacked hovels of those of less lofty station, piled so leaningly high that they turned the narrow streets between them into shadowy arbors of dark wood and plaster Most of the buildings of Southmarch had been connected over the years by a ramshackle aggregation of covered walkways and tunnels to protect the denizens from the wet northern weather and the often ruthless winds, so that sometimes all the castle’s disparate structures, built over generations, seemed to have fused together like the contents of one of the tide pools in the rocks at the ocean edge of Brenn’s Bay, where stone and plants and shells grew together into one semiliving—and no longer separable—mass.

Still, there was sun here, Ferras Vansen told himself, far more of it in a year than he had seen in his entire youth in the Dales, not to mention fresh winds off the sea. That made it all bearable, and more than bearable: there were times when just being in the place filled him with joy.

By the time the afternoon had begun to fade, Vansen had walked most of the uneven circle of the Old Wall, stopping at each guard post, even those that consisted of nothing more than a lonely soldier with a pike standing before a locked door or gate and trying not to doze. Drunk on sea air and some rare time to pursue his own thoughts without the distractions of command, Vansen briefly considered a course around the much lengthier New Wall, but a look at the harbor and the sails of the newly arrived carrack from Hierosol reminded him that he could not afford the time. There would be a hundred tasks before the end of the day; the visitors must be safely lodged, guarded, and watched, and Avin Brone, the lord constable, would expect Vansen to take charge of the task himself. The ship had four masts—a good-sized vessel, which meant that the envoy might have come with a sizable bodyguard.Vansen cursed quietly. More than one day’s pleasurable solitude was going to be sacrificed to this ship and its passengers. He would have to keep his men and the southerners apart as much as possible. With King Olin a captive of Hierosol’s Ludis Drakava, there was much bad blood between the Hierosolines and the Southmarch folk.

When he came out of the small guard tower by the West Green, he was distracted from his planning by the sight of someone else on the walls, a cloaked and hooded figure that seemed slight enough to be a woman or a young boy. For an illogical moment he wondered if it could be her, the one he dared not think of too often. Had fate somehow brought her here alone to this place where they could not help but speak? The thought of all the things he might say to her, careful, respectful, sincere, passed through his mind in a heartbeat before he realized that it could not be her, that she was still out with the others hunting in the hills.

As though this swirl of confused thoughts made a sound as audible and frightening as a swarm of hornets, the hooded figure suddenly seemed to notice him; it immediately stepped down from the wall into the stairwell and disappeared from his sight. By the time Vansen reached the stairs he could not discern that particular dark, hooded cloak in the throng of people in the narrow streets below the wall.

So I am not the only one who likes the view from high places, he thought. He felt a pang; it took him a moment to realize, to his surprise, that it was loneliness.

“You’re too much inside yourself, Vansen,” old Murroy had once told him. “You think more than you talk, but that’s little use when the others can see so plainly what you’re thinkin’. They know that you think well of yourself, and often not so well of them. The older men in particular, Laybrick and Southstead, don’t like it.”

“I do not like men who… who take advantage,” Vansen had answered, trying to explain what was in his heart but not quite having the words. “I do not like men who take what the gods give and pretend it’s their due.”

Hearing that, Murroy’s leathery old face had creased in one of his infrequent smiles. “Then you must not like most men.”

Ferras Vansen had wondered ever since whether his captain’s words were true. He liked Captain Murroy himself slightly more than he feared him, or at least he liked the man’s brutal evenhandedness, his unwillingness to complain, his occasional flashes of sour humor. Donal Murroy was staying that way to the end: even as the wasting sickness stole his life, he offered no complaint against fate or the gods, saying only that he wished he had known what was going to happen so he could have given his wife’s lying, bragging younger brother a thrashing while he still had the strength. “As it is, I’ll have to leave it to the next man whose hospitality or good sense he offends. I hope it’s someone who has the time to beat him within a hair of his useless life.”

Vansen marveled at how the older man could laugh despite the racking cough and the blood on his lips and stubbled chin, how his shadowed, deep-sunken eyes were still as bright and heartlessly fierce as a hunting bird’s.

“You’ll follow me as guard captain, Vansen,” said the dying man. “I’ve told Brone. Himself has no powerful objections, though he thinks you a bit young. The great man’s right, of course, but I wouldn’t trust that ass Dyer with the bung from an empty cask and all the older men are too fat and lazy. No, it’s you, Vansen. Go ahead and muck things up if you want to. They’ll just come and put flowers on my grave and miss me.” Another laugh, another spray of red-tinged spittle.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t bother, lad If you do it right, you’ll spend all your life working at it with no more payment than a little land to build a house and p’raps a spot in a proper graveyard at the end of it instead of the potter’s field “ He wiped his chin with a gnarled hand. “Which reminds me —don’t let them forget there’s a place set aside for me in the guards’ cemetery. I don’t want to end up out in the western hills somewhere, but I don’t want Mickael Southstead pissing on my grave, either, so you keep an eye on me after I’m gone.”

He hadn’t cried when the captain died, but he sometimes felt as if he wanted to when he thought about him now. The captain’s manner of going had been much like that of Ferras’ own father, now that he thought on it. He hadn’t cried for Pedar Vansen either, and hadn’t been to his father’s grave in the old temple yard at Little Stell for years, but that wasn’t really so surprising. Vansen’s sisters, what was left of the crofter’s family, were all in Southmarch-town now, settled with husbands and children of their own. Daler’s Troth was several days’ ride away in the hills to the west. His life was here now, in this dizzyingly large and crowded citadel.

He made his way around to the western tower of the Raven’s Gate. The men in the guardhouse there had a well-stoked fire and he stopped to warm his hands before going to see what Lord Brone wanted done about the southerners. The easy chatter had fallen off when he had come in, as usual, and all the men were standing around in awkward silence except for Collum Dyer, the officer in charge, closest thing to a friend Ferras Vansen had. He dreaded the day he would have to draw that line Murroy had talked of so often, and discipline Dyer for something—whatever Dyer felt about Vansen was certainly not fear, and did not quite seem like respect either—because he was certain that would be the day that their friendship, slight as it was, would end.

“Been out wandering the walls, Captain?” Dyer asked him Vansen was grateful that Dyer at least named him by his rank in front of the men That was a small nod of respect, wasn’t it? “Any sign of invading forces?"

Vansen let himself smile. “No, and Perin be thanked for that, today and every day. But there is a Hierosoline ship in the harbor and there will be fighting men on board, so let us not take things too lightly, either.”

He left them and made his way down the stairs to the sloping road that led up to the Great Hall. The lord constable had his work chambers in the maze of corridors behind the throne room, and at this time of the day Vansen felt certain he would be there. As he walked up the road toward the vast carved facade, where the guards were already straightening at their young captain’s approach, he looked up at the high hall nestled in the midst of the Mount’s towers like a gem on a royal crown and felt a clutch of worry that something might change, that some error of his own or the whim of feckless gods might take all this away from him.

I am a fortunate man, he told himself. Heaven has smiled on me, far beyond what I have earned, and I have everything I could want —or nearly so. I must accept these great riches and not ask more, not anger the gods with my greed.

I am a fortunate man and I cannot, even in the foolishness of my secret heart, ever forget that.

3. Proper Blue Quartz

The boy from behind the Shadowline stopped to stare at the castle’s jutting towers. The three of them were on the lower reaches of the hill road now, which wound down through rolling farmlands to the edge of the city on the shoreline. The heights of Midlan’s Mount were still distant across the causeway, Wolfstooth Spire looming above all like a dark claw scratching the belly of the sky. “What is that place?” the child asked, almost in a whisper. “Southmarch Castle,” Chert told him. “At least the part with the towers out on that rock in the middle of the bay—the bit on this side is the rest of the town. Yes, Southmarch… some call it Shadowmarch, did I already say that? On account of it’s so close to the…” He remembered where the boy came from and trailed off. “Or you can call it ‘The Beacon of the Marches,’ if you like poetry.”

The boy shook his head, but whether because he didn’t like poetry or for some other reason wasn’t clear. “Big.” “Hurry up, you two.” Opal had marched ahead. “She’s right—we have a long walk yet.”

The boy still hesitated. Chert laid his hand on the boy’s arm. The child seemed strangely reluctant, as though the distant towers themselves were something menacing, but at last he allowed himself to be urged forward. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, lad,” Chert told him. “Not as long as you’re with us. But don’t wander off.”

The boy shook his head again.

As they made their way down from the hilly farmlands into the mainland town, they found wide Market Road lined with people, almost entirely big folk. For a moment Chert wondered why so many people had come out of their houses and shops to stare curiously at two Funderlings and a ragged, white-haired boy, then realized that the royal family’s hunting party must have passed just ahead of them. The crowd was beginning to disperse now, the hawkers desperately reducing the prices of their chestnuts and fried breads, fighting over the few remaining customers. He heard murmurs about the size of something the hunters had caught and paraded past, and other descriptions—scales? Teeth?—that made little sense unless they had been hunting something other than deer. The people seemed a little dispirited, even unhappy. Chert hoped the princess and her sullen brother were safe—he had thought she had kind eyes. But if something had happened to them, he reasoned, surely folk would be talking about it.

It took the best part of the fading afternoon to make their way through the city to the shore, but they arrived at the near end of the causeway with a little time to spare before the rising tide would turn Midlan’s Mount back into an island.

The causeway between the shore and the castle on the Mount was little more than a broad road of piled stones, most of which would vanish under the high tide, but the place where it met the docks outside the castle gate had been built up by generations of fishermen and peddlers until what hung over the water there was nearly a small town in itself, a sort of permanent fairground on the wind-lashed doorstep of Midlan’s Mount. As the Funderling, his wife, and their new guest trudged across the piers and wooden platforms filled with flimsy, close-leaning buildings whose floors stood only a few cubits above the reach of high tide, dodging wagons and heavily laden foot-peddlers hurrying to cross back over the causeway before nightfall, Chert looked out through a crack between two rickety shops, across the mouth of Brenn’s Bay to the ocean. Despite the last of the bright afternoon sun there were clouds spread thick and dark along the horizon, and Chert suddenly remembered the shocking thing that the arrival of the riders and the mysterious boy had driven from his mind.

The Shadowline! Someone must be told that it’s moved. He would have liked to think that the king’s family up in the castle already knew, that they had taken all the facts into careful consideration and decided that it meant nothing, that all was still well, but he couldn’t quite make himself believe it.

Someone must be told. The thought of going up to the castle himself was daunting, although he had been inside the keep several times as part of Funderling work gangs, and had even led a few, working directly with Lord Nynor, the castellan—or with his factor, in any case. But to go by himself, as though he were a man of importance.

But if the big folk do not know, someone must tell them. And perhaps there will even be some reward in it —enough to buy Opal that new shawl, if nothing else. Or at least to pay for what this young creature will eat when Opal gets him home.

He regarded the boy for a moment, horrified by the sudden realization that Opal might very well intend to keep him. A childless woman, he thought, was as unpredictable as a loose seam in a bed of sandstone.

Hold now, one thing at a time. Chert watched the clouds hurrying across the ocean, their black expanse making the mighty towers suddenly seem fragile, delicate as pastry. Someone needed to tell the king’s people about the Shadowline, there was no arguing it. If I go to the Guild, there will be days of argument, then Cinnabar or puffed-up Young Pyrtte will be appointed messenger and I will get no reward.

Nor will you get the punishment if you’re wrong, he reminded himself.

For some reason he again saw before his mind’s eye the young princess and her brother, Briony’s frightened gaze when she thought she had run him down, the prince s face as troubled and impersonal as the sky out beyond the Mount, and he felt a sudden warmth that almost, if it had not been so ridiculous, felt like loyalty.

They need to know, he decided, and suddenly the idea of what might be coming closer behind that line of moving darkness pushed anything so abstract as the good graces of the royal family from his mind There was another way to pass the news, and he would use it Everyone needs to know.

Although his horse was dead, left behind for three servants to bury on the hillside where the wyvern had died, Prince Kendrick himself had suffered little more than bruises and a few burns from the creature’s venomous froth. Of all the company he was the only one who seemed in good cheer as they made their way back toward the castle, the huge corpse of the wyvern coiled on an open wagon for the amazement of the populace. Market Road was crowded with people, hundreds and hundreds waiting to see the prince regent and his hunting party. Hawkers, tumblers, musicians, and pickpockets had turned out too, hoping to earn a few small coins out of the spontaneous street fair, but Briony thought most of the people seemed glum and worried. Not much money was changing hands, and those nearest the road watched the nobles go by with hungry eyes, saying little, although a few called out cheers and blessings to the royal family, especially on behalf of the absent King Olin. Kendrick had been splashed in blood from head to foot; even after he had washed and then rubbed himself with rags and soothing leaves, much of him was still stained a deep red. Despite the itch where the wyvern s spittle burned him, he made it a point to wave and smile to the citizens crowded in the shadows of the tall houses along the Market Road, showing them that the blood was not his own.

Briony felt as though she, too, were covered with some painful substance she could not shake off. Her twin Barrick was so miserable about his clumsy failure even to raise his spear properly that he had not spoken a word to her or anyone else on the ride home. Earl Tyne and others were whispering among themselves, no doubt unhappy that the foreigner Shaso had stolen their sport by killing the wyvern with an arrow. Tyne Aldritch was one of that school of nobles who believed that archery was a practice fit only for peasants and poachers, an activity whose primary result was to steal the glory from mounted knights in war. Only because the master of arms might have saved the lives of the young prince and princess was the hunters’ unhappiness muttered instead of proclaimed aloud.

And more than a dozen of the dogs, including sweet Dado, a brachet who in her first months of life had slept in Briony s bed, lay cold and still on the leafy hillside beside Kendrick’s horse, waiting to be buried in the same pit.

I wish we’d never come. She looked up to the pall of clouds in the northeastern sky. It was as though some foreboding thing hung over the whole day, a crow’s wing, an owl’s shadow. She would go home and light a candle at Zona’s altar, ask the virgin goddess to send the Eddons her healing grace. I wish they’d just gone out and killed that creature with arrows in the first place. Then Dado would be alive. Then Barrick wouldn’t be trying so hard not to cry that his face has turned to stone.

“Why the grim look, little sister?” Kendrick demanded. “It is a beautiful day and summer has not entirely left us yet.” He laughed. “Look at the clothes I have ruined! My best riding jacket. Merolanna will skin me.”

Briony managed a tiny smile. It was true—she could already hear what their great-aunt would have to say, and not just about the jacket. Merolanna had a tongue that everyone in the castle, except perhaps Shaso, feared, and Briony would have given odds that the old Tuani only hid his terror better than others did. “I just… I don’t know.” She looked around to make sure that her black-clad twin was still a few dozen paces behind them. “I fear for Barrick,” she said quietly. “He is so angry of late. Today has only made it worse.”

Kendrick scratched his scalp, smearing himself anew with drying blood. “He needs toughening, little sister. People lose hands, legs, but they continue with their lives, thanking the gods they have not suffered worse. It does no good for him to be always brooding over his injuries. And he spends too much time with Shaso—the stiffest neck and coldest heart in all the marchlands.”

Briony shook her head. Kendrick had never understood Barrick, although that had not kept him from loving his younger brother. And he didn’t understand Shaso very well either, although the old man was indeed stiff and stubborn. “It’s more than that…”

She was interrupted by Gailon Tolly riding back down the road toward them, followed by his personal retinue, the Summerfield boar on their green-and-gold livery brighter than the dull sky. “Highness! A ship has come in from the south!”

Briony’s chest tightened. “Oh, Kendrick, do you think it’s something about Father?” The Duke of Summerfield looked at her tolerantly, as though she might have been his own young and slightly sheltered sister. “It is a carrack—the Podensis out of Hierosol,” he told the prince regent, “and it is said there is an envoy on board sent from Ludis with news of King Olin.”

Without realizing it, Briony had reached out and grabbed at Kendrick’s red-smeared arm. Her horse bumped flanks with her brother’s mount. “Pray all heaven, he is not hurt, is he?” she asked Gailon, unable to keep the terror from her voice. The cold shadow she had felt all day seemed to draw closer. “The king is well?”

Summerfield nodded. “I am told the man says your father continues unharmed, and that he brings a letter from him, among other things.”

“Oh, the gods are good,” Briony murmured.

Kendrick frowned. “But why has Ludis sent this envoy? That bandit who calls himself Protector of Hierosol can’t think we have found all the ransom for the king yet. A hundred thousand gold dolphins! It will take us at least the rest of the year to raise it—we have dragged every last copper out of the temples and merchant houses, and the peasants are already groaning under the new taxes.”

“Peasants always groan, my lord,” said Gailon. “They are as lazy as old donkeys—they must be whipped to work.”

“Perhaps the envoy from Hierosol saw all these nobles in their fine clothes, out hunting,” Barrick suggested sourly. None of them had noticed him riding closer. “Perhaps he has decided that if we can afford such expensive amusements, we must have found the money.”

The Duke of Summerfield looked at Barrick with incomprehension Kendrick rolled his eyes, but otherwise ignored his younger brother’s gibe, saying, “It must be something important that brings him. Nobody sails all the way from Hierosol to carry a letter from a prisoner, even a royal prisoner.”

The duke shrugged. “The envoy asks for an audience tomorrow.” He looked around and spotted Shaso riding some distance back, but lowered his voice anyway. “And another thing. He is as black as a crow.” “What has Shaso’s skin to do with anything?” Kendrick demanded, irritated. “No, the envoy, Highness. The envoy from Hierosol.”

Kendrick frowned. “That is a strange thing.”

“The whole of it is strange,” said Gailon of Summerfield. “Or so I hear.”

If the nameless boy had seemed disturbed by his first glimpse of the castle, he appeared positively terrified by the Basilisk Gate in the castle’s massive outwall. Chert, who had been in and out of it so many times he had lost count, allowed himself to see it now with a stranger’s eyes. The granite facing four times a man’s height—and many more times Chert’s own small stature—was carved in the likeness of a glowering reptilian creature whose twining coils surmounted the top of the gate and looped down on either side. The monster’s head jutted out above the vast oak-and-iron doors, its staring eyes and toothy mouth dressed with thin slabs of gemstone and ivory, its scales edged with gold. In the Funderling guilds, if not among the big folk, it was common knowledge that the gate had been here far longer than the human inhabitants.

“That monster is not alive,” he told the child gently. “Not even real. It is only chiseled stone.”

The boy looked at him, and Chert thought that something in his expression seemed deeper and stranger than mere terror.

“I … I do not like to see it,” he said.

“Then close your eyes while we walk through, otherwise we will not be able to reach our house. That is where the food is.”

The boy squinted up at the lowering worm for a moment through his pale lashes, then shut his eyes tight. “Come on, you two!” Opal called. “It will be dark soon.”

Chert led the boy under the gate. Guards in high-crested helmets and black tabards watched curiously, unused to the sight of a human child being led by Funderlings. But if these tall men wearing the Eddons’ silver wolf-and-stars emblem were concerned by the oddity, they were not concerned enough to lift their halberds and move out of the last warm rays of the sun.

The princess and her party had already reached their destination. As the Funderlings and their new ward reached arcade-fenced Market Square in front of the great Trigon temple, Chert could see all the way to the new wall at the base of the central hill, where the lights of the inner keep were as numerous as fireflies on a midsummer evening. The keep’s Raven’s Gate was open and dozens of servants with torches had come out from the residence to meet the returning hunters, to take the horses and equipment and guide the nobles to hot meals and warm beds.

“Who rules here?" asked the boy.

It seemed an odd sort of question, and now it was Chert who hesitated. “In this country? Do you mean in name? Or in truth?”

The boy frowned—the meaning was chopped too fine for him. “Who rules in that big house?”

It still seemed a strange thing for a child to ask, but Chert had experienced far stranger today. “King Olin, but he is not here. He is a prisoner in the south.” Almost half a year had passed since Olin had left on his journey to urge the small kingdoms and principalities across the heartland of Eion to make federation against Xis. He had hoped to unite them against the growing menace of the Autarch, the god-king who was reaching out from his empire on the southern continent of Xand to snap up territories along the lower coast of Eion like a spider snaring flies, but instead Olin had been delivered by the treachery of his rival Hesper, King of Jellon, into the hands of the Protector of Hierosol, an adventurer named Ludis Drakava who was now master of that ancient city. But Chert scarcely understood all the details himself. It was far too much to try to explain to a small, hungry child. “The king’s oldest son Kendrick is the prince regent. That means he is the ruler while his father is gone. The king has two younger children, too—a son and daughter.”

A gleam came to the boy’s eyes, a light behind a curtain. “Merolanna?"

“Merolanna?” Chert stared as if the child had slapped him. “You have heard of the duchess? You must be from somewhere near here. Where are you from, child? Can you remember now?”

But the small white-haired boy only looked back at him silently.

“Yes, there is a Merolanna, but she is the king’s aunt Kendrick’s younger brother and sister are named Barrick and Briony. Oh, and the king’s wife is carrying another child as well.” Chert reflexively made the sign of the Stone Bed, a Funderling charm for good luck in childbirth.

The strange gleam in the boy’s eyes faded.

“He’s heard of Duchess Merolanna,” Chert told Opal. “He must be from these parts.”

She rolled her eyes. “He’ll probably remember a lot more when he gets a meal and some sleep Or were you planning to stand in the street all night talking to him of things you know nothing about?"

Chert snorted but waved the boy forward.

More people were streaming out of the castle than were going in, mostly inhabitants of the mainland part of the city whose work brought them onto the Mount and who were now returning home at the end of the day Chert and Opal had a hard time forcing their way against a tide of much larger people Opal led them out of Market Square and through echoing covered walkways into the quieter, somewhat gloomy back streets behind the south waterway, called Skimmer’s Lagoon, and its docks, one of two large moorings inside the castle’s outwall. The Skimmers had carved the wooden dock pilings into weird shapes, animals and people bent and stretched until they were almost unrecognizable. The colorful paint was dulled by the dying light, but Chert thought the carved pilings still seemed as strange as ever, like trapped foreign gods staring out across the water, trying to get a glimpse of some lost homeland. The still shapes even seemed to mourn out loud as boats full of half-naked Skimmer fishermen unloaded the day’s catch on several of the smaller docks, the air of the lagoon was full of their groaning (and to Chert’s ear, almost completely tuneless) songs.

“Aren’t those people cold?" the boy asked. With the sun now behind the hills, chill winds were beginning to run across the waterway, sending white-tipped wavelets against the pillars.

“They’re Skimmers,” Chert told him. “They don’t get cold.” “Why not?"

Chert shrugged. “The same reason a Funderling can pick something up off the ground faster than you big folk can. We’re small. Skimmers have thick skins. The gods just wanted it that way.”

“They look strange.”

“They are strange, I suppose. They keep to themselves. Some of them, it’s said, never step farther onto dry land than the end of a loading dock. Webbed feet like a duck, too—well, a bit between the toes. But there are even odder folk around here, some claim, although you can’t always tell it to look at them.” He smiled. “Don’t they have such things where you come from?"

The boy only looked at him, his expression distant and troubled.

They were quickly out of the back alleys of Skimmer’s Lagoon and into the equally close-leaning neighborhoods of the big folk who worked on or along the water. The light was failing quickly now and although there were torches at the crossings and even a few important people being led by lantern-bearers, most of the muddy streets were lit only by the candlelight and firelight that leaked from soon-to-be-shuttered windows. The big folk were happy to build their ramshackle buildings one on top of the other, ladders and scaffolding thick as hedgehog bristles, so that they almost choked off the narrow streets entirely. The stench was dreadful.

Still, this whole place has good bones, Chert could not help thinking, strong and healthy stone, the living rock of the Mount. It would be a pleasure to scrape away all this ugly wood. We Funderlings would have this place looking as it should in a trice. Looking as it once did.

He pushed away the odd thought—where would all these big folk go, for one thing’.

Chert and Opal led the boy down the narrow, sloping length of Stonecutter’s Way and through an arched gate at the base of the New Wall, leading him out from beneath the evening sky and into the stony depths of Funderling Town.

This time Chert was not surprised when the boy stopped to stare in awe: even those big folk who did not particularly trust or like the small folk agreed that the great ceiling over Funderling Town was a marvel. Stretching a hundred cubits above the small people s town square and continuing above all the lamplit streets, the ceiling was a primordial forest carved in every perfect detail out of the dark bedrock of the Mount. At the outer edges of Funderling Town, closest to the surface, spaces had even been cut between the branches so that true sky shone through, or so that when night fell (as it was falling even now), the first evening stars could be seen sparkling through the gaps in the stone. Each twig, each leaf had been carved with exquisite care, centuries of painstaking work in all, one of the chief marvels of the northern world. Birds feathered in mother-of-pearl and crystal seemed as though they might burst into song at any moment. Vines of green malachite twined up the pillar-trunks, and on some low branches there were even gem-glazed fruits hanging from stems of improbably slender stone.

The boy whispered something that Chert could not quite hear. “It is wonderful, yes,” the little man said. “But you can look all you want tomorrow. Let us catch up with Opal, otherwise she will teach you how a tongue can be sharper than any chisel.”

They followed his wife down the narrow but graceful streets, each house carved back into the stone, the plain facades giving little indication of the splendid interiors that lay behind them, the careful, loving labor of generations. At each turning or crossing oil lamps glowed on the walls inside bubbles of stone thin as blisters on overworked hands. None of the lights were bright, but they were so numerous that all night long the ways of Funderling Town seemed to tremble on the cusp of dawn.

Although Chert himself was a man of some influence, their house at the end of Wedge Road was modest, only four rooms all told, its walls but shallowly decorated. Chert had a moment of shame remembering the Blue Quartz family manor and its wonderful great room covered with deeply incised scenes of Funderling history. Opal, for all her occasional spikiness of tongue, had never made him feel bad that the two of them should live in such a modest dwelling while her sisters-in-law were queening it in a fine house. He wished he could give her what she deserved, but Chert could no more have stayed in the place, subservient to his brother Nodule—or “Magister Blue Quartz,” as he now styled himself—than he could have jumped to the moon. And since his brother had three strong sons, there was no longer even a question of Chert inheriting it should his brother die first.

“I am happy here, you old fool,” Opal said quietly as they stepped through the door. She had seen him staring at the house and had guessed his thoughts. “At least I will be if you go and clear your tools off the table so we may eat like decent people.”

“Come, boy, and help me with the job,” he told the little stranger, making his voice loud and jovial to cover the fierce, sudden love he felt for his wife. “Opal is like a rockfall—if you disregard her first quiet rumblings, you will regret it later on.”

He watched the boy wipe dust from the pitted table with a damp cloth, moving it around more than actually cleaning it.

“Do you remember your name yet?” he asked. The boy shook his head.

“Well, we must call you something—Pebble?” He shouted to Opal, who was stirring a pot of soup over the fire, “Shall we call him Pebble?” It was a common name for fourth or fifth boys, when dynastic claims were not so important and parental interest was waning.

“Don’t be foolish. He shall have a proper Blue Quartz family name,” she called back. “We will call him Flint. That will be one in the eye for your brother.”

Chert could not help smiling, although he was not entirely happy about the idea of naming the child as though they were adopting him as their heir. But the thought of how his self-important brother would feel on learning that Chert and Opal had brought in one of the big folk’s children and given him miserly old Uncle Flint’s name was indeed more than a little pleasing.

“Flint, then,” he said, ruffling the boy’s fair hair. “For as long as you stay with us, anyway.”

Waves lapped at the pilings. A few seabirds bickered sleepily. A plaintive, twisting melody floated up from one of the sleeping-barges, a chorus of high voices singing an old song of moonlight on open sea, but otherwise Skimmer’s Lagoon was quiet.

Far away, the sentries on the wall called out the midnight watch and their voices echoed thinly across the water. Even as the sound faded, a light gleamed at the end of one of the docks. It burned for a moment, then went dark, then burned again. It was a shuttered lantern; its beam pointed out across the dark width of the lagoon. No one within the castle or on the walls seemed to mark it.

But the light did not go entirely unobserved. A small, black-painted skiff slid silently and almost invisibly across the misty lagoon and stopped at the end of the dock. The lantern-bearer, outline obscured by a heavy hooded cloak, crouched and whispered in a language seldom spoken in South-march, or indeed anywhere in the north. The shadowy boatman answered just as quietly in the same language, then handed something up to the one who had been waiting for almost an hour on the cold pier—a small object that disappeared immediately into the pockets of the dark cloak.

Without another word, the boatman turned his little craft and vanished back into the fogs that blanketed the dark lagoon.

The figure on the dock extinguished the lantern and turned back toward the castle, moving carefully from shadow to shadow as though it carried something extremely precious or extremely dangerous.

4. A Surprising Proposal

Puzzle looked sadly at the dove that he had just produced from his sleeve. Its head was cocked at a very unnatural angle, in fact, it seemed to be dead.

“My apologies, Highness.” A frown creased the jester’s gaunt face like a crumpled kerchief. A few people were laughing nastily near the back of the throne room. One of the noblewomen made a small and somewhat overwrought noise of grief for the luckless dove. “The trick worked most wonderfully when I was practicing earlier. Perhaps I need to find a bird of hardier constitution.

Barrick rolled his eyes and snorted, but his older brother was more of a diplomat. Puzzle was an old favorite of their father’s. “An accident, good Puzzle. Doubtless you will solve it with further study.”

“And a few dozen more dead birds,” whispered Barrick. His sister frowned.

“But I still owe Your Highness the day’s debt of entertainment.” The old man tucked the dove carefully into the breast of his checkered outfit.

“Well, we know what he’s having for supper,” Barrick told Briony, who shushed him.

“I will find some other pleasantries to amuse you,” Puzzle continued, with only a brief wounded look at the whispering twins. “Or perhaps one of my other renowned antics? I have not juggled flaming brands for you for some time—not since the unfortunate accident with the Syannese tapestry. I have reduced the number of torches, so the trick is much safer now…”

“No need,” Kendrick said gently. “No need. You have entertained us long enough—now the business of the court waits.”

Puzzle nodded his head sadly, then bowed and backed away from the throne toward the rear of the room, putting one long leg behind the other as though doing something he had been forced to practice even more carefully than the dove trick. Barrick could not help noticing how much the old man looked like a grasshopper in motley. The assembled courtiers laughed and whispered behind their hands.

We’re all fools here. His dark mood, alleviated a little by watching Puzzle’s fumbling, came sweeping back Most of us are just better at it than he is. Even at the best of times he found it difficult to sit on the hard chairs. Despite the open windows high above, the throne room was thick with the smell of incense and dust and other people—too many other people. He turned to watch his brother, conferring with Steffans Nynor the lord castellan, making a joke that set Summerfield and the other nobles laughing and made old Nynor blush and stammer. Look at Kendrick, pretending like he’s Father. But even Father was pretending —he hated all this. In fact, King Olin had never liked either priggish Gailon of Summerfield or his loud, well-fed father, the old duke.

Maybe Father wanted to be taken prisoner, just to get away from it all… The bizarre thought did not have time to form properly, because Briony elbowed him in the ribs.

“Stop it!” he snarled. His sister was always trying to make him smile, to force him to enjoy himself. Why couldn’t she see the trouble they were in—not just the family, but all of Southmarch? Could he really be the only one in the kingdom who understood how wretched things were?

“Kendrick wants us,” she said.

Barrick allowed himself to be pulled toward his elder brother’s chair— not the true throne, the Wolf’s Chair, which had been covered with velvet cloth when Olin left and not used since, but the second-best chair that previously stood at the head of the great dining table. The twins gently elbowed their way past a few courtiers anxious to snatch this moment with the prince regent. Barrick’s arm was throbbing. He wished he were out on the hillside again, riding by himself, far from these people. He hated them all, loathed everyone in the castle… except, he had to admit, his sister and brother … and perhaps Chaven…

“Lord Nynor tells me that the envoy from Hierosol will not be with us until almost the noon hour,” Kendrick announced as they approached.

“He said he was unwell after his voyage.” The ancient castellan looked worried, as always; the tip of his beard was chewed short—a truly disgusting habit, in Barrick’s opinion. “But one of the servants told me that he saw this envoy talking to Shaso earlier this morning. Arguing, if the lazy fellow is to be trusted, which he is not to be, necessarily.”

“That sounds ominous, Highness,” suggested the Duke of Summerfield.

Kendrick sighed. “They are both, from appearance, anyway, from the same southern lands,” he said patiently. “Shaso sees few of his own kind here in the cold north. They might have much to talk about.”

“And argue about, Highness?” Summerfield asked.

“The man is a servant of our father’s captor,” Kendrick pointed out. “That’s reason enough for Shaso to argue with the man, is it not?” He turned to the twins. “I know how little you both care for standing around, so you may go and I’ll send for you when this fellow from Hierosol finally graces us with his attendance.” He spoke lightly, but Barrick could see that he was not very happy with the envoy’s tardiness. His older brother, Barrick thought, was beginning to develop a monarchical impatience.

“Ah, Highness, I almost forgot.” Nynor snapped his fingers and one of his servants scuttled forward with a leather bag. “He gave me the letters he bears from your father and the so-called Lord Protector.” “Father’s letter?” Briony clapped her hands. “Read it to us!”

Kendrick had already broken the seal, the Eddon wolf and crescent of stars in deep red wax, and was squinting at the words. He shook his head. “Later, Briony.”

“But Kendrick… !” There was real anguish in her voice.

“Enough.” Her older brother looked distracted, but his voice said there would be no arguing. Barrick could feel the strain in Briony’s abrupt silence.

“What’s all that rumpus?” asked Gailon Tolly a moment later, looking around. Something was happening at the other end of the throne room, a stir among the courtiers.

“Look,” Briony whispered to her twin. “It’s Arissa’s maid.”

It was indeed, and Barrick’s sister was not the only one whispering. Now that the twins’ stepmother was close to giving birth, she seldom left her suite of rooms in the Tower of Spring. Selia, her maid, had become Queen Arissa’s envoy to the rest of the great castle, her ears and eyes. And as eyes went, even Barrick had to admit they were a most impressive pair.

“See her flounce.” Briony did not hide her disgust. “She walks like she’s got a rash on her backside and she wants to scratch it on something.”

“Please, Briony,” said the prince regent, but although the Duke of Summerfield looked dismayed by her rude remark, Kendrick was mostly amused Still, he had been distracted from the letter and was watching the maid’s approach as carefully as anyone else.

Selia was young but well-rounded. She wore her black hair piled high in the manner of the women of Devonis, the land of her and her mistress’ birth, but although she kept her long-lashed eyes downcast, there was little of the shy peasant girl about her. Barrick watched her walk with a kind of painful greed, but the maid, when she looked up, seemed to see only his brother, the prince regent.

Of course, Barrick thought. Why should she be any different than the rest of them…?

“If it please you, Highness.” She had been only a season in the marches, and still spoke with a thick Devonisian accent. “My mistress, your stepmother, sends her fond regarding and asks leave for talking to the royal physician.”

“Is she unwell again?” Kendrick truly was a kind man although none of them much liked their father’s second wife, even Barrick believed his brother’s concern was genuine.

“Some discomforting, Highness, yes.”

“Of course, we will have the physician attend our stepmother at once. Will you carry the message to him yourself?” Selia colored prettily. “I do not know this place so well yet.”

Briony made a noise of irritation, but Barrick spoke up. “I’ll take her, Kendrick.”

“Oh, that’s too much trouble for the poor girl,” Briony said loudly, “going all the way across to Chaven’s rooms. Let her go back to assist our suffering stepmother. Barrick and I will go.”

He looked at his twin in fury, and for a moment regretted putting her on the list of people he did not despise. “I can do it myself.”

“Go, the both of you, and argue somewhere else. “ Kendrick waved his hand. “Let me read these letters. Tell Chaven to see to our stepmother at once. You are both excused attendance until the noon hour.”

Listen to him, Barrick thought. He really does think he’s king.

Even accompanying the lovely Selia could not redeem Barrick’s mood, but he still took care to make sure that his bad arm, wrapped in the folds of his cloak, was on her opposite side as they went out of the throne room into the light of a gray autumn morning. As they descended the steps into the shadowed depths of Temple Square, four palace guards who had been finishing a morning meal hurried to fall in behind them, still chewing. Barrick caught the girl’s eye for a moment and she smiled shyly at him. He almost turned to make sure she was not looking over his shoulder at someone else.

“Thank you, Prince Barrick. You are very kind.” “Yes,” answered his twin. “He is.”

“And Princess Briony, of course.” The girl smiled a little more carefully, but if she was startled by the growl in Briony s voice she did not show it. “Both of you, so very kind.”

When they had passed through the Raven’s Gate and acknowledged the salutes of the guards there, Selia paused. “I go from here to the queen. You are certain I do not go with you?"

“Yes,” said Barrick’s sister. “We are certain.”

The girl made another courtesy and started off toward the Tower of Spring in the keep s outer wall. Barrick watched her walk.

“Ow!” he said. “Don’t push.”

“Your eyes are going to fall out of your head.” Briony hurried her stride and turned into the long street that wound along the wall of the keep. The people who saw the twins moved respectfully out of their way, but it was a crowded, busy road full of wagons and loud arguments, and many scarcely noticed them, or did their best to make it appear that way. King Olin’s court had never been as formal as his father’s, and the people of the castle were used to his children walking around the keep without fanfare, accompanied only by a few guards.

“You’re rude,” Barrick told his sister. “You act like a commoner.”

“Speaking of common,” Briony replied, “all you men are alike. Any girl who bats her eyes and swings her hips when she walks into the room turns you all into drooling bears.”

“Some girls like to have men look at them.” Barrick’s anger had congealed into a cold unhappiness. What did it matter? What woman would fall in love with him, anyway, with all his problems, his ruined arm and all his… strangeness? He would find a wife, of course, even one who would pretend to revere him—he was a prince, after all—but it would be a polite he.

I will never know, he thought. Not as long as I am of this family I will never know what anyone truly thinks of me, what they think of the crippled prince. Because who would ever dare to mock the king’s son to his face?

“Some girls like to have men look at them, you say? How would you know?” Briony had turned her face from him now, which meant she was truly angry. “Some men are just horrid, the way they stare.”

“You think that about all of them.” Barrick knew he should stop, but he felt distant and miserable. “You hate all men. Father said he couldn’t imagine finding someone you would agree to marry who would also agree to put up with your hardheadedness and your mannish tricks.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, then a deathly silence Now she was not speaking to him either. Barrick felt a pang, but told himself it was Briony who interfered first. It was also true, everyone talked about it. His sister kept the other women of the court at arm’s length and the men even farther. Still, when she did not speak for half a hundred more steps, he began to worry They were too close, the pair of them, and although both were fierce by nature, wounding the other was like wounding themselves Their word-combats almost always moved to swift bloodletting, then an embrace before the wounds had even stopped seeping.

“I’m sorry,” he said, although it didn’t sound much like an apology. “Why should you care what Summerfield and Blueshore and those other fools think, anyway? They are useless, all of them, liars and bullies. I wish that war with the Autarch really would come and they would all be burned away like a field of grass.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Briony snapped, but there was color in her cheeks again instead of the dreadful, shocked paleness of a moment before.

“So? I don’t care about any of them,” he said. “But I shouldn’t have told you what Father said. He meant it as a joke.” “It is no joke to me.” Briony was still angry, but he could tell that the worst of the fight was over. “Oh, Barrick,” she said abruptly, “you will meet hordes of women who want to make eyes at you You’re a prince—even a bastard child from you would be a prize. You don’t know how some girls are, how they think, what they’ll do…”

He was surprised by the frightened sincerity in her voice So she was trying to protect him from voracious women! He was pained but almost amused. She doesn’t seem to have noticed that the fairer sex are having no trouble resisting me so far.

They had reached the bottom of the small hill on which Chaven’s observatory-tower was set, its base nestled just inside the New Wall, its top looming above everything else in the castle except the four cardinal towers and the master of all, Wolfstooth Spire. As they climbed the spiral of steps, they put distance between themselves and the heavily armored guards.

“Hoy!” Barrick called down to the laboring soldiers. “You sluggards! What if there were murderers waiting for us at the top of the hill?”

“Don’t be cruel,” said Briony, but she was stifling a giggle.

Chaven—he probably had a second name, something full of Ulosian as and os, but the twins had never been told it and had never asked—was standing in a pool of light beneath the great observatory roof, which was open to the sky, although the clouds above were dark and a few solitary drops of rain spattered the stone floors. His assistant, a tall, sullen young man, stood waiting by a complicated apparatus of ropes and wooden cranks. The physician was kneeling over a large wooden case lined with velvet that appeared to contain a row of serving plates of different sizes. At the sound of their footsteps Chaven looked up.

He was small and round, with large, capable hands. The twins often joked about the unpredictability of the gods’ gifts, since tall, rawboned Puzzle, with his gloomily absorbed manner, would have made a much better royal astrologer and physician, and the cheerful, mercurial, dexterous Chaven seemed perfectly formed to be a court jester.

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 appeared 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.

“No!” she shouted. “Never!” She turned to Kendrick, suddenly understanding his chilled, miserable mask. “I will never do it!”

“It is not your turn to speak, Briony,” he rasped. Something moved behind his eyes—despair? Anger? Surrender? “And this is not the place to discuss this matter.”

“She can’t!” Barrick shouted. The courtiers were talking loudly now, surprised and titillated. Some echoed Briony’s own refusal, but not many. “I won’t let you!”

“You are not the prince regent,” Kendrick declared. “Father is gone. Until he comes back, I am your father. Both of you.”

He meant to do it. Briony was certain. He was going to sell her to the bandit prince, the cruel mercenary Ludis, to reduce the ransom and keep the nobles happy. The ceiling of the great throne room and its tiled pictures of the gods seemed to swirl and drop down upon her in a cloud of dizzying colors. She turned and staggered through the murmuring, leering crowd, ignoring Barrick’s worried cries and Kendrick’s shouts, then slapped away Shaso’s restraining hand and shoved her way out the great doors, already weeping so hard that the sky and the castle stones ran together and blurred.

5. Songs of the Moon and Stars

Young Flint didn’t seem very taken with the turnip porridge, even though it was sweetened with honey. Well, Chert thought, perhaps it’s a mistake to expect one of the big folk to feel the same way about root vegetables as we do. Since Opal had gone off to the vent of warm subterranean air behind Old Quarry Square to dry the clothes she had washed, he took pity on the lad and removed the bowl.

“You don’t need to finish,” he said. “We’re going out, you and I.” The boy looked at him, neither interested nor disinterested. “Where?” “The castle—the inner keep.”

A strange expression flitted across the child’s face but he only rose easily from the low stool and trotted out the door before Chert had gathered up his own things. Although he had only come down Wedge Road for the first time the night before, the boy turned unhesitatingly to the left. Chert was impressed with his memory. “You’d be right if we were going up, lad, but we’re not. We’re taking Funderling roads.” The boy looked at him questioningly. “Going through the tunnels. It’s faster for the way we’re going. Besides, last night I wanted to show you a bit of what was above ground—now you get to see a bit more of what’s down here.”

They strolled down to the bottom of Wedge Road, then along Beetle Way to Ore Street, which was wide and busy, full of carts and teams of diggers and cutters on their way to various tasks, many leaving on long journeys to distant cities that would keep them away for half a year or more, since the work of the Funderlings of Southmarch was held in high regard nearly everywhere in Eion. There was much to watch in the orderly spoked wheel of streets at the center of Funderling Town, peddlers bringing produce down from the markets in the city above, honers and polishers crying their trades, and tribes of children on their way to guild schools, and Flint was wide-eyed. The day-lanterns were lit everywhere, and in a few places raw autumn sunlight streamed down through holes in the great roof, turning the streets golden, although all in all the day outside looked mostly dark.

Chert saw many folk he knew, and most called out greetings. A few saluted young Flint as well, even by name, although others looked at the boy with suspicion or barely-masked dislike. At first, Chert was astonished that anyone knew the boy’s new name, but then realized Opal had been talking with the other women. News traveled fast in the close confines of Funderling Town.

“Most times we’d turn here,” he said, gesturing at the place near the Gravelers Meeting Hall where the ordered ring of roads began to become a little less ordered and Ore Street forked into two thoroughfares, one level, one slanting downward, “but the way we’re going all the tunnels aren’t finished yet, so we’re making a stop at the Salt Pool first. When we get there you have to be quiet and you can’t cut up.”

The boy was busy looking at the chiseled facades of the houses, each one portraying a complicated web of family history (not all of the histories strictly true) and did not ask what the Salt Pool might be. They walked for a quarter of an hour down Lower Ore Street until they reached the rough, largely undecorated rock that marked the edge of town. Chert led the boy past men and a few women idling by the roadside—most waiting by the entrances to the Pool in hopes of catching a day’s work somewhere—and through a surprisingly modest door set in a wall of raw stone, into the glowing cavern.

The Pool itself was a sort of lake beneath the ground; it filled the greater part of the immense natural cave. It was salt water, an arm of the ocean that reached all the way into the stone on which the castle stood, and was the reason that even in the dimmest recesses of their hidden town the Funderlings always knew when the tides were high or low. The run of the lake was rough, the stones sharp and spiky, and the dozens of other Funderlings who were already there moved carefully. It would have been the work of a few weeks at the most to make the cavern and its rocky shore as orderly as the middle of town, but even the most improvement-mad of Chert’s people had never seriously considered it. The Salt Pool was one of the centers of earliest Funderling legend—one of their oldest stories told how the god the big folk called Kernios, who the Funderlings in their own secret language named “Lord of the Hot Wet Stone,” created their race right there on the Salt Pool’s shores in the Days of Cooling.

Chert did not explain any of this to the boy. He was not certain how long the child would stay with them and the Funderlings were cautious with outsiders; it was far too early even to consider teaching him any of the Mysteries.

The boy scrambled across the uneven, rocky floor like a spider, and he was already waiting, watchful features turned yellow-green by the light from the pool, when Chert reached the shore. Chert had only just taken off his pack and set it down by the boy’s feet when a tiny, crooked-legged figure appeared from a jumble of large stones, wiping its beard as it swallowed the last bite of something.

“Is that you, Chert? My eyes are tired today.” The little man who stood before them only reached Chert’s waist. The boy stared down at the newcomer with unhidden surprise.

“It is me, indeed, Boulder.” Now the boy looked at Chert, as surprised by the name as by the stranger’s size. “And this is Flint. He’s staying with us.” He shrugged. “That was Opal’s idea.”

The little fellow peered up at the boy and laughed. “I suppose there’s a tale there. Are you in too much of a hurry to tell it to me today?”

“Afraid so, but I’ll owe it to you.” “Two, then?”

“Yes, thank you.” He took a copper chip out of his pocket and gave it to the tiny man, who put it in the pouch of his wet breeches.

“Back in three drips,” said Boulder, then scampered back down the rocky beach toward the water, almost as nimble as the boy despite his bent legs and his many years.

Chert saw Flint staring after him.”That’s the first thing you have to learn about our folk, boy. We’re not dwarfs. We are meant to be this size. There are big folk who are small—not children like you, but just small—and those are dwarfs. And there are Funderlings who are small compared to their fellows, too, and Boulder is one of those.”

“Boulder… ?”

“His parents named him that, hoping it would make him grow. Some tweak him about it, but seldom more than once. He is a good man but he has a sharp tongue.”

“Where did he go?”

“He is diving. There’s a kind of stone that grows in the Salt Pool, a stone that is made by a little animal, like a snail makes a shell for itself, called coral. The coral that grows in the Salt Pool makes its own light . .

Before he could finish explaining, Boulder was standing before them, holding a chunk of the glowing stuff in each hand; even though it was starting to darken after having been taken from the water, the light was still so bright that Chert could see the veins in the little man’s fingers. “These have just kindled,” he said with satisfaction. “They should last you all day, maybe even longer.”

“We won’t need them such a time, but my thanks.” Chert took out two pieces of hollow horn from his pack, both polished to glassy thinness, and dropped a piece of coral into each, then rilled them with a bit of salt water from Boulder’s bucket to wake the light and keep the little animals inside the coral alive. Submerged in the water, the stony clumps began to glow again.

“Don’t you want reflecting bowls?” asked Boulder.

Chert shook his head. “We won’t be working, only traveling. I just want us to be able to see each other.” He capped both hollow horns with bone plugs, then took a fitted leather hood out of his bag, tied it onto Flint’s head, and put one of the glowing cups of seawater and coral into the little harness on the front of the hood above the boy’s eyes. He did the same for himself, then they bade Boulder farewell and made their way back across the cavern of the Salt Pool. The boy moved in erratic circles, watching the light from his brow cast odd shadows as he scrambled from stone to stone.

Although the road had been braced and paved, it was so far out along the network of tunnels that it had no name yet. The boy, only named himself the night before, did not seem to mind.

“Where are we?”

“Now? Even with the gate to Funderling Town, more or less, but it’s a good way back over there. We’re passing away from it and along the line of the inner keep wall. I think the last new road we crossed, Greenstone or whatever they’re calling it now, climbs back up and lets out quite close to the gate.”

“Then we’re going past… past…” The boy thought for a moment. “Past the bottom of the tower with the golden feather on top of it.”

Chert stopped, surprised. The boy had not only remembered a small detail on the tower’s roof from the previous afternoon’s walk, but had calculated the distances and directions, too. “How can you know that?”

Little Flint shrugged, the keen intelligence suddenly hidden behind the gray eyes again like a deer moving from a patch of sunlight into shadow.

Chert shook his head. “You’re right, though, we’re passing underneath the Tower of Spring—although not right under it. Once we come up out of the deepest parts of Funderling Town, we don’t go directly under the inner keep. None of the high Funderling roads do. It’s… forbidden.”

The boy sucked on his lip, thinking again. “By the king?”

Chert was certainly not going to delve straight into the deep end of the Mysteries, but something in him did not want to lie to the child. “Yes, certainly, the king is part of it. They do not want us to tunnel under the heart of the castle in case the outer keep, and Funderling Town, should be overrun in a siege.”

“But there’s another reason “ It was not a question but a disconcertingly calm assertion. Chert could only shrug. “There is seldom only one reason for anything in this world.”

He led the boy upward through a series of increasingly haphazard diggings Their ultimate destination was inside the inner keep, and the fact that they could actually reach it from the tunnels of Funderling Town was a secret that only Chert of all his people knew—or at least he believed that was the case. His own knowledge was the result of a favor done long ago, and although it was conceivable someone could use this route as a way of going under the wall of the inner keep and attacking the castle itself, he couldn’t imagine anyone not of Funderling blood and upbringing finding their way through the maze of half-finished tunnels and raw scrapes.

But what about the boy? he thought suddenly. He’s already shown he has a fine memory. But surely even those clever, hooded eyes could not remember every twist and turn, the dozens of switchbacks, the crossings honeycombed with dozens of false trails that would lead anyone but Chert down endless empty passages and, if they were lucky enough not to be lost in the maze forever, eventually funnel them back into the main roads of Funderling Town.

Still, could he really risk the secret route with this child, of whom he knew so little?

He stared at the boy laboring along beside him in the sickly coral-light, putting one foot in front of the other without a word of complaint. Despite the child’s weird origins Chert could sense nothing bad in him, and it was hard to believe anyone could choose one so young as a spy, not to mention plan with such skill that the one person who knew these tunnels would wind up taking the child into his home. It was all too farfetched. Besides, he reminded himself, if he changed his mind now, he would not only have wasted much of the day, he would have to present himself at the Raven’s Gate and try to talk his way past the guards and into the inner keep that way. He didn’t think they were likely to let him in, even if he told them who he was going to see. And if he told them the substance of his errand, it would be all over the castle by nightfall, causing fear and wild stories No, he would have to go forward and trust his own good sense, his luck.

It was only as they turned down the last passage and into the final tunnel that he remembered that “Chert’s luck”—at least within his own Blue Quartz family—was another way of saying “no luck at all.”

The boy stared at the door. It was a rather surprising thing to find at the end of half a league of tunnels that were little more than hasty burrows, the kind of crude excavations that Funderling children got up to before they were old enough to be apprenticed to one of the guilds. But this door was a beautiful thing, if such could be said of a mere door, hewn of dark hardwoods that gleamed in the light of the coral stones, its hinges of heavy iron overlaid with filigree patterns in bronze. All that trouble, and for whom? Chert knew of no one else beside himself who ever used it, and this was only his third time in ten years.

It didn’t even have a latch or a handle, at least on the outside Chert reached up and pulled at a braided cord that hung through a hole in the door. It was a heavy pull, and whatever bell it rang was much too far away to hear, so Chert pulled it again just to make certain They had what seemed a long wait—Chert was just about to tug the cord a third time— before the door swung inward.

“Ah, is it Master Blue Quartz?” The round man’s eyebrows rose. “And a friend, I see.”

“Sorry to trouble you, sir.” Chert was suddenly uncomfortable—why had he thought it would be a good idea to bring the boy with him? Surely he could simply have described him. “This boy is… well, he’s staying with us. And he’s… he’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about. Something important.” He was uncomfortable now, not because Chaven’s expression was unkind, but because he had forgotten how sharp the physician’s eyes were—like the boy’s but with nothing hidden, a fierce, fierce cleverness that was always watching.

“Well, then we must step inside where we can talk comfortably. I am sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had to send away the lad who works for me before I came. I do not share the secret of these tunnels lightly.” Chaven smiled, but Chert wondered if what the physician was politely not saying was, Even if some others do.

He led them down a series of empty corridors, damp and windowless because they were below the ground-floor chambers, passages set directly into the rocky hill beneath the observatory.

“I told you the truth,” Chert whispered to the boy. “About not digging under the inner keep, that is. You see, we’ve just crossed under its walls, but not until we were inside this man’s house, as it were. Our end of the tunnel stops outside the keep.”

The boy looked at him as though the Funderling had claimed he could juggle fish while whistling, and even Chert was not sure why he felt compelled to point out this distinction. What loyalty could the boy have to the royal family? Or to Chert himself, for that matter, except for the kindness of a bed and a few meals?

Chaven led them up several flights of stairs until they reached a small, carpeted room. Jars and wooden chests were stacked along the walls and on shelves, as though the room was as much a pantry as a retiring room. The small windows were covered with tapestries whose night-sky colors were livened by winking gems in the shapes of constellations.

The physician was more fit than he appeared: of the three of them, Chert alone was winded by the climb. “Can I offer you something to eat or drink?” asked Chaven. “It might take me a moment to fetch. I’ve sent Toby off on an errand and I’d just as soon not tell any of the servants there’s a guest here who didn’t come in through any of the doors—at least any of the doors they know about…”

Chert waved away the offer. “I would love to drink with you in a civilized way, sir, but I think I had better get right to the seam, as it were. Is the boy all right, looking around?”

Flint was moving slowly around the room, observing but not handling the various articles standing against the wall, mostly lidded vessels of glass and polished brass.

“I think so,” Chaven said, “but perhaps I should withold my judgment until you tell me what exactly brings you here—and him with you.”

Chert described what he had seen the day before in the hills north of the castle. The physician listened, asking few questions, and when the little man had finished, he didn’t speak for a long time. Flint was done examining the room and now sat on the floor, looking up at the tapestries and their twining patterns of stars.

“I am not surprised,” Chaven said at last. “I had… heard things. Seen things. But it is still fearful news.” “What does it mean?”

The physician shook his head. “I can’t say. But the Shadowline is something whose art seems far beyond ours, and whose mystery we have never solved. Scarcely anyone who passes it returns, and those who have done so are no longer in their right minds. Our only solace has been that it has not moved in centuries—but now it is moving again. I have to think that it will keep moving unless something stops it, and what would that be?” He rose, rubbing his hands together.

“Keep moving…?”

“Yes, I fear that now it has started the Shadowline will keep moving until it has swept across Southmarch—perhaps all of Eion. Until the land is plunged back into shadow and Old Night.” The physician frowned at his hands, then turned back to Flint. His voice was matter-of-fact but his eyes belied it. “Now I suppose I had better have a look at the boy.”

Moina and Rose and her other ladies, despite all their kind words and questions, could not stop Briony’s furious weeping. She was angry with herself for acting so wildly, so childishly, but she felt lost beyond help or even hope. It was as though she had fallen down a deep hole and was now beyond the reach of anyone.

Barrick pounded at the chamber door, demanding that she speak to him.

He sounded angry and frightened, but although it felt as if she were casting offa part of her own body, she let Rose send him away. He was a man— what did he know of how she felt? No one would dream of selling him to the highest bidder like a market pig.

Eighty thousand dolphins discounted for my sake, she thought bitterly. A great deal of gold—most of a king’s ransom, in fact. I should be proud to command such a high price. She threw a pillow against the wall and knocked over an oil lamp. The ladies squealed as they rushed to stamp out the flames, but Briony did not care if the entire castle burned to the ground.

“What goes on here?”

Treacherous Rose had opened the door, but it was not Barrick who had come in, only Briony s great-aunt, the Dowager Duchess Merolanna, sniffing. Her eyes widened as she saw Moina smothering the last of the flames and she turned on Briony. “What are you doing, child, trying to kill us all?"

Briony wanted to say yes, she was, but another fit of weeping overcame her. As the other ladies tried to fan the smoke out the open door, Merolanna came to the bed and sat her substantial but carefully groomed self down on it, then put her arms around the princess.

“I have heard,” she said, patting Briony’s back. “Do not be so afraid— your brother may refuse. And even if he doesn’t, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. When I first came here to wed your father’s uncle, years and years and years ago, I was as frightened as you are.”

“But Ludis is a m—monster!” Briony struggled to stop sobbing. “A murderer! The bandit who kidnapped our father! I would rather marry… marry anyone—even old Puzzle—before allowing someone like that…” It was no use. She was weeping again.

“Now, child,” Merolanna said, but clearly could think of nothing else to say.

Her great-aunt had gone, and Briony’s ladies-in-waiting kept their distance, as though their mistress had some illness which might spread—and indeed she did, Briony thought, because unhappiness was ambitious.

A messenger had just arrived at the door, the third in an hour. She had returned no message to her older brother, and hadn’t been able to think of anything sufficiently cutting to send back to Gailon, Duke of Summerfield.

“This one comes from Sister Utta, my lady,” Moina said. “She sends to ask why you have not visited her today, and if you are well.”

“She must be the only one in the castle who doesn’t know,” said Rose, almost laughing that anyone could be so remote from the day’s events. A look at Briony’s tearstamed face and the lord constable’s niece quickly sobered. “We’ll tell her you can’t come…”

Briony sat up. She had forgotten her tutor entirely, but suddenly wanted nothing more than to see the Vuttish woman’s calm face, hear her measured voice. “No. I will go to her.”

“But, Princess…”

“I will go!” As she struggled into a wrap, the ladies-in-waiting hurried to pull on their own shoes and cloaks. “Stay here. I am going by myself.” The feared darkness having enfolded her now, she felt no need to waste her strength on niceties. “I have guards. Don’t you think that’s enough to keep me from running away?”

Rose and Moina stared at her in hurt surprise, but Briony was already striding out the door.

Utta was one of the Sisters of Zoria, priestesses of the virgin goddess of learning. Zona once had been the most powerful of goddesses, some said, mistress of a thousand temples and an equal of even her divine father Perin, but now her followers had been reduced to advising the Trigon on petty domestic policy and teaching highborn girl-children how to read, write, and—although it was not deemed strictly necessary in most noble families—to think.

Utta herself was almost as old as Duchess Merolanna, but where Briony s great-aunt was a royal barge, elaborately painted and decorated, the Vuttish woman was spare as a fast sailing ship, tall and thin, with gray hair cropped almost to her scalp. She was sewing when Briony arrived, and her pale blue eyes opened wide when the girl immediately burst into tears, but although her questions were sympathetic and she listened carefully to the answers, the priestess of Zona was not the type to put her arms around even her most important pupil.

When Briony had finished the story, Utta nodded her head slowly. “As you say, our lot is hard. In this life we women are handed from one man to another, and can only hope that the one we come to at last will be a kind steward of our liberties.”

“But no man owns you.” Briony had recovered herself a little. Something strong about Utta, the unassuming strength of an old tree on a windy mountainside, always calmed her. “You do what you want, without a husband or a master.”

Sister Utta smiled sadly. “I do not think you would wish to give up all I have given up to become so, Princess. And how can you say I have no master? Should your father—or now your brother—decide to send me away or even kill me, I would be trudging down Market Road within an hour or hanging from one of the mileposts.”

“It’s not fair! And I won’t do it.”

Utta nodded again, as if she was truly considering what Briony said. “When it comes to it, no woman can be turned against her own soul unless she wills it. But perhaps it is too early for you to be worrying. You do not know yet what your brother will say.”

“Oh, but I do.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “The council—in fact, almost all the nobles—have been complaining for months about the price of Father’s ransom, and they have also been telling Kendrick that I should be married off to some rich southern princeling to help pay for it. Then when he resists them, they whisper behind their hands that he is not old enough yet to rule the March Kingdoms. Here is a chance for him to stop their moaning in an instant. I’d do it, if I were him.”

“But you are not Kendrick, and you have not yet heard his decision.” Now Utta did an unusual thing, leaned over and for a moment took Briony’s hand. “However, I will not say your worries are baseless. What I hear of Ludis Drakava is not encouraging.”

“I won’t do it! I won’t. It is all so unfair—the clothes they always want me to wear, the things they want me to say and do . . and now this! I hate being a woman. It’s a curse.” Briony looked up suddenly. “I could become a priestess, like you! If I became a Sister of Zoria, my maidenhood would be sacred, wouldn’t it?”

“And permanent.” Utta could not quite muster a smile this time. “I am not certain you could join the sisterhood against your brother’s wishes, anyway. But is it not too early to be thinking of such things?”

Briony had a sudden recollection of the envoy Dawet dan-Faar, of eyes proud and leopard-fierce. He did not seem the type to stand around for weeks waiting for a defeated enemy to agree to the terms of surrender. “I don’t think I have much time—until tomorrow, perhaps. Oh, Sister, what will I do?"

“Talk to your brother, the prince regent. Tell him how you feel. I believe he is a good man, like your father. If there seems no other way… well, perhaps there is advice I might give you then, even assistance.” For a moment, Utta’s long, strong face looked troubled. “But not yet.” She sat up straight.

“We have an hour left before the evening meal, Princess. Shall we spend it usefully? Learning may perhaps keep your mind off your sorrows, at least for a little while.”

“I suppose.” Briony had cried so much she felt boneless. The room was quite dark, with only one candle lit. Most of the light in the spare apartment came from the window, a descending beam that ended in a bright oblong climbing steadily higher on the wall as the sun dropped toward its evening harbor. Earlier she had felt sure the worst had happened, but now she thought she could feel the shadowy wings still beating above her, as if there was some threat as yet undiscovered.

“Teach me something, then,” she said heavily. “What else do I have left?”

“You have learning, yes,” Utta told her. “But you also have prayers. You must not forget your prayers, child. And you have Zoria’s protection, if you deserve it. There are worse things to cling to.”

Finished examining the boy, Chaven reached into his pockets and produced a disk of glass pent in a brass handle. Flint took it from him and looked through it, first staring up at the flickering lamp, then moving it close to the wall so he could examine the grain of stone in the spaces between the tapestries.

Maybe he’ll make a Funderling yet, thought Chert.

The boy turned to him, smiling, one eye goggling hugely behind the glass Chert laughed despite himself. At the moment, Flint seemed to be no more than he appeared, a child of five or six summers.

Chaven thought so, too. “I find nothing unusual about him,” the physician said quietly as they watched the boy playing with the enlarging-glass “No extra fingers, toes, or mysterious marks. His breath is sweet—for a child who seems to have eaten spiced turnips today, that is—and his eyes are clear. Everything about him seems ordinary. This all proves nothing, but unless some other mysterious trait shows itself, I must for the moment assume he is what your wife guessed him to be, some mortal child who wandered beyond the Shadowline and, instead of wandering back again as some do, met the riders you saw and was carried out instead. “Chaven frowned. “You say he has little memory of who he is. If that is all he has lost, he is a lucky one. As I said before, those who have wandered across and returned before now have had the whole of their wits clouded if not ruined.”

“Lucky. Yes, it seems that way.” Chert should have been relieved, especially since the child would be sharing their house for at least the present, but he could not rid himself of a nagging feeling that there was something more to be discovered. “But why, if the Shadowline is moving, would the the Quiet Folk oh-so-kindly carry a mortal child across the line? It seems more likely they would slit his throat like a rabbit and leave him in the foggy forest somewhere.” Chaven shrugged. “I have no answer, my friend. Even when they were slaughtering mortals long ago at Coldgray Moor, the Twilight People did things that no one could understand. In the last months of the war, one company of soldiers from Fael moving camp by midnight stumbled onto a fairy-feast, but instead of slaughtering them—they were far outnumbered—the Qar only fed them and led them into drunken revels. Some of the soldiers even claimed they mated with fairy women that night.”

“The… Qar?"

“Their old name.” Chaven waved his hand. “I have spent much of my life studying them but I still know little more than when I began. They can be unexpectedly kind to mortals, even generous, but do not doubt that if the Shadowline sweeps across us, it will bring with it a dark, dark evil.”

Chert shuddered. “I have spent too much time on its borders to doubt that for a moment.” He watched the boy for a moment. “Will you tell the prince regent and his family that the line has moved?"

“I expect I will have to. But first I must think on all this, so that I can go to them with some proposal. Otherwise, decisions will be made in fear and ignorance, and those seldom lead to happy result.” Chaven rose from his stool and patted his bunched robe until it hung straight again. “Now I must get back to my work, not least of which will be thinking about the news you’ve brought me.”

As Chert led Flint to the door, the boy turned back. “Where is the owl?" he asked Chaven. The physician stiffened for a moment, then smiled. “What do you mean, lad? There is no owl here, nor ever has been one, as far as I know.”

“There was,” Flint said stubbornly. “A.white one.”

Chaven shook his head kindly as he held the door, but Chert thought he looked a little discomposed.

After checking to make sure none of his servants were in sight, the physician let Chert and the boy out through the observatory-tower’s front door. For reasons he did not quite know himself, Chert had decided to go back aboveground, out through the Raven’s Gate. The guard would have changed at midday and there should be no reason for those on duty now to doubt that their predecessors questioned Chert closely before letting him and his young charge into the inner keep.

“What did you mean about the owl?” Chert asked as they made their way down the steps. “What owl?”

“You asked that man where the owl was, the owl that had been in his room.”

Flint shrugged. His legs were longer than Chert’s and he did not need to look down at the steps, so he was watching the afternoon sky. “I don’t know.” He frowned, staring at something above him. The morning’s clouds had passed. Chert could see nothing but a faint sliver of moon, -white as a seashell, hanging in the blue sky. “He had stars on his walls.”

Chert recalled the tapestries covered with jeweled constellations. “He did, yes.”

“The Leaf, the Singers, the White Root—I know a song about them.” He pondered, his frown deepening. “No, I can’t remember it.”

“The Leaf… ?” Chert was puzzled. “The White Root? What are you talking about?”

“The stars—don’t you know their names?” Flint had reached the cobblestones at the base of the steps and was walking faster, so that Chert, still moving carefully down the tall steps, could barely make out what he said. “There’s the Honeycomb and the Waterfall… but I can’t remember the rest.” He stopped and turned. His face beneath the shock of almost white hair was full of sad confusion, so that he looked like a little old man. “I can’t remember.”

Chert caught up to him, out of breath and troubled. “I’ve never heard those names before. The Honeycomb? Where did you learn that, boy?”

Flint was walking again. “I used to know a song about the stars. I know one about the moon, too.” He hummed a snatch of melody that Chert could barely make out, but whose mournful sweetness made the hairs lift on the back of his neck. “I can’t remember the words,” Flint said. “But they tell about how the moon came down to find the arrows he had shot at the stars…”

“But the moon’s a woman—isn’t that what all you big folk believe?” A moment of sour amusement at his own words—the boy was but Chert’s own height, even a little shorter—did not puncture his confusion. “Mesiya, the moon-goddess?”

Flint laughed with a child’s pure enjoyment at the foolishness of adults. “No, he’s the sun’s little brother. Everyone knows that.”

He skipped ahead, enjoying the excitement of a street full of people and interesting sights, so that Chert had to hurry to catch up with him again, certain that something had just happened—something important—but he could not for the life of him imagine what it might have been.

6. Blood Ties

She did not make her dwelling in the ancient, labyrinthine city of Qul-na-Qar, although she had long claim to a place of honor there, by her blood and by her deeds—and by deeds of blood as well. Instead, she made her home on a high ridgetop in the mountains called Reheq-s’Lai, which meant Wanderwind, or something close to it. Her house, although large enough to cover most of the ridge, was a plain thing from most angles, as was the lady herself Only when the sunlight was in the right quarter, and a watcher’s face turned just so, could crystal and sky-stone be seen gleaming among the dark wall stones. In one way at least her house was like great Qul-na-Qar: it extended deep into the rocky ridge, with many rooms below the light of day and a profusion of tunnels extending beyond them like the roots of an old, old tree. Above the ground the windows were always shuttered, or seemed that way. Her servants were silent and she seldom had visitors.

Some of the younger Qar, who had heard of her madness for privacy, but of course had never seen her, called her Lady Porcupine. Others who knew her better could not help shuddering at the accidental truth of the name—they had seen how in moments of fury a nimbus of prickly shadow bloomed about her, a shroud of phantom thorns.

Her granted name was Yasammez, but few knew it. Her true name was known to only two or three living beings. The lady’s high house was called Shehen, which meant “Weeping.” Because it was a s’a-Qar word, it meant other things, too—it carried the intimation of an unexpected ending, and a suggestion of the scent of the plant that in the sunlight lands was called myrtle—but more than anything else, it meant “Weeping.”

It was said that Yasammez had only laughed twice in all her long life, the first time when, as a child, she first saw a battlefield and smelled the blood and the smoke from the fires. The second time had been when she had first been exiled, sent away from Qul-na-Qar for crimes or deeds of arrogance long since forgotten by most of the living. “You cannot hide me, or hide from me,” she is said to have told her accusers, “because you cannot find me. I was lost when I first drew breath “ Yasammez was made for war and death, all agreed, as a sword is made, a thing whose true beauty can only be seen when it brings destruction.

It was also said that she would laugh for the third time only when the last mortal died, or when she herself took her final breath.

None of the stories said anything about the sound of her laughter, except that it was terrible.

Yasammez stood in her garden of low, dark plants and tall gray rocks shaped like the shadows of terrified dreamers, and looked out over her steep lands. The wind was as fierce as ever, wrapping her cloak tightly around her, blowing her hair loose from the bone pins that held it, but was still not strong enough to disperse the mist lurking in the ravines that gouged the hillside below like claw-scratches. Still, it blew loudly enough that even if any of her pale servants had been standing beside her they would not have been able to hear the melody Lady Yasammez was singing to herself, nor would they even have believed their mistress might do such a thing. They certainly would not have known the song, which had been old before the mountain on which she stood had risen from the earth.

A voice began to speak in her ear and the ancient music stopped. She did not turn because she knew the voice came from no one in the stark garden or high house. Secretive, angry, and solitary as she was, Yasammez still knew this voice almost better than she knew her own. It was the only voice that ever called her by her true name.

It called that name again now.

“I hear, O my heart,” said Lady Porcupine, speaking without words.

“I must know.”

“It has already begun,” the mistress of the ridgetop house replied, but it stabbed her to hear such disquiet in the thoughts of her beloved, her great ruler, the single star in her dark, cold sky. After all, this was the time for wills to become stony, for hearts to grow thorns. “All has been put into motion. As you wished. As you commanded.”

“There is no turning back, then.”

It almost seemed a question, but Yasammez knew it could not be. “No turning back,” she agreed. “So, then. In the full raveling of time we will see what new pages will be written in the Book.” “We shall.” She yearned to say more, to ask why this sudden concern that almost seemed like weakness in the one who was not just her ruler but her teacher as well, but the words did not come; she could not form the question even in the silence of shared thought. Words had never been friends to Yasammez; in this, they were like almost everything else beneath the moon or sun.

“Farewell, then. We will speak again soon, when your great task reaches fulfillment. You have my gratitude.”

Then Lady Porcupine was alone again with the wind and her thoughts, her strange, bitter thoughts, in the garden of the house called Weeping.

The longer, heavier sword skimmed off Barrick’s falchion and crashed down against the small buckler on his left arm. A lightning flash of pain leaped through his shoulder. He cried out, sagged to one knee, and only just managed to throw his blade up in time to deflect the second blow. He climbed to his feet and stood, gasping for breath. The air was full of sawdust. He could barely hold even his own slender sword upright.

“Stop.” He stepped back, letting the falchion sag, but instead of lowering his own longer sword, Shaso suddenly lunged forward, the point of his blade jabbing down at Barrick’s ankles. Caught by surprise, the prince hesitated for an instant before jumping to avoid the thrust. It was a mistake. As the prince landed awkwardly, the old man had already turned his sword around so he clutched the blade in his gauntlets. He thumped Barrick hard in the chest with the sword’s pommel, forcing out the rest of the boy’s air. Gasping, Barrick took one step backward and collapsed. For a moment black clouds closed in. When he could see again, Shaso was standing over him.

“Curse you!” Barrick wheezed. He kicked out at Shaso’s leg, but the old man stepped neatly away. “Didn’t you hear? I said stop!”

“Because your arm was tired? Because you did not sleep well last night? Is that what you will do in battle? Cry mercy because you fight only with one hand and it has weaned?” Shaso made a noise of disgust and turned his back on the young prince. It was all Barrick could do not to scramble to his feet at this display of contempt and skull the old Tuani with the padded falchion.

But it was not just his remaining shreds of civility and honor that stopped him, nor his exhaustion, even in his rage, Barrick doubted he would actually land the blow.

He got up slowly instead and pulled off the buckler and gauntlets so he could rub his arm. Although his left hand was curled into something like a bird’s claw and his forearm was thin as a child’s, after countless painful hours lifting the iron-headed weights called poises. Barrick had strengthened the sinews of his upper arm and shoulder enough that he could use the buckler effectively. But—and he hated to admit it, and certainly would not do so aloud—Shaso was right he still was not strong enough, not even in the good arm which had to wield his only blade, since even a dagger was too much for his crippled fingers.

As he pulled on the loose deerskin glove he wore to hide his twisted hand, Barrick was still furious. “Does it make you feel strong, beating a man who can only fight one-armed?”

The armorers, who today had the comparatively quiet task of cutting new leather straps at the huge bench along the room’s south wall, looked up, but only for a moment—they were used to such things. Barrick had no doubt they all thought him a spoiled child. He flushed and slammed down his gauntlets.

Shaso, who was unstitching his padded practice-vest, curled his lip. “By the hundred tits of the Great Mother, boy, I am not beating you. I am teaching you.”

They had been out of balance all day. Even as a way to spend the tedious, stretching hours until his brother convened the council, this had been a mistake. Briony might have made it something civil, even enjoyable, but Briony was not there.

Barrick lowered himself to the ground and began removing his leg pads. He stared at Shaso’s back, irritated by the old man’s graceful, unhurried movements. Who was he, to be so calm when everything was falling apart? Barrick wanted to sting the master of arms somehow. “Why did he call you ‘teacher’?”

Shaso’s fingers slowed, but he did not turn. “What?”

“You know. The envoy from Hierosol—that man Dawet. Why did he call you ‘teacher?’And he called you something else—’Mor-ja.’What does that mean?”

Shaso shrugged off the vest His linen undershirt was soaked with sweat, so that every muscle on his broad, brown back was apparent. Barrick had seen this so many times, and even in the midst of anger, he felt something like love for the old Tuani—a love for the known and familiar, however unsatisfying.

What if Briony really leaves? he thought suddenly. What if Kendrick really sends her to Hierosol to marry Ludis? I will never see her again. His outrage that a bandit should demand his sister in marriage, and that his brother should even consider it, suddenly chilled into a simpler and far more devastating thought—Southmarch Castle empty of Briony.

“I have been asked to answer that for the council,” Shaso said slowly. “You will hear what I say there, Prince Barrick. I do not want to speak of it twice.” He dropped the vest to the floor and walked away from it. Barrick could not help staring. Shaso was usually not only meticulous in the care of his weapons and equipment, but sharp-tongued to any who were not—Barrick most definitely included. The master of arms set the long sword in the rack without oiling it or even taking off the padding, took his shirt from a hook, and walked out of the armory without another word.

Barrick sat, as short of breath as if Shaso had struck him again in the stomach. He had long felt that among all the heedless folk in Southmarch, he was the only one who understood how truly bad things had become, who saw the deceptions and cruelties others missed or deliberately ignored, who sensed the growing danger to his family and their kingdom Now that proof was blossoming before him, he wished he could make it all go away—that he could turn and run headlong back into his own childhood.

After supper Chert’s belly was full, but his head was still unsettled. Opal was fussing happily over Flint, measuring the boy with a knotted string while he squirmed. She had used the few copper chips she had put aside for a new cooking pot to buy some cloth, since she planned to make a shirt for the child.

“Don’t look at me that way,” she told her husband. “I wasn’t the one who took him out and let him rip and dirty this one so badly.”

Chert shook his head. It was not paying for the boy’s new shirt that concerned him.

The bell for the front door rang, a couple of short tugs on the cord. Opal handed the boy her measuring string and went to answer it Chert heard her say, “Oh, my—come in, please.”

Her eyebrows were up when she returned trailed by Cinnabar, a handsome, big-boned Funderling, the leader of the important Quicksilver family.

Chert rose. “Magister, you do me an honor. Will you sit down?”

Cinnabar nodded, grunting as he seated himself. Although he was younger than Chert by some dozen years, his muscled bulk was already turning to fat. His mind was still lean, though; Chert respected the man’s wits.

“Can we offer you something, Magister?” Opal asked. “Beer? Some blueroot tea?” She was both excited and worried, trying to catch her husband’s eye, but he would not be distracted.

“Tea will do me well, Mistress, thank you.”

Flint had gone stock-still on the floor beside Opal’s stool, watching the newcomer like a cat spying an unfamiliar dog Chert knew he should wait until the tea was served, but his curiosity was strong. “Your family is well?”

Cinnabar snorted. “Greedy as blindshrews, but that’s nothing new. It strikes me you’ve had an addition yourself.” “His name is Flint.” Chert felt sure this was the point of the visit. “He’s one of the big folk.” “Yes, I can see that. And of course I’ve heard much about him already— it’s all over town.” “Is there a problem that he stays with us? He has no memory of his real name or parents.” Opal bustled into the room with a tray, the best teapot, and three cups. Her smile was a little too bright as she poured for the magister first. Chert could see that she was frightened.

Fissure and fracture, is she so attached to the boy already?

Cinnabar blew on the cup nestled in his big hands. “As long as he breaks none of the laws of Funderling Town, you could guest a badger for all it matters to me.” He turned his keen eyes on Opal. “But people do talk, and they are slow to welcome change. Still, I suppose it is too late to reveal this secret more delicately.”

“It is no secret!” said Opal, a little sharply.

“Obviously.” Cinnabar sighed. “It is your affair. That’s not why I’m here tonight.”

Now Chert was puzzled. He watched Cinnabar snuffle at his tea. The man was not only head of his own family, but was one of the most powerful men in the Guild of Stonecutters Chert could only be patient.

“That is good, Mistress,” Cinnabar said at last. “My own lady, she will boil the same roots over and over until it is like drinking rainwater.” He looked from her expectant, worried face to Chert’s and smiled. It cracked his broad, heavy-jawed face into little wrinkles, like a hammerblow on slate. “Ah, I am tormenting you, but do not mean to. There’s nothing ill in this visit, that’s a promise. I need your help, Chert.”

“You do?”

“Aye. You know we’re cutting in the bedrock of the inner keep? Tricky work. The king’s family wants to expand the burial vaults and stitch together various of their buildings with tunnels.”

“I’ve heard, of course. That’s old Hornblende in charge, isn’t it? He’s a good man.”

“Was in charge. He’s quit. Says it’s because of his back, but I have my doubts, though he is of an age.” Cinnabar nodded slowly. “That’s why I need your help, Chert.”

He shook his head, confused. “What…?”

“I want you to chief the job. It’s a careful matter, as you know—digging under the castle. I don’t need to say more, do I? I hear the men are skittish, which may have something to do with Hornblende’s wanting nothing more of it.”

Chert was stunned. At least a dozen other Funderlings had the experience to take Hornblende’s place, all more senior or more important than he was, including one of his own brothers. “Why me?”

“Because you have sense. Because I need someone I can trust as chief over this task. You’ve worked with the big folk before and made out well.” He flicked a glance at Opal, who had finished her tea and was again measuring the child, although Chert knew she was listening to every word. “We can speak more of it later, if you tell me you will do it.” How could he say no? “Of course, Magister. It’s an honor.”

“Good. Very good.” Cinnabar rose, not without a small noise of effort. “Here, give me your hand on it. Come to me tomorrow and I’ll give you the plans and your list of men. Oh, and thanking you for your hospitality, Mistress Opal.”

Her smile was genuine now. “Our pleasure, Magister.”

He did not leave, but took a step forward and stood over Flint. “What do you say, boy?” he asked, mock-stern. “Do you like stone?”

The child regarded him carefully. “Which kind?”

Cinnabar laughed. “Well questioned! Ah, Master Chert, perhaps he has the making of a Fundering at that, if he grows not too big for the tunnels.” He was still chuckling as Chert let him out.

“Such wonderful news!” Opal’s eyes were shining. “Your family will regret their snubs now.” “Perhaps.” Chert was glad, of course, but he knew old Hornblende for a levelheaded fellow. Was there a reason he had given up such a prestigious post? Could there be something of a poisoned offering about it? Chert was not used to kindnesses from the town leaders, although he had no reason to mistrust Cinnabar, who was reputed for fair-dealing.

“Little Flint has brought us good luck,” Opal purred. “He will have a shirt, and I -will have that winter shawl and . . and you, my husband, you must have a handsome new pair of boots. You cannot go walking through the big folk’s castle in those miserable old things.”

“Let’s not spend silver we haven’t seen yet,” he said, but mildly. He might have been a little uncertain about this surprising good fortune, but it was good to see Opal so happy.

“And you would have left the boy there,” she said, almost giddy. “Left our luck sitting in the grass!”

“Luck’s a strange thing,” Chert reminded her, “and as they say, there is much digging before the entire vein is uncovered.” He sat down to finish his tea.

Kendrick had convened the council in the castle’s Chapel of Erivor, dedicated to the sea god who had always been the Eddon family’s special protector. The main chamber was dominated by the statue of the god in green soapstone trimmed with bright metal, with golden kelp coiling in Erivor s hair and beard and his great golden spear held high to calm the waters so Anglin’s ancestors could cross the sea from Connord. Generations of Eddons had been named and married at the low stone altar beneath the statue, and many had lain in state there, too, after they had died the echoes that drifted back from the chapel’s high, tiled ceiling sometimes seemed to be voices from other times.

Barrick had enough difficulty with unwanted voices as it was he didn’t like the chapel much. Today a ring of chairs had been set up on the floor just beneath the steps that led to the low stone altar. “It is the only chamber m this castle where we can close the door and find any privacy,” Kendrick explained to the nobles. “Anything important said in the throne room or the Oak Chamber will be spread across Southmarch before the speaker has finished.”

Bamck moved uncomfortably in the hard, high-backed chair. He had been chewing willow bark since supper but his crippled arm still ached miserably from Shaso’s blows. He darted a sour look at the master of arms. Shaso’s face was a mask, his eyes fixed on the frescoes that, with so many lamps lit, gleamed daytime-bright, as though the birth and triumph of Erivor was the most interesting thing he had ever seen. Barrick had not attended many of these councils he and Briony had only been invited since their father’s departure, and this was his first without her, which added to his discomfort. He could not shake off the feeling that a part of him was gone, as though he had woken up to find he had only one leg.

Gailon of Summerfield was talking quietly into the prince regent’s left ear Sisel, Hierarch of Southmarch, had been given the position of honor on Kendrick’s other hand. The hierarch, a slender, active man of sixty winters or so, was the leading priest of the rnarchlands, and although in some things he was forced to act as the hand of the Trigonarch in distant Syan, he was also the first northerner to hold the position, and thus unusually loyal to the Eddons. The Trigonarchy had been unhappy that Barrick’s father Olin had chosen to elevate one of the local priests over their own candidate, but neither Syan nor theTrigon itself wielded as much power in the north as they once had.

Ranged around the table were many of the other leading nobles of the realm, Blueshore’s Tyne, Lord Nynor the castellan, the bearlike lord constable, Avin Brone, and Barrick’s dandified cousin Rorick Longarren, who was Earl of Daler’s Troth (strangely matched with those dour, plainspoken folk, Barrick always felt) as well as a half dozen more nobles, some clearly sleepy after the midday meal, others indifferently hiding their irritation at giving up a day of hunting or hawking. That sort would not even have been present were it not for their interest in seeing some relief from the royal levy, Barrick felt sure. The fact that his sister was the bargaining chip bothered them not at all.

He would gladly have seen them all skewered on Erivor’s golden fish spear.

Shaso alone seemed suitably grave. He had taken a place at the table’s far end, with a space between himself and the nearest nobles on either side. Barrick thought he looked a bit like a prisoner brought to judgment.

“Your argument should be made to all,” Kendrick loudly told Gailon, who was still whispering to him. At this signal, the other nobles turned their attention to the head of the table.

Duke Gailon paused. A bit of a flush crept up his neck and onto his handsome face. Other than Barrick and the prince regent, he was the youngest man at the gathering. “I simply said that I think we would be making a mistake to so easily give the princess to Ludis Drakava,” he began. “We all want nothing more than to have our King Olin back, but even if Ludis honors the bargain and delivers him without treachery, what then? Olin, may the gods long preserve him, will grow old one day and die. Much can happen before that day, and only the unsleeping Fates know all, but one thing is certain—when our liege is gone, Ludis and his heirs will have a perpetual claim on the throne of the March Kings.”

And his claim will be a better one than yours, Barrick thought, which is your real objection. Still, he was heartened to discover he had an ally, even one he cared for as little as he did Gailon Tolly. He supposed he should be grateful Gailon was the oldest of the Tolly sons. He might be an ambitious prig, but he looked noble as Silas when set beside his brothers, shiftless Caradon and mad Hendon.

“Easy enough for you to say, Summerfield,” growled Tyne Aldritch, “with all your share of the ransom gathered already. What of the rest of us? We would be fools not to take up Ludis’ bargain.”

“Fools?” Barrick straightened. “We are fools if we don’t sell my sister?”

“Enough,” said Kendrick heavily. “We will come back to this question later. First there are more pressing matters Can Ludis and his envoy even be trusted? Obviously, if we were to agree to this offering… and I speak only of possibilities, Barrick, so please keep still… we could not allow my sister to leave our protection until the king was released and safe.”

Barrick squirmed, almost breathless with fury—he would never have believed that Kendrick could talk so carelessly about giving his own sister to a bandit—but the prince regent had spoken with another purpose.

“In fact,” Kendrick continued, “we know little about Ludis, except by reputation, and less of his envoy Shaso, perhaps you can make us wiser about this man Dawet dan-Faar, since you seem to know him.”

His question settled on the master of arms as softly as a silken noose. Shaso stirred. “Yes,” he said heavily. “I know him. We are… related.”

This set the table muttering. “Then you should not be seated in this council, sir,” said Earl Rorick loudly. The royal cousin was dressed in the very latest fashion, the slashes in his deep purple doublet a blazing yellow. He turned to the prince regent, bright and self-assured as a courting bird. “This is shameful. How many councils have we held, speaking, though we knew it not, for the benefit not only of the marchlands but Hierosol as well?”

At last, Shaso seemed to pay attention. Like an old lion woken from sleep, he blinked and leaned forward. One hand had fallen to his side, close to the hilt of his dagger. “Stay. Are you calling me a traitor, my lord?”

Rorick’s return look was haughty, but the earl’s cheeks had gone pale. “You never told us you were this man’s relative.”

“Why should I?” Shaso stared at him for a moment, then sagged back, his energy spent. “He was of no importance to any of you before he arrived here. I myself did not know he had taken service with Ludis until the day he arrived. Last I had heard of him, he led his own free company, robbing and burning across Krace and the south.” “What else do you know of him?” Kendrick asked, not particularly kindly. “He called you a name—’Mordiya’.”

“It means ‘uncle,’ or sometimes ‘father-in-law.’ He was mocking me.” Shaso closed his eyes for a moment “Dawet is the fourth son of the old king of Tuan. When he was young I taught him and his brothers, just as I have taught the children of this family. He was in many ways the best of them, but in more ways the worst—swift and strong and clever, but with the heart of a desert jackal, looking only for what would advantage himself. When I was captured by your father in the battle for Hierosol, I thought that I would never see him or any of the rest of my family again.”

“So how does this Dawet come to be serving Ludis Drakava?”

“I do not know, as I said, Ke… Highness. I heard that Dawet had been exiled from Tuan because of… because of a crime he had committed.” Shaso’s face had gone hard and blank. “His bad ways had continued and worsened, and at last he despoiled a young woman of good family and even his father would no longer protect him. Exiled, he crossed the ocean from Xand to Eion, then joined a mercenary company and rose to lead it. He did not fight for his father or Tuan when our country was conquered by the Autarch. Nor did I, for that matter, since I had already been brought here.”

“A complicated story,” said Hierarch Sisel. “Your pardon, but you ask us to take much on faith, Lord Shaso. How is it that you heard of his doings after your exile here?”

Shaso looked at him but said nothing.

“See,” Rorick proclaimed. “He hides something.”

“These are foul times,” Kendrick said, “that we should all be so mistrustful. But the hierarch’s question is a fair one. How do you come to know of what happened to him after you left Tuan?”

Shaso’s expression became even more lifeless. “Ten years ago, I had a letter from my wife, the gods rest her. It was the last she sent me before she died.”

“And she used this letter to tell you about one of what must have been many students?” The master of arms placed his dark hands flat on his knees, then looked down at them carefully, as though he had never seen such unusual things as hands before. “The girl he ruined was my youngest daughter. Afterward, in her grief, she went to the temple and became a priestess of the Great Mother. When she sickened and died two years later, my wife wrote to tell me. My wife thought it was a shattered heart that had taken Hanede—that our daughter had died from shame, not just fever. She also told me something of Dawet, full of despair that such a man should live and prosper when our daughter was dead.”

Silence reigned for long moments in the small chapel.

“I… I am grieved to hear it, Shaso,” Kendrick said at last. “And doubly grieved that I have forced you to think of it again.”

“I have thought of nothing else since I first heard the name of Hierosol’s envoy,” the old man said. Barrick had seen Shaso do this before—go away to somewhere deep inside himself, like the master of a besieged castle.

“Were Dawet dan-Faar not under the March King’s seal, one of the two of us would already be dead.” Kendrick had clearly been caught by surprise, and just as clearly had not enjoyed it. “This … this speaks badly of the envoy, of course. Does it also mean his offer is not to be trusted?”

Hierarch Sisel cleared his throat. “I, for one, think the offer is honest, although the messenger be not. Like many bandit-lords, Ludis Drakava is desperate to make himself a true monarch—already he has petitioned the Trigon to recognize him as Hierosol’s king. It would be to his advantage to link himself to one of the existing noble houses as well. Syan and Jellon will not do it—even with the mountains between, Hierosol is too close to them, and they deem Ludis too ambitious. Thus, I suspect, his mind has turned to Southmarch.” He frowned, considering. “It could even be he planned this all along, and is the reason he took King Olin.”

“He wanted the ransom to begin to pinch before he offered us this other bargain?” asked a baron from Marnnswalk, shaking his head. “Very crafty.”

“All this talk of why and what happened does not change the facts,” snapped Earl Tyne. “He has the king. We do not. He wants the king’s daughter. Do we give her to him?”

“Do you agree with the hierarch, Shaso?” Kendrick looked at the master of arms keenly. He had never felt Briony s loyalty to the old Tuani, but he did not share Barrick’s grudges either. “Is the offer to be trusted?”

“I think it genuine, yes,” Shaso said at last. “But the Earl of Blueshore has reminded us of the true question here.” “And what do you think?” Kendrick prodded him.

“It is not for me to say.” The old man’s eyes were hooded. “She is not my sister. The king is not my father.” “The final decision will be mine, of course. But I wish to hear counsel first, and you were always one of my father’s most trusted councillors.”

Barrick could not help but notice that Kendrick had called Shaso his father’s trusted councillor, not his own. The master of arms grew even more stony at this slight, but he spoke carefully. “I think it a bad idea.”

“Again, one who does not suffer has an easy choice,” said Tyne Aldritch. “You have no ransom to raise, no tithe of crops to deliver. What does it matter to you whether the rest of us are crippled by this?”

Shaso would not answer the Earl of Blueshore, but Gailon Tolly did. “Can none of you see any farther than the boundaries of your own smallholdings?” he demanded. “Do you think you alone suffer hardship? If we do not give the princess to Ludis, as I think we should not, we all must still share the burden of the greatest hardship—the king’s absence!”

“What did our father say?” Barrick asked suddenly. The whole gathering had been like a bad dream, a confusion of voices and faces. He still could not believe his brother was giving the Lord Protector’s suit any consideration at all. “You read his letter, Kendrick—he must have said something about this.”

His brother nodded but did not meet his younger brother’s eye. “Yes, but in few words, as though he did not take it seriously. He called it a foolish offer.” Kendrick blinked, suddenly weary. “Does this help us to decide, Barrick? You know that Father would never allow himself to be bartered for anyone, even the lowest pig farmer. He has always put his ideals above all else.” There was a note of bitterness, now. “And you know he dotes on Briony, and has since she was in swaddling clothes. You’ve complained of it often enough, Barrick.”

“But he’s right! She is our sister!”

“And we Eddons are the rulers of Southmarch. Even Father has always put those responsibilities above his own desires. Who do you think is more important to our people, our father or sister?”

“The people love Briony!”

“Yes, they do. Her absence would sadden them, but it would not make them fearful, as they have been since the king has been gone. A kingdom without its monarch is like a man without a heart. Better Father were dead, the gods preserve him and us, than simply gone!”

A shocked silence fell over the table at this near-treason, but Barrick knew that his brother was right. Although everyone had tried to pretend otherwise, the king’s absence had been a kind of living death for the March Kingdoms, as unnatural as a year without sunshine. And now, for the first time, Barrick could see the strain beneath what he sometimes thought of as his brother’s guileless features, the immense worry and exhaustion. Barrick could only wonder what other things Kendrick had been hiding from him.

The other nobles took up the argument. It quickly became apparent that Shaso and Gailon were in the minority, that Tyne and Rorick and even Lord Constable Avin Brone thought that since one day Briony would be married off for political gain anyway, her maidenhead might as well be bartered now for something as valuable as restoring King Olin. However, few beside Tyne were honest enough to admit that part of the plan’s appeal was that it would spare them many golden dolphins as well.

Tempers frayed and the discussion became loud. At one point, Avin Brone threatened to knock in Ivar of Silverside’s head, although both were arguing in favor of the same position. At last Kendrick demanded quiet.

“It is late and I have not made up my mind yet,” the prince regent said. “I must think and then sleep on it tonight. My brother Barrick is right in one thing, especially—this is my sister, and I’ll do nothing lightly that will so greatly affect her. Tomorrow I will announce my decision.”

He stood; the others rose and bade him good night, although ill will was still in the air. Barrick was dissatisfied with many things, but he did not for a moment envy his older brother, who like a cattle herder’s dog had to nip at the heels of these vexatious bulls to keep them moving together.

“I want to talk to you,” he told Kendrick as his brother left the chapel. The prince regent’s guards had already formed a silent wall behind him.

“Not tonight, Barrick. I know what you think I still have much to do before I sleep.” “But . but, Kendrick, she’s our sister! She is terrified—I went to her chambers and heard her sobbing . !”

“Enough!” the prince regent almost shouted. “By Perin’s hammer, can’t you leave me alone? Unless you have some magical solution to this problem, all I want from you tonight is silence.” Despite his fury, Kendrick seemed on the verge of weeping himself. He waved his hand. “No more.”

Stunned, Barrick could only stand and watch his older brother walk back toward his chambers. When Kendrick stumbled, one of the guards kindly reached out a hand to steady him.

“That’s enough, Briony. I cannot tell you more—not yet. I still must think and talk on this entire matter You are my sister and I love you, but I must be the ruler here while our father is gone. Go to bed.”

Remembering Kendrick s words of only a few hours ago, thinking back on the whole terrible day, she lay sleepless in the dark—although, judging by the sounds, her ladies were not having the same problem: as always, pretty little Rose was snoring like an old dog Briony had managed to drowse for a short while, but a terrible dream had awoken her, in which Ludis Drakava—who in truth she had never seen; all she knew about him was that he was near her father’s age—had been an ancient thing of cobwebs, dust, and bones, pursuing her through a trackless gray forest. She had not been able to sleep since. She wondered if it was dreams of that sort which robbed Barrick of his sleep and health.

What hour is it? she wondered. She had not heard the temple’s midnight bell yet, but surely it could not be far away. I must be the only one in the castle still awake.

In other times such a thought would have been more exciting than troubling, but now it was only testament to the terrible fate hanging over her like a headsman’s ax.

Has Kendrick decided?

He had given away nothing of his thoughts when she had visited him in his chambers during the evening. She had wept, which made her angry with herself now. She had also begged him not to marry her to Ludis, then had apologized for her selfishness. But he must know I want Father back as much as anyone does!

Kendrick had been distant the whole time she was in his chamber, but had taken her hand when they parted and kissed her cheek, something he rarely did. In fact, the memory of that kiss now chilled her more than his preoccupation. She felt certain that he had been kissing her good-bye.

Pain was wearying. Perpetual fear became numbness. For a little while Briony’s mind wandered and she imagined all the things, good and bad, that could happen. Somehow her father could escape and Ludis would have no claim on the Eddons. Or she could find that the Lord Protector was a slandered man, that truly he was handsome and kind. Or that he was worse than the tales, in which case she would have no choice but to kill him in his sleep, then kill herself. She lived so many lives in that hour, both grim and fanciful, that at last she slipped into a true dream without knowing it— a kinder one this time, the twins playing at hide-and-seek with Kendrick, children together once more—and slept through the midnight bell. But she did not sleep through the shriek that came just a short while later.

Briony sat upright in bed, half certain she had imagined it. Nearby young Rose squirmed in her sleep, lost in some nightmare of her own.

“The black man… ” the girl moaned.

Briony heard it again—a terrified wail, growing louder Moina was awake now, too. Something banged hard on the chamber door and Briony almost fell out of her bed in fright.

“The Autarch!” Moina squealed, plucking at the charm she wore about her neck. “Come to kill us all in our beds …”

“It is only one of the guards,” Briony told the Helmingsea girl harshly, trying to convince herself as well. “Go and take off the bolt.”

“No, Princess! They’ll ravish us!”

Briony pulled her dagger from beneath her mattress, then wrapped the blanket around her and stumbled to the door, heart fluttering as she called out to learn who was on the other side. The voice was not one of the guards’, but even more familiar as the door opened, Briony’s great-aunt Merolanna flapped into the room, her nightdress askew, her long gray hair down on her shoulders, crying, “Gods preserve us! Gods preserve us!” “Why is everyone shouting?” Briony asked, fighting against growing dread. “Is it a fire?”

Merolanna stumbled to a halt, panting and peering short-sightedly. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Briony, is that you? Is it? Oh, praise the gods, I thought they had taken you all.”

The old woman’s words ran through her like icy water. “All ? What are you talking about?” “Your brother—your poor brother.

The chill threatened to stop her heart. She cried, “Barrick?" and shoved past Merolanna. There were no guards outside, but the passage was full of disembodied sounds, wails and distant shouting, and as she emerged into the high-ceihnged Tribute Hall, she found it full of people drifting confusedly in the near-darkness, calling questions or babbling religious oaths, a few carrying candles or lamps, and all in their nightclothes. The vast hall, strange even in bright daylight with its weird statues and other objects brought back from foreign lands, like the stuffed head of the great-toothed ohphant that hung above the fireplace and was as ugly as any demon in the Book of the Trigon, now also seemed filled with pale ghosts Steffans Nynor, wearing a ridiculous sleeping cap and with his beard tied up in a strange little bag, stood in the center of the room shouting orders, but no one was listening to him. The scene was all the more dreamlike because no one stopped Briony or even spoke to her as she ran past them. Everyone seemed to be going in the wrong direction.

She reached the hall outside Barrick’s chamber but found it deserted, her brother’s door closed. She had only a moment to wonder at this before something grabbed her arm. She let out a small, choked shriek, but when she saw whose wide-eyed face was beside her she grabbed at him and pulled him close. “Oh, oh, I thought you Merolanna said…”

Barrick’s red hair was disheveled from bed, wild as a gale-blown haystack. “I saw you go past.” He seemed like one dragged from sleep yet still dreaming, his eyes wide but curiously empty. “Come. No, perhaps you shouldn’t.

“What? Her relief vanished as swiftly as it came. “Barrick, what in the name of all the gods is going on?” He led her around the corner into the main hall of the residence. The corridor was full, and guards armed with halberds were pushing servants and others back from the door of Kendrick’s chambers. She suddenly realized her misunderstanding.

“Merciful Zoria,” she whispered.

Now she could see in the light of the torches that Barrick s face was not empty, but slack with horror, his lips trembling. He took her hand and pulled her through the crowd, which shrank back from them as though the twins might carry some plague. Several of the women were weeping, faces grotesque as festival masks.

The guards kneeling around the body glanced up at the twins’ approach but for a moment did not seem to recognize them Then FerrasVansen, the captain of the royal guard, stood, his face full of dreadful pity, and yanked one of the crouching soldiers out of the way. The prince regent’s room was full of terrible smells, slaughterhouse smells. They had turned Kendrick onto his back His face gleamed red in the torchlight.

There was so much blood that for a fleeting instant she could tell herself it was someone else, that this horror had been visited on some stranger, but Barrick’s groan destroyed the flimsy hope.

Her dagger fell from her hand and clinked onto the flags Her knees sagged and she half fell, then crawled toward her older brother like a blind animal, tangling herself for a moment with one of the guards as he mumbled a prayer. Kendrick’s face twitched. One blood-slicked hand opened and closed.

“He’s alive!” Briony screamed. “Where is Chaven? Has someone sent for him?” She tried to lift Kendrick, but he was too wet, too heavy. Barrick pulled her back and she struck at her twin. “Let me go! He’s alive!” “He can’t be.” Barrick, too, was in some other world, his voice confused and distant. “Just look at him.”

Kendrick’s mouth worked again and Briony almost climbed on top of him, so desperate was she to hear him speak, to know that he was still her brother, that life was in him. She searched for his wounds so she could stop them up, but the whole front of him was soaking wet, his shirt in tatters and the skin beneath it just as ragged. “Don’t,” she said in his ear. “Hold on to me!” Her brother’s eyes rolled; he was trying to find her. His mouth opened. “… Isss…” A sibilant whisper that only Briony could hear.

“Don’t leave us, oh, dear dear Kendrick, don’t.” She kissed his bloody cheek. He let out a whimper of pain, then curled as slowly as a leaf on hot coals until he was lying on his side, bent double. He kicked, whimpered again, then the life was out of him.

Barrick still pulled at her, but he was weeping, too— Everyone is crying, Briony thought, the whole world is crying. Dimly, as though it were happening in another country, she could hear people shouting down the corridor.

“The prince is dead! The prince has been murdered!”

Guard Captain Vansen was trying to lift her away from Kendrick. She turned and slapped at him, then grabbed at the man’s heavy tunic and tried to pull him down, so full of fury she could barely think.

“How did this happen?” she shrieked, her thoughts as red and slippery as her hands. “Where were you? Where were his guards?You are all traitors, murderers!”

For a moment Vansen held her at arm’s length, then his face convulsed with grief and he released his grip. Briony scrambled to her feet, struck hard at his shoulders and face. Ferras Vansen did nothing more to defend himself than lower his head until Barrick pulled her off.

“Look!” her brother said, pointing. “Look there, Briony!”

Her eyes blurred with tears, she did not at first understand what she was seeing—two stained lumps of shadow on the floor beside the prince regent’s bed Then she saw the Eddon wolf on the slashed tunic of one of the figures and the pool of blood a shiny blackness beneath them both, and understood that Kendrick’s guards, too, were dead.

7. Sisters of the Hive

The smoky scent of the jasmine candles and the perpetual sleepy buzz of the Hive temple, the half-frightened, half-exalted breathing of the other girls, all the sounds and odors that surrounded her at the moment the world changed beyond all recognition would never again completely leave her mind. But how could it be otherwise? It would have been overwhelming enough just to meet the Living God on Earth, the Autarch Sulepis Bishakh am-Xis III, Elect of Nushash, the Golden One, Master of the Great Tent and the Falcon Throne, Lord of All Places and Happenings, a thousand, thousand praises to His name, but what happened to Qinnitan at this moment was beyond belief—and always would be.

Even a year later, when she would have to abandon a life of splendid leisure in the Palace of Seclusion and run in terror of death through the dark streets of Great Xis, every moment of this day would still be alive inside her a day that had begun like many others, with her friend Duny poking her out of bed in the darkness before sunrise.

Duny had been so aflutter with excitement that morning she could barely keep her voice in a proper whisper. “Oh, get up, Qin-ya, get up! It’s today! He’s coming! To the Hive!”

The events of that day would lift Qinnitan up to heavenly heights, to honors not just undreamed-of, but so impossible as to be ludicrous even to imagine Still, if she had known all of what was to come, she would have done anything to escape, as a jackal in a trap will gnaw through its own leg in its desperation for freedom.

They hurried down the corridor, two lines of girls with hair still damp from the water they had splashed on their faces and heads in the ritual cleansing, their robes sticking to their bodies, making a lively chill that would not last long in the rising heat of the day Qmnitan’s own black hair hung in lank, loose ringlets, the odd reddish streak hardly visible when it was wet. When she was a baby, the old women of Cat’s Eye Street had called it a witch streak and made the pass-evil sign, but no sign of witchery or anything out of the ordinary at all had followed. Some of the other children had called her “Striped Cat,” but other than that, by the time she was old enough to range the streets and alleys in the neighborhood of her parents’ house, no one paid any more attention to it than they did to a mole on the nose or crossed eyes.

“But why is He coming here?” Qinnitan asked, still not quite awake.

“To find out what the bees think,” Duny said.

“Of course.”

“Think about what?” The priestesses and the Hive Mistress often spoke about autarchs coming to seek the wisdom of the sacred bees, tiny oracles of the all-powerful fire god Nushash, but the names they cited were of the impossibly distant past—Xarpedon, Lepthis, rulers whom Qinnitan had only ever heard mentioned during the boasting of the Great Hive’s caretakers. But now the real, living autarch, the god-on-earth himself, was coming to consult with the fire god’s bees. It was hard to believe. Her father had been a priest in the temple of Nushash all his life but had never been favored with a visit from an actual autarch. Qinnitan had been a sworn acolyte priestess for scarcely more than a year. It almost didn’t seem fair.

This autarch, Sulepis, was a fairly young god-on-earth still. He had only been on the Falcon Throne for a short time—Qinnitan could remember his father, the old autarch Parnad, dying (followed more violently by several of his other sons, who had been the current autarch’s rivals) when she had first gone to serve the bees, the funereal hush that had lain so deeply on the Hive temple that she had been surprised later to discover things were not always that way. Perhaps the autarch’s youthtulness explained why he was doing astounding things like visiting a smoke-filled apiary in one of the more obscure corners of Nushash’s sprawling, ancient fire temple.

“Do you think He’ll be handsome?” Duny asked in a strangled whisper, clearly shocked and thrilled by her own daring Sulepis had spent most of his first months on the throne chastising some of the outer provinces who had thought, falsely and to their subsequent regret, that the new, young autarch might prove timid. Thus, he had not found time for the sort of processions or public events that made the common people feel as though they knew their ruler Qinnitan could only shrug and shake her head. She couldn’t think of the autarch in that way and it hurt her head even to try. It was like a worm trying to decide whether a mountain was the right color. She wasn’t angry, though she knew her friend was frightened, and who wouldn’t be? They were going to meet the living god, a being as far above them as the stars, someone who could snuff all their lives more easily than Qinnitan could kill a fly.

For a brief moment—it was always too brief—the acolytes passed out of the narrow passageway into the high-windowed gallery that crossed from the living quarters to the temple complex Twelve to fifteen steps at most, depending on how quickly the leading girl was marching, but it was the only chance Qinnitan had to see below her the magnificent city of Great Xis, a city in which she had once, if not exactly run free, at least lived at street level, among people that spoke in normal tones of voice In the Hive scarcely anyone ever spoke above a whisper—although sometimes the whispers could be as intrusive as shouts.

“Do you think He’ll speak? What do you think He’ll sound like?” “Quiet, Duny!”

Qinnitan had just a few moments each day to savor the world outside the temple, even if she only saw it at a distance, and she missed it very much. As always, she opened her eyes wide as they crossed the windowed gallery, trying to drink in every bit she could absorb, the blue sky bleached mostly gray with the smoke of a million fires, the pearl-white rooftops stretching far beyond sight like an endless beach covered with squared stones, interrupted here and there where the towers of the greatest families thrust up into the air. The towers’ colorful stripes and gold ornaments made them look like the sleeves of splendid garments, as though each tower were a man’s fist raised toward the heavens. But of course the rich men of the tower families had no complaints against the heavens instead of clenched in a fist, their tower-hands should be spread wide, in case the gods should decide to throw down even more good fortune on people already choked with it.

Qinnitan often wondered what would have happened if her own family had been one of the ruling elite instead of only a middling merchant family, her father a landholder instead of a mere functionary in the administration of one of Nushash’s larger temples. She supposed it could have been worse—he could have been a lackey of one of the other gods, fast losing power to the great fire god. “We are so lucky to have this for you,” her parents had told her when she had been admitted as an acolyte of the Sisters of the Hive, although she herself had prayed—blasphemy, but there it was—that it would not happen. “Far richer families than ours would shed blood for such an honor. You will be serving in the autarch’s own temple!”

The temple, of course, had proved to be a sprawl of connected buildings that seemed only slightly smaller than Great Xis itself, and Qinnitan one of so many hundreds of Hive Sister acolytes that it was doubtful even the priestess in charge of her living quarters knew more than a few of their names.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if He looks at me. If I faint, will He have me put to death?” “Please, Duny. No, I’m sure people faint all the time. He’s a god, after all.” “You say that so strangely, Qin. Are you feeling ill?”

Her momentary glimpse of freedom ended: the mighty city disappeared as they stepped out of the gallery and into the next corridor. One of Qinnitan’s aunts had told her that Xis was so big that a bird could live its entire life while flying from one side of the city to the other, perching along the way to sleep, eat, and perhaps even start a family. Qinnitan was not certain that was true—her father had poured scorn on the notion—but it was certainly true that there was a world outside so much bigger than her own constrained circumstances, so much more vast than her march from living quarters to temple each morning and back again each evening, that she ached to be a bird, flaunting herself above a city that never ended.

Even fretful, chattering Duny at last fell silent as they passed into the great hypostyle hall, awed as they all were, every day, by the size of the stone pillars shaped like cedars that stretched up a dozen times the girls’ height or more before disappearing into the inky shadows beneath the ceiling. When she had first come to the temple, Qinnitan had thought it strange that Nushash should live in such a dark place, but after a while she had come to see how right it was. Fire was never brighter than when it bloomed out of blackness, never more important than when it was the only light in a sunless place.

At the end of the great hall the eyes of Nushash were opening even now as the temple’s oldest priest lit the great lanterns, moving more slowly than it seemed any human being could manage and yet still be alive, extending his long lighting-pole with the creeping pace of an insect that thinks it might be observed by a hungry bird. This priest was one of the only men Qinnitan and her fellow acolytes saw during the conduct of their daily duties. Despite the fact that he was Favored, and thus a reason far more compelling than mere age ensured he was no threat to a large congregation of virgins, Qinnitan thought the Hive Sisters must have picked him because he was old enough to be doubly safe. They certainly had not picked him for his skill and dispatch. He must have already been at his maddeningly slow work for hours this morning, she decided more than half the lanterns had been kindled. Their flicker exposed the looping lines of the sacred writing on the wall behind them, the gold characters of the Hymn to the Fire God glinting red with reflected flame.

Beyond the massive and ornately decorated archway lay the maze and inner sanctuary of Nushash himself, chief god of the world, the lord of fire whose wagon was the sun—a wagon bigger even than the autarch’s earthly palace, Qinnitan’s father had bragged, its wheels higher than the tallest tower. (Her father Cheshret was nothing if not proud of his employer.) Mighty Nushash crossed the sky each day in this great cart and then, despite all the snares that Argal the Dark One laid for him, despite the monsters that thronged his path, continued on through the night beyond the dark mountains, so he could bring the light of fire back to the sky each morning, thus allowing the earth and all who dwelled in it to live.

Somewhere beyond that archway glowered the great golden statue of Nushash himself, as well as all the endless corridors and chambers of his great temple, the chapels and the priests’ living quarters and the storage rooms so filled with offerings that a vast part of his army of priests had no other task except to receive and catalog them. Beyond that archway lay the seat of the fire god’s power on earth, and it formed—along with the autarch’s palace—the axis of the entire spinning world. But of course, girls like Qinnitan were not allowed into that part of the temple, nor were any other women, not even the autarch’s paramount wife or his venerated mother.

The procession of acolyte priestesses turned left down the smaller hallway, hurrying on softly pattering feet toward the Temple of the Hive of the Fire God’s Sacred Bees, to give it its full name. If the youngest Hive Sisters had not been waiting weeks for this day, it was at this moment that they would have first realized today was not to be like the others the high priestess herself was waiting for them, along with her chief acolyte. Although she was not as venerated as the Oracle Mudry, High Priestess Rugan was the mistress of the Hive temple and thus one of the most powerful women in Xis. That being the case, she was a remarkably ordinary and even kindly woman, although she did not suffer foolish behavior well.

High Priestess Rugan clapped her hands and the girls all fell silent, gathered in a semicircle around her. “You all know what day this is,” she said in her deep voice, “and who is coming.” She touched her own ceremonial robe and hood, as if to be sure she had remembered to put them on. “I do not need to tell you the temple must be spotless.”

Qinnitan suppressed a groan. They had been cleaning all week—how could it get any cleaner?

Rugan s face was appropriately stern. “You will give thanks as you work. You will praise Nushash and our great autarch for this honor. You will consider the monumental importance to all our lives of this visit. And most importantly, as you work, you will reflect on the sacred bees and their own ceaseless, uncomplaining toil.”

“They are so beautiful,” said the chief acolyte.

Qinnitan paused for a moment in her work to look at the great hives behind their clouds of smoky silk netting, vast cylinders of fired clay decorated with bands of copper and gold and warmed in winter by pots of boiling water set beneath the bulky ceremonial stands—one of the least enjoyable of the acolytes’jobs Qinnitan had more than a few burns on her hands and wrists where a spill had scalded her. The fire god’s bees lived in houses far more splendid than any but the most exalted and fortunate of men. As if they knew it, the bees were singing quietly, contentedly, a hum deep enough to make ears tickle and hair lift on the back of the neck. “Yes, Mistress Chryssa,” said Qinnitan, meaning it. It was perhaps the thing she liked best about the Hive temple—the hives themselves, the bees, busy and serene. “They truly are.”

“It is a wonderful day for us.” The chief acolyte was herself still a young woman, pretty in a thin-faced way when one learned to look past the scar that ran from her eye to her cheek. The scar made her the subject of much giggling speculation in the acolytes’ quarters. Qinnitan had never summoned the nerve to ask her how she had received it. “An entirely wonderful day. But for some reason, child, you do not seem entirely happy.”

Qinnitan took a breath, suddenly shocked and frightened that her strange mood should show on her face. “Oh, no, Mistress I am the luckiest girl in the world to be here, to be a Hive Sister.”

The chief acolyte didn’t look like she entirely believed her, but she nodded approvingly. “It’s true, there are probably more girls who would happily take your place here than there are grains of sand on the beach, and you have had the even greater good fortune of having caught the eye of Eminence Rugan herself. Otherwise a girl of your… otherwise you might not have been selected out of so many other worthy candidates.” Chryssa reached out and patted Qinnitan on the arm. “It was your clever tongue, you know, although you still need to learn when not to use it. I think Her Eminence has hopes you might be a chief acolyte yourself one day, which would be an even greater honor.” She nodded a little, acknowledging her own hard work and good fortune. “Still, it is a high, lonely calling, and sometimes it can be difficult to leave behind your family and friends. I know it was for me, when I was young.”

Before Qinnitan could seize this chance to ask the revered and mysterious Mistress Chryssa some questions about her childhood before the temple, the nets in front of the hives billowed a little in a sudden draft, although the weight of hundreds of bees clinging to them kept them from moving too much. The breeze carried something through the great room, a whisper of sudden fear and excitement that made both the chief acolyte and her young charges straighten and turn to the door where the High Priestess had suddenly appeared, her arms held up, her hands open in the air like flowers.

“Praises to the highest,” breathed Chryssa, “He is here!”

Qinnitan got down on her knees beside the chief acolyte. A murmur of footsteps became louder, swishing and booming on the polished stone floors, as soldiers began to file in, each with a great curved sword on his belt and bearing on his shoulder a long, bell-mouthed tube of brightly polished figured steel—the Autarch’s Leopards, they had to be, no one else was allowed to wear that black-and-gold armor. It was astonishing she had never thought to see any men here in the Hive’s great portico, let alone a hundred of them with muskets. This rarity was followed by several dozen robed priests of Nushash, then an even larger troop of soldiers, these carrying more conventional but still frightening weapons, long spears and swords. At last the shuffling of feet stopped. Qinnitan sneaked a look over at Mistress Chryssa, whose face was radiant with excitement and something even stronger—a sort of joy.

A vast litter appeared in the doorway, a thing of gold-painted wood and heavy curtains embroidered with the wide-winged falcon of the royal family. The brawny soldiers who held it set the litter down just to the side of the doorway and one of them leaped forward to pull back the curtains. Although none of the women in the temple chamber said a word, Qinni-tan thought she could feel them, dozens of them, all drawing breath at the same time. A face appeared from the shadows in the depths of the litter, picked out by the lanterns.

Qinnitan swallowed, although for a moment it seemed impossible to do so. The autarch was a monster.

No, not quite a monster she saw at her second glance, but the youth in the litter was bent and gnarled as though by extreme age and his head was far too large for his spindly body. He blinked and looked absently from side to side like a sleepy man realizing he has opened the wrong door, then withdrew into the darkness of his curtained bower once more.

Even as Qinnitan gaped, the Leopard guards all lifted their guns off their shoulders, held them high, then slammed their feet against the floor with a deafening report—boom, boom ! For a moment she thought the guns had all gone off, and some of the Hive Sisters let out shrieks of fear and dismay. As the echoes died, a half dozen more men in black-and-gold armor appeared in the doorway and then a figure almost as strange as the one in the litter followed them into the temple room.

He was tall, half a head above the biggest of the Leopards, but not as freakishly so as he first appeared it was the length of his neck and the narrowness of his face that made him seem so unusual, and the spidery stretch of his fingers as he raised his hand. Beneath the high, dome-shaped crown his face, too, seemed like an ordinary face that had been pulled a bit beyond its appropriate shape—a long jaw and a curved, bony nose like a hawk’s beak that matched oddly with his youth—smooth brown flesh stretched tight across the skull. He wore a small trimmed black beard and his eyes seemed unnaturally large and bright as he stared around the room. A few of the Nushash priests stepped forward and began chanting and swinging their censers, filling the air around the tall young man with smoke.

“Who is that?” Qinnitan whispered under cover of the priests’ noise.

Chryssa was clearly shocked that she should dare to whisper, even when it was more or less safe to do so under the cover of the priests’ voices. “The autarch, you fool girl!”

It certainly made more sense that the tall one was their ruler—he had an undeniable power to him. “But then who is that… who is the man in the litter?”

“The scotarch, of course—his heir. Now be silent.”

Qinnitan felt stupid. Her father had once told her that the scotarch, the autarch’s ceremonial heir, was sickly, but she had entirely forgotten, and had certainly never guessed him to be so obviously afflicted. Still, considering that the autarch’s own life and rule hinged on the health and continued well-being of the scotarch, by ancient Xixian tradition, Qinnitan couldn’t help wondering at the autarch’s choice of such a frail reed.

It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. These folk were as much above her—all the doings of the high house were as far above her—as the stars in the sky.

“Where is the mistress of this temple?” The autarch’s voice was high-pitched but strong; it rang in the great room like a silvery bell.

Eminence Rugan came forward, head bowed, her usual brisk walk transformed almost into the slinking of a frightened beast. That, more than the soldiers or priests or anything else, made Qinnitan understand that she was in the presence of matchless, terrifying power: Rugan bowed to no one else that Qinnitan had ever seen. “Your glory reflects on us all, O Master of the Great Tent,” Rugan said, voice quavering a little. “The Hive welcomes you and the bees are gladsome in your presence. Mother Mudry is coming to offer you any wisdom the Sacred Bees of Nushash can grant. She begs your generous indulgence, Golden One. She is too old to wait here in the drafty outer temple without great discomfort.”

The look that crossed the autarch’s corvine features was almost a smirk. “She does me too much honor, does old Mudry. You see, I haven’t come to consult the oracle. I want nothing from the bees.”

Even cowed by the presence of a hundred armed soldiers, many Sisters of the Hive couldn’t restrain a gasp of surprise—some of the noises even sounded suspiciously like disapproval. Come to the temple and not consult the sacred bees?

“I’m… I’m afraid I don’t understand, O Golden One.” Clearly confused, Eminence Rugan took a step back, then sank to one knee. “The high priest’s messenger said you wished to come to the Hive because you were searching for something…”

The autarch actually laughed. It had a strange edge to it, something that made Qinnitan’s flesh prickle on her arms. The curtain of the scotarch’s litter twitched as though the sick young man was peering out. “Yes, he did,” the autarch said. “And I am. Come, Panhyssir, where are you?”

A bulky shape in dark robes with a long, narrow beard like a gray waterfall trundled out from behind the Leopard guards—Panhyssir, the high priest of Nushash, Qinnitan guessed, and thus another of the most powerful people in the entire continent of Xand. He looked as fat and unconcerned with trivial human things as one of the drones in the sacred hives. “Yes, Golden One?”

“You said that this was the place I would find the bride I sought.”

Panhyssir didn’t look anywhere near as worried as the Hive priestesses; he had already overseen the collection of hundreds of brides for the autarch, so perhaps this seemed a bit routine. “She is definitely here, Golden One. We know that.”

“Ah, is she, now? Then I will find her myself.” The autarch took a few steps, his eyes sweeping along the rows of kneeling, terrified Hive Sisters. Qinnitan had no better an idea of what was going on than any of her comrades, but she saw the autarch and his Leopards moving across the temple toward them and so she turned her face toward the floor and tried to stay as still as the paving stones.

“This is the one,” said the autarch from somewhere nearby.

“Yes, that is the bride, Golden One,” said Panhyssir. “The Master of the Great Tent cannot be fooled.” “Good. She will be brought to me this evening, along with her parents.”

It was only when the guards’ rough hands closed on her arms and lifted her to her feet that Qinnitan realized that this astounding, unbelievable thing had happened to no one but her.

8. The Hiding Place

It had been the longest hour of his life. The young woman he admired beyond any other, without a hope of his affection ever being returned, had just spat on him and blamed him for her brother’s murder, and he was not at all certain she was wrong. Bleeding runnels showed where she had gouged his cheeks with her nails; the wounds burned, stinging with tears and sweat, both his own. But worst of all, his failure, the failure of every man sworn to protect the royal family, pressed on him like the walls of a lead coffin. King Olin had been gone for months, held prisoner in a far country. Now his son and heir was dead, butchered in his own bedchamber in the middle of Southmarch Castle.

If the world was indeed ending, thought Ferras Vansen, captain of the royal guard, then he hoped the end would come quickly. At least it would mean an end to this most horrible of nights.

Hierarch Sisel, shocked wide-eyed and murmuring to himself, had hurried from his guest chambers in the Tower of Summer, and was now struggling to remember the words to the death rite—he had not been an ordinary priest for a long time—as he leaned over Prince Kendrick’s bloodied corpse. The dead prince had been lifted onto the bed and unfolded from his death spasm; he lay now with eyes closed and arms at his sides in a semblance of peaceful rest. A cloth stitched with gold had been draped over his wounded body so that only the naked shoulders and face were showing, but scarlet flowers of blood were already beginning to bloom through the covering. Chaven the physician, as pale-faced and disturbed as Vansen had ever seen him, waited to examine the murdered prince before the royal body was taken by the Maids of Kernios to be prepared for the funeral.

Wordless as survivors of a terrible battle, the twins had not left their dead brother’s side. Blood had dried on their nightclothes—Briony in particular was so red-painted that a newcomer would be forgiven in mistaking her for the prince’s killer. She kneeled weeping on the floor by the bed, her head resting on Kendrick’s arm. The prince must be uncomfortable, Vansen thought absently, then remembered as if in a dream that the prince was now beyond all bodily discomfort.

Lord Constable Avin Brone, huge and deep-voiced and as much a part of the Eddon family as anyone not of the blood could be, was perhaps the only one who could even think of trying to move the princess from her dead brother’s side. “There are things to do, my lady,” he rumbled. “It is not meet that he should lie here untended. Come away and let the physician and the death-maids do their work.”

“I’m not leaving him.” She would not even glance at Brone.

“Talk sense to her,” the lord constable growled at her pale twin brother. Barrick looked half his years, a frightened child, his hair still tousled from bed. “Help me, Highness,” Brone asked him more gently. “We will never find what happened here, never discover the cruel hand that did this if we cannot… if we must work with a mourning family watching us.”

“The dark man… !” Briony lifted her head, a sudden feverish light in her eyes. “My maid woke dreaming of a dark man. Where is that villain Dawet? Did he do this? Did he kill… my… my… ?” Her mouth curled, lost shape, then she was weeping again, a raw, heartbreaking sound. She pressed her head against Kendrick’s side.

“My lady, you must come,” Brone told her, tugging his beard in anxious frustration. “You will have a chance for a proper farewell to the prince, I promise you.”

“He’s not a prince—he’s my brother!” “He was both, Highness.”

“It’s time to get up, Briony,” Barrick said weakly, as if telling a he he did not think anyone would believe.

Avin Brone looked to the guard captain for help Vansen moved forward, hating what his duty made him do Brone already had one of the girl’s arms in his broad hands Vansen took the other, but Briony resisted, glaring at him with such complete hatred that he let her pull away.

“Princess!” Brone hissed. “Your older brother is dead and you cannot change that. Look around you. Look there.” “Leave me alone.”

“No, gods curse this night, look out the door!”

Outside the prince regent’s chamber dozens of pale faces hovered silently in the corridors, phantoms of lantern light, the castle’s residents were crowded there, watching in disbelief and horror.

“You and your brother are the heads of the Eddon family now,” Brone told her in a harsh whisper. “The people need to see you be strong. Your grief should wait until you are private. Can you not stand and be strong for your people?”

At first she seemed more likely to spit at him than speak, but after a long moment Briony shook her head, then wiped her cheeks and eyes with the back of her hand.

“You are right, Lord Constable,” she said. “But I will not forgive you for it.”

“I am not in my post to be either loved or forgiven, Mistress Come, you are in mourning, but you are still a princess. Let us all get on with what we have to do here.” He offered her his wide arm.

“No, thank you,” she said. “Barrick?”

Her twin took an unsteady step toward her. “Are we…?”

“We will go to the chapel.” Briony Eddon’s face was a mask now, hard and pale as fired white clay. “We will pray for Kendrick there. We will light candles. And if the lord constable and this supposed captain of the guard manage to find the one who killed our brother under their very noses, we will be composed to pass fitting sentence on him.”

Taking her brother’s arm, she stepped around Ferras Vansen without a look, as though he were a cow or sheep, something too stupid to clear the way of its own volition. As she passed, he could see that her eyes were brimming over again but that she held her head straight. The servants and others in the hall shrank back against the walls to let them pass Some called out fearful questions, but Briony and her brother walked through them as though they were no more than trees, their voices only the rush of the wind.

“Eminence, will you go with them?” Avin Brone asked Hierarch Sisel when the twins had passed from earshot. “We need them out of the way so we may do our work, but my heart sinks for them and for the kingdom. Will you go and lead them in prayers, help them to find strength?”

Sisel nodded and followed the prince and princess. Vansen could not help being impressed at the way his master had dispatched the hierarch—a man of the gods who answered only to the Trigonarch himself in distant Syan—as though he were a lowly groom.

When they were all gone, Brone scowled and spat. Such disrespect in the prince’s death chamber shocked Vansen, but the lord constable seemed caught up with other things. “At least the Raven’s Gate is closed for the night,” he growled. “But, tomorrow, word of this will move from house to house through the city like a fire, and will be carried to all the lands around, whether we like it or not. We cannot shut out questions or seal in the truth. The young prince and princess will need to show themselves soon or we will have great fear in the people.”

There is a hole in the kingdom now, Ferras Vansen realized. A terrible hole. This might be the time when a strong man could step in and fill it. What if Avin Brone thought of himself as that sort of man?

He certainly looked the type. The lord constable was as tall as Vansen, who was not a small fellow, but Brone was almost twice as wide, with a huge bushy beard and shoulders as broad as his substantial belly. In his black cloak—which Ferras suspected he had simply thrown over his night things, then stuffed his feet into boots—the older man looked like a rock on which a ship might founder… or on which a great house might be built. And there were others in the kingdom who might also think themselves a good size to wear a crown.

As the physician Chaven busied himself with the prince’s body, Avin Brone moved to stand over the two slain guardsmen. “This one is Gwatkin, yes? I do not recognize the other.”

“Caddick—a new fellow.” Ferras frowned Just days earlier the men had been mocking Caddick Longlegs for never having kissed a girl. Now the youth was new in death as well. “There would have been two more here, but I thought I would rather keep an eye on the end of the keep where the foreigners are lodged.” He swallowed an abrupt surge of bile. “There should have been two more to guard the prince…”

“And have you spoken to those guards yet? By the gods, man, what if they are all dead and the foreigners are now ranging the keep with bloody swords?”

“I have long since sent a messenger and had one back One of my best men leads them—Dyer, you know him—and he swears the Hierosoline envoy and his company have not left their rooms.”

“Ah.” Brone nudged one of the guards’ bodies with his boot toe. “Slashed. A bit fine for swordplay, looks like. But how could a troop of men attack and murder the prince without anyone knowing? And how could something smaller than a troop do such grim work?"

“I do not know how it could be a troop and go unnoticed, my lord. The corridors were not empty.” Ferras stared at Gwatkin’s wide-eyed face, the jaw hanging open as though death had been more a surprise than anything else. “But the servants did hear something earlier in the evening—arguing, some shouting, but muffled. They could make out no words and did not recognize the voices, but all agreed it did not sound like men fighting for their lives.”

“Where are the prince’s bodyservants? Where are his pages?”

“Sent away.” Ferras could not help but smart a little under Brone s questioning. Did the lord constable think that because Guard Captain Vansen’s father was a farmer, the son had no wit? That he hadn’t thought to see to these things himself? “The prince himself sent them away. They thought it was because he wanted to be alone, either to think or perhaps to discuss his sister’s fate privately with someone.”

“Someone?"

“They do not know, Lord. He was alone when he sent them away. They ended by sleeping in the kitchen with the potboys. It was one of the pages, returning for a religious trinket of some sort, who found the dying prince and raised the alarm.”

“I will speak to that one, then.” Brone carefully lowered his heavy frame into a squat beside the murdered guardsmen. He pulled at the nearest man’s jerkin. “He is wearing armor.”

“Most of the blood on him comes from a slashed throat. That is what killed him.” “The other, too?”

“His throat was slashed and bleeding, but that wasn’t what did for him, my lord. Look at his face.” Brone squinted at the second body. “What happened to his eye?”

“Something sharp went through it, my lord. And deep into his skull, too, from what I can see.” Avin Brone whistled in surprise and levered himself upright like a bear stumbling out of its cave in spring. “If we cannot find a troop of assassins, then have we but one killer? Our murderer must be a fine fighter, to kill two armored men. And Kendrick is not clumsy with a sword either.” Startled by his own words, Brone made a pass-evil. “Was not. Did he have a chance to arm himself?”

“We have seen no sign of any weapon yet except the guards.’ ” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps somehow the prince was attacked first. Perhaps he sent these guards out on some errand as he did his other servants, and they returned to find the murderer had already struck.”

Brone turned to Chaven, who had removed the golden cloth and was probing at the body. The prince regent already looked like a tomb-statue, Ferras thought, cold and white as marble. “Can you guess what killed him?” the lord constable asked.

The royal physician looked up, his round face troubled. “Oh, yes. No, better to say, I can show you why he died. Come look.”

Ferras and the lord constable moved to the bedside. Now it was Ferras who helplessly made the pass-evil—a fist around his thumb to keep Kernios the death god from noticing him. He had seen many score of violent deaths since his childhood, but he had not made the gesture for as long as he could remember.

The prince’s bloodless pallor and yellow hair made him appear disquietingly like his younger sister—Ferras suddenly felt troubled to be looking on his helpless nakedness, although he had often seen Kendrick bathing in the river after a long, dusty hunt. The corpse’s arms were covered with shallow slashes now cleaned of blood—wounds of defense. The blood had been wiped from his chest and stomach as well, but there was no way to prettify these larger wounds, half a dozen straight gashes livid along their edges and deeply, upsettingly red in their depths.

“Not a sword,” said the lord constable after a moment. He was breathing a little harshly, as if the sight disturbed him more than he let show. “A knife?”

“Perhaps.” Chaven frowned. “Perhaps a curved one—see how the cuts are wider on one end… ?”

“A curved knife?” Brone’s bushy eyebrows slid up. He looked to Ferras, who felt his heart speed with surprise and fear.

“I know who has a knife like that,” he said. “We all do,” said the lord constable.

Barrick’s head felt hollow. The rustle of the blanket Briony wore wrapped around her nightdress, the slap of his own feet, the murmur of the people in the corridor, all rolled around his skull like the roar of the ocean in a seashell. He was finding it difficult to believe that what had just happened was real.

“Prince Barrick,” someone called—one of the pages, “Is he really dead, Is our lord Kendrick really dead?" Barrick did not dare speak. Only holding his teeth clenched together kept him from bursting into tears or worse. Briony waved the onlookers back and they turned to beseech Hierarch Sisel for news instead, slowing his progress. At the end of the corridor the twins turned toward the Erivor Chapel, but then at the next turmng Briony walked swiftly in the wrong direction.

“No, this way,” Barrick said dully. His poor sister, lost in her own house. She shook her head and continued down the corridor, then turned again. “Where are we going?”

“Not to the chapel.” Her voice sounded strangely light, as though nothing unusual had happened, but when she turned toward him a blasted emptiness was in her eyes, a look so unfamiliar that it terrified him. “They’ll only find us there.”

“What? What do you mean?”

His sister took his arm and pulled him down another corridor. Only when they reached the old pantry door did he understand. “We haven’t been here for … for years.”

She pulled a stub of candle from the shelf just inside, then turned back to light it from one of the wall sconces. When they pulled the door closed behind them the light on the shelves cast all the familiar shadows that Barrick had once known as well as the shape of his own knuckles.

“Why didn’t we go to the temple?” he asked. He was half afraid to hear the answer. He had never seen his sister quite like this.

“Because they’ll find us. Gailon, the hierarch, all that lot. And then they’ll make us do things.” Her face was pale but intent. “Don’t you understand?”

“Understand what? Kendrick Briony, they killed Kendrick! Someone killed Kendrick.” He wagged his head, trying to make sense. “But who?”

His sister’s eyes were bright with tears. “It doesn’t matter! I mean, it does, but don’t you see? Don’t you see what’s going to happen? They’re going to make you prince regent, and they’re going to send me to Hierosol to marry. Ludis Drakava. They’ll be even more certain to do it now. They’ll be terrified—they’ll do anything to get Father back.”

“They’re not the only ones.” Barrick could not keep up with Briony, who was thinking so quickly it seemed she had dived into a rushing river and left him on the bank, stuck in mud. Barrick couldn’t think at all. It seemed the nightmares that plagued his sleep had stormed and conquered his waking life as well. Someone had to make things right again. He was astonished to hear himself say it, but at this moment it was true: “I want Father back, too. I want him back.”

Briony started to say something, but her lip was quivering. She sat down on the dusty floor of the pantry and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Poor… K-Kendrick!” She fought back the tears. “He was so cold, Barrick. Even before he… before the end. He was shivering.” She made a snuffling noise, pressed her face against her arms.

Barrick looked up at the pantry ceiling, which undulated like water in the flickering candlelight. He wished he and Briony were on a river together, floating away. “We used to hide from him here when we were little, remember? He used to get so angry when he couldn’t find us. And it worked so many times!”

“Even after Aunt Merolanna told him, he’d always forget.” She looked up with a crooked smile. “Up and down the halls. ‘Barrick! Briony! I’ll tell Father!’ He would get so angry!”

For a long moment they fell silent, listening for a phantom echo.

“What are we going to do, then? I don’t want to be the cursed prince regent.” Barrick considered. “We can run away If we’re gone, they can’t make me the prince regent and they can’t give you to Ludis.”

“But who will rule Southmarch?” Briony asked.

“Let Avin Brone do it. Or that prig Gailon. The gods know he wants to.”

“All the more reason he shouldn’t. Sister Utta says that people who want power are the first who should be mistrusted with it.”

“But they’re the only ones who want it.” He crouched beside her. “I don’t want to be prince regent. Besides, why shouldn’t it be you, anyway? You’re older.”

Even in the very pit of misery, his sister could not help smiling. “You are such a wretched monster, Barrick. That’s the first time you have ever admitted that. And it was only a matter of moments, anyway.”

Barrick slumped down. He had no smile to give back. A poisonous weariness poured through his limbs, heart, and head like a gray smoke, fogging his thoughts. “I want to die, that’s what I want. Go with Kendrick. Much easier than running away.”

“Don’t you dare say that!” Briony grabbed his arm and leaned forward until her face was only a handspan from his. “Don’t you dare think about leaving me alone.”

For a moment he almost told her—gave up the secret he had hidden so long, all those nights of fear and misery… But the habit of years could not be so easily broken, even now. “You’re the one who will be leaving me,” he said instead.

In the middle of the long, dark silence that followed, someone rapped lightly on the pantry door. The twins, startled, looked at each other, eyes wide in the candlelight. The door scraped open.

Their great-aunt, Duchess Merolanna, stepped in.”I knew you’d be here. You two. Of course you would be.” “They sent you after us,” Briony said accusingly.

“They did—oh, they did. The whole castle is in terror, looking for you. How could you be such wicked children?” But Merolanna was not as angry as she sounded. In fact, she seemed like another sleepwalker. Her pale, wide face, devoid of paint, looked like something dragged out of its burrow and into the sunlight. “Don’t you know the worst thing you could do is to vanish like this, after . after…”

A great choking gasp came out of Briony, who crawled to Merolanna and buried her face in the old woman’s voluminous nightdress. “Oh, Auntie ‘Lanna, they k-k-killed him! He’s… he’s gone!”

Merolanna reached down and stroked her back, although she was struggling to keep her balance against the girl’s weight on her legs. “I know, dear…Yes, our poor, sweet little Kendrick…”

And then the horrible fact of it climbed up Barrick’s backbone and into his head again, a ghastly, overwhelming thing that choked out all light and sense, and he clambered over to Merolanna and wrapped his arms around her waist, forcing her off balance again. She had no choice but to claw at the shelves and let herself fold to the floor of the pantry in a great slipping and bunching of cloth. She held them both with their heads together in her lap, their hair mingling like the waters of two rivers, red and gold, both of them weeping like small children.

Merolanna was crying again, too. “Oh, my poor ducks,” she said, looking at nothing as tears ran down her wrinkled cheek. “Oh, my poor little chickens, yes. My poor, dear ones…”

Briony had dried her eyes before they reached. Avin Brone and the others, and had even let Merolanna fuss her hair back into some kind of order, but she still felt like a prisoner dragged from a cell to face a high justice.

But although Hierarch Sisel (who Merolanna had told them had walked halfway around the castle looking for them) looked annoyed beneath his appropriately serious and mournful expression, Lord Brone did not tax Barrick and Briony for their waywardness.

“We have been waiting for you,” he said as the twins approached, staying close to Merolanna for whatever protection she might afford them. “We have grim business still to do tonight, and you are the head of the Eddon family now.” “Which of us?” asked Barrick a little nastily. “You can’t have two heads.”

“Either of you,” said Brone, surprised for a moment, as though he had not thought of this particular conundrum. “Both of you. But you must see what we do, that justice is done.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Briony. The man Vansen, the captain of the guards, was standing behind the lord constable. He had bloody scratches on his face, and for a moment she felt a twinge of shame, thinking of how she had attacked him. But he is the one who is ahve, and my brother is murdered, she thought, and the feeling evaporated. He did not meet her eye, which made it easier to ignore him.

“I am talking about the knife that made the wounds on your brother and his guards, Princess.” Brone turned at a clattering noise. A troop of guards entered the corridor and stopped at the end, waiting. “Tell them about it, Captain Vansen.”

The man still could not look her in the face. “It was curved,” he said quietly. “The physician Chaven saw that when he looked at… at the wounds. A curved dagger.”

Brone waited for him to say more, then grunted with impatience and turned to the twins. “A Tuani dagger, Highnesses.”

It took a moment for Briony to make out what he was saying, then the mocking, handsome face of the envoy came rushing into her mind. “That man Dawat… !” She would see him skinned. Burned alive.

“No,” said Brone. “He did not leave his chambers all night. Nor did any of his entourage We had guards watching them.”

“Then… then what?” said Briony, but a moment later she began to understand.

“Shaso?” Barrick’s voice was strange, tight, full of both fear and a kind of weird exhilaration. “Are you saying that Shaso killed our brother?”

“We do not know for certain,” the lord constable said. “We must go and confront him. But he is a promoted peer of Southmarch, an honored friend of your father’s We need you two to be there.”

As Brone led them down the hall toward the armory, the troop of guards fell in behind them, faces hard, eyes shadowed beneath their helmets. The hierarch and Merolanna did not accompany them, heading for the family chapel to pray instead.

What is going on? Briony wondered Has everything in the world turned upside down at once? Shaso? It could not be true—someone must have stolen the old man’s dagger In fact, why must it have even been Shaso’s dagger? She found it hard to disbelieve Chaven, but surely there were other explanations—there must be dozens of Tuam weapons available in the waterside markets. But when she whispered this to Barrick, he only shook his head. As if he had cried out all his brotherly feeling with his tears, he barely looked at her.

Merciful Zorta, will he turn into another Kendrick now? Will he send me to Ludis because it’s best for the whole kingdom? Her skin was needled by a sudden chill.

Three guards waited in the armory outside the door of Shaso’s chamber. “He has not left,” said one of them, looking at empty air as he talked, clearly confused as to whether to speak directly to the lord constable or his captain, Vansen. “But we have heard strange noises. And the door is bolted.”

“Break it down,” said Brone, then turned to the twins. “Stand back, if you please, Highnesses.” A half dozen kicks from booted feet and the bolt splintered away from the inside. The door swung in. The guards stepped through with halberds extended, then quickly stepped back again. A dark shape appeared in the opening like a monstrous spirit summoned from the netherworld.

“Kill me then,” it growled, but the voice was strangely liquid. For a moment Briony thought that Shaso had indeed been invested by some kind of demon, one which had not learned to use its usurped body properly, for the master of arms was swaying in the doorway, unable to stand upright. “I suppose I am… a traito.r So kill me. If you can.” “He’s drunk,” Barrick said slowly, as though this was the biggest surprise the night had produced. “Take him,” Avin Brone called. “But ‘ware—he is dangerous.”

Briony could not make herself believe it. “Don’t hurt him! Alive! He must be taken alive!”

The guards moved forward, jabbing with the pike ends of their halberds, forcing the dark-skinned man out of the doorway and back into his chamber. Briony could see that the room was in disarray behind him, the bedclothes torn to pieces and scattered across the floor, the shrine in the corner knocked to flinders. He is mad, then, or sick. “Don’t hurt him!” she shouted again.

“Will you condemn some of these guardsmen to death?” Avin Brone growled. “That old man is still one of the fiercest fighters alive!”

Briony shook her head. She could only watch with Barrick as the guards tried to subdue Shaso. Barrick was right, the man was reeling, clearly drunk or damaged in some way, but even without a weapon he was a formidable quarry.

Shaso did not remain weaponless for long. He snatched a halberd away from one of the guards and stunned the man with the butt, then crashed it against the helm of another who tried to take advantage of the opening. Already two of the guards were down. The room was too small for proper pike work. Shaso put his back against the far wall and stood there, chest heaving. Blood was smeared all over his arms and some on his face as well—old blood, dried until it was scarcely visible against his skin.

“Captain,” Brone said, “bring me archers.”

“No!” Briony tried to rush forward, but the lord constable seized her arm and held her despite all her struggles.

“Forgive me, my lady,” he said through clenched teeth. “But I will not lose another Eddon tonight.”

Suddenly someone else slipped past him—Barrick. Even as Avin Brone cursed, Briony’s brother stopped just inside the doorway.

“Shaso!” he shouted. “Put that down!”

The old man lifted his head and shook it. “Is that you, boy?”

“What have you done?” The prince’s voice trembled. “Gods curse you, what have you done?”

Shaso tipped his head quizzically for a moment, then smiled a bitter, horrible smile. “What I had to—what was right. Will you kill me for it? For the honor of the family? Now there is irony for you.”

“Give yourself up,” Barrick said.

“Let the guards take me, if they can.” Even slurred with drink, his laugh was dreadful. “I do not care much if I live or not.”

For a moment no one spoke. Briony was numb with despair. The dark wings of her ominous mood had not been black at all, it seemed, but blood-red; now they had spread over the whole of the house of Eddon.

“You owe your life to our father.” Barrick’s voice was tight with misery or fear or something else that Briony could not recognize. “You speak of honor—will you give away even that last vestige of it? Kill some of these innocent men instead of surrendering?”

Shaso goggled at him. For a moment he lost his balance where he leaned on the wall, but then the halberd came up again quickly. “You would do that to me, boy? Remind me of that!”

“I would. Father saved your hfe.You swore that you would obey him and all his heirs. We are his heirs. Put up your weapon and do the honorable thing, if you have not become a stranger to honor altogether. Be a man.”

The master of arms looked at him, then at Briony. He barked a laugh that ended in a ragged tatter of breath. “You are cruder than your father ever was—than your brother, even.” He threw the halberd clattering to the floor. A moment later he swayed again and this time crumpled and fell.The guards rushed forward and swarmed on him until it was clear he was not feigning, that he had fallen senseless from drink or exhaustion or something else.

The guards heaved him up from the floor, one on each leg and arm. It was not easy—Shaso was a large man. “To the stronghold with him,” Brone commanded them. “Chain him well. When he wakes we will question him closely, but I cannot doubt we have found our murderer.”

As he was carried past Briony, Shaso’s eyes flicked open. He saw her and tried to say something but could only groan, then his eyes slid shut again. His breath smelled of drink.

“It can’t be,” she said. “I don’t believe it.”

Ferras Vansen, the captain of the guard, had found something on the floor beside Shaso’s spare bed. He picked it up with a polishing cloth and brought it to the twins and the lord constable, bearing it gingerly, like a servant carrying a royal crown.

It was a curved Tuani dagger nearly as as long as a man’s forearm—a dagger that all of them had seen before, scabbarded on Shaso’s belt.The hilt was wrapped in figured leather. The sharp blade, always kept glittermgly polished, was smeared up and down with blood.

9. A Gleam of Pale Wings

“Toby!” the physician bellowed as he staggered through the door. He did not know whether to weep or scream or beat his head against the wall—he had been restraining his feelings too long. “Curse you, where are you hiding?”

The other two servants, his old manservant and his housekeeper (who had just barely managed to beat Chaven home, hurrying back from a gathering of worried citizens in the torchlit square between the West Green and the Raven’s Gate) scuttled away down the corridors of Observatory House, grateful that their masters unhappmess had settled on someone other than themselves.

The young man appeared, wiping his hands on his smock. “Yes, Master?”

Chaven made a face at the black smears on Toby’s clothing, but was surprised to find the young fellow at his tasks so early in the morning; it was usually hard to get him to work even when the sun was high in the sky. “Bring me something to drink. Wine—thatTorvian muck is already open on my bedside table. By the gods, the world is falling apart.”

The young man hesitated. Chaven could see fear behind the usual sul-lenness. “Is… will there… will there be war?”

Chaven shook his head. “War? What do you mean?"

“Mistress Jennikin and Harry, they say the older prince is dead, sir Murdered My da’ told me once that when Olin’s brother died there was almost a war.”

The physician fought down the urge to berate this poor blunt tool. Everyone in the castle was terrified—he himself had not felt so desperate in all the years since fleeing Ulos Why should the boy feel any differently? “Yes, Toby, the older prince is dead. But when Olin’s brother Lorick died, the country was rich and unthreatened, and it was worth the time of any number of ambitious nobles to try to put themselves or some useful puppet on the Southmarch throne instead of a child heir. Now I suppose it will be young Barrick earns the regency, and no one will want the blame for what is about to happen here, so they will gratefully let him have the honor of keeping his father’s chair warm.”

“So there won’t be a war?" Toby ignored Chaven’s bleak sarcasm as though it were a foreign language. He could not meet his master’s eye directly, and had his head down like a stubborn goat that would not be forced through a gate. “You are telling the truth, Master? You are certain?"

“I’m certain of nothing,” Chaven said. “Nothing. Now go fetch me the wine and perhaps a bit of cheese and bread and dried fish, too, then let me think.”

He let the hanging fall back across the window. It was still dark outside, although he could smell dawn on the breeze, which should have been reassuring but was not. The wine had done nothing to relieve the pressure in his skull, the fear that he was watching the first moments of a collapse that might soon begin to spread so quickly there would be no stopping it. He had been in the middle of such a frenzy before, although not in Southmarch he never wanted to experience it again. And of all the people who had been in the castle tonight dealing with the horror of the prince regent’s death, Chaven alone knew of the movement of the Shadowlme.

He had questions he wanted to ask before he slept—needed to ask Unusual questions.

The idea had been preying on him since the first dreadful moment looking down on Kendrick’s murdered body and had kept tugging at him since, far more powerful than the urge for wine he had just satisfied. He had tried to fight it down because there was more than a little shame in his hunger and he had promised himself not to indulge again so soon, but he reassured himself that it was clearly an exceptional night, a night for suspending his own rules. And (he also told himself) the things he might learn could save his life, perhaps even save the kingdom.

“Kloe?” he called quietly. He snapped his fingers and looked around. “Where are you, my mistress?” She did not appear immediately, upset perhaps that after a rude and hurried excursion from their shared bed earlier he had been back in his house for an hour, but this was the first time he seemed to have thought of her. “Kloe, I apologize. I have been discourteous.”

Mollified, she appeared from behind a curtain and stretched. She was spotted like a pard, but all in shadow-tones of black and gray, with only a little white around her eyes. Chaven could not have said exactly why he found her beautiful but he did. He snapped his fingers again and she came to him, exactly slow enough to demonstrate whose need was greater. But when he scratched under her chin she forgot herself enough to purr.

“Come,” he said, and gave the cat the last bit of dried fish before lifting her. “We have work to do.”

It was a room that no living person in Southmarch Castle except Chaven had ever seen, a small dark compartment deep beneath the observatory, with a door that opened off the corridor where he had let in the Funderling Chert and his strange ward. On one wall a row of shelves began near the flagstone floor and stretched to the low ceiling, and every shelf contained a row of objects covered with dark cloths. With the door safely closed and bolted behind him, Chaven put down his candleholder and picked up a covered object too large to rest beside the others, which had been leaning propped against the wall Kloe, after a brief sniff around the room, leaped up onto one of the upper shelves and curled into a ball, her eyes bright and watchful.

He took off the velvet cover very carefully, then unfolded the wooden wings so that the mirror could stand by itself. It was one of his largest: with the base on the floor, the top reached almost to the physician’s waist.

Chaven lowered himself into a sitting position on the flags in front of the mirror and for a long time said nothing, staring deep into the glass.The candlelight made strange angles of things and cast long, swaying shadows: if something had actually been moving in the nnrror s depths, it would have taken an observer a little while to be sure.

Chaven remained silent for a long, long time. At last, without turning from the glass, he said, “Kloe? Come here, now, Mistress. Come.”

The cat stretched, then jumped down from the shelf and stepped delicately across the floor toward him When she stopped, he reached out and tapped on the mirror.

“Do you see that? Look there, Kloe! A mouse!”

She brought her blunt gray-and-black face close to the glass, staring. Her ears twitched. Indeed, there was something moving in the dark corner of the room, but only in the room as it was reflected. Kloe hunched lower, tail kinking and unkinking as she watched the scurrying shadow in the depths of the mirror Chaven stared at it, too, fixedly, as though he dared not close his eyes or even breathe Oddly, the mirror seemed not to reflect either the cat or physician, but only the empty room behind them.

Without warning, Kloe lunged forward. For a moment it actually seemed that her paw passed through the reflecting surface, but she hissed in frustration as though she had struck only cold glass Chaven abruptly picked her up, stroked her, and then unbolted the door and put her outside in the corridor.

“Wait for me.”

Balked, but by what it was hard to say, Kloe let out a warble of irritation.

“You would not be happy in here,” he told the cat as he closed the door. “And you would never have tasted that mouse anyway, I fear.”

Now he sat before the mirror again.The candle was apparently burning low because the room swiftly grew darker. All that showed in the mirror were the reflected walls, except that the mirror-chamber contained a tiny bundle of darkness lying on the mirror-floor near the front of the glass.

Chaven sang a little in a very old language, was quiet for some time, then sang a little more. He sat and stared at the small dark shape. He waited.

When it came, it was like a sudden flame, an explosion of pale light. Despite his strong, schooled nerves, Chaven let out a quiet grunt of surprise. Feathers rippled and gleamed in the depths of the mirror as it clutched the dead mouse with a taloned foot, then bent to take the offering in its sharp beak. For a moment the tail hung like a thread, then the shadow-mouse was swallowed down and a huge white owl stared out of the glass with eyes like molten copper.

“I don’t understand,” said the boy Flint, scowling. “I like the tunnels. Why do we have to walk up here?”

Chert looked back to make sure the Funderling work crew were in an orderly line behind him. Dawn was just beginning to lighten the sky and turn the shadows silvery: if they had been big folk and unused to darkness, they would have been carrying torches. Chert’s guildsmen were straggling a little, a few whispering avidly among themselves, but that was within the bounds of suitable respect. He turned back to the boy. “Because when we go to work in the keep, we always come in at the gate. Remember, there are no tunnels that lead into the inner keep from below.” He gave the boy a significant look, praying silently to the Earth Elders that the child would not start prattling about the underground doorway into Chaven’s observatory within the hearing of the other Funderlings.

Flint shook his head. “We could have gone a lot of the way underground. I like the tunnels!”

“I’m glad to hear it, because if you stay with us, you’ll be spending a lot of your days in them. Now, hush—we’re coming to the gate.”

A young Trigon priest awaited them at the guard tower of the Raven’s Gate. He was thick in the waist and looked as though he didn’t deny himself much, but he did not treat Chert as though he were half-witted as well as half-heighted, which made everything much more pleasant.

“I am Andros, Lord Castellan Nynor’s proxy,” announced the priest. “And you are…” he consulted a leatherbound book,”… Hornblende?”

“No, he took ill. I’m Chert and I’ll be chief of this job.” He produced the Stonecutter’s Guild’s astion, a circle of crystal polished very thin (but starthngly durable) that he wore around his neck on a cord. “Here is my token.”

“That is well, sir.” The priest frowned in distraction. “I am here not to contest your authority, but to tell you that your orders have changed. Are you aware of what happened here only one night ago?”

“Of course. All of Funderling Town is in mourning already.” Which was not entirely the truth, but certainly the news had shot from house to house over the last grim day like an echo, and most of the inhabitants of the underground city were shocked and frightened. “We wondered whether it was appropriate to come this morning as had been originally ordered, but since we had not heard otherwise…”

“Quite right. But instead of the work that was planned, we have a sadder and more pressing task for you. The family vault where we will lay Prince Kendrick has no more room. We knew of this, of course, but did not think we should need to enlarge it so soon, never expecting…” He broke off and dabbed at his nose with a sleeve. This man was genuinely mourning, Chert could see. Well, he knew the prince, no doubt —perhaps spoke to him often. Chert himself was feeling quite unsettled, and he had never seen the prince regent closer than a hundred yards. “We are happy to serve,” he told Andros.

The priest smiled sadly. “Yes. Well, I have your instructions here, directly from Lord Nynor. The work must be swift, but remember this is the burial place for an Eddon prince. We will not have time to paint the new tomb properly, but we can at least make sure it is clean and well-measured.”

“It will be the best work we can do.”

The interior of the tomb cast a shadow on Chert’s heart. He looked at little Flint, wide-eyed but unbothered by the heavy carvings, the stylized masks of wolves snarling out of deep shadows, the images of sleeping warriors and queens on top of the ancient stone caskets. The tomb walls were honeycombed with niches, and every niche held a sarcophagus. “Does this frighten you?”

The boy looked at him as though the question made no sense. He shook his head briskly.

I only wish I could say the same, thought Chert. Behind him the work gang was also quiet as they made their way through the mazy tomb. It was not the idea of mortal spirits that disturbed him, of ghosts—although in this dark, quiet place he was not quick to dismiss the thought—but of the ultimate futility of things. Do what you will, you will come to this. Whether you sit lonely in your house and store up money, or sing loud in the guildhall, buying tankards of mossbrew for all your friends and relations, in the end you will find this —or it will find you.

He paused beside one niche. On the coffin lid was carved a man in full armor, his helmet in the crook of his elbow, his sword hilt clasped upon his chest His beard was wound with ribbons, each wrought in careful, almost loving detail.

“Here lies the king’s father,” he told Flint. “The old king, Ustin, He was a fierce man, but a scourge to the country’s enemies and a fair-dealer to our people.”

“He was a hard-hearted bastard,” said one of the work gang quietly. “Who said that?” Chert glared. “You, Pumice?”

“What if I did?” The young Funderling, not three years a guild member, returned his stare. “What did Ustin or any of his kind ever do for us? We build their castles and forge their weapons so they can slaughter each other—and us, every few generations—and what do we get in return?”

“We have our own city…”

Pumice laughed. He was sharp-eyed, dark, and thin. Chert thought the youth had somehow got himself born into the wrong family. He should have been a Blackglass, that one. “Cows have their own fields. Do they get to keep their milk?”

“That’s enough.” Some of the others on the work gang were stirring, but Chert could not tell whether they were restless with Pumice s prating or in agreement with him. “We have work to do.”

“Ah, yes. The poor, sad, dead prince. Did he ever step into Funderling Town, ever in his life?”

“You are speaking nonsense, Pumice. What has got into you?” He glanced at Flint, who was watching the exchange without expression.

“You ask me that? Just because I have never loved the big folk? If someone needs to explain, I think it’s you, Chert. None of the rest of us have adopted one of them into our own household.”

“Go out,” Chert told the boy. “Go and play—there is a garden up above.” A cemetery, in truth, but garden enough. “But… !”

“Do not argue with me, boy. I need to talk to these men and you will only find it boring. Go out. But stay close to the entrance.”

Flint clearly felt he would find the conversation anything but boring, but masked his feelings in that way he had and walked across the tomb and up the stairs. When he was gone, Chert turned back to Pumice and the rest of the work gang.

“Have any of you a complaint with my leadership? Because I will not lead men who grumble and whine, nor will I chief a job where I do not trust my workers. Pumice, you have had much to say. You do not like my feelings about our masters. That is your privilege, I suppose—you are free and a guildsman. Do you have aught else to say about me?”

The younger man seemed about to start again, but it was an older man, one of the Gypsum cousins, who spoke instead. “He doesn’t talk for the rest of us, Chert. In fact, we’ve spent a bit too much time listening to him lately, truth be told.” A few of the other men grunted agreement.

“Cowards, the lot of you,” Pumice sneered. “Slaving away like you were in the Autarch’s mines, working yourselves almost to death, then down on your knees to thank the big folks for the privilege.”

A sour smile twisted Chert’s mouth. “The day I see you working yourself almost to death, Pumice, will be a day when all the world has finally gone wheels-over-ore-cart.” The rest of the men laughed and the moment of danger passed. A few rocks had tumbled free, but there had been no slide. Still, Chert was not happy that there had been such ill-feeling already on the first day.

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 way 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.

“Look at this,” he said to Opal. “Can you make anything of it?” “Cloudchip?” she suggested, naming an obscure kind of crystal. “Earth-ice?” He shook his head. “No, it’s neither of those. Flint, where did you find this stone, boy?" “In the garden place. Outside where you were digging.” The boy stuck out his hand. “Give them back.”

Chert glanced from the boy to the bag on a cord, the mysterious, sewn-shut bag. He handed it back to Flint but hung onto the murky crystal. He and Opal would need to talk about this mysterious legacy, but there was no sense worrying about everything at once. “I’m going to take this stone,” he told the child. “Not to keep, but because I’ve never seen anything like it and I want to see if someone can tell me what it is.” He looked at the boy, who stared back expectantly. It took Chert a moment to understand why. “If I may, that is,” he said. “You found it, after all.”

The boy nodded, satisfied. As Chert and Opal went out, Flint rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling as he squeezed the little leather bag between his fingers.

Opal returned to her clearing up, but Chert only sat, turning the crystal over and over in his hand. It seemed to have an artificial shape, that was the strange thing, a regularity—it appeared to have been chipped out of some larger piece, but there were no fracture-markings, in fact, the edges were quite rounded. And it was definitely, incontrovertibly, something he had not seen before. A dark spot seemed to move in its depths.

It troubled him, and the more he thought about it the more troubled he grew. It seemed like something that could only have come from behind the Shadowline, but if so, what was it doing deep inside Southmarch Castle? And was it coincidence that the boy found it in the cemetery, only a few hundred steps from the chambers where the prince regent was murdered? Or that the boy from beyond the Shadowline had been the one who found it’.

He looked at Opal, who was contentedly darning a hole in the knee of Flint’s breeches. He desperately wanted to ask her opinion, but knew he was going to spend a mostly sleepless night himself and was reluctant to rob her of what might be her last contented slumber for some time. Because a fear was growing inside him.

What was it that Chaven had said? “Do not doubt that if the Shadowline sweeps across us, it will bring with it a dark, dark evil.”

Let Opal at least have this night, he decided Let her be happy this one night.

“You’re quiet, Chert. Are you feeling poorly?" “All is well, my old darling,” he said. “Never fear.”

10. Halls of Fire

It was always bad in the lands of sleep, but this was worse than the other nights, far worse. The long halls of Southmarch were again full of the shadow-men, the insubstantial but relentless figures who dripped and flowed like black blood, who oozed from the cracks between the stones and then took shape, faceless and whispering. But this night, everywhere they went, flames followed them, blazing up in the wake of their pursuit, until it seemed as though the very air would catch fire.

Everywhere he went more of them appeared, oozing up from beneath the flagstones, clotting as they slid or shuffled after him, solidifying into vague man-shapes. Eyeless, still they stared, and they called mouthlessly after him, noises of both threat and promise. They followed him, many still joined to their brethren in a near-solid mass, and fire came behind them, catching in the tapestries and licking upward toward the ancient ceiling as the faceless men followed his hopeless attempt at flight from room to room, through corridor after corridor.

They killed Kendrick! His heart seemed lopsided in his chest; his lungs burned. Room after room was wreathed in flame, but still the dark men swarmed after him.

They want to kill me, too —kill us all! The air was so hot it scorched his nostrils and crackled in his throat, as though the entire palace had become an oven. These phantoms of soot, shadow, and blood had killed his brother and now they would kill him, too, chase him like a wounded deer and hound him to his death through endless halls of flame…

“Make him well!”

Chaven stood slowly. At his feet, the page who crouched beside Barrick’s bed dabbed at the prince’s brow with a wet cloth. “It is not so easy, Princess…”

“I don’t care! My brother is burning up with fever!” Briony felt a balance inside her tipping dangerously.”He is in pain!”

Chaven shook his head. “With all respect, I think not so much, Highness. It is one of the boons of fever—it clouds much of the hurt of the illness and lets the mind float free of the body.”

“Float free?” She struggled to control herself but her finger was trembling as she pointed at her writhing, moaning twin. “Look at him! Do you think he is free of anything?”

The other physician, Brother Okros, cleared his throat. “Actually, my lady, we have seen others afflicted this way, but in a few days many have been well again.”

She turned on this small, diffident man who had come from Eastmarch Academy in the mainland town to consult with Chaven. Okros took a step back as though she might hit him, and for a moment she felt a hysterical sense of pleasure at his fear, at the power of her own anger. “Yes? Many? What does that mean? And how long have you all known about this fever-plague?”

“Since the ending of the last festival month, Highness.” There was a slight squeak in his voice. Okros was a priest, but mostly in name only, a teacher of the sciences who had probably seldom set foot in a Trigon temple since his ordainment. “Your brother—your other brother—was informed by the academy when the first groups of sufferers began to come to us. But he…”

“Was killed? Yes.” She took a deep breath, but it did not calm her. “Yes, that might explain why he hasn’t given his time to this issue. Did you plan to wait until everyone else in my family was dead from one thing or another before mentioning this plague to me?"

“Please, Princess,” said Chaven. “Briony Please.”

The use of her name caught her for a moment, made her look at the court physician. She couldn’t quite read the expression on his round face, but it was clear he was trying to tell her something. I am making a fool of myself that is what. She looked around at the servants and guards in Barrick’s room and knew there were more castle folk outside, no doubt with their ears pressed to the door. She blinked against what felt like the beginning of tears. I am frightening everyone.

“It is not a plague, Highness,” Okros said carefully. “Not yet. We have fever seasons like this almost every year. This is simply more severe than most.”

“Just tell me what will happen to my brother.”

“His elements are out of balance,” Chaven explained. “He is full of fire, at least in a sense. I do not want to insult you with what may seem like old superstitions, but it is hard to explain illness without also explaining how the elements within us correspond to the elements without—in our earth and in our firmament.” He rubbed his head wearily. “So I will only say that his blood is too heated because the elements are out of balance. Normally the elements of earth and water already inside him would serve to keep that balance, just as stones ring a blaze and water extinguishes it when necessary. But he is all fire and air at the moment, gusting and burning.”

Gusting and burning. She looked down in horror at Barrick’s dear face, so contorted now and so oblivious. Oh, merciful Zoria, please don’t take him from me. Don’t leave me alone in this haunted place. Please.

“Many have already survived this fever, Princess,” said little Brother Okros. “We have had news of it from southern travelers in prior days. It has already been in Syan and Jellon for months.”

“Perhaps it came in with the ship from Hierosol,” Chaven suggested. He had tugged the page boy away and was examining Barrick again, smelling his breath. Briony’s twin was a little quieter, but he still murmured worriedly in his sleep, his face sparkling with sweat.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. It was the bleak and ruthless will of the gods, the dark wings she had felt spreading above them all. It was her every dire premonition coming true. “It doesn’t matter where it came from. Just tell me this—how many die from it and how many live?”

“We hate to make pronouncements of that type, my lady,” began the academy physician. Chaven frowned at him. “At least half have survived. Unless they were babies or old folk.”

“Half?” She was on the verge of shrieking again. She closed her eyes and felt the world spinning around her. All had gone mad. All had gone completely mad. “And what is the treatment?”

“Open windows,” Okros said promptly .“Dirt from the temple of Kernios beneath the head and foot of his bed. And wrap him in wet cloths—water from Envor’s temple basins would be particularly good, and we must make prayers to Erivor, of course, since he is your family’s special patron. All this will serve to soothe the influence of fire and air.”

“There are also herbs that might help.” As Chaven rubbed at his forehead again, considering, Briony noticed for the first time that the court physician looked dreadful. His features were pale and sagging, and he carried circles dark as bruises beneath his eyes. “Willow bark. And tea made from elder flowers might also help bring down the fever.

“We should bleed him as well,” added Okros, glad to be talking about something meaningful. “A bit less blood will ease his suffering.”

Briony nudged Chaven to one side, none too gently, and with an immense rustling of skirts sank down beside her brother. These clothes keep me trussed like a troublesome horse, she thought as she struggled to find a comfortable position. Or a captured thief. It hurts even to bend.

Her brother’s eyes were mere slits, but his pupils darted about between the lids.

“Barrick? It’s me, Briony. Oh, please, can’t you hear me?” She touched his cheek then took his hand, despite its warmth, it was damp as something found in a rock pool. “I won’t leave you.”

“You must leave him, my lady,” said a new voice Briony looked up to see Avin Brone standing in the doorway, filling it with his bulk. “I beg your pardon, but the truth must be told. There is much to do. Tomorrow we bury the prince regent. Tomorrow someone must take up the scepter so that the people can see an Eddon still sits the throne. If Prince Barrick is too ill, then it must be you. And I have other news for you as well.”

She felt a weird little thrill So the only person I can absolutely trust not to send me to Ludis, she realized, will be on that throne. For a moment she had an image of all the things she might do, all the petty wrongs she could reverse. Then she looked down at Barrick again and the idea of what she might accomplish seemed pointless. “How many are sick with this?” she asked Chaven.

“How many have the fever now?” He looked at the physician from the academy. “A few hundred in the town, perhaps. Is that right, Okros? And a dozen or so in the castle. Three of the kitchen servants, I think. Your stepmother’s maid and two of Barrick’s own pages.” He patted the head of the little boy who held the wet cloth. “Those are the ones I knew about when your brother began to sicken.”

“Anissa’s maid? But how is Anissa herself?” “Your stepmother is well and so is the baby she carries.” “And none of those who came with that man Dawet have the fever?” Chaven shook his head.

“Strange it should be brought on their ship and yet none of them should sicken.”

“Yes, but fever is a strange thing,” said this pale, battered-looking Chaven—a man who almost seemed a stranger to her. She found herself wondering for perhaps the first time ever in her life what he did when he was by himself, “what life and thoughts he kept secret from others, as everyone did. “It can touch one and leave another standing just beside him unharmed.”

“Like murder,” she said.

Briony was almost the only one in the room who did not make the sign to ward away evil after she had spoken. Even Barrick groaned in his fevered sleep.

He had run until he was beyond the immediate reach of the faceless shapes, the whisperers, but he knew they were still somewhere behind him, flowing through the honeycombed rooms, sniffing for him like dogs. He was in a wing of the castle he didn’t know, chamber after chamber of dusty, unfamiliar objects flung around without order or care. A broken orrery stood on a table, metal arms bent so that they protruded in all directions like the quills of some spiky creature Carpets and tapestries were draped across each other, bunched and crumpled at the edges, even spread onto the timbered celling so that it was somehow difficult to tell which way was up, and they were beginning to curl with the rising heat.

He stopped. Someone—or something—was calling his name. “Barrick! Where are you?”

He realized with a spasm of terror that it was not only the shadow-men who were looking for him, the men of smoke and blood, but something else as well. Something dark and tall and singular. Something that had been hunting him a long, long time.

His swift walk became a run. Moments later it became a wild, headlong dash. Still his own name floated to him like a lonely echo from one benighted mountaintop to another, or like the cry of some lost soul stranded upon the moon.

“Bamck? Come back!”

He was in a long corridor open on one side, he realized, sprinting through a gallery that dropped away next to him, a dizzying plunge to the stone flags just a misstep away. All the castle must be afire now—here the tapestries were burning at the bottom edges, flames beginning to lick their way up the stylized hunting scenes and representations of adventuring gods and ancient kings seated in glory.

“Barrick?”

He pulled up, heart speeding. The flames were climbing higher, the gallery filling with black smoke. He could feel a baking heat all down his right side that hurt his skin. He wanted to run, but something was moving in the smoke ahead of him, something stained red and orange by leaping firelight.

“I am angry. Very angry.”

Barrick’s heart felt as though it might crack his breastbone. The shape trudged out of the murk, smoke dripping down its length like water, fire curling in the dark beard.

“You shouldn’t run from me, boy “ His father’s stare was dull and empty, cloudy as the eyes of a dead fish in a bucket. “Shouldn’t run. It makes me angry with you.”

For all her discontent with her clothing, Briony was glad for once that Moina and Rose had laced her so tightly, glad that her embroidered stomacher was stiff as armor. It seemed to be all that held her upright on her battered wooden chair—the chair that at least for this mad moment had become the throne of all the March Kingdoms.

Did anyone else feel the same as she did? Did everyone? Were all these castle folk in their ornate finery no more than confused souls hiding inside costumes, as the hard shells of snails protected the helpless, naked things that lived within them?

“He says what?” She was frightened again, even if she forced herself not to show it. She fought hard to keep her eyes on the lord constable, not to let her glance dart into the shadows in anxious search for the assassins and traitors who had seemed all around her in the terrible hour of Kendrick’s death, but whose phantom presences had been mostly absent since Shaso’s capture. “But we found the bloody knife—surely you have told him that. What does he claim?”

“He will not tell us anything else.”Avin Brone looked almost as tired as Chaven had, his great body sagging. He would clearly have liked to sit down, but Briony did not call for a stool. “He simply says he did not kill your brother or his guards.”

“Pay no attention to this nonsense, Briony.” Gailon Tolly’s anger seemed genuine, and for once it was not aimed at her. “Would an innocent man not tell everything he knew? Shaso is taken by shame, that is all. Though I am surprised it could happen with such a villain.”

“But what if he is telling the truth, Duke Gailon?” Briony turned back to Brone. “Or what if he is not the only murderer? It still seems strange he should kill all three by himself.”

“Not so strange, Highness,” suggested the lord constable. “He is a deadly fighter, and they would not have been prepared—he would have caught them all unsuspecting. He likely stabbed the first guard and set on the second in a mere moment. Once the second guard was killed, he then attacked your unarmed brother.”

Briony felt queasy. She couldn’t bear to think too deeply about it— about Kendrick alone, helpless, holding up his arms, perhaps defending himself against a man he had known and trusted all his life. “And you still say there is no one else in the castle who could have done it, or even aided Shaso in the murder?”

“I have not said that, my lady. I’ve said that we cannot find any such person, despite our hardest labors, but it is not certain we ever could. Even at night, hundreds are quartered inside this keep. Captain Vansen and his guards have spoken to almost everyone, searched nearly every room, but there are ten hundred more that enter here during the hours of day who might have hidden, then escaped after the murder in the alarm and confusion.”

“Vansen.” She snorted, but then anger overcame her. “There are not ten hundred in the whole world who would want to kill my brother! But there are some, and I suspect I know many of them.” The courtiers stirred nervously and their whispers became even quieter. Many fewer were in the throne room than usual: dozens were keeping to their rooms or houses in fear, both of assassins and the fever. “Ten hundred, Lord Brone—that is wordplay! Are you telling me that the simpleton boy who brings the turnips from the Marnnswalk wagons might be one of Kendricks murderers? No, it is someone with something to gain.”

Brone frowned and cleared his throat. “You do me… and yourself… a disservice, Highness. Of course, what you say is true. However, though we must suspect almost everyone, we must insult no one needlessly. Would you have me mew up every noble who might be thought to benefit from the prince regent’s death? Is that your command?” He looked around the room and a sudden silence fell. The courtiers looked startled as geese caught in the open by a thunderstorm.

A part of her would indeed have liked to see all these idle, overdressed, and overpainted folk made to answer for themselves, but Briony knew that was just rage and despair One or two of them might well be guilty, might be part of a conspiracy with Shaso, but the rest would then be blameless and would rightly resent ill-treatment. The landowning nobility were not famous for their patience and humility. And if the Eddons did not have the support of the nobility, then the Eddons were nothing.

We’ve lost Father and Kendrick. I won’t lose our throne as well.

“Of course I don’t want that,” she said, measuring her words. “Rough times make for rough jokes, Lord Avin, so I forgive you, but please do not instruct me. I may be green in years, but in my father’s absence and my brother Barrick’s illness, I am the throne of Southmarch.”

Something flickered in Brone’s eyes, but he bowed his head. “I stand fairly chastised, Highness.”

Briony’s strength was failing. She badly needed to he down and sleep— she had not had more than a few unbroken hours of it for several nights. She wanted to see her twin well, and her other brother alive again. Most of all, she wanted her father back, someone who would hold her and protect her. She took a slow, deep breath. It did not matter what she wanted, of course: there would be no rest any time soon.

“No, Lord Brone, we all are chastised,” she said. “The gods humble us all.”

The face was twisted into something almost unrecognizable, but there was no question who it was. Barrick turned and ran. Smoke and flames swirled around him as though he had tumbled down one of the rooftop chimneys, or down a gash in the earth toward the regions of fire. His father came after, boots echoing on the flags, a fuming Kernios with beard ablaze and voice booming.

“Come here, child! You are making me very angry!”

The downward course of the stairs twisted in a great arc like the limbs of a wind-tortured tree, as blurry in the smoke as something seen beneath deep water, but it was his only escape and he did not hesitate. For a moment his feet were solid beneath him, but then a hand clawed at his back, snagged in his garments, tried to grapple him.

“Stop… !”

And then his feet were out from under him and he was tumbling down the steps beside the abyss, sliding, flung like a pebble, thumped and rattled down against hard stone until his breath was out of his body and his brains were out of his head. As he fell the voices of the whispering shadow-men became a shout, a roar, and all he could think was, Not again ’.

Oh, gods, not again…

He woke, shivering and weeping. He did not know where he was or even who he was.

A round man with a somber, kindly face bent over him, but for an instant it was that other face that he saw again, that familiar face twisted into a hateful mask and bearded in flame, and he shrieked and struck out. In his weakness his hand barely twitched, the shriek was a stifled moan.

“Rest,” the man said Chaven. His name was Chaven. “You have a fever, but there are people caring for you.”

Fever? he thought. It is no fever. The castle was on fire and they were under attack. Evil flowed inside the walls like poisoned blood in a dying man. Briony! He remembered her suddenly, and as if in imitation of their collateral birth, with her name his own came back as well. She has to know —she must be told. He strained again to make a noise, this time to speak “… Briony…”

“She is well, Highness. Drink this. “A beautiful coolness was poured into his throat, but he could not immediately remember how to swallow. When he had finished sputtering and coughing, and had taken a little more, Chaven’s cool hand touched his forehead. “Now sleep, Highnness.”

Barrick tried to shake his head. How could they not understand? He felt the darkness reach out to drag him down. He had to tell them about the shadow-men who swarmed the castle, about the fires. They had been hiding here for years, but now they had come out in full force. Perhaps the family’s enemies were only a few chambers away by now! And he also had to tell Briony about Father—what if he came to her? What if she did not know, did not understand, and let him in?

The darkness was pulling, sucking at him, making him liquid. “Tell Briony…” he managed, then slid beneath the surface of light once more, down into the burning depths.

Young Raemon Beck was finding it hard to think of anything but Helmingsea. They were still two days west of Southmarch and his home lay another two days ride beyond that, but he had been away for a month and a half and it was hard not to think of his wife and his two small boys, hard to keep his eagnerness under control.

Easier when we were in Settland and still weeks away from home, he thought. Easier when we had things to occupy us, bargaining, buying, selling. Now there is nothing left to do but ride and think.

He looked ahead along the line of their small caravan, almost a score of high-laden mules and half that many horses pulling wagons, all under the hand of his cousin Dannet Beck, who in turn ruled this mercantile venture on behalf of his father, Raemon’s uncle Dannet had made a few mistakes over the past weeks, Raemon thought—like many untried men, he was quick to take resistance to his authority as a personal slight—but overall he had not done badly, and the mules and wagons were loaded down with miles of the finest dyed wool thread from Settland ready for the factories of the March Kingdoms. And Raemon himself would benefit from this venture, not merely by his own share, which, though tiny, would still bring him more money than he had ever had in his twenty-five years—enough to leave his parents’ house, perhaps and build his own—but through greater responsibilities in the future, and someday perhaps a good-sized share in the family venture.

His improving fortunes aside, though, he mostly felt a breathless impatience to see Derla again and hold her close, to see his children and his own father and mother and to eat bread at his own table. Only a few days, but the wait seemed longer now than it did when the journey had only just begun.

We would go faster if we had not combined with that Settish prince’s daughter and her party. The girl, scarcely fourteen, with eyes like a frightened fawn, was being sent to marry Rorick Longarren, Earl of Daler’s Troth and a cousin of the Eddon family. From what Beck knew of Rorick, it seemed surprising that he would marry at all, let alone a girl of the remote and mountainous eastern lands, but royalty was royalty, it seemed, and any prince s daughter no mean prize.

Beck had nothing against the girl, and it was a reassurance even in these fairly peaceful times to have her dozen armored guards riding with the caravan, but she had been frequently ill; at least three times the groups had been forced to stop early for the day because of it, something that had driven homesick Raemon Beck almost to despair.

He looked back at the Settlanders, then ahead at the uneven procession of pack mules. One of the drovers saw him looking and waved, then pointed at the chinks between the trees and the cloudless autumn sky as if to say, “Look how lucky we are!” The first days of their return journey had been bitter with cold rain off the eastern mountains, so this was indeed a kindly change.

He waved back, but in truth he did not much like these forested hills. He remembered them from the outbound trip, how they seemed to loom and lower in the rain, and how they still did even under sunlit skies. Even on a fairly warm day such as this they bore their own thick mists along the summit and in the valleys between the slopes. In fact, a tongue of fog seemed to be stretching its way down along the hillside ahead of them even now, crawling through the trees and across the dark green grass toward the road.

Still, it is faster than going by sea, he thought. All that way south, down through the straits and up the eastern coast just to get there —I would have been parted from Derla and the boys for half a year… !

Someone shouted up ahead. Raemon Beck was startled to see that the tongue of fog had already covered the road at the front of the caravan. Beyond a score of paces he now could see little except dark tree shadows and the vague outline of men and of beasts of burden. He looked up. The sky had swiftly gone dark, as though the mist crept above the trees as well as below.

A storm… ?

The shouting was quite loud now, with a strange edge to it—he heard not just confusion or irritation in the men’s voices, but real fear. The hairs rose on his neck and arms.

An attack? Bandits, taking advantage of the sudden fog? He looked for the armored men who escorted the prince’s daughter, saw two of them thunder out of the mist and hurtle past him, and realized to his dismay that the fog was behind him now as well. They were all adrift in it like a boat on the ocean.

Even as he squinted into the mist, a shape leaped out and his horse reared in terror. Raemon Beck had only a moment to glimpse what had frightened his mount, but that moment was enough to make his heart stumble and almost stop with fright; it was a thing of tatters and cobwebs that flailed at him—pale, long-armed, and eyeless—with a mouth as ragged as a torn sack.

His horse reared again and then stumbled as its feet touched the earth. Beck had to cling for his life. Men were screaming all around him now— horses, too, dreadful shrieks unlike anything he had ever heard.

Shapes staggered in and out of the mist, men and other things, grappling, struggling. Some of the voices he had first thought were his companions he now could hear were calling or even singing in some unfamiliar language More of the tattered things came twitching up out of the brush, but they made up only a small share of the bizarre shapes that danced and gibbered through the mist. Some of the attackers seemed only a little more substantial than the fog itself. Men and horses still screamed, but now the terrible sounds began to grow more faint, as though the mist were thickening into something heavy as stone, or as though Raemon himself had fallen into a hole that was now being filled in atop him.

A group of tiny, red-eyed shapes like malevolent bearded children leaped out of the grass and clawed at his stirrups. His horse kicked its way through them and bolted in shrilling panic. Branches lashed Raemon Beck’s face, but then a heavier limb snatched him completely out of the saddle and flung him to the ground, knocking out his breath and his wits in one blow.

He woke feeling like a sack of broken eggs. For a heart-clutching moment he saw a face peering down at him from the fog that still swirled all around—a strangely beautiful face, but cold and lifeless as one of the godly statues on a Trigon temple. He held his breath as though he might that way escape the demon’s attention, but it only stared at him. Its skin was pale, its eyes shiny as candleflame behind the thick glass of a temple window. He thought it was male, but truly it was hard to think of it as anything so simple and human. Then it was gone, simply vanished, and the fog swirled down around him and turned the world gray.

Raemon Beck squeezed his eyes shut and gasped for breath, waiting to die. When he had stayed unmoving long enough to become aware of his achmg back and ribs, of the pounding of his head and the countless cuts and scratches on his skin, he opened his eyes once more. The fog was gone. He was in the shade of a deep dell, but he could see bits of blue sky above him through the leaves.

He sat up and looked around. The dell was empty.

Beck dragged himself to his feet, wincing but doing his best to remain silent, then crept back along the path of broken branches left by his horse’s flight from the road. There was no sign of the horse. There was no noise from any animals or men. Beck braced himself for the terrible scene he knew he would find.

He reached the road. A horse—not his own, but one of the caravan’s— stood there as if waiting for him. Its sides were heaving but it was otherwise unharmed, cropping grass by the roadside. As he walked toward it the horse startled a bit, then allowed itself to be stroked. After a moment it quieted and returned to grazing.

Other than this one animal, the road was empty. Of the dozens of men and horses and mules, the wool wagons, the armored soldiers, and the prince’s daughter, not to mention whatever army of nightmares had attacked them, no sign remained. Even the fog had vanished.

Terror and disbelief squeezed him like a brutal hand. Raemon Beck felt his stomach convulse, then he brought up the remains of his morning meal. He wiped his mouth and clambered hurriedly into the horse’s saddle, grunting at the pain in his ribs and back. His companions had disappeared so completely there was nowhere he could think of to begin a search, and in any case he did not want to search, did not want to spend another instant in this haunted spot. He only wanted to ride and ride until he reached a place where people lived.

He knew he could never come into these hills again. If that meant he must give up his place in the family venture and his wife and children must join him begging for coppers in the street, there was no help for it.

He kicked his heels against his new mount’s ribs and started east, huddled low against the horse s neck and weeping.

It was early in the morning and she couldn’t sleep—had not slept all night, despite immense weariness. Briony lay in her bed staring into the darkness, listening to the slumber sounds of Rose and Moina and three other young noblewomen who were staying in the castle on this night before Kendrick’s funeral. How could any of them sleep, she wondered. Did they not know that everything was in danger—that the entire kingdom tottered?

If Shaso was the murderer and had acted alone, there could be no comprehensible reason for it, and so how could she trust anyone ever again? If somehow he had been suborned, or if someone else performed this terrible murder and painted him with the blame, then the Eddons had been purposefully struck to the heart by a terrible enemy, and struck as they slept in their own house. How could anyone ever sleep again?

Her heart had begun beating swiftly even before she realized what the new sound was: a quiet knock at the door of her chamber. There were guards outside, she knew. Even that careless fool Ferras Vansen would not leave her unguarded at a time like this. She pulled a cloak over her nightdress—the room and the stone floors were cold—and started toward the door.

But Kendrick had guards, she remembered, and her skin took a deeper chill. He would have thought he was safe, too.

“Princess?” The voice was quiet, but she recognized it. Now she was frightened for a completely different reason. She hurried forward, hesitated again for a moment.

“Chaven? It is you? Truly you?”

“It is.”

“We are here, too, Highness.” It was one of the guards. She recognized the gruff voice, although she couldn’t remember the man’s name. “You can open the door.”

Still, such had been the terror of the last days that she had to force herself not to flinch when the door at last swung open. Chaven and the guards stood waiting in the pool of torchlight outside. The physician’s face was serious and haggard with exhaustion, but the terrible look she expected to see was not there.

“Is it my brother?”

“It is, my lady, but do not fear. I come to say that I think his fever has broken. He will not quickly be himself again, but I strongly believe he will live and recover. He was asking for you.”

“Merciful Zoria! Thank all the gods!” Briony fell to her knees and lowered her head in prayer. She should have been delirious with joy, but instead she was suddenly dizzy. This one terrible fear allayed, it was as though the rigor with which she had held herself up now ended in a moment. She tried to stand, but instead swayed and began to collapse. Chaven and one of the guards caught at her arms.

“We will survive,” she whispered.

“Yes, Princess,” he said, “but tonight you will go back to bed.” “But, Barrick… !”The room still spun around her.

“I will tell him that you will come with the first light. He is probably asleep now, anyway.” “Tell him I love him, Chaven.”

“I will.”

She allowed herself to be helped onto her own bed—for a moment she could not avoid thinking of poor Kendrick in the hands of the death-maids of Kernios at this very moment. But even this horror, or the walls that seemed slowly to revolve, could not keep exhaustion at bay.

“Tell Barrick… “ she said,”… tell Barrick…” but that was all she could manage before weariness finally breached the stronghold and conquered her.

11. Bride of the God

If Qinnitan had thought the autarch’s throne room would be a more intimate setting than the cavernous Temple of the Hive, she would have been very wrong the majesty of the Golden One’s entourage was even more overwhelming here, the white-and-black-tiled hall packed with hundreds of soldiers and servants and the representatives of dozens of noble families and of trade and bureaucratic interests, all joined together under the eyes of the watchful, wide-eyed gods painted on the ceiling. The autarch himself sat at the center of it all on the great Falcon Throne, an immense bird’s head covered in topaz feathers, the eyes red jasper, Sulepis Bishakh am-Xis III himself was seated beneath the awning made by the upper part of the giant raptor’s gaping golden beak. The autarch was surrounded by his legendary musketeers, the Leopards, and the Leopards were surrounded in turn by an almost equally famous troop of Penkalese mercenaries, the White Hounds. These Hounds were all second or third generation now, their forefathers originally captured by the current autarch’s grandfather in a famous sea battle. Few of them could still speak the language of Penkal, but the master of much of the continent of Xand had more than enough pale-skinned women at his disposal to keep the present generation of Hounds as white as their forebears. They were strange-looking men, these northerners, even to Qinnitan’s frightened, confused gaze, built more like the bears she had seen in pictures than like hounds, hairy and wide-bearded, broad of back and shoulder.

From behind the Perikalese mercenaries, one of the Leopard soldiers was staring at her—an important soldier, judging by the long black tail on his helmet. He had a frown like a gash, and his elaborate armor only emphasized his own broad shoulders. Terrified she had already done something wrong, Qinnitan dropped her eyes.

When she looked up again, the knot of courtiers was moving away from the Falcon Throne, shuffling backward with many bows and flutterings of hands, and she could see the autarch once more. The young god-on-earth leaned back and gazed up at the stretching beak above his head as if the room was empty but for himself, and briefly scratched his long nose. His gold finger-stalls glittered, tiny guardians of the safety of all creation: it was a truth as powerful as the blueness of the sky that the autarch must not accidentally touch something impure.

Qinnitan’s mother was weeping again. Qinnitan was frightened, too, but she still couldn’t understand such behavior. She bumped her mother’s side with an elbow, a piece of impertinence that would have been unthinkable in most families. “Hush!” she whispered, which would have been thought even more inexplicable.

“We are so lucky!” her mother said, sniffling.

We? Even through the terror at being singled out, the overwhelming strangeness of it all, and even an unavoidable tingle of pride at having somehow caught the eye of the most powerful man in the world, Qinnitan knew one thing: she didn’t want to marry the autarch. There was something about him that frightened her very much, and it was not simply his matchless power or the things she had heard about his cruel whims. There was something in his eyes, something she had never seen in another person, but might have seen once in the eyes of a horse that had bounced its rider off his saddle and then, when the man’s foot caught in the stirrup, dragged him to his death through the crowded marketplace, smashing the rider’s head against the cobbles for a hundred paces before a soldier brought the beast down with an arrow. As the horse lay gasping out its last bubbling red breaths, she had seen its eye rolling in the socket, the eye of something that was not seeing what was really there.

The autarch, although calm and apparently amused by what he observed around him, had such an eye. She did not— did not —want to be given to such a man, to go to his bed, to undress for him and be touched and entered by him, even if he truly was a god upon the earth. The very idea made her shudder as if she had a fever.

Not that she had any other choice. To refuse would be to die, and to see her father and mother and sisters and brothers die before her—and none of the deaths, she felt sure, would be swift.

“Where are the bee-girl’s parents?” the autarch asked suddenly. The room fell silent at his voice. Someone let out a little nervous cough.

“They stand there, Golden One,” said an older man wearing what looked like ceremonial armor made out of silver cloth, pointing a finger toward the place where Qinnitan’s mother and father huddled facedown on the stone floor. Qinnitan suddenly realized she had not abased herself, and put her head down. She imagined the man in silver cloth must be Pin-lmmon Vash, the paramount minister.

“Bring them up,” commanded the autarch in his strong, high voice. Someone coughed again. It sounded loud in the silence that followed the autarch’s words and she was terribly glad it wasn’t either of her parents.

“Do you give her up to be the bride of the god?” the minister asked her mother and father, who still cowered, unable to look up at the autarch. Even through her own misery, Qinnitan was ashamed of her father. Cheshret was a priest, able to stand before the altar of Nushash himself, so why should he be unable to face the autarch’

“Of course,” her father said. “We are honored… so… we are…”

“Yes, you are.” The autarch flicked his glittering finger at a wooden casket. “Give the money to them Jeddin, send some of your men to help them carry it home.” The Leopard soldier who had been staring at her earlier murmured a few words and two of the autarch’s riflemen stepped forward and lifted the chest. It was clearly heavy.

“Ten horses worth of silver,” the autarch said. “Generous payment for the honor of bringing your daughter into my house, is it not?”

The men with the money chest had already started back across the throne room. Qinnitan’s parents scrambled awkwardly after it, trying to keep it in sight but not daring to turn their backs even slightly on the autarch.

“You are too kind, Master of the Great Tent,” her father called, bowing and bowing. “You bring too much honor on our house.” Qinnitan’s mother was crying again. A moment later, they were gone.

“Now,” said the autarch, then somebody coughed again. The autarch’s lean face writhed in annoyance. “Who is that? Bring him up here.”

Three more Leopards sprang down from the dais and out into the room, their polished, decorated guns held high. The crowd shrank back from them. A moment later they returned to the dais, dragging a frail young man. The crowd drew even farther back, as though he might be carrying a fatal illness, which in fact he probably was, since he had drawn the angry attention of the god-on-earth.

“Do you hate me so much, that you must interrupt me with your braying?” the autarch demanded. The young man, who had fallen onto his knees when the Leopard soldiers let go of him, could only shake his head, weeping with terror. He was so terrified his face had turned the color of saffron. “Who are you?”

The youth was clearly too frightened to answer. At last the paramount minister cleared his throat. “He is an accounting scribe from my ministry of the Treasury. He is good with sums.”

“So are a thousand merchants in Bird Snare Market. Can you tell me any reason I should not have him killed, Vash? He has wasted too much of my time already.”

“Of course he has, Golden One,” said the paramount minister with a gesture of infinite regret. “All I can offer in his favor is that I am told he is a hard worker and very well liked among the other scribes.”

“Is that so?” The autarch stared up at the famous tiled ceiling for a moment, scratched his long nose with a long finger. He already seemed bored with the subject. “Very well, here is my sentence. Leopards, take him away. Beat him and break his bones with the iron bar. Then, if he is to survive, these so-called friends of his in the Treasury may take care of him, feed him, so on. We shall see how far their friendship truly extends.”

The large crowd murmured approvingly at the wisdom of the autarch’s sentence, even as Qinnitan suppressed a shriek of horrified fury. The young man was taken away, his feet dragging on the floor, leaving a wet track like a snail. He had fainted, but not before emptying his bladder. A trio of servitors scurried to wipe the flagstones clean again.

“As for you, girl,” the autarch said, still angry, and Qinnitan s heart suddenly began to beat even more swiftly Had he tired of her already? Was he going to have her killed? He had just bought her like a market chicken from her parents and no one would raise a finger to save her. “Stand before me.”

Somehow she made her legs work just well enough to carry her up the steps and onto the dais. She was grateful to reach the spot before the Falcon Throne, grateful to be able to slump down onto her knees and not have to feel them quivering. She put her forehead against the cool stone and wished that time would stop, that she would never have to leave this spot and find out what else was in store for her. A powerful, sweet scent filled her nostrils, threatening to make her sneeze. She peered from half-opened lids. A group of priests had surrounded her like ants on a crumb of cake, blowing incense on her out of bronze bowls, perfuming her for the presence of the autarch.

“You are very lucky, little daughter,” said Pimmmon Vash. “You are favored above almost all women on the earth. Do you know that?”

“Yes, Lord. Of course, Lord.” She pushed her forehead harder against the stone, felt the area of cold spread on her skin. Her parents had sold her to the autarch without even a question as to what might become of her. She wondered if she could hit her head against the tiles hard enough to kill herself before someone stopped her. She didn’t want to marry the lord of the world. Just looking at his long face and strange, birdlike eyes made her heart feel as though it would stop beating. This close, she almost thought she could sense the heat of his body coming off him, as though he were a metal statue that had sat all day in the sun. The idea of those thin-fingered hands touching her, the gold stalls scraping her skin as that face came down onto her own…

“Stand up.” It was the autarch himself. She got to her feet, so wobbly that the paramount minister had to put his dry old hand under her elbow. The living god’s pale, pale eyes moved over her body, up to her face, back down over her body. There was no lechery in it, nothing really human: it felt as though she hung on a butcher’s hook.

“She’s thin but not ugly,” said the autarch. “She must go to the Seclusion, of course. Give her to old Cusy and tell her that this one must have special and very careful treatment. Panhyssir will tell her what is expected.”

To her astonishment, Qinnitan found herself raising her eyes to meet the autarch’s, heard herself say, “Lord, Master, I don’t know why you’ve chosen me, but I will do my best to serve you.”

“You will serve me well,” he said with an odd, childlike laugh. “May I ask one favor, Great Master?”

“You will address the Autarch Sulepis as ‘Living God on Earth’ or as ‘Golden One,’ “ the paramount minister said sternly, even as the assembled throng murmured at her forwardness.

“Golden One, may I ask a favor?”

“You may ask.”

“May I say good-bye to my sisters in the Hive, my friends? They were very kind to me.”

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Jeddin, send some of your Leopards to take her back for her farewells and to bring with her anything she needs from her old life.Then she will enter the Seclusion.” His pallid eyes narrowed a little. “You do not seem happy with the honor I have given you, girl?”

“I am . . overwhelmed, Golden One.” Fear had gripped her now. She could barely make her voice loud enough for him to hear a few paces away; she knew that to the rest of those assembled in the vast room she would be unheard, not even a murmur. “Please believe that I do not have the words to describe my happiness.”

The contingent of Leopards marched her through the long passages of the Orchard Palace, a labyrinth that she had only heard about but which, it seemed, would now be her home for the rest of her life. Thoughts swirled in her head like choking incense.

Why does he want me? He had scarcely even looked at me before today. “Not ugly,” he said. That is what one says about an arranged marriage. But I bring nothing. My parents —nobodies! Why on earth should he choose me, even as one new wife among hundreds . . ?

The Leopard band’s captain, the muscular, serious-faced soldier called Jeddin, was watching her again. He seemed as if he had been doing it for more than a moment, but she had only just noticed. “Mistress, I apologize,” he said, “but I cannot give you long for your farewells. We are expected at the Seclusion in a short time.”

She nodded. He had fierce eyes, but his glint seemed decidedly more human than the animating force behind the autarch’s bottomless stare.

When they came to the Hive, all the girls seemed somehow to have known Qinnitan was coming. Perhaps the oracle predicted it, she thought, sour and miserable. She was about to pass beyond the reach of even the golden bees and the thought frightened her. From the feminine deeps of the Hive to the female prison of the Seclusion. It did not seem like a good trade, however astonishing the honor of being chosen.

High Priestess Rugan bade her farewell with pride but little sentiment.

“You have brought great honor to us,” she said, and kissed Qinnitan on each cheek before returning to her chambers and her accounts. Chief Acolyte.

Chryssa, on the other hand, seemed genuinely sorry to see her go, although there was a powerful pride in her face as well. “No one has ever gone from the Hive into the Seclusion,” she said, eyes glowing with the same light of religiosity that filled her when the bees spoke. Qinnitan could believe that Chryssa might be dreaming of how wonderful it would have been if she instead of Qinnitan had been chosen.

Qinnitan was doing the same.

“Do you really have to go?” Duny was crying, but she seemed almost as excited and pleased as Chryssa. “Why can’t you live here until it happens?”

“Don’t be foolish, Dunyaza,” the chief acolyte told her. “Someone who is to be the autarch’s wife cannot live in the Hive. What if someone… what if she… ?” Chryssa frowned. “It just would not be right. He is the Living God on Earth!”

When the chief acolyte had gone, Qinnitan had begun putting her few personal articles into a bag—the carved bone comb her mother had given her when she had first been called to the sacred bees, a necklace of polished stones from her brothers, a tiny metal mirror from her sisters, the festival dress she had never worn since becoming a Hive Sister. As she packed these things up, trying to answer Duny’s excited questions as best she could— after all, how much could she tell when she had no idea what was to happen to her, why she had been chosen, or how she had been noticed?—she realized that from now on she was not going to be a person any more, at least for her Hive Sisters, but a Story.

I’m going to be Qinnitan, the girl the autarch noticed and plucked out of their midst. They’re going to talk about me at night. They’ll wonder if it ever might happen again, to one of them. They’re going to think it’s a wonderful, romantic tale, like Dasmet and the Girl With No Shadow.

“Don’t forget about me,” she said suddenly.

Duny stared at her in amazment. “Forget about you? Qin-ya, how could we ever… ?”

“No, I mean don’t forget about the real Qinnitan. Don’t make up silly stories about me.” She stared at her friend, who for once was shocked into silence. “I’m scared, Duny.”

“Getting married isn’t so bad,” her friend said. “My older sister told me…” She broke off, eyes wide. “I wonder if gods do it the same way people do… ?”

Qinnitan shook her head. Duny would never understand. “Do you think you could come visit me?” “What? You mean… in the Seclusion?”

“Of course. It’s only men who aren’t allowed in. Please say you will.” “Qin, I’ll… yes! Yes, I’ll come, as soon as the Sisters will let me.”

She threw her arms around Duny. Mistress Chryssa was standing in the doorway of the acolytes’ hall, letting her know that the soldiers were growing impatient outside the temple. “Don’t forget about me,” Qinnitan whispered in her friend’s ear. “Don’t make me into some… princess.”

Duny could only shake her head in confusion as Qinnitan took the sack with her pitiful array of possessions and followed the chief acolyte.

“One more thing,” Chryssa said. “Mother Mudry wishes a word with you before you go.”

“The… oracle? With me?” Mudry could hardly know Qinnitan at all. They had never been any nearer to each other than a dozen paces since Qinnitan had come to the Hive. Did even that august old woman desire to curry a little favor with the autarch? Qinnitan supposed she must. But the nicest thing he said about me was that I wasn’t ugly. Doesn’t give me much power to get favors done, now does it?

They walked through the darkest part of the Hive. The sleepy murmuring of the bees washed in through the air shafts high in the walls—there was nowhere in the Hive their song could not be heard. If the bees noticed the departure of one of the younger acolytes, it didn’t seem to bother them.

The oracle’s room smelled of lavender water and sandalwood incense. Oracle Mudry sat in her high-backed chair, her face lifted expectantly toward the door, blind eyes moving behind the lids. She reached out her hands. Qinnitan hesitated: they looked like claws.

“Is that the child? The girl?”

Qinnitan looked around but Chryssa had left her at the doorway to the inner chamber. “It’s me, Mother Mudry,” she said.

“Take my hands.”

“It’s very kind of you…”

“Hush!” She said it harshly, but without anger, a warning to a child not to touch a naked flame. Her cold hands closed on Qinnitan’s ringers. “We have never sent one to the Seclusion before, but Rugan tells me she thought you… unusual.” She shook her head. “Did you know that it was all ours, once, girl? Surigali was the Mistress of the Hive, and Nushash her cowering consort.”

Qinnitan had no idea what this meant, and it had been a long and confusing day. She stood silent as Mudry squeezed her fingers. The old woman paused as if listening, face lifted to the ceiling, much as earlier that day the autarch had stared at nothing while deciding to have a man’s bones shattered because he had coughed. The old woman’s hands seemed to grow warmer, almost hot, and Qinnitan had to force herself not to pull away. The oracle’s lined face seemed to grow slack, then the toothless mouth fell open in a gape of dismay.

“It is as I feared,” Mother Mudry said, letting go of Qmnitan’s hands. “It is bad. Very bad.”

“What? What do you mean?” Did the oracle have some knowledge of her fate? Was she to be slain by her husband-to-be, as so many others had been slain?

“A bird will fly before the storm.” Mudry spoke so quietly Qinnitan could barely hear her. “Yet it is hurt, and can scarcely keep wing. Still, that is all the hope that remains when the sleeper awakens. Still, the old blood is strong Not much hope at all…” She swayed for a moment, then stopped, her face turned straight toward Qinnitan s. If she had been sighted, she might have stared. “I am tired, forgive me. There is little we can do and it is of no use to frighten you. You must remember who you are, girl, that is all.”

Qinnitan had no idea if this was how the old woman usually behaved, but she knew the oracle was indeed frightening her, whether she wanted to or not. “What do you mean, remember? That I’m a Hive Sister?”

“Remember who you are. And when the cage is opened, you must fly. It will not be opened twice.” “But I don’t understand… !”

Chryssa put her head in the door. “Is everything all right? Mother Mudry?”

The old woman nodded. She gave Qinnitan’s hand one last leathery squeeze, then let go. “Remember Remember.” It was all Qinnitan could do not to cry as the Chief Acolyte handed her back over to the soldiers and their captain, silently glowering Jeddin, so they could conduct the new bride-to-be away to the hidden fastness of the Seclusion.

12. Sleeping in Stone

Chert watched Mica and Talc dressing the stone on the wall above the tomb. The Schists could be clannish, and since they were Hornblende’s nephews, he had thought they might give trouble to their uncles replacement, but instead they had been nothing but helpful. In fact, his whole crew had been exemplary—even Pumice was doing his work with a minimum of complaining: whatever they might not have liked about the original job, they had swallowed it for the sake of getting the prince regent’s tomb ready. And a good thing, too. The only light where Chert stood were the torches in the stone wall sconces—four of the sconces new-carved—but he felt certain the morning sun must already be creeping above the eastern battlements, which meant only a few hours remained until the funeral.

It had not been easy, any of it, and Chert could only thank his Blue Quartz ancestors that it had been a comparatively small task, the construction of one new room, and that they were working mostly with limestone. Even so, in some cases they had been forced to cut corners—or not cut corners, to be more accurate, the new chamber was oddly shaped and still un finished on the far end where a low tunnel opened into farther caverns, and they had dressed only the wall into which the prince regent’s tomb had been cut Lumps of hard flint still floated like islands in all the finished walls, and most of the carvings would have to be completed later as well. There had barely been time for Little Carbon to decorate the tomb itself and the wall just around it, but the craftsman had done a fine job despite the haste, turning a raw hole in the bones of the Mount into a sort of forest bower. The stone plinth on which the prince regent’s coffin would he seemed a bed of long, living grasses, the tree trunks and hanging leafy branches carved into the walls of the crypt had been crafted with such delicacy that they seemed to fall away into the distance, row upon row Chert almost felt he could walk into the carving toward the heart of a living forest.

“It is splendid,” he told Little Carbon, who was doing a last bit of finework on a group of flowers in the plinth. “No one will be able to say that the Funderlings have not done their part and more.”

Little Carbon wiped dust from his sweaty face. He looked older than his true age—he was only a few years married, but already had the wizened features of a grandfather and white in his beard that did not come from limestone dust. “Sad job, though. You’d have thought this was to be my son’s to do, or even my grandson’s, not mine. He went too young, the poor prince. And who’d have believed that southerner fellow would have done it? After all these years, he seemed almost civilized.”

Chert turned and called to the others to hurry with pulling down the scaffolding Mica and Talc were on the ground now and nearly done, but the work gang still had to plaster the holes where the scaffold beams had been driven into the walls, and it needed to be done soon. Nynor the castellan had a dozen men and women waiting to fill the Eddon family crypt with flowers and candles.

Little Carbon squinted at a stone bloom, gave it a couple of last pokes with his chisel, then began working it with a pohshing-stick. “Speaking of sons, where’s that one of yours?"

Chert felt an odd mixture of pride and irritation to hear the boy referred to as his son. “Flint! I sent him out before you got here—he’ll be playing upground. All his messing about was going to send me mad.” Which was only part of the truth. The child had been acting so strangely that it had frightened him a little. In fact, Flint had been acting up so much that for a few moments Chert had feared it might be bad air leaking in through the cavern end of the tomb— breath of the black deep his people called it, and it had killed many a Funderling over the years—but none of the others had been affected. It had quickly become clear that the boy’s behavior was odder than even a pocket of bad air could explain he seemed both drawn to and afraid of the dark opening at the end of the tomb, grunting to himself as he peered into it like a much younger child—or even like an animal, Chert had thought fearfully—and singing snatches of unrecognizable songs. But when he had pulled the boy away, Flint had answered questions with no less reticence than usual, saying that the sound of the cavern beyond frightened him, whatever that meant, that he could hear voices and smell things.

“Things I don’t understand,” was all he would or could offer by way of explanation, “that I don’t want to understand,” but when Chert had grabbed a chunk of glowing coral and got down on his knees to poke his head into the raw, unworked limestone cavern beyond, he had found nothing unusual.

With a pressing job and the memory of what Cinnabar had said about the men’s restiveness fresh in his thoughts, Chert had made up his mind quickly. He didn’t want the boy kicking up a fuss and putting the men off their work, so he had taken Flint up the stairs and told him to stay inside the boundaries of the cemetery, but under no circumstances to go out of sight of the top steps of the tomb. With Chert’s men carrying limestone chips out of the mound in wheeled barrows all day, he had thought the boy could not get into too much trouble without being noticed.

Thinking about it now, as Little Carbon used a wet rag dipped in fine sand to scrape away a few last imperfections, Chert realized that he hadn’t heard or seen anything of the boy in some time, although he would have expected him to have come back down by now looking for his midmorning meal. He called a few last suggestions to the men tugging apart the scaffolding, patted Little Carbon on the shoulder, then stumped off to see what the child was up to.

A few of Nynor’s big folk were working in the outer chambers of the tomb, cleaning and preparing it for the burial procession, scrubbing soot off the walls where torches had burned, strewing rushes and neverfade blossoms on the floor. All these growing things filled the rock halls with a smell that reminded Chert of the days when he was courting Opal and took her upground to walk along the sea-meadows at Landsend. She had later told him that for a girl who had almost never been out of Funderling Town, it had been both exciting and frightening to stand looking down at the sea and that immensity of open sky. He remembered feeling an expensive pride—as though he had made it all for her.

But the scent of flowers and a few happy memories of his younger days could not change the nature of the place In niche after niche lay the mortal remains of the Eddons who had ruled Southmarch, of lives that might once have been grand or insignificant, but were all the same now. Still, when they were alive, someone cared for them, he thought. Their bodies were brought to this place by weeping mourners just as others would bring the murdered prince this day, then they had been left to sleep in stone until the machineries of time wore them away to dry dust and knobs of bone.

It did not make Chert fearful, although the Funderlings themselves did not bury their dead, but neither could he ignore the presence of so many finished lives. Some of the grander caskets, made in stone or metal to outlast the ages, had an effigy not of the occupant as he or she looked in life, although there were many of those, but of the occupant in death, withering and decaying, a style of funerary art from three centuries earlier. During those years after the plague, it seemed that many of the dying wished to remind the living just how transitory their good luck would be.

Why all the mystery? Chert wondered. These bodies of ours come out of the earth, come out of all we eat and drink and breathe, and they go back to earth in the end, whatever the gods may do with the spark that is inside us. But he could not be as blithe as he wished, and even though there were big folk busily at work in the catacombs around him, still he hurried Lately—even before the prince regent’s death—all around him had begun to seem tinged with the chill breath of mortality, a hint of the endings of things.

For once a child of stone was glad to see the raw daylight, but the lift in his spirits did not last long Flint was nowhere to be seen, and although Chert walked through all the graveyard and even into the gardens beyond, calling and calling, he could not find him.

Briony stood, naked and cold from the bath, looking down at her own pale limbs and hating the weakness of her womanhood.

If I were a man, she thought, then Summerfield and Lord Brone and the others would not seize at my every word. They would not think me weak. Even if I had a withered arm like Barrick’s, they would fear my anger. But because of the accident of my birth, of my sex, I am suspect.

The room was chill and she was trembling. Oh, Father, how could you leave us? She closed her eyes and for a moment she became a child again, shivering while the nurses bustled around her, drying her small body with flannels, the great house full of familiar sounds. Where does time go when it is used up? she wondered. Is it like the sound of voices that echo and echo in a long hallway, growing smaller and smaller until they’re too faint to hear? Is there an echo somewhere of that time when we were all together —Kendrick alive, Father here, Barrick well?

But even if there were, it would only be a dying echo, populated by ghosts. She raised her arms. “Dress me,” she told Moina and Rose.

The thought of her father, the sudden urge to see him, or at least to hear his voice, had reminded her of something: where was his letter, the one Dawet dan-Faar had brought from Hierosol? Perhaps it was with some of Kendrick’s other effects—she had not had a chance to look through them all yet. But her father’s letter was not like other papers: she not only needed to see it, she wanted to, desperately. She would look for it after the funeral. Kendrick’s funeral.

The horror of what lay ahead made her knees weak, but she straightened, held herself firm. She would not show her ladies how fearful she was, how helpless and hopeless.

Rose and Moina were strangely quiet. Briony wondered if they were as overwhelmed as she was, or merely respecting her mood and the dread weight of the day. And what did it matter? Death made its own respect, one way or another.

They slipped on her chemise, working a little to pull it into place over her damp skin. The petticoat tied at the back with points, she was still barefoot and it pooled around her feet. Rose pulled the laces too tight as she tied the corset and Briony grunted but did not ask her to loosen it. She had learned that these formal clothes served a purpose: like a soldier’s armor, they gave an outward semblance of strength even when the body inside was weak.

But I don’t want to be weak! I want to be strong, like a man, for the family and for our people. But what did that mean? There were many kinds of strength, the bearlike power of someone like Avin Brone or the more subtle force Kendrick had possessed: her older brother had once thrown one of the bigger guards so hard in a wrestling match that the man had to be carried away. Thinking of him made her breath hitch. He was so alive —he can’t be gone. How can a single night change the world ?

But there were other kinds of strength, too, she thought as Moina and Rose helped her into the black silk dress stiff with black brocade and delicate silver-and-gold filigree. Father almost neper raises his voice, and I have never seen him strike a blow in anger, but only fools ever called him weak. And why are only men thought strong? Who has held this family together in the past days? Not me, may Zoria forgive me. It had not been Barrick either, or even the lord constable. No, it had been Briony’s great-aunt Merolanna, stern and set as the Mount itself, who had ordered life and made a little sense of death.

Rose and Moina were busy as bees around a dark flower, unbending and spreading the ruffled cuffs of Briony s dress, trimming a loose thread from the hem and then slipping on her shoes, one of them bracing her so she could lift her foot while the other guided the black slipper into place. For a moment she was filled with love for these girls. They, too, were being brave, she decided. Men’s wars happened far away and they proved their courage in front of armies of other men. Women’s wars were more subtle things and were witnessed mostly by others of their sex. Her ladies-in-waiting and all the other women in the castle were waging a battle against chaos, struggling to lend sense to a world that seemed to have lost it.

She did not like what the world had forced upon her, but today, Briony decided, she was still proud to be what she was.

When they had finished with her shoes, the ladies-in-waiting draped her in a cloak of heavy black velvet that her father had given her but which she had never worn. She sat on a high stool, or rather leaned, half standing, so that Rose could bring out her jewelry and Moina and one of the younger maids could begin to arrange her hair.

“Don’t bother with all that,” she told Moina, but gently. Her lady-in-waitmg stopped, the curling iron already in her hands. “I will wear a headdress—the one with silver stitching.”

With as much ceremony as a mantis producing a shrine’s sacred object, Rose set the jewel casket on a cushion and opened the lid. She pulled out the largest necklace, a heavy chain of gold with pendant ruby, a gift from Briony’s father to the mother she had scarcely known.

“Not that,” Briony said. “Not today. There—the hart and nothing else.”

Rose lifted the slender silver necklace, confusion showing on her face. The leaping-deer pendant was a small and insignificant piece and seemed out of keeping with the heavy majesty of her other garments.

“Kendrick gave it to me. A birthday gift.”

Rose’s eyes filled as she draped it around her mistress’ neck. Briony tried to wipe the girl’s tears away, but the sleeves of her gown were too stiff, her cloak too massive. “Curse it, don’t you dare start that. You’ll have me going, too.”

“Cry if you want to, my lady,” Moina said, sniffling. “We haven’t begun your face yet.”

Briony laughed a little despite herself. The wretched sleeves would not let her wipe her own eyes either, so she could only sit helplessly until Rose brought a kerchief to blot her dry again.

Her hair pulled back and knotted at the back of her head, she sat as patiently as she could while the two ladies-in-waiting begin to daub things on her cheeks and eyelids. She hated face paint, but today was not an ordinary day. The people—her people—had already seen her cry. Today they had to see her strong and dry-eyed, her face a mask of composure. And it was a distraction for Rose and Moina, as well, this unusual liberty, they were laughing again as they brushed rouge onto her cheeks, despite their still-damp eyes.

When they had finished, they lowered the gabled headdress onto her head and fastened it with pins, then spread its black velvet fall onto her shoulders and down her back. Briony felt solid and unbending. “The guards will have to come and carry me—I swear I cannot move an inch. Bring me a glass.”

Moina blew her nose while Rose hurried to find the looking glass. The other maids formed into a respectful half circle around her, whispering, impressed. Briony regarded herself, all in black from head to foot with only a glint of silver at her brow and breast.

“I look like Siveda the moon-maiden Like the Goddess of Night.” “You look splendid, Your Highness,” said Rose, suddenly all formality.

“I look like a ship under full sail. Big as the world.” Briony sighed and her breath caught. “Oh, gods, come and help me get up. I have to bury my brother.”

A boy was clinging high on the wall on the outside of the chapel building, but even in this time of fear, when murderous enemies might still be at large, no one in Southmarch Castle seemed to have noticed him. At the moment he was crouching in the corner of a vast window frame, the colored glass surrounding him like the background of a painting. Although the chapel was full of people, if anyone inside had taken note of the shadow at the bottom of the great window they had decided it was only grime or a drift of leaves.

A group of servants hurried up the path from the graveyard toward the doorway that led to the inner keep, still carrying the baskets they had brought down an hour before but with only a few petals now remaining in the bottoms, the rest had been scattered inside the tomb and along the winding path through the cemetery. The boy did not look down at them, and they were all far too intent on their just-finished tasks and their whispered conversations to look up.

Something above the boy’s head caught his attention. A butterfly, a big one, all yellow and black, lit on the edge of the roof and sat there with its wings beating as slowly as a tranquil heart. It was late in the season for butterflies.

He found the edge of the window with his stubby, dirty fingers and pulled himself up until he was standing beside one edge of the leaded glass window. Anyone watching from the inside would now have seen the drift of leaves suddenly become a vertical column, but no sound came to him from behind the glass except the continuing low hum of a chorus singing the “Lay of Kernios,” longest and most expansive of the funeral songs. A moment later the column was gone and the window was unshadowed again.

Flint pulled himself up onto one of the protruding carvings that decorated the outside wall of the chapel, then moved sideways like a spider to another before climbing up to a higher one Withm a matter of moments, even as a gate on the far side of the graveyard closed behind the basket-carrying servants and their voices fell away, he was onto the roof.

The chapel rooftop was a great angled field of slate with spiral chimneys protruding every few yards like trees Moss and even living tufts of long grass poked up between the slate, and the autumn wind had piled great drifts of leaves against the chimneys like red-and-brown snow Many other rooftops were visible from this spot, plateaus almost touching each other in jostling profusion, but most of the towered inner keep still stretched far above his head on all sides, the forest of chimneys rendered in giant size.

Flint seemed to care about none of these things. At first he only lay on his belly and stared at the place where the butterfly sat near the roof’s summit, fanning its wings indolently. Then the boy began to crawl upward, digging his feet into the eruptions of moss and lifted slate, until he was within arm’s reach of the creature. His hand stretched and the butterfly suddenly sensed him, tumbled over the edge, and was gone, but the boy did not stop. His fingers closed on something quite different and he plucked it out of the grass and brought it close to his face.

It was an arrow, small as a darning needle. He squinted. It was fletched with tiny crests of the same yellow and black as the butterfly’s wings.

For long moments the boy lay silently, motionlessly, staring at the arrow. Someone watching might have thought he had fallen asleep with his eyes open, so complete was his stillness, but the watcher would have been wrong. He abruptly rolled and scrambled across the rooftop to the nearest chimney, fast as a striking snake, and thrust with his hand first at one spot, then another, grabbing after something that fled through the little forest of grass around the base of the bricks.

His hand closed and suddenly he was still again. He pulled back his fist, holding it close to his body as he sat down with the chimney against his back. When he opened his hand, the thing huddling there did not move until he poked it gently with his finger.

The little man who now rolled over and crouched in Flint’s palm was not much taller than that finger. The man’s skin seemed sooty-dark, although it was hard to say how much of that was truly skin and how much was dirt His eyes were wide, httle pinpricks of white in the shadow of the boy’s hand. He tried to leap free, but Flint curled his fingers into a cage and the little man crouched again, defeated. He was clothed in rags and bits of gray pelt. He wore soft boots and had a coil of coarse thread looped over his shoulder, a quiver of arrows on his back.

Flint bent and picked something out of the grass. It was a bow, strung so fine that the cord could barely be seen. Flint looked at it for a moment, then set it on his palm beside the little man. The captive looked from the bow toward his captor, then picked it up. He passed the bow slowly from hand to hand with a kind of wonder, as though it had become something totally different since he touched it last. Flint stared at him, unsmiling, brow furrowed.

The little man gulped air. “Hurt me not, master, I beg ‘ee,” he fluted, something like hope in his eyes where before there had been only terror. “Tha hast me fair, skin to sky. Grant thy wish, I will. All know a Roof-topper will keep un’s word.”

Flint frowned, then set the little man down on the slate. The prisoner got to his feet, hesitated, took a few steps, then stopped again. Flint didn’t move. His little face screwed up in confusion, the tiny man at last turned away and began scrambling up the moss paths between the slates, heading for the roofcrest with his bow dangling in his hand. Every few steps he looked back over his shoulder, as though expecting his apparent freedom to prove only a cruel game, but by the time he reached the top, the boy still had not moved.

“Oh, th’art good, young master,” the tiny man cried, his voice almost inaudible from a yard and a half away. “Beetledown and un’s aftercomers will remember thee. That be promised!” He vanished over the roofcrest.

Flint sat against the chimney until the sun was high above him, until the dim moan of the chorus below had ended, then began his climb back down.

She was grateful for Rose standing beside her with the kerchief, and furious with herself for needing it. It was hard to believe how terrible a varnished wooden box could be. The funeral songs droned on and on, but she was grateful for that, too it gave her a chance to compose herself.

It seemed shameful to carry Kendrick to the tomb in a borrowed coffin, but there had been no time to prepare a proper one. In fact, Nynor had assured her the Funderling craftsmen had done well simply to prepare the tomb. The true coffin with its carved effigy should not be hurried, he said—would she want an imperfect likeness of her brother to gaze out at eternity, as if he were forced to hide behind a crude mask? Kendrick could be moved into the stone coffin when it was finished.

Still, it seemed shameful.

Despite the presence of members of the household like Rose and Moina, a dry-eyed but somber Chaven, and even old Puzzle, hatless and dressed in black-and-gray motley, his hair smoothed across his head in thin strands, the royal family’s bench at the front of the chapel was only half full. Briony’s stepmother Anissa sat a short distance away beside Merolanna, arms folded protectively across her belly Her face was hidden by a black veil, but she sobbed and snuffled loudly. At least we found something that could get her out of bed, was Briony’s bitter thought. She had not seen much of the queen lately. It was as though Anissa had turned the Tower of Spring into a sort of fortress, covering all the windows with heavy cloths and surrounding herself with women as a besieged monarch might surround himself with soldiers. Briony had never entirely warmed to her stepmother, but for the first time she was truly beginning to dislike her. Your husband is imprisoned, woman, and one of his children is murdered. Even with a baby in your belly, surely you have more duties now than just to hide in that nest of yours like a she-crow brooding on her eggs.

The chorus finished at last and Hierarch Sisel, in his finest red-and-silver robes, stood and took his place in front of the coffin to begin the funeral oration. It was the sort of thing Sisel did best, showing why King Olm had chosen him to fill such an important post despite the objections of Sisel’s own superiors back in Syan (who had thought him too lukewarm in his support of the policies of the current trigonarch) and he spoke the familiar words with apparent compassion and sincerity. As the soothing Hiero-sohne litany filled the Erivor Chapel, Briony could almost let herself believe she had found one of those echoes of the past, a remnant of the days she would whisper with her brothers during services, annoying Merolanna and frustrating the old mantis Father Timoid, who knew that the children’s father would never let them be scolded for a crime Olin himself deemed so insignificant.

But I’m not a child now. There is nowhere for me to hide from this moment.

As Sisel began to speak the words of the epitaph, the nobles dutifully repeating the significant phrases, Briony was distracted by a fuss at her elbow. Moina was talking sharply but quietly with a young page. “What does the fellow want?” Briony whispered.

“I come from your brother, Highness,” the child told her.

Held tightly around the middle by her confining garments, Briony did her best to bend toward the boy; it made her breathless. “Barrick?” But of course it had to be Barrick. If her other brother had sent her a message, it would not be carried by a young boy with a dripping nose. “Is he well?”

“He is better. He sends to say that you should not go to the cr… the cr…” The boy was nervous and couldn’t remember the word.

This little fellow is facing the Goddess of the Night, after all, she thought. Are you happy now, Lord Brone? I am not a weeping girl anymore —I have become a thing to scare children. “The crypt?”

“Yes, Highness.” The boy nodded rapidly but still couldn’t meet her eye. “He says you should not go down to the crypt until you see what he is sending to you.”

“What he is sending?” Briony looked to Rose, staring in damp misery at the coffin on the altar. It was draped in a banner blazoned with the Eddon wolf and stars, but it was no less dreadful for its proud covering. Behind her, Briony could hear the courtiers whispering loudly and she felt herself growing angry at their disrespect. “Why are these fools talking? Rose, did you hear what the boy said? What could Barrick be sending?"

“Myself.”

She turned and her heart thumped painfully in her breast. With his long black cloak only imperfectly covering the white nightdress and his face even paler than usual, Barrick might have been Kendrick himself in his winding-sheet. Her twin stood in the aisle of the chapel with a royal guardsman at each elbow helping him to stand upright Just getting here had clearly been an effort; his face was damp with sweat and his eyes did not quite meet hers.

Briony levered herself upright and pushed past Moina, grateful that she was in the front of the chapel and not wedged between two rows of benches like a caravel in a too-tight berth. She threw her arms around Barrick as well as she could manage with her heavy clothes and confining corset, then realized everyone in the chapel must be looking at them. She leaned back a little and kissed his cheek, which was still warm from fever or effort.

“But, you wonderful fool,” she said quietly, “what are you doing here? You should be in bed!”

He had been stiff in her embrace; now he stepped back, shaking off the two guardsmen who were trying to help him. “What am I doing here?” he asked loudly. “I am a prince of the House of Eddon. Did you think you would bury our brother without me?”

put her hand to her mouth, surprised by his tone but even more shocked by the look of cold anger on his face Something in her own features seemed to touch him in a way her embrace and kiss had not: his expression softened and he sagged. One of the guardsmen took his elbow. “Oh, Briony, I am sorry. I have been so ill. It was so hard to get here, I had to stop and catch my breath every few steps, but I had to… for Kendrick. Pay no attention. My mind has been full of so many foolish things.…”

“Of course—oh, Barrick, of course. Sit down.” She helped him down onto the bench beside her. Even seated, he did not let go of her hand, holding her fast in his damp, hot grip.

Hierarch Sisel, after waiting while the courtiers reseated themselves, and with only the smallest and most tasteful look of puzzlement, resumed the eulogy

“ ‘Whether we are born in time of joy or time of woe, and whether we make of our lives a wonder to all eyes or a shame before Heaven, still the gods grant us only our allotted time,’ so said the oracle Iaris in the days of the splendor of Hierosol, and he spoke truth. To no man is given anything certain but death, be he ever so exalted. But be he ever so low, still can his spirit be seated with the immortals in Heaven.

“To Kernios of the black, fruitful earth, we commend this our beloved Kendrick Eddon’s mortal raiment. To Erivor of the waters, we give back the blood that ran in his veins. But to Perin of the skies, we offer up his spirit, that it may be carried to Heaven and the halls of the gods as a bird is carried on the winds until it reaches the safety of its own nest once more.

“May the blessings of the Three be upon him, this our brother. May the blessings of the Three be also upon those who must remain behind. The world will be a darker place for the light that was his and is now gone, but it will shine brightly in the halls of the gods and shall be a star in Heaven.…”

As he finished, the hierarch sprinkled a handful of earth on the coffin, then a few drops of water from a ceremonial jar; lastly, he set a single white feather atop them. As the gathered nobles spoke the response to Sisel’s words, four guardsman stepped forward and slid two long poles through the coffin’s handles, rucking the embroidered head of the Eddon wolf on the covering cloth so that its snarl seemed to turn to a look of confusion, then lifted the coffin and carried it to the door of the chapel.

Briony, going slowly so Barrick would not fall behind, moved to her place behind the coffin. She reached out a hand and lifted the family banner so she could touch the polished wood. She wanted to say something, but could not make herself believe that the Kendrick she knew was in that box.

It would be too cruel if he was —putting him down under all that stone. He loved to ride, to run… She was weeping again as the coffin was carried out of the chapel behind a ceremonial guard, with all the noble mourners falling into line behind the twins.

The other residents of the palace had been waiting beside the flower-strewn path, the servants and lesser nobility who were now getting their only chance to see the casket that held the prince’s remains. Many were crying and moaning as though Kendrick’s death had just happened, and Briony found herself both moved and yet somehow angered by the noise—quite out of control for a moment, so that she had to fight herself not to turn around and run back into the chapel. She turned to Barrick instead and saw that he hardly seemed to notice the crowd. He was staring at the ground with clench-jawed ferocity, using all his strength just to stay moving behind the coffin. It was too painful for Briony to watch him, almost frightening: he looked like he was still locked in a fever-dream, as though only his body had come back to join the living.

She turned away from her twin and, as her eyes swept the crowd, she glimpsed a small face watching intently from a spot on the wall, a fair-haired boy who had apparently climbed up to get a better vantage point. For a moment she was fearful for the child—he was treetop-high—but he seemed as unconcerned as a squirrel.

Barrick had caught up again, and now he whispered in her ear. “They are all around, you know.” For a moment she thought he was talking about small boys like the one clinging to the wall. “Who are?”

He put his finger to his lips. “Softly, softly. They do not think I know, but I do. And when I have taken up my birthright, I will make them pay for what they have done.” He fell back a pace and let his gaze drop to the ground once more, his mouth set in a tight, pained smile.

Please let this end soon, she prayed. Merciful Zoria,just let us put our brother into the ground and let this day end.

When they reached the graveyard, the procession wound among the slanting shadows of ancient stones until it reached the mouth of the family crypt. Briony and Barrick, Anissa, Merolanna, and a few others followed the guardsmen and their burden down into the ground, leaving the rest of the nobles to stand on the grass at the door of the tomb, deserted and awkward.

The graveyard was full of big folk, all of them in mourning dress. Chert felt like he was lost in a thicket of black trees. There was no sign of the boy anywhere.

All he could do was wait. The funeral had almost ended. In a few moments the royal family would come back out and the crowd would disperse. Maybe then he could find some trace of where the child had gone. Opal will never forgive me, he thought What could have happened to him?

With all these people here, could he have stumbled upon his real family? Chert thought even Opal could live with that, if they only knew it for certain.

But it’s not just Opal, he admitted to himself. I’ll miss the boy, too, mourn the loss of him. Fissure and fracture, listen to me! Talking like it was Flint being put away in the dark instead of the prince. He’s just run off somewhere, is all.

A hand touched his back. He turned to find the boy standing beside him.

“You! Where have you been?” Heart racing with unexpected joy and relief, Chert surprised himself by grabbing the boy and pulling him close. It was like hugging an unwilling cat Chert released him and looked him over. The child seemed quiet and full of something—secrets, perhaps, but that was nothing new. “Where have you been?” Chert asked again.

“I met one of the old people.” “Who is that? What do you mean?”

But Flint did not answer Instead he stared past Chert at the place where the royal family had descended into the tomb Chert turned to see that some of them had come out again: the funeral was over.

“You still haven’t told me where you went, boy…”

“Why is that woman looking at me?”

Chert swiveled until he saw the stout old woman in black-and-gold brocade, part of the funeral party. He almost recognized her, wondered if she might be the murdered prince’s great-aunt, Merolanna. She was indeed staring at the boy, but as Chert watched, she swayed a little as though she might faint Flint quickly moved behind Chert, but he did not look fearful, only cautious. Chert turned back to see the old woman’s maids steadying her, leading her back toward the inner keep, but even as she walked, the woman kept looking around as if for the boy, her face set in an odd mixture of terror and need, until the milling crowd hid her from Chert’s view.

Before he could make any sense out of what he had seen, a ripple passed through the crowd, a quiet murmuring. He caught at the boy’s sleeve to make sure he didn’t vanish again.The young prince and princess were being helped up the stairs and out of the crypt. They both looked shaken, the prince in particular so pale and hollow-eyed that he might have been one of the tomb’s denizens escaped for a moment back into the outside air.

Poor Eddon family, Chert thought as the twins floated past, surrounded by courtiers and servants but somehow terribly alone, as though they were only partly in the world the rest of the castle folk shared. It was hard to believe they were the same pair he had seen riding in the hills only a few days earlier.

The weight of the world, that’s what they’re carrying now, he thought. For the first time, he could truly feel the meaning of the old phrase, the grim solidity of dirt and cold stone. It made him shiver.