Shadowmarch

13. Vansen’s Charge

“I don’t want to hear any more.” He was tired and his head hurt. He still felt deathly ill—felt as though he would never again be truly well. He wanted only to go back to what he had been doing, bouncing the hard leather ball against the floor that had already been pitted with age in his great-grandfather’s day, thinking about nothing.

“Please, Barrick, I beg of you.” Gailon Tolly, Duke of Summerfield, was doing his best to keep impatience from his voice. It amused Barrick, but it angered him too.

“Prince Barrick. I am prince regent, now. I am not your little cousin any longer and you cannot treat me that way.” Gailon bobbed his head. “Of course, Highness. Forgive my disrespect.”

Barrick smiled. “Better. Well, then, tell it to me again.”

“I have…” The duke regained his look of patience. “It is simply this. Your sister has seen the envoy from Ludis again this morning. The black man, Dawet.”

“By herself? Behind closed doors?”

Gailon colored. “No, Highness. In the garden, with others present.”

“Ah.” Barrick bounced the ball again. It did trouble him, but he wouldn’t show it and give Gailon the satisfaction. “So my sister, the princess regent, was talking in the garden to an envoy of the man who’s holding our father prisoner.”

“Yes, but…” Gailon scowled and turned to Avin Brone. “Prince Barrick does not want to understand me, Brone. You explain.”

The mountainous lord constable shrugged, a motion that looked as if it might start an avalanche. “She appears to enjoy the man’s company. She listens very closely to what he has to say.”

“While you were ill, he had a long audience with her, Highness,” said Gailon. “She ignored everyone else who was present.”

Ignored, thought Barrick. Through all the disturbing images that had not entirely left his head, through weariness and the strands of fever that still draped him like cobwebs, it was a word whose meaning he understood immediately. “She is paying more attention to him than to you, is that what you mean, Gailon?”

“No… !”

“It seems to me that you are trying to drive a wedge between my sister and myself.” Barrick flung the leather ball down against the floor. It hit on the edge of a flagstone and went bouncing across the room. Two young pages dove out of the way as one of the larger dogs scrambled after it, then chased it into a corner behind a chest and growled in excited frustration. “But my sister and myself are almost the same thing, Duke Gailon. That is what you must know.”

“You wrong me, Highness.” Gailon turned to Brone, but the big man was watching the dog rooting behind the chest, making it clear that he wanted no responsibility for the duke’s little embassy. “We are in a terrible time. We need to be strong—all the houses of Southmarch must stand together, Eddons, Tollys, all of us. I know that. But neither should the common people begin to whisper of… dalliances between your sister and your father’s kidnappers.”

“You go too far.” Barrick was angry, but it was a distant fury like lightning over far hills. “Leave this room now and I will forgive your clumsy tongue, Gailon, but be careful. If you say such things in front of my sister, you may find yourself fighting for honor, and she will not ask for a champion. She will fight you herself.”

“By the gods, is this whole family mad?” the duke cried, but Brone already had Gailon Tolly’s shoulders and was steering him toward the door, whispering words of calm in his ear. The lord constable gave Barrick an odd look as he urged Gailon out, something that could equally have been surprised approval or disdain imperfectly masked.

Barrick did not feel strong enough to try to make sense of it all. In the three days he had been out of bed, through the ghastly funeral and the equally drawn-out and exhausting ceremony in the castle’s huge, incense-choked Trigonate temple that had conferred the regency on both Briony and himself, he had never felt entirely well. That terrible fever had swept through him like a wildfire through a forest glade. Fundamental things were gone, roots and branches, and they would take time to grow back. At the same time, the fever itself seemed to have left behind unfamiliar spores, seeds of new ideas which he could feel quickening inside him, waiting to hatch.

What will I become? he wondered, staring at his bent left hand. I was already a monster. Already a target for scorn, haunted by those terrible dreams, by… by Father’s legacy. Am I a target for treachery now as well? These new thoughts would not go away, feelings of distrust that scratched away at him at all hours, sleeping and waking, like rats in the walls. He had prayed and prayed, but the gods did not seem to care enough to relieve his misery.

Should I be listening to Gailon more carefully about this? But Barrick did not trust his cousin at all. Everyone knew that Gailon was ambitious, although he was by no means the worst of his family: his brothers, sly Caradon and the dangerously reckless Hendon, made the Duke of Sum-merfield seem almost maiden-shy by comparison. In fact, Barrick did not trust any of the Southmarch nobles, not Brone, not Tyne Aldritch of Blueshore, not even the old castellan, Nynor, no matter how valuable a servant any of them had been to his father. He trusted nobody but his sister, and now Gailon’s words had begun to eat away at that bond, too. Barrick stood up, so full of rage and unhappiness that even the dog shied away. His two pages waited, solemn-faced, watching him as small animals watch a larger one who might be hungry. He had shouted at them more than a few times since dragging himself out of his fever-bed, and had struck both of them at least once.

“I must dress now,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.

The council was meeting in an hour. Perhaps he should ask Briony straight out what her business was with the dark man, the envoy. The memory of Dawet’s lean brown face and superior smile sent a little shudder of unease up Barrick’s spine. It was so much like something from the fever dreams, those shadowy, heartless creatures that pursued him. But waking life had also been nightmarish since then. It was all he could do to remind himself that he was awake, that the walls were solid, that eyes did not watch him from every corner.

I almost told Briony about Father, he realized. That was one thing he must never do. It could be the end of any happiness either of them would ever have together. “I am waiting, curse it!”

The pages had been lifting his dark, fur-trimmed gown out of the chest; now they hurried toward him, awkward beneath the weight, bearing the heavy thing like the body of a dead foe.

What did Briony want with that envoy? And more importantly, why hadn’t she told him, her brother? He couldn’t help remembering that she had seemed quite prepared to take the regency without him, to leave him alone in his bed of pain.

No. He forced the thoughts away but they did not go far: like starving beggars rebuffed, they moved only out of immediate reach. No, not Briony. If there is anyone I can trust, it is Briony.

His knees were shaking as the two young pages stood on their toes to drape the gown across his shoulders. He did not need to see these boys’ faces. He knew they were looking at each other. He knew they thought something was wrong with him.

Am I still fevered? he wondered. Or is this the thing that Father spoke of? Is this the true beginning of it?

For a moment he was back in the shadowed passages of his illness, looking down a great distance into red-shot darkness. He could see no way out.

Sister Utta’s long face showed amusement, but concern as well, and she spoke carefully. “I think it is a very bold idea, Highness.”

“But not a good one, is that what you’re saying?” Briony fidgeted. So many things were moving inside her these days, a torrent of feeling and need and sometimes even . . well, it felt like strength, the kind that she had been asked to hide over and over again. All of these competing forces yanked at her limbs and thoughts as though she were on puppet strings. “You think I am asking for trouble. You want me not to do it.”

“You are the princess regent now,” said Utta. “You will do as you see fit. But this is a disturbed time—the waters are roiled and muddy. Is it really the time for the mistress of the nation to wear what everyone will think of as a man’s garments?”

“Is it the time?” Briony clapped her hands together in frustration. “If not now, when? Everything is changing. Only a week ago, Kendrick was about to send me to marry the Bandit of Hierosol. Now I rule in Southmarch.”

“With your brother.”

“With my brother, yes. My twin. We can do whatever we want to do, whatever we think is right.” “First,” said Utta, “remember that Barrick is your twin, but he is not you.”

“Are you saying he will be angry with me? For dressing as I want to, wearing sensible, sturdy clothes instead of the frills of an empty-headed creature who is meant only to be pleasing to the eye?”

“I am saying nothing except that your brother, too, has seen the world he knows turned upside down. And so have all the people of the country. It has not been just a few days of change, Princess Briony. A year ago at the autumn harvest your father was on the throne and the gods seemed happy. Now all has changed. Remember that! There is a dark, cold winter coming—there is already snow in the high hills. People will huddle around their fires and listen to the wind whistling in the thatch and wonder what is coming next. Their king is imprisoned. The king’s heir is dead—murdered, and no one can say why. Do you think during those dark, cold nights they will be saying, ‘Thanks to the gods that we have two children on the throne now who are not afraid to turn all the old ways upside down!’.”

Briony stared at the Zorian Sister’s beautiful, austere face What I would not give to look like her, Briony thought Wise, so wise and calm —no one would doubt me then! Instead I look like a milkmaid most of the time, red-faced and sweaty. “I came to you for advice, didn’t I?” she said.

Utta made a graceful little shrug. “You came for your lesson.” “Thank you, Sister. I will think about what you’ve said.”

They had scarcely gone back to reading Clemon’s. The History of Eion and Its Nations when someone knocked quietly at the door.

“Princess Briony?” called Rose Trelling from the corridor. “Highness? It is nearly time for you to see your council.”

Briony got up and gave Utta a kiss on her cool cheek before going out to her waiting maids. There wasn’t room for them to walk three abreast in the narrow passageway so Rose and Moina dropped behind her, Briony could hear the sides of their skirts brushing the walls.

Moina Hartsbrook cleared her throat. “That man… says he would be honored if he could find you in the garden again tomorrow.”

Briony couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s disapproving tone. “By ‘that man’ you mean Lord Dawet?"

“Yes, Highness.” They all walked on in silence for a while, but Briony could sense Moina trying to work up the courage to speak again. “Princess,” she said at last, “forgive me, but why do you see him? He is an enemy of the kingdom.”

“And so are many foreign envoys. Count Evander of Syan and the old wheezing fellow from Sessio who smells like horse dung—you don’t think those are our friends, do you? Surely you remember that fat pig Angelos, the envoy from Jellon, who smiled at me every day and fawned over Kendrick, until we woke up one morning and found that his master King Hesper had sold Father to Hierosol. I would have killed Angelos myself if he hadn’t already made the excuse of a hunting trip and slipped away back to Jellon. But until we catch them doing something wrong, we put up with them.That’s called statecraft.”

“But… but is that really why you talk to him?” Moina was being stubborn; she ignored Rose’s elbow bumping her ribs. “Just for… statecraft?”

“Are you asking if I spend time with him because I find him handsome?”

Moina blushed and looked down. Briony’s other attendant was also having trouble meeting her eyes. “I don’t like him either,” Rose confessed.

“I’m not planning to marry him, if that’s what you’re wondering.” “Highness!” Her ladies-in-waiting were shocked. “Of course not!”

“Yes, he is handsome. But he is almost my father’s age, don’t forget I’m interested in what he has to say about the many places he has seen, the southern continent where he was born and its deserts, or old Hierosol with all its ruins. I have not had much chance to see other places, you know.” Her maids looked at her with the expressions of young women who associated journeying in foreign lands with little beside hardship and possible ravishment. She knew they would never understand her longing to learn of things beyond this damp, dark old castle. “But I am even more interested in what Dawet has to say about Shaso, of course. Who, you may remember, is in chains because he seems to have killed my brother. Is it acceptable to the two of you, that I should try to understand the reasons why Prince Kendrick was murdered?”

Rose and Moina were both caught up in sputtering apologies, but Briony knew she had not been entirely honest: there was more to her feelings about Dawet than simply admiration for his wide experience, although she was not exactly sure what those feelings were. She was no mere girl, she told herself, to fawn over a lovesome face, but something about the man truly had caught her attention and she considered him more than she should, wondered what he thought both of her and her court.

He would have earned me off to Ludis without a second thought, she reminded herself. That is the kind of man he is. If Kendrick had announced it a day earlier, I would be halfway to Hierosol by now, on my way to meet my new husband, the Lord Protector.

It suddenly occurred to her that since she felt certain Kendrick had in the end decided to give her to Ludis for the greater good of Southmarch, the prince regent’s death had occurred at the last possible moment to prevent that from happening. The idea was so obvious and so surprising that she stopped in the middle of the hallway and her two ladies bumped into her from behind. It took a moment before they were all sorted out and moving again, but now Briony wished she did not have to go to the council chamber. This strange new thought made everything look different, as a cloud passing in front of the sun turned a bright day into sudden twilight.

But who would be so anxious to stop Kendrick sending me away? And where would Shaso fit into such a conspiracy? Or had it been arranged not to keep Briony herself in Southmarch, but by someone who wished to take the throne? But even if it was someone in the family with a blood-claim, someone like Gailon Tolly or Rorick, there are still two better claims ahead of any of them — Barrick’s and mine. They would have to kill us, too.

No, there are more than two claims ahead of both Gailon and Rorick, Briony remembered. There are three. There is also the child in Anissa’s belly.

And, of course, that infant would be the heir to the throne if he or she was born brotherless and sisterless into the world.

Anissa? Briony suddenly did not want to think about such things anymore. She had never much cared for her stepmother, but surely no woman would murder an entire innocent family for the sake of an unborn child— a child who might not even live? Surely not. But it was disturbingly hard to clear away such suspicions once they had begun to take root. Wasn’t Anissa’s family in Devonis related in some way to King Hesper of Jellon, the one who sold Briony s father to Hierosol in the first place?

Gailon, Rorick Longarren, her father’s wife—she could not think of any of them now without suspicion This is what murder does, she realized. She had reached the door of the council chamber and now waited to be announced. Barrick was slouched in one of the two tall chairs at the head of the table, arms folded tightly across his chest as though he were cold, the face framed in the collar of black fur even more pale than usual. It does not make one phantom only —it makes hundreds.

Once these halls were full of people I knew, even though I might not have liked them all. Now the house is crowded with demons and ghosts.

Wait and I will call for you, the message from Avin Brone commanded. Even without the Eddon wolf and stars and Brone’s own sigil both stamped in wax at the bottom, the lord constable’s thick, black pen strokes would have been unmistakable.

Ferras Vansen waited in his dress cloak just inside the doorway to the council chamber between two of his guardsmen Two more guards waited out in the hall with the man they would present to the councillors. The council room, known as the Oak Chamber for the massive wooden table at its center, was an old room that had once been the castle treasury in the dangerous days of the marauding Gray Companies, a large but windowless space with only two doors, nested in the maze of corridors behind the throne hall. The captain of the royal guard had never much liked the stark, stony room: it was the kind of place built for last stands, for the dreadful heroics of defeat and disaster.

The guard captain had been furious at first that Lord Brone should treat their news so offhandedly, ordering it held until the end of a long council session full of far more trivial matters, but as first one hour passed, then another, Vansen had come to believe he understood Brone’s thinking. Many days had passed since Prince Kendrick’s death—a killing still unexplained as far as most of the people of Southmarch were concerned, even if the murderer himself had been captured. The business of the land had been almost uniformly ignored since then, and many things had already waited in pressing need of answer before the prince regent died. If Vansen had been allowed to present his own news first, it was possible that none of this other business would have had its audience.

So he waited—but it was not easy.

He let his eye rove across the dozen noblemen who made up today’s council, playing a game of anticipating an attack on the royal twins first by this one, then by that, and trying to decide how he would counter it. The nobles looked bored,Vansen thought. They didn’t seem to realize that after the recent events boredom was a privilege, perhaps even a luxury no one could afford.

Ferras also thought young Prince Barrick still appeared very ill, although perhaps the boy was just careworn. Whatever the cause, Barrick was certainly not paying the closest attention to the business of the kingdom. As case after case came up before them—the rents on royal lands in need of attention, official embassies of grief and support fromTalleno, Ses-sio, and Perikal to be heard, important property disputes that had come up from the assize courts or the temple courts needing a final decision—the young prince barely seemed to attend the speakers. In most cases he simply waited for Briony to speak, then nodded his head in agreement, all the while rubbing the crippled arm that he held in his lap like a pet dog. Only a question from Lord Nynor the castellan seemed to awaken the boy from his lethargy at last and kindle a light in his eye: Nynor wanted to know how much longer the Hierosoline envoy Dawet dan-Faar would be with them, since the household purse had made allotment for only a fortnight’s stay. But although he was clearly interested, Barrick became, if anything, even more silent and unmoving as Briony answered the question. The princess said that they could not of course hurry a reply to the man who held her father’s safety in his hands, especially at so troubled a time. She seemed almost as distracted as her brother. Ferras Vansen thought that Barrick did not seem to like her answer much, but the prince made no spoken objection and Nynor was left to go grumbling off to rearrange the household finances.

The princess and her brother dispatched several dozen such questions over the course of two hours. The gathered nobles of the council offered suggestions, and on some occasions dissenting opinions as well, but mostly they seemed to be watching the twins at their new task—watching them and judging them. Gailon of Summerfield made none of his usual objections, and in fact seemed to be as absorbed by his own thoughts as the prince and princess were by theirs. When the subject of the envoy Dawet came up, it seemed Gailon might say something, but the moment passed and the handsome duke resumed picking at the leg of the council table with a small ceremonial dagger, barely hiding what was obviously some great frustration, although Ferras Vansen had no idea what its cause might be. For the first time Vansen could see Summerfield’s duke for what he really was, despite all his power and wealth a man younger than Vansen himself, and one with less training in silence and patience as well.

It must have been hard for him with that drunken blowhard of a father. Nobody outside Summerfield Court missed old Duke Lindon very much, and Vansen couldn’t help guessing that there probably weren’t many people in his duchy who missed him either.

The afternoon wore on, bringing nothing more interesting than reports of a sharp increase in the number of strange creatures that seemed to be coming from across the Shadowline. Something with spines and teeth had badly injured some children near Redtree, and a man had been killed by a goat with black horns and no eyes, which the locals had promptly captured, killed, and burned, but most of the reports were of creatures that seemed harmless despite their strangeness, many of them crippled or dying, as though they had not been prepared for the world on this side of the unseen barrier.

At last even the novelty of these tales began to fade. Some of the council members began to ignore the proceedings and talk openly among themselves despite sharp looks from Brone. Vansen was intrigued to see that the lord constable seemed also to have taken up the role of first minister, a position unfilled since the old Duke of Summerfield’s death a year earlier. He wondered if this was part of the reason for the young duke’s disgruntlement. So many things are out of joint since the king went away, he thought.

“And now, if it pleases you, Highnesses,” Avin Brone announced after a long dispute over the construction of a new Trigonate temple had left most of the table yawning, “there is some important business we have saved until last.”

Several of the nobles, slumped and weary, actually straightened up, their attention finally caught Vansen was about to fetch the witness when Brone surprised him by turning his back on him and summoning in two people Vansen had never even seen, a round-eyed man and a young girl. The man was bald as a turtle, although otherwise he seemed of healthy middle years, and even the girl was odd to look upon she seemed to have plucked out her eyebrows entirely, as in the style of a hundred years before, and her hairline began far up her forehead. She wore a skirt and shawl that mostly hid her form, but the man certainly had the bulging chest and long, muscled arms typical of his kind.

Skimmers! Hundreds of the water-loving folk lived within the castle walls, and even though they generally stuck to their own kind and places, Vansen had encountered them often. But seeing them in the highest council chamber did surprise him, especially because he had thought that his own news would be asked for next.

“Highnesses,” Avin Brone declared, “this is the fisherman Turley Longfingers and his daughter. They have something they wish to tell you.”

Barrick stirred. “What is this, the entertainment? Have we put old Puzzle out to graze at last and found some new talents?”

Briony gave her brother a look of irritation. “The prince is tired, but he’s right about one thing—this is unusual, Lord Brone. It feels like a bit of mummery, saved till last.”

“Not last, I am afraid,” responded the lord constable. “There will be more. But forgive the surprise. I did not know whether they would come forth and tell this story until just before the council came to the table. I have been chasing down the rumor for days.”

“Very well.” Briony turned to the fisherman, who was squeezing an already shapeless hood or hat in the clawlike hands that must have given him his name. “He said your name is Turley?"

The man swallowed. Vansen wondered what could make one of the normally imperturbable Skimmers, folk who routinely swam with sharks and killed them with knives when it was needful, look so harrowed. “Turley, yes,” he said in a thick voice. “It is that, my queen.”

“I’m not a queen and my brother isn’t a king. The real king is our father, and he still lives, thank all the gods “ She looked at him closely. “I have heard that among yourselves you Skimmers don’t use Connoric names.”

Turley’s eyes widened. They had very little white around the edges. “We do have our own talk, Majesty, that’s true.” “Well, if you would prefer to use a name like that, you may.”

He looked for a moment as though he might actually bolt the room, but at last shook his gleaming head. “Prefer not, Majesty. Close-held, our names and talk. But no harm done to tell you of our clan. Back-on-Sunset-Tide, we are called.”

She smiled a little, but her brother beside her just looked aggrieved. “A very fine name. Now why has Lord Brone brought you before the council?”

“My daughter Ena’s tale it is, truly, but she was frightened to speak before them as high as yourselves, so came I with her.” The man stretched out his long arm and his daughter moved against him. In her odd way, with her small stature and huge, watchful eyes, Vansen thought the girl almost pretty, but he could not ignore that oddity entirely: the Skimmers carried their strangeness around with them like a cloak. He had never yet talked to one without being reminded several times by his eyes and ears and even his nose that it was a Skimmer he was speaking to and not an ordinary person.

“Very well, then,” said Briony. “We are listening.”

“On the night…What happened, it was on the night before the night of the killing,” said Turley. Briony sat a little straighter. It was so quiet in the room Vansen could hear her skirts rustling. “The killing?” “Of the prince. The one that just was buried.”

Barrick was not slouching anymore either. “Go on.”

“My daughter here, she was… she was…” The hairless man looked flustered again, as though he had been pulled out of a shadowy, safe place and into bright light.”Out when she should not be.With a young man, one of the Hull-Scrapes-the-Sand folk, who should know better.”

“And where is this young man?” asked Briony.

“Nursing some bruises.” Turley Longfingers spoke with a certain dark satisfaction. “He’ll not be taking young girls midnight paddling in our lagoon for a bit.”

“Go on, then. Or perhaps now that your daughter has seen us and heard us, she will be able to tell the story herself. Ena?”

The girl jumped at the sound of her name, although she had been listening to every word. She blushed, and Vansen thought the dark mottling on neck and cheeks robbed her of the momentary beauty she had showed before. “Yes, Majesty,” the girl said. “A boat I saw, Majesty.”

“A boat?"

“With no lights. It slid past the place where I was swimming with… with my friend, it did. All cut-paddled.” “Cut-paddled?”

“Dipping paddle blade sideways-like.” Turley demonstrated. “That’s what we call the stroke when someone tries to be quiet.”

“This was in the South Lagoon?” Barrick asked. “Where?”

“Near the shore at Hangskin Row,” the girl replied. “Someone was waiting for it on the Old Tannery Dock. That’s how we name it. The one closest to the tower what has all the banners on it. They had a light—him on the dock, I mean—but it was hooded. Up the boat went to it, still cut-paddled, and then they gave them something.”

“They?” Briony leaned forward. The princess looked unusually calm, but Ferras Vansen thought he could see something else behind her pale features, a fear she was struggling to hide, and for a moment all the helpless affection he had for her came surging up inside him. He would do anything for Briony Eddon, he realized, anything to protect her, no matter what she thought of him.

A jest, Vansen? He needed no enemies to do it—he could mock himself. Do anything? You already had the protecting of her elder brother and now he’s dead.

“The one in the boat,” the Skimmer girl said, “gave something to the one on the dock. We couldn’t see what it was or who they were. Then the boat went away again, out toward the front seawall.”

“And even after the prince was murdered the next night, you did not come forward?” Briony asked, her face gone hard. “Even after the ruling lord of Southmarch was killed? Are you so used to seeing things like this on the lagoon?”

“Dark boats paddling silent, yes, sometimes,” the girl told her, gaining courage as she went. “Our folk and the fishermen have feuds and people get into trouble, and… and other things happen. But I still thought it meant no good, that shuttered light. I feared saying anything, though, because… because of my Rafe.”

“Your Rafe!” snorted her father. “He’ll be no one’s Rafe if I see him near our dockhouse again. Hands soft as skateskin, and he’s a Hullscraper!”

“He’s kind,” said the girl quietly.

“I think that’s enough.” Avin Brone came forward. “Unless Your Highnesses have other questions… ?”

“They can go,” Briony said. Both she and Barrick looked troubled. Meanwhile Ferras Vansen was working it through in his head and realizing that the tower the girl mentioned must be the Tower of Spring—and that the prince and princess must know that, too.

Queen Anissa’s residence, he thought. But there are other things on that side of the castle as well —the observatory, more than a few taverns, and at least one of our own guardhouses, not to mention the homes of hundreds of Skimmers and ordinary folk. It tells us nothing truly useful. Still, there was something about the idea that tugged at him, so that for a moment he nearly forgot his own pressing errand here.

As Lord Brone’s man-at-arms showed out the two Skimmer folk, the court physician Chaven slipped in past them to stand just inside the council chamber doorway, an unsettled look on his round face.

“Now we have one last piece of business,” said Brone. “A minor thing only, so I think that after such a long piece of talking and listening we might send the extra guards and servants away and let them get on with preparing for the midday meal. Will you indulge me in this, Prince Barrick, Princess Briony?”

The twins gave their assent and within a few moments the chamber was empty of everyone except the councillors themselves, Vansen and his guards, and Chaven, who still lingered beside the far door like a schoolboy waiting for punishment.

“So?” Barrick sounded tired and childishly irritated; it was hard to believe he and Briony were the same age. “Obviously you want to thwart rumors, Lord Brone, so why wait until after the news of this mystery boat has been delivered? Right now half the people you sent out are hurrying to find someone to tell about this.”

“Because that is what we want people talking about, Highness,” said Brone. “It is true about the boat, but at this point it’s also meaningless. It will not frighten people, just intrigue them. Best of all, it will mean that no one will be in a hurry to find out what we are saying here, now.”

“They already know what we’re going to be saying, though, don’t they?” asked Briony. “We are going to discuss what that Skimmer girl saw and whether it means anything.”

“Perhaps,” said Brone. “But perhaps not. Forgive me for playing a deep game, my lord and lady, but I have another bit of news for you, one that would make for much more fearful rumors. Captain Vansen?”

The moment came upon him so suddenly, and with his head still so full of questions about the Skimmers and of thoughts about the princess herself that for a painfully extended moment. Ferras Vansen just stood, not quite hearing. Then he suddenly realized the lord constable was staring at him, waiting, as was everyone else in the council. He leaped toward the door, certain he could hear the prince and princess snickering behind him, and stepped out into the passage to call for the other guards to bring in the young man.

“So you stand before us again, Vansen,” Briony said when he returned to the chamber. “I hope you are not looking for an advancement of your position?”

He waited a few moments to make sure he had control of his voice, would not misspeak. If she hated him, he could not but believe he had earned it. “Your Highnesses, Lords, this man beside me is named Raemon Beck. He has only reached Southmarch this morning. He has a tale you should hear.”

When it was finished and the first rush of amazed questions had gusted itself out, silence fell over the chill, windowless room.

“What does it mean?” the princess asked at last. “Monsters? Elves? Ghosts? It seems an unbelievable tale.” She stared at Raemon Beck, who was shivering as though he had just come in out of a snowstorm instead of a day bright with autumn sunshine. “What are we to do with such news?”

“It is foolishness,” growled Tyne of Blueshore. Several of the other council members nodded vigorous agreement. “Bandits, yes—the roads to the west are not safe even in these days. But this man has been struck on the head and dreamed the rest. That or he seeks to make a name for himself.”

“No!” cried Beck. Tears welled in his eyes. He hid his head in his hands, muffling his voice. “It happened—it is all true!”

“And bandits or boggarts, why did you alone survive?” demanded one of the barons.

Chaven stepped forward. “Your pardon, my lords, but I suspect that this man was merely the one chosen to bear the message.”

“What message?” Small spots blazed on Prince Barrick’s cheeks as though his fever had returned. He seemed almost as frightened as Raemon Beck. “That the world has gone mad?”

“I do not know what the message is,” said Chaven. “But I think I know who is sending it. I have been told by one I know, one I trust… that the Shadowline has begun moving.”

“Moving?” Avin Brone, who had already heard the young merchant’s story, now for the first time looked truly startled. “How so?”

Chaven explained how a Funderling man searching for rare stones in the hills had found the line moved some yards closer to the castle—the first such movement in anyone’s memory. “I had planned to tell you of this, Your Highnesses, but the tragic events that you know of kept me busy, and then I did not wish to burden you when you still had your brother to bury.”

“That was days and days ago,” Briony said angrily. “Why have you kept silent since then?"

Gailon Tolly saved the physician from having to answer immediately. “What is all this about?” the Duke of Summerfield demanded loudly. “Scholar, you and this Helmingsea lackwit spout nurse’s tales as though you spoke of true places like Fael or Hierosol. The Shadowline? There is nothing beyond it but mist and wet lands too cold to farm and… and old stories.”

“You are young, my lord,” said Chaven gently. “But your father knew. And his father. And your grandfather several times over was one of the men who regained Southmarch and this castle from the hands of the Twilight People.” The small man shrugged, but there was something terrible in the gesture, an entire language of resignation that did not hide the fear. “It could be that after all these years the Quiet Folk seek to have it back.”

The councillors all seemed to begin shouting at once, no one listening to any other. Briony stood up and extended a trembling hand. “Silence! Chaven, you will attend my brother and me at once in the chapel, or somewhere else we can have privacy. You will tell us everything you know. But that is not enough. Dozens of our countrymen have been robbed and perhaps murdered on the Settland Road. We must find out everything we can, immediately, before all trace of the attackers is gone.” She looked at her twin, who nodded, but his face showed his unhappiness. “We must go to the place where this occurred, with force. We must find the track of these creatures and follow it. If they can take men away from the road, they will have left some mark of their passage.” She turned on Raemon Beck, who had sunk to a crouch as though his legs could no longer support him. “Do you swear you have told us the truth, man? Because if I find… if we find that you have made up this story, you will spend the rest of a short and unhappy life in chains.” The merchant could only shake his head. “It is all true!”

“Then we will send a troop of soldiers at once,” she said. “To follow the trail wherever it leads. That at least we can do while we consider what this may mean, what… message we have been sent.”

“Across the Shadowline?” Avin Brone appeared surprised by the idea. “You would send men across the Shadowline?”

“Not you,” she said scornfully. “Have no fear.”

The lord constable stood. “There is no need to insult me, Princess.” They were the only two standing. Their eyes met over the heads of the others.

“Again, you have showed me hasty, Lord Brone,” Briony said after a moment’s silence, each word crisp as the sound of a small bell being struck. “Despite the trickery you have used today to put on this little show, you do not deserve as much anger as I have shown. I apologize.”

He made a stiff little bow. “Accepted, of course, Highness. With thanks, although you do me too much honor.”

“I will go,” said Gailon suddenly. He rose, too, his face flushed as though with drink. “I will lead a troop to the spot. I will find these bandits—and I wager my good name that they will prove to be no more than that. But whatever they are, I will bring back them or their corpses to answer for the crime.”

Vansen saw Briony exchange a look with her brother that the captain of the royal guard could not interpret. “No,” said Barrick.

“What?” The duke turned on the prince in anger. Gailon Tolly seemed to have lost his usual composure. Vansen’s muscles tensed as he watched. “You cannot go yourself, Barrick! You are sick, crippled! And your sister may think she is a man, but the gods know she is not! I demand the honor of leading this troop!”

“But that is just the issue, Cousin,” said Briony, speaking with cold care. “It is not an honor. And whoever goes must go with an open heart, not with an intent to prove himself right.”

“But… !”

She turned her back on him and her gaze swept down the row of nobles at the table, Tyne and Rorick and many others, before it lit on Ferras Vansen where he stood behind the crumpled, sobbing form of the merchant Raemon Beck. For a moment her gaze met his and Vansen thought he saw a little smile flicker across her lips. It was not a kind smile. “You, Captain. You have failed to prevent my brother’s murder and you have failed to find a reason that explains why Lord Shaso, one of our family’s most loyal retainers, should have performed that murder. Perhaps you will be able to fulfill this new charge more successfully.”

He couldn’t look at her any longer. Staring at his boots, he said, “Yes, Highness. I will accept the charge.”

“No!” Gailon was out of his seat again, so angry that for a worrying moment Ferras thought the duke actually meant to attack the prince and princess.Vansen was not the only one—the nobles on either side of Gailon Tolly snatched at his arms but failed to hold him. Brone’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, but the lord constable was almost as far away as the guard captain and much slower.

Gods! Ferras took a stumbling step forward. Too late, still too late, I have failed again! But Summerfield only turned and stalked away from the great table toward the far door of the council chamber. When he turned in the doorway, the young duke’s face was composed again, almost frightemngly so.

“I see I am not needed here, either in this council or in this castle. With your permission, Prince Barrick, Princess Briony, I will return to my own lands where there may be something of use I can do.” Gailon Tolly had asked their leave, but he did not wait to receive it before departing the chamber. His bootheels banged away down the corridor.

Briony turned toVansen again, as though Gailon had never been in the room. “You will take as many men as you and the lord constable think fit to assemble, Captain.You will take this man, too…” she gestured at Beck, “and go to the place his caravan was attacked. From there, send back messengers to tell us what you find, and if you can pursue the robbers, pursue them.”

Raemon Beck realized what was being said. “Don’t send me back, Highness!” he shrieked, scrabbling across the floor toward the prince and princess. “The gods’ mercy, not there! Put me in irons, as you promised, rather than send me to that place.”

Barrick pulled his foot back -when the man would have grabbed it.

“How else will we know that the spot is the correct one?” Princess Briony asked gently. “If every trace is gone, as you have said? Your fellows may be alive. Would you steal away even the slim chance of rescuing them?” She turned to the table full of slack-mouthed councillors, a row of bewildered masks like the chorus of some antique mummer’s play. “The rest of you may go, but you are sworn to secrecy about this attack. He who speaks a word about it joins Shaso in the stronghold. Chaven, you and Lord Brone come with my brother and myself to the chapel. Rorick andTyne, come to us in an hour, please. Captain Vansen, you will leave tomorrow at dawn.”

After she was gone and the chamber was all but empty, Vansen and two of his guardsmen helped the weeping Raemon Beck up from the floor.

“The princess does not take well to begging,” Ferras Vansen told the young merchant as they led him toward the door. The guard captain’s own thoughts were slow and numbed as fish at the bottom of a frozen stream. “Her older brother was killed—did you know that? But we will do our best to take care of you. For now, let us find you some wine and a bed. That’s the best any of us will get tonight… or for some time to come, I think.”

14. Whitefire

Barrick’s first thought was that the man looked like a chained beast, both frightening and pitiable, like the bear brought to the castle during the last Pennsday feast and made to dance in the throne room. All the courtiers had laughed—he had even laughed himself to see its clumsy antics and hear its snort of irritation, so like a man’s, when its trainer flicked its bandy legs with a whip. Only Briony had been angry.

But she always worries more about animals than people. If I had been one of the dogs, she would never have left my side while I was ill.

His father had not laughed either, he suddenly remembered. For on that Pennsday they had all still been together, Olin here in Southmarch, Kendrick alive, everything as it should be. Now all had changed, and since the fever even his own thoughts had become strange and untrustworthy.

He forced himself to concentrate, staring at Shaso with what he hoped was the proper expression of a ruling prince to a traitorous vassal. Despite the ankle-chain half hidden by the straw on the floor of the stronghold, its far end socketed into the stone wall, the Tuani man looked less like a bear than a captured lion.

You could never make a lion dance on its chain.

“There should be guards,” said Avin Brone. “It is not safe…”

“You are here with us,” Briony replied sweetly. “You are a famous fighter, Lord Constable.” “So is Lord Shaso, with all respect.”

“But he is chained and you are not. And he is not armed.”

Shaso stirred. Barrick had always found it hard to think of him as anything but ageless, but now the man’s years showed in his slack skin and gray-whiskered cheeks. He had been given clean clothes, but they were poor and threadbare. Except for the muscles that still rippled in his forearms and the back that had not yet learned to bend, this old man might have been a street beggar in Hierosol or one of the other southern cities. “I will not hurt you,” he growled. “I am not fallen so low.”

Barrick fought down a gust of anger. “Is that what you told our brother before you killed him?”

The prisoner stared. His dark face seemed lightened, as though a layer of fine dust had sifted down onto him from the surrounding stones, or as if his time in the sunless depths had leached out some of his color. “I did not kill your brother, Prince Barrick.”

“Then what happened?” Briony took a step forward, stopping before Brone was compelled to grab at her arm. “I would like to believe you. What happened?”

“I have told Brone already. When I left Kendrick, he was alive.” “But your dagger was bloodied, Shaso. We found it in your room.” The old Tuani warrior shrugged.” It was not the prince’s blood.”

“Whose was it?” Briony took another step closer, which made even Barrick uncomfortable—she was within the compass of the old man’s chain now, and all three of his visitors knew his cat-quickness. “Just tell me that.”

Shaso looked at her for a moment, then his mouth curved in what might be called a smile, except that there was no jot of mirth in it, nothing of happiness at all. “My own. The blood is my own.”

Barrick’s rage flared up again. “He’s telling a shadow-tale, Briony—I know you want to believe him, but don’t let yourself be fooled! He was with Kendrick. Our brother and two other men were killed, and the wounds were curved like his dagger, which we found covered in blood. He cannot even tell a good lie.”

Briony was silent for a moment. “Barrick’s right,” she said at last. “You ask us to believe much that seems unbelievable.”

“I ask nothing. It does not matter to me.” But even Shaso’s own hands betrayed him, Barrick thought—they sat in his lap like harmless things, but the dark fingers were working, clenching and unclenching.

“It does not matter to you that my brother is dead?” Now Briony could not keep her own voice calm. “That Kendrick has been murdered? He was good to you, Shaso.We have all been good to you.”

“Oh, yes, you have been good to me, you Eddons.” He moved a little and the chain clinked. Avin Brone stepped up beside Briony. “Your father defeated me on the battlefield and spared my life. He is a good man. And then he brought me home like a dog he had found in the road and made me into his servant. A very good man.”

“You are worse than a dog, you ungrateful creature!” shouted Barrick. This was a different Shaso, sullen and self-pitying, but still his tormentor, still the one who so many times had made him feel less than whole. “You have never been treated like a servant! He made you a lord! He gave you land, a house, a position of honor!”

“And in that way he was cruelest of all.” The frighteningly empty smile returned, a pale gash in the dark face. “As my old life slid away from me like a boat drifting from the bank, he gave me a new life, rich in wealth and honor. I could not even hate him. And later on, it is true, I myself played the slave master—I sold my own freedom. But just because of the two of us I was the worse traitor, that does not mean I have forgiven him.”

“He admits he is a traitor!” Barrick moved forward to tug at Briony’s arm, but she resisted him. “Come! He admits he hates our family. We have heard enough.” He didn’t want to be in the shadowy stronghold any longer, separated from the sun and air by yards of stone, caught in this place that stank of misery. He suddenly feared that Shaso held secrets more terrible than any blade, more devastating even than murder. He wanted the old man to stop talking.

Briony waited a moment before she spoke. “I don’t understand everything you say, but I do know that if you feel any loyalty to our family at all, even a tainted loyalty, then you must tell us the truth. If it is your blood, how did it get there?”

Shaso slowly lifted his arms. The crisscross slashes had mostly healed. “I cut myself.” “Why?”

He only shook his head.

“More likely he was wounded by the guards or Kendrick,” Barrick pointed out. “While they defended their lives.”

“Was there blood on their weapons?” his sister asked. “I cannot remember.” All this talk of blood had made Briony go quite pale. The Barrick of half a year ago, he knew, would have said something to distract her, to make it easier to discuss these dreadful things, but now he was hollowed, his insides burned black.

“Your brother had no weapon,” answered Avin Brone, “which makes his killing even more cowardly. The guards were covered all over with blood from their own wounds, so it was impossible to tell if their blades had been bloodied before they died.”

“You still have explained nothing,” Briony told the old man. “If you want us to believe that, tell us why you cut yourself. What did you and Kendrick speak of, that led to such a strange thing?”

The master of arms shook his head. “That is between me and him. It will die with me.”

“Those may not be idle words, Lord Shaso,” said Avin Brone. “As you know, we have not kept the headsman as well employed in King Olin’s day as in his father’s, but his blade is still sharp.”

The master of arms turned his red-rimmed eyes first on Barrick, then Briony. “If you want my head, then take it. I am tired of living.”

“The gods damn your stubbornness!” Briony cried. “Would you rather die than tell us what happened? What obscure point of honor have you caught on, Shaso? If there is something that will save your life, then for the sake of all the gods, tell me!”

“I have told you the truth—I did not murder your brother I would not have harmed him even if he had put his own blade to my throat, because I swore to protect your father and his household.”

“Wouldn’t have harmed him?” Barrick was feeling tired and sick again—even his anger had become only a distant storm. “Strange words— you have knocked me down and beaten me often enough. My bruises haven’t healed from the last time.”

“That was not to harm you, Prince Barrick.” The old man’s words had a sharp, cold edge. “That was an attempt to make you a man.”

Now Barrick was the one who stepped toward the master of arms, hand upraised Shaso did not move, but even before Avin Brone reached him, Barrick had stopped. He had remembered the courtiers who pelted the dancing bear with cherry-stones and crusts of bread, and how he had laughed to see the chained creature snapping at the missiles in annoyance.

“If you are the murderer of our brother,” he said, “as I think you are, then you will receive your punishment soon enough. Lord Brone is right— Southmarch still has a headsman.”

Shaso flapped his hand dismissively, His chin sank to his chest as though he was too weary to keep his head up any longer.

“That is your last word?” Briony asked. “That you did not harm Kendrick, that the blood on your knife was your own, but you won’t tell us how it happened?”

The old man did not look up. “That is my last word.”

As he followed Briony out the door, Barrick wondered if such a mad story could possibly be true. But if it was, then truth itself was not trustworthy, for there was no other explanation for Kendrick’s death, no one else suspected but Shaso. Take that away and all was shadow, as treacherous and inconstant as the worst of his own fever-dreams.

He must be the murderer, Barrick told himself If not, reason itself tottered.

Ferras Vansen studied the line of men as though they were suddenly discovered family—as, in a way, they were. They would be living together for weeks or months, travehng into the wild places, and even family did not breed any greater closeness than a company of soldiers—or in some cases, any greater contempt. They were only half a pentecount all together—any greater number would have excited too much attention—and their little troop was dwarfed not only by Wolfstooth Spire looming just above them, but by the empty expanses of the barracks’ reviewing yard. Vansen had chosen to take seven mounted men including himself, and a dozen-and-a-half foot soldiers, a pair of them new recruits who were little more than farmboys, to watch after the donkey-cart. In order to make things easier for his lieutenant Jem Tallow, who would command the castle guard in his absence and needed able, levelheaded men,Vansen had deliberately chosen his troop so that more than half were young and inexperienced. There were fewer than ten of these men that Vansen really trusted in a fight he hoped it would be enough.

Raemon Beck had been given a horse and a sword, both of which he handled like what he was, a merchant’s nephew Vansen had considered armoring the young man as well, but his own experiences in the bandit campaign of three years earlier had taught him that one unused to heavy gear would eventually make things hard for the others, even on horseback. He would keep the youth nearby, with himself and old hand Collum Dyer watching over him, that would be the young man’s best armor.

“Don’t look so grim,” he told Beck. “Your caravan was caught unaware, and only the gods know the quality of the fighting men who were with you. Now you’re with half a pentecount of hardy Southmarch Guard, many of them blooded in Krace and against the last of the Gray Companies. They won’t run from shadows.”

“Then they are fools.” Beck was pale and his mouth trembled a little when he spoke, but he had gained composure since his audience with the prince and princess. “They have not seen these shadows. They have not seen the devils that live in them.”

Vansen shrugged. He was not himself entirely happy about their mission; he had spoken largely to cheer the young merchant. FerrasVansen was a child of Daler’s Troth, and had grown up only a short distance from the haunted ruins of old Westmarch—on days the south wind blew back the mists, the broken shell of its keep could sometimes be seen from the highest hilltops. He and his people knew better than to speak contemptuously, as the Duke of Summerfield had, about the Shadowlme and what lay beyond that cloudy border. But like the rest of his people, a fierce and generally standoffish community of hillside farmers and herders, he was also keenly aware that his family’s land was a holding that had been only a few generations in the hands of mortals. The dale folk had long had a sense that there were forces waiting beyond the Shadowline to take back those lands, as well as an equally fierce and stubborn determination not to let that happen.

A messenger from Lord Brone trotted into the reviewing yard. Vansen called the troop to order. The horses stamped restlessly, waiting, and the donkey cropped dry grass from between the cobbles. The morning was already far advanced, but there was nothing to do but wait. Already the long shadow cast by Wolfstooth Spire was beginning to shrink back into itself.

She came at last, a slender shape in mourning black accompanied by two female attendants and the great bulk of the lord constable who, if he was not becoming the king, did seem to be changing into something like the father of the prince and princess, assuming a kind of ceremonial precedence over all the business of the Eddon family despite the comparative lowliness of his title. He was rich, though, with vast holdings of lands, and able enough that he had risen higher in the royal family’s favor than any of their closer kinsmen Vansen wondered if it could be this rather than anything else that had sent young Gailon of Summerfield home to his family’s dukedom—the knowledge that Lord Brone had sealed off the avenues of approach to the royal twins, leaving Gailon with a superior claim by right of blood, but inferior access.

Ferras Vansen couldn’t keep his mind for long on such bloodless matters as the princess approached. The past weeks had not been kind to her—she had not painted her face since the funeral and he could see by the blue shadows beneath her eyes that she had not slept well Still, despite this, despite the cold look she turned upon him, he could not imagine another face that would make him feel as he so helplessly did.

Perhaps it really is as the ancients say, he thought Perhaps a heart was indeed like a piece of dry birchwood, and could only take fire and burn brightly once—that any fire that came after would be only an ember, smaller and cooler.

Just my treacherous luck I should bum for her, for one I can never have, honorably or dishonorably, and who hates me in any case.

“Captain Vansen,” she said in a dry, firm voice, “my brother is resting, but he sends his wish that the gods speed your mission “ Vansen was a little surprised to see that there was an expression other than contempt on her face, the first time since Kendrick Eddon’s death that anything else had lit her features when looking at him. The problem was that he could not read the look, which might only have been weariness and disinterest. “I see you have your men ready.”

“Yes, Highness Your pardon, but are you certain you wish us to ride out so plainly in the middle of the day? Everyone will whisper of it.”

“Everyone is already whispering. How many people did that man there, Beck, speak to before he was brought to the castle? Do you think there is anyone in Wharfside or the Three Gods who hasn’t heard his story by now? You and your men will ride out down Market Road, across the causeway, and straight through Southmarch Town. Everybody will know that the Eddons are not so crippled by grief and fear that they ignore plundered caravans and kidnapped noblewomen.” She looked to Brone, who nodded his approval. “And this is not only for show, Vansen. We are not taking it lightly, my brother and I. So I trust you will take advantage of any trustworthy travelers on the road to send word back to us of your progress.”

“Yes, Your Highness. The monks of the university have a post service that travels back and forth on the Settland Road every fortnight, and it is a long time yet before the winter will stop them. I will keep you and Lord Brone informed, but I honestly hope I will not be gone so long.”

“You will return only when you have answers to give us,” she declared; sudden fury was like a whipcrack in her voice. “Of course,Your Highness.” He was stung, but in that moment he saw not just her anger, but something deeper and stranger in her expression, as though a frightened prisoner looked out from behind her face. She is afraid! It filled him with ridiculous thoughts, with the wild urge to kiss her hand, to declare his painful love for her. Thwarted in its natural direction and forced to find other escape, like steam hissing from beneath a pot hd, the sudden flicker of madness dropped him to his knees.

“I will not fail you again, Princess Briony,” he declared. “I will do what you have sent me to do or I will die trying.”

Even with his head down, he could sense the stir of surprise going through the other guardsmen, could hear Avin Brone’s sucked-in breath.

“Get up, Vansen.” Her voice sounded strange. When he was on his feet again, he saw that the anger was back in her eyes, along with a glitter that might have been tears. “I have had enough death, enough oaths, enough men’s talk about honor and debts—I have swallowed them all until I am ready to scream.

“You may think I blame you for my brother’s death. I do in part, and not only you, but I am not so foolish as to think some other guard captain would have saved him. You may think I have given you this charge because I want to punish you. There may be a little truth to that, but I also know you for a man who has done other things well, and who has the trust of his soldiers. I am told that you are levelheaded, too.” She took a step forward until only the broad sweep of her skirts separated them. Vansen couldn’t help holding his breath. “If you die without solving this mystery, you accomplish nothing. If you live, even if you have failed your charge, you still may do some good for this land at another time.”

She paused, and for a teetering moment it seemed to Vansen that she might say absolutely anything at all.

“But if the safety of any of my family is ever again on your shoulders,” she finally suggested, with a smile that would be cruel were it not so weary, “then you do indeed have my permission to die trying, Captain Vansen.”

She turned to his men and called to them,”May all the gods protect you. May Perin himself make your road smooth and straight.” A moment later she was walking back across the courtyard with Brone and the two ladies-ln-waiting hurrying to catch up.

“Not quite a court favorite, Captain, are we?” asked Collum Dyer, and laughed.

“Mount up.” FerrasVansen did not understand what had just happened, but there were many miles ahead of them, days of riding, and he would have plenty of time to think about it.

The one known as. The Scourge of the Shivering Plain rode down out of Shehen on her great black horse, letting the animal pick its way along the narrow hill paths with scarcely a tug on the rein, although in places the drop was so great that it was hard even to see the birds flying below her. Yasammez had no need for haste. Her thoughts were traveling before her, winged messengers faster than any bird, swifter even than the wind.

She descended from the heights and turned toward the oldest lands and the greatest city of all, which stood on the shores of the black ocean just outside the great northern circle of frost and ice. There were Qar folk that lived even in the northernmost lands beyond Qul-na-Qar, strange ones who walked in that permanent darkness and made songs with their fingers and their chill skin, but they had lived apart for so long that most of them had little to do with the rest of their race anymore. They scarcely even thought about the lost southern lands, for they had never lived there, and thus of all the Twilight People they had suffered the least at the hands of the mortal enemy. The cold ones would not serve Lady Porcupine: she would have to muster her armies from Qul-na-Qar and the lands that lay south of it, all the way down to the thrice-blessed fence that the mortals called Shadowline, and that the Qar themselves called A’sish-Yarrit Sa, which meant “Storm of Silence,” or, with a slightly different intonation of voice or gesture of the hand, “White Thoughts.”

The northerners might not care about the mortal thieves, but those who lived below their icy lands did. As Yasammez rode, they came up from the cavern towns of Qirush-a-Ghat, “Firstdeeps,” and out from the forest villages in the great dark woods to see her pilgrimage. The starlight dancers paused and grew silent on the hilltops as she passed. Those who did not know her—for it had been long since Yasammez had last left her house at Shehen—knew only that one of the great powers was passing, terrible and beautiful as a comet, and although they feared and respected such might, they did not cheer her, but watched in troubled silence. Those of the Qar who did recognize her of old were fiercely divided, because they all knew that where Lady Porcupine went, she was blown on winds of war and blood. Some returned to their families or villages to tell them that bad weather was coming, that it was time to put away stores of what was needful and strengthen the walls and gates. Others followed her in a quiet but growing crowd, their numbers swelling behind her like a bride's train. All of these knew that the bridegroom to whom she went was Death, and that her husband and master would not be careful of whom he took, but they followed her anyway. Centuries of anger and fear pushed them together, clenched them like a fist.

Yasammez was the blade which that fist had raised in the past. Now it would be raised again.

Her arrival threw Qul-na-Qar into confusion. By the time she rode through the great leaning gates at the head of a silent flock of Qar, the ancient citadel had already broken into camps of fanatical supporters and equally fanatical opponents, and a party larger than those two put together whose only shared philosophy was resistance to both extremes, a willingness to wait and see the shape that time took. But none of this was obvious, and to the casual eye—if there had been such a thing in this place—the great capital would have seemed to move in its usual deceptively calm way, its immemorial ordered disorder.

The servitors of Yasammez who waited for her within Qul-na-Qar, almost all of whom had been born into that service since the last time she had visited the city, had scurried to air out her chambers on the sprawling castle's eastern side, heaving up the shutters for the first time in decades and opening the windows. The chill marine winds and the ocean's ceaseless noise, like the breathing of a vast animal, filled the rooms as they rushed to make things ready for their mistress. This was a day that all knew would someday form a chapter of its own in the Book of Regret.

But as she made her way through the Hall of the Gate, passing beneath its living sculptures without an upward glance, Yasammez was surrounded not only by her own minions but by all the dark city's excitement-seekers as well—those bright-eyed ones who dabbled in the showier magicks, others who passed their time refining the arts of war and the arts of courtship until they were scarcely distinguishable from each other, all the planners of secret campaigns and delvers of forgotten mysteries. She was surrounded by believers, too, those who had yearned for a voice to echo forcefully their own talk of catastrophe, to satisfy their yearnings for an all-smothering doom. All came singing and calling out questions, some in languages that even Yasammez herself did not speak. She paid none of them any attention, and passed instead from the Hall of the Gate to the Hall of Black Trees, then on through many more, the Hall of Silver Bones, the Hall of Weeping Children, the Hall of Gems and Dust. She stopped outside the Mirror Hall but did not go in, even though the blind king and silent queen waited behind the doors, aware of her coming since before she even left her high house.

Instead she told the servitor who guarded the entrance—a Child of the Emerald Fire who showed the faint glow of its kind even through its robe and mask— “Outside the gate there are thousands of our race who have followed me here from the countryside. See that they are well-treated. Soon I will speak to them.”

The masked figure did not reply, but bowed. Yasammez turned away from the Mirror Hall—it was not yet time to seal the Pact of the Glass, although that time would come before she left Qul-na-Qar again—and made her way to her old chambers overlooking the sea and the dark twilight sky. The crowd that had gathered inside the great castle and followed her through the halls like ants through a rotting tree were left to stand, to wait, to stare at each other in glee or shame or madness, and eventually to disperse.

It did not matter. There would be a time for all of them, Yasammez knew.

She had donned her plate armor, forged in Greatdeeps in the days before the Book, cured for centuries in an ice mountain without a name. The black spikes covered it like the quills of her namesake, a dark bristling that was obscured but not hidden by her cloak, which seemed almost as insubstantial as a thundercloud. Her head was bare she had set her featureless helmet on the table beside her, as though, like a favored pet, she wished it to watch the proceedings.

Seven other figures sat at the round table in Lady Porcupine’s chamber. It was dark in the room, only a single candle burning, its flame a-tremble before the open windows, but Yasammez and her allies did not need to see each other.

Some of what they said was spoken, some passed only in shared thought.

“Eats-the-Moon, what of the Changing tribe?”

“Many are with us I smell anger. I smell readiness. Ours were often the first of the People to meet the stone apes, back in the world before defeat, and the first to suffer as well. Not all are fighters, but those who are not shall be ears and eyes for the rest, swift fliers, silent crawlers.”

“Many? What number is that?”

A growl. “Many. More than I can count.” “And Greenjay? What of the Tricksters?”

“Cautious but willing to listen, as you would expect. Our tribe always likes to determine which side will win, and then join that side at an opportune time—not too late, but most definitely not too early.”

“Your honesty is commendable.”

“Can a frog be taught to fly? I tell you only what is true.”

“There will be no winner in this fight, even if we triumph. This is only a moment in the great defeat. But the mortals will suffer, and our own suffering will become less. What the stone apes inherit when we are gone will no longer taste sweet to them—will never taste sweet again. Make no mistake, the time has come for your Tricksters—and all the others, too—to decide the manner of their passing—not as individuals, but as families of the People.”

“But why, Lady? Why must we allow defeat? Still we are strong, and the old ways are strong. It is only our resolve that has been weak.”

“I have not yet come to you, Stone of the Unwilling. Soon I will ask you what the Guard of Elementals thinks…” “Ask me now.”

A pause. “Speak.”

“They think as I think. That we can retreat no farther, and that we can no longer live with exile and defeat. We must push them from our lands. We must put fire to all their houses and sickness in all their beds. We must shake down their temples and bury their cruel iron in the ground where it can become something clean again. We must bring on the Old Night.”

“I have heard you. But no matter what they wish, will your tribe follow where I lead, whatever path I may choose? Because only one can lead in this thing.”

“Can you lead, my lady? What of the Pact?”

“The Pact of the Glass will come to naught, an empty promise. But the old rules cannot be ignored, so I have agreed. It has been signed. Only an hour ago, I put my blood on it.”

“You signed the Pact? Then have they given you the Seal of War?”

For answer she lifted her helmet from the table. In the dark room the thing that had been hidden beneath it gleamed like molten stone. She lifted the red gem on its heavy black chain and put it on, let the stone fall with a dull clank onto her breast. “Here it is.”

For a moment only the sound of the ocean was heard, the waves pounding against the rocks. “The Guard of Elemental will follow you, LadyYassamez.”

The others spoke, one by one, telling her of their tribes, of their readiness or unreadiness, but all agreed—there were enough to muster. There were enough to cross the line and make war.

“Then I have one more thing to show you.” Yasammez reached beneath her great cloak. Buckles clicked. A moment later she lifted her scabbard and dropped it on the table, then wrapped her hand around the hilt of the sword and pulled it out. From point to pommel it was as white as packed snow, as licked bone. The candle flame, taxed by one too many chill breezes, shuddered and died. The only light in the room now was the subtle bhndworm glow of the sword itself.

“I have taken Whitefire from it’s sheath.” The voice of Yasammez, the People’s Fire of Vengeance, was matter-of-fact, whether aloud or in winged thought. Her words had weight because of who she was and what she said. “It will not be sheathed once more until I am dead or until what was taken from us is ours and the queen lives again.”

Briony found him outside, to her surprise and annoyance, wandering in the quiet and somewhat gloomy west garden of the residence. Except he was not wandering he was staring up at the roofline where the chimneys clustered like mushrooms that had sprouted after rain.

“I… Did you see that?” Barrick rubbed his eyes. “See what?"

“I thought I saw…” He shook his head. “I thought I saw a boy on the roof. Is it the fever? I saw many things when I had the fever…”

She squinted, shook her head. “Nobody would be up so high, certainly not a child. Why aren’t you in bed? I came to see you and they told me you had refused to stay in your chamber.”

“Why? Because I wanted to see the sun. But it’s almost gone. I feel like a corpse, lying in that dark room.” His face had closed again, the moment’s vulnerability replaced by something harsher. “It’s not like you need me, in any case.”

Briony was shocked. “What do you mean? Merciful Zoria, Barrick, not need you? You’re all I have left! Gailon has just left the castle—left Southmarch entirely. He will be back in Summerfield in days, full of discontent, telling anyone who will listen about it—and many people will listen to the Duke of Summerfield.”

Her brother shrugged. “So what can we do? Unless Gailon’s talking treason, we can’t stop him saying what he wants. In fact, it wouldn’t be easy to do even if he were talking treason. Summerfield Court has walls almost as thick as Southmarch and the Tollys keep a small army there.”

“It’s too early to worry about things like that, and if the gods are kind or Gailon has a shred of honor, we may not have to. But we have problems enough, Barrick, so no more of this nonsense, please. I need you to be well. Better a few days bored and restless in bed now than you being ill all through the winter months. Let Chaven tend you.”

“No more of what nonsense?” He shot her another of his suspicious glances. “Are you certain you don’t just want me out of the way so you can do something foolish? Pardon Shaso, perhaps?”

Her heart felt like a lump of lead. How could her twin, her beloved other half, think such things? Had the fever really changed him so much? “No! No, Barrick, I would never do such a thing without your approval.” He was staring at her almost as if she were a stranger. “Please, now is not the time for you and I to argue. We’re all that’s left of the family!”

“There’s still Merolanna. And the Loud Mouse.”

Briony grimaced. “That’s a strange thing, now you mention it. I have never seen Aunt Merolanna so distracted—perhaps over Kendrick, but it seems odd. She was strong as stone before the funeral, but has been grieving like a madwoman since, hardly leaving her chambers. I’ve been to see her twice and she’s barely spoken to me, as though she can’t wait for me to leave. In fact, it seems that all the family we have left is at loose ends. Oh, and here’s another surprise—since you mentioned her, I should tell you that our stepmother has asked us to dine with her tomorrow night.”

“What’s that about?”

“I don’t know. But let’s be openhearted and believe she wishes to be closer to her stepchildren now that Kendrick is gone.”

Barrick’s snort made his feelings clear.

“Another thing. Have you seen the letter Father wrote? The one Kendrick received from Hierosol the day before… before…”

Barrick shook his head. He looked annoyed—no, it was something more. He almost looked frightened. Why? “No. What does it say?”

“That’s just it—I don’t know where it’s gone. I can’t find it.”

“I don’t have it!” he said sharply, then waved his hand in weak apology. “I’m sorry—I suppose I really am tired. I don’t know anything about it.”

“But it’s important we find it!” She looked at him, saw that it was no good pressing; he was exhausted. “Whatever the case, never forget, you are needed, Barrick. I need you. Desperately. Now go to bed. Rest, and let me do what needs to be done tomorrow, then I’ll tell you about it when we go to dine with Anissa.”

He looked at her, then looked around the garden. The sun had sunk behind the residence’s western wing and the roofs were rapidly becoming dark silhouettes; an entire army of fever-children could have been hiding there now.

“Very well I will stay in my bed for tomorrow,” he said. “But no longer.”

“Good. Now, I’ll walk back with you.”

“You see, I don’t like sleeping,” he told her as they made their way down the path. Almost without her noticing it, he had taken her hand, as he had done when they were both children.”I don’t like sleeping at all. I have such very bad dreams—all of our family being cursed, haunted…”

“But that’s all they are, Barrick, dear Barrick. Just dreams. Fever dreams.” But his words had started a chill in her, even as the first evening breezes swirled through the garden and made the leaves of the hedges and ornamental trees scrape and rustle.

“I dream that darkness is coming down just like a storm,” he said, almost whispering. “Oh, Briony, in my dreams I see the end of the world.”

15. The Seclusion

The Seclusion, Qinnitan quickly discovered, was not a building, or even a group of buildings, but something vastly larger, a walled city within the autarch’s immense palace, sandstone brick buildings set in carefully husbanded grounds, most with shrines and scented gardens at their centers, all connected by hundreds of covered walkways that provided much-needed shade, so that one of the Seclusions residents could travel from one side to the other, a journey that might take the best part of an hour, without ever feeling the direct touch of the harsh Xandian sun on her skin. It truly was a city all by itself, home not just to the autarch’s hundreds of wives, but to the army of people necessary to care for them, thousands of maids, cooks, gardeners, and petty bureaucrats, and not a single one of them a man.

None were men in the conventional sense, but there were certainly many hundreds of people within the Seclusion’s great high walls who had been born with at least the basic elements of masculinity, but who simply had not, for one reason or another, managed to hang onto all of them.

The Seclusion took up a sizable section of the autarch’s gigantic Orchard Palace, just as the palace itself took up a large portion of Great Xis, Mother of Cities In truth, the Seclusion’s share was proportionately larger than other sections of the ancient and monstrous sprawl of buildings formally known as Palace of the Flowering Spring Orchard, because those who lived and worked in other parts of the great palace could share gardens and dining halls and kitchens, but the Seclusion must be kept separate and protected, and so each function had to be carefully reproduced within its walls and staffed only with women or Favored.

If the Seclusion was a small city, the Favored were its priests and governors. Because of the famous sacrifice of Habbili, son of Nushash, Xis had always been a kingdom in which the castrated were held in some esteem— it was almost as established a route to the corridors of power as the priesthood In fact, the Favored ruled not just the Seclusion, but many of the bureaucracies of the Orchard Palace, so that the more daring soldiers of the autarch’s army sometimes sourly joked—in private, of course—that real men weren’t wanted in most of the palace, and would only be welcomed in the one place they were absolutely barred, the Seclusion. The actual truth was that many ordinary men who still wore their stones held positions of influence throughout the autarch’s court, like Pimmmon Vash, the paramount minister. The Favored as a group were some of the autarch’s mightiest subordinates, but they were by no means all-powerful. They had to struggle, as did everyone else in the Orchard Palace, for every fleck of attention from the God-King Sulepis, from whom all power and glory radiated like the sun’s light. But in the metaphorical darkness of the Seclusion, that country of women in which women held no nominal power—although the more important of the autarch’s wives were powers unto themselves— the Favored ruled virtually without rivals.

The Favored of the Seclusion, perhaps in deference to a tradition no one could now remember (or perhaps for other, less exalted reasons) considered themselves women, not tremendously different from those over whom they watched, and made the traditional attributes of womanhood their own, although exaggerated into parody they were almost all extremely excitable, romantic, vengeful, fickle. And of course the wives and their born-female servants had their own complicated webs of influence and intrigue as well. Altogether, walking into the Seclusion was like entering a magical cave out of a story, a place strung with invisible strands and snares, full of beautiful things guarded by deadly traps.

Qinnitan’s own role in the place was confusing from the first, and within days of entering she had begun to long for the certainty of her old life, for her uncomplicated role as one of the youngest and thus lowest of the low among the Hive Sisters. All the autarch’s wives and wives-to-be—and it was hard to tell sometimes what the difference in status meant, since he so seldom visited any of them—were of infinitely greater importance than any of the Seclusion’s servants, and yet the hundredth wife, let alone new-minted Qinnitan who was something closer to the thousandth, had to wait weeks for even the briefest appointment to see Cusy, the immensely fat chief of the Seclusion’s Favored—the Eunuch Queen, as she was sometimes laughingly called in the Orchard Palace. But nobody in the Seclusion would ever have laughed at old Cusy to her face Of all the denizens of that place, only Arimone, the autarch’s paramount wife—a flinty, beautiful young woman known as the Evening Star, who was the autarch’s cousin and had been the wife of the last older brother Sulepis had murdered to clear his path to the throne—would have stood up to Cusy without a great deal of consideration. Since Arimone lived almost as removed from the Seclusion as the autarch himself (she had her own little palace and grounds nesded at one end of the vast compound like the inmost chamber of a nautilus, and no one, not even the other high-ranking wives, came there without an invitation) there was nobody to challenge the Eunuch Queen’s authority.

Qinnitan had the fantastic luck—or so it seemed at the time—to be taken under the wing of Luian, one of Cusy’s deputies, a motherly Favored (at least in size and demeanor, since she was not particularly old) who took an unexpected interest in the new wife and within days of Qinnitan’s arrival invited her to come to her chambers and drink tea.

Qinnitan was treated to the promised tea, along with powdered Sania figs and several kinds of sweet breads, in a tented, cushion-strewn room in Luian’s chambers. The meal was accompanied by a gale of gossip and other useful information about the Seclusion, but it was only at the end of the meal that Luian explained why her eye had lit on Qinnitan.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?" she said as Qinnitan bent to kiss her hand in farewell. Qinnitan had been caught by the fact of Luian’s large hands, one of the few things now that betrayed her beginnings as a man, and so she did not for a moment understand the question.

“Recognize you?” Qinnitan said when the import finally sank in.

“Yes, darling girl You don’t think I lavish my time on every little queen that comes through the door of the Seclusion, do you?” Luian patted her chest as if the idea gave her breathing problems; her jewelry rattled. “My goodness, we have had two already this month from Krace, which is practically the moon. I was shocked to hear they even spoke a human language. No, my sweetness, I asked for you because we grew up in the same neighborhood.”

“Behind Cat’s Eye Street?”

“Yes, my darling! I remember you when you could barely walk, but I see you don’t remember me.” Qinnitan shook her head. “I… I must admit I don’t, Favored Luian.”

“Just Luian, dear, please. But of course I was different then. Big and clumsy, studying to be a priest. You see, that’s what I thought I would be until I was Favored, and then I lost my taste for it. I even went to your father once for advice. I used to walk up and down the alleys between Cat’s Eye and Feather Cape Row, reciting the four hundred Nushash prayers, or trying to…”

Qinnitan let go of Luian’s hand and stood up. “Oh! Dudon! You’re Dudon! I remember you!”

The Favored waved her fingers languidly. “Sssshh, that name! That was years ago. I hate that name these days—ungainly, unhappy creature. I am much more beautiful now, am I not?” She smiled as if to mock herself, but there was something other than self-mockery involved in the question. Qinnitan looked at the person before her—it was a little harder to think of Luian as female now, after the recollection of her former self—discreetly examined the broad features, the thick makeup, the large hands covered in rings, and said, “You are very beautiful now, of course.”

“Of course.” Luian laughed, pleased.”Yes, and you have learned your first lesson. Everyone in the Seclusion is beautiful, wives and Favored. Even if one of us should hold a knife to your throat and demand to be told she is looking poorly that day, just a little peaked around the eyes, perhaps, skin just a little less rosy than it should be, you will say only that you have never seen her more beautiful.” For a moment Luian’s kohl-rimmed eyes grew hard and shrewd. “Do you understand?”

“But I meant it sincerely.”

“And that is the second lesson—say everything sincerely. Goodness, you are a clever girl. It is too bad that I will have so little to do with your training.”

“Why is that, Luian?”

“Because for some reason the Golden One has ordered that you must be schooled by Panhyssir’s priests. But I will keep a close eye on you and you will come to take tea with me often, if you would like.”

“Oh, yes, Luian.” Qinnitan wasn’t quite certain what she’d done to rate such attention, but she wasn’t going to turn her back on it. Having a link to one of the Favored, especially an important one like Luian, could make a world of difference in one’s accommodations, in the skill and tact of one’s assigned servants, in any number of things up to and including the continuing favor of the autarch himself. “Yes, I would like that very much.” She paused in the doorway. “But how did you know who I was? I mean, I would have been not much more than a baby when you left our old neighborhood—how could you recognize me?”

Luian smiled, settling back in her cushions. “I didn’t. My cousin did.” “Cousin?”

“The chief of the Leopards. The very, very handsome Jeddin.” Favored Luian sighed in a way that suggested she had complicated feelings about this handsome cousin. “He recognized you.”

Suddenly Qinnitan, too, remembered the solemn-faced warrior. “He… recognized me?”

“And you did not recognize him either, I see. Not surprising, I suppose. He has changed almost as much as I have. Would you remember if I called him Jin instead of Jeddin? Little Jin?”

Qinnitan put her hand to her mouth. “Jin? I remember him—a bit older than me. He used to chase after my brother and his friends. But he was so small!”

Luian chuckled deep in her throat. “He grew. Oh, my, he certainly did.” “And he recognized me?”

“He thought he did, but he was not certain until he saw your parents. By the way, please write and tell your mother that she will be invited to visit you when the time is right, and to stop pestering us with pleading messages.”

Qinnitan was embarrassed. “I will, Favored Lu… I mean I will, Luian. I promise.” She was still stunned by the idea that the slab-muscled Leopard captain could possibly be Little Jin, a perpetually wet-nosed boy whom her brothers had more than once smacked in the face and sent home crying. Jin—Jeddin-^-looked now as though he could break any of Qinnitan’s brothers in half with one hand. “I’ve kept you too long, Luun,” she said out loud. “Thank you so much for your kindness.”

“You are quite welcome, my darling. We Cat’s Eye girls must stick together, after all.”

“The gardens are beautiful!” said Duny. “And the flowers smell so lovely. Oh, Qinnitan, you live in such a beautiful place!”

Qmnitan drew her friend away from the climbing roses and toward a bench at the middle of the courtyard. Queen Sodan’s Garden was the largest in the Seclusion and its hedges were low, which was why she’d chosen it.

“I live in a very dangerous place,” she told Duny quietly when they sat down on the bench. “I’ve been here two months and this is the first conversation I’ve had where I won’t have to worry whether the person I’m talking to might decide to have me poisoned if I say the wrong thing.”

Duny’s mouth fell open. “No!”

Qinnitan laughed in spite of herself. “Yes, oh, yes. My dearest Dunyaza, you just don’t know. The meanness of the older Sisters back at the Hive, the way they’d get after the younger ones or the pretty ones—that was nothing. Here if you’re too pretty, they don’t just push you down in the hallways or put dirt in your soup. If someone is jealous of you and you don’t have a powerful protector, you’ll end up dead. Five people have died since I’ve been here. They always say they fell ill, but everyone knows better.”

Duny looked at her sternly. “You’re teasing me, Qin-ya. I can’t believe all that. These women have been chosen by the autarch himself! He wouldn’t allow anything to happen to them, praise to his name.”

“He scarcely ever comes, and there are hundreds of us, anyway. I doubt he remembers more than a few. Most of the brides are chosen for political alliances—you know, important families in other countries—but some of them are like me. Nobody knows why we’ve been chosen.”

“We know why! Because he fell in love with you.”

Qinnitan snorted. “I thought I asked you not to make up stories about me, Duny. Fell in love with me? He scarcely noticed me, even when he was making the arrangements with my parents, such as they were.” She made a sour face. “Not that they could have said no, I suppose, but they sold me.”

“To the autarch! That is not being sold, that is a great honor!” Duny’s face suddenly froze. “Won’t you be in trouble for saying such things?” she whispered.

“Now you know why I brought you out here, where there are no walls or high hedges for spies to hide behind.” Qinnitan felt as though she had aged ten years since leaving the Hive, felt very much the older sister now. “Do you see that gardener over there, over by that pavilion?”

“Him in the baggy clothes?”

“Yes, but not a him, and the gods save you if you ever said that in front of her. That’s Tanyssa, one of the Favored. Most of them go by women’s names here. Anyway, it’s her job to watch me, although I don’t know who’s given the job to her. Everywhere I go, there she is—for a gardener, she seems to travel from one part of the Seclusion to another very freely. She was in the baths yesterday morning, pretending to have some errand with the young Favored boy who heats the water.” Qinnitan looked at the well-muscled gardener with distaste as Tanyssa pretended to examine the leaves of a monkeyfruit tree. “They say she killed that young Akarisian princess who died last month. Threw her out of a window, but of course they say she fell.”

“But, Qin, that’s terrible!”

She shrugged. “It’s how things are here. I have some friends, too—not friends like you and I are friends, of course, although I may make some of those too someday. The kind of friends you have to have if you want to stay alive, if you don’t want to fall over dead after drinking your tea some evening.”

Duny looked at her without saying anything for a long time—a long time for Duny, anyway. “You seem different, Qinnitan. You seem hard, like one of those traveler girls that dance in Sun’s Progress Square.”

Qinnitan s laugh was a little harsh, but something about Duny’s innocence made her angry. It was the fact that Duny could still afford to be innocent, more than anything else. “Well, I probably am. Everyone talks nicely here—oh, they do talk nicely. And other than the occasional hissing catfight, everything is quite peaceful and comfortable. Do you like my dress?” She lifted her arm and let the pleated sleeve fall, graceful and translucent as a dragonfly s wing.

“It’s lovely.”

“Yes, it is. As I said, everything is quite peaceful and comfortable… on the surface. But underneath, it is a pit full of scorpions.”

“Don’t talk like that, Qin.You’re scaring me.” Duny took her hand. “You are a queen! That must be wonderful, even if the people here are tiresome. What is the autarch like? Have you… did you… ?” She colored.

Qinnitan could not resist rolling her eyes—after all, it was a self-indulgence she could not allow herself most of the time. “Duny! Don’t you listen? I already told you the autarch almost never comes here. When he wants to see one of his wives, he has her brought to his palace. Well, I suppose this is all his palace, but you know what I mean. He has never spoken to me since he bought me from my parents, let alone made love to me! So, yes, since you are wondering, I am still a virgin. As you may remember from listening to the older girls, in most cases a deflowerment requires the man and the woman to be in the same room.”

“Qin-ya, you shouldn’t talk like that!” Duny said, but whether because she was embarrassed or because she did not want to suffer further damage to her flowery illusions wasn’t clear. After a moment, she asked, “But if he didn’t fall in love with you, and you’re not a princess of somewhere—you’re not, are you?—then… then why did he marry you?”

“First off, he hasn’t married me yet,” Qinnitan told her. “At least I don’t think so. I’ve had some religious instruction from the priests—some very strange rituals—so maybe that’s why, to prepare me for the marriage ceremony. Some of the women here went through ceremonies, but some others were…well, just taken. But as to why he chose me… well, Duny, I don’t know. And nobody else in this poisonous place seems to know quite why either.”

“I have such a nice treat for you, darling,” Luian announced when Qinnitan arrived, a little breathless, in the Favored’s chambers. “We must primp and prepare, both of us. We don’t have much time.” She snapped her fingers and her pair of silent Tuani slave women came into the room like shadows.

“But … but, Luian. Thank you. What are we…”

“We are going to the palace, my sweet. Out of the Seclusion, yes! Someone very special wants to see you.” For a moment Qmnitan found it hard to breathe. “The… the autarch?”

“Oh, no!” Luian threw up her hands and laughed. The Tuani girl with the curling iron, who had come within an eyelash of burning her mistress on the arm, paled a little. “Oh, no, if it was the autarch himself they’d be preparing you for days. No, we are going to see my cousin.”

It took a moment for Qinnitan to understand. “Jeddin? Of the Leopards?”

“Yes, my dearest, we are invited to see handsome Jeddin. He wishes to speak with you, to hear stories of the old neighborhood. I am going along as chaperone, lucky girl that I am. I do so admire that young man.” “But… am I allowed to meet with any men at all?”

A look of annoyance creased Luian s powdered forehead. “He is not any man, he is chief of the Leopards, chosen by our autarch himself, praise to his name. Besides, I will be with you, child, I told you. If that is not respectable, what is?” But the Favored’s eyes darted briefly to the Tuani slave beside her, and Qinnitan could not help wondering if it was truly all as obvious and ordinary as Luian made it out to be.

When they were both ready, Favored Luian, rigged like a festival ship in a fringed-and-beaded robe, and Qinnitan in a less ostentatious and properly virginal white robe with a hood, different only in quality from something she might have worn in a Hive procession, they set out. Despite her misgivings, Qinnitan could not help being excited: it was the first time in three months she had been outside of the Seclusion’s walls, even if it was only to another part of the great Orchard Palace. Other than Duny, and Qinnitan’s mother, (who had spent most of her visit weeping over their family’s good fortune) this would be her first chance to see anyone from outside. And, needless to say, Jeddin would be the first natural man she had seen since he and his soldiers had brought her here, to this invincible prison of beautiful blossoms, splashing fountains, and cool stone arcades.

The Favored who guarded the Seclusion’s outer gate did not dress a bit like women. They were the largest people Qinnitan had ever seen, a half dozen hulking creatures with ceremonial swords whose flat, curved blades were almost wide enough to use as tea trays. They engaged in a long whispered discussion among themselves before Luian, Qinnitan, and the two silent Tuani servants were at last allowed to pass out of the Seclusion and into the greater palace, but only with one of the guards bringing up the rear of the small procession like an enormous dog guiding a herd of sheep. The little company continued on for a good portion of an hour, through lush but empty gardens and unused corridors and courtyards so opulent that they seemed to have been prepared for some royal princeling who had not yet moved into them.

At last they reached a small but prettily decorated courtyard that rang with the sounds of a fountain. At one edge of court, where the tiles gave way to a pocket garden with paths of pale sand, a muscular, sun-browned young man sat on mounds of cushions beneath a striped awning big enough for a dozen guests. As if he were the groom to Qinnitan s bride, he, too, wore a robe of flowing white. He stood as they approached, hesitated a moment between Qinnitan and Luian, between nominal rank and actual power, and then lowered himself to one knee before the girl.

“Mistress. So kind of you to come.” He rose and turned to Luian. “Respected cousin, you do me honor.” Luian produced a fan from her sleeve and snapped it open with a clack like an eagle taking wing. “Always a pleasure, Captain.”

Jeddin beckoned his visitors to join him beneath the awning, then sent his servant to fetch refreshments. After an appropriate time of small talk with Luian about her health and the health of various important residents of the Seclusion, he turned to Qinnitan.

“Luian says you remember me now.”

She blushed, since many of her chief memories were of him being humiliated by older boys. It was even harder to reconcile that with the present now that she saw him again. The Leopard captain’s muscles moved under his dark skin like those of a real leopard she had once seen in a cage in the Sun’s Progress marketplace, the most fearsome animal she had ever encountered. For all its strength, though, despite its dreadful teeth and claws, that leopard had seemed sad to her and not altogether present, as though it saw not the crowds of people around it but the shadow-splashed woodlands where it had once roamed—saw those places, but knew it could not reach them.

Oddly, she thought she saw something of this in Jeddin s eyes as well, but knew she must simply be romanticizing, muddling this handsome young man with the trapped beast. “Yes Yes, Captain, I do remember you. You knew my brothers.”

“I did.” Like an eminent man asked to recall the pivotal moments of his career, Jeddin began to reminisce at length about the days in Cat’s Eye Street, describing the adventures of a group of young scapegraces—of whom, he felt compelled to admit, he had not been the least mischievous. To hear him speak, he had been one among equals, and none of the miseries she recalled on his behalf had ever truly happened. It was strange, as though he had lived his childhood on the other side of an ornamental screen from the rest of them, making up his own mind what things meant, seeing only what he wished to see Several times Qinnitan had to bite her tongue when the urge to correct him became strong. There was something about Jeddin, the way he talked, that made her feel as though telling him now that even a small part of his memory was faulty would be no different than the way her brothers had sometimes pushed him from behind as he ran, making him go so much faster than his legs could carry him that he stumbled and fell.

The refreshments came, and as the servants poured tea and piled sweetmeats on plates, Qinnitan watched Luian watching Jeddin, which the Favored did with the sort of avidity she usually reserved for things like the rosewa-ter jelly being spooned into her bowl. It seemed unusual, not that Luian should find Jeddin attractive—he was more than that, his body as hard and wonderfully defined as a statue, his face befittingly serious and noble of cast, with nose straight and strong and eyes a surprisingly bright green under the heavy brows—but that someone like Luian, who in all other ways seemed to have settled into a kind of premature, matronly old age, and who, after all, had given up her original organs years ago, should still have such feelings at all.

“Well,” Luian said abruptly, ending a silence. “To think that after so many years we of the old neighborhood should have a reunion here!”

The captain’s emerald eyes now turned to Qinnitan. “You must be very happy, Mistress Of all of us, well as we have done, you have risen highest. A wife of the Golden One himself? He dropped his gaze. “An unmatched honor.”

“Yes, of course.” Although I might as well be married to a hassock or a sandal for all that comes of it, she almost said, but didn’t Jeddin had the look of a religious man, and obviously he must be devout at least where the autarch himself was concerned. “I am blessed by his notice.”

“And he is blessed by.” He paused and to her amazement appeared to blush.

“And he, our autarch, is blessed by all the heavens, and especially by his heavenly father Nushash,” said Luian abruptly and loudly.

“Yes, of course. All praise to the Golden One,” said Jeddin. Qinnitan echoed the blessing, but could not help feeling something important had just happened and she had missed it.

“We should go now, Cousin.” Luian waved for the Tuam girls to help her to her feet, which they did, fighting the Favored’s great weight like nomads trying to put up a tent in a high wind. “Thank you for the refreshments and the courtesy of your company.” There was a new tone in Luian’s voice, faintly cold.

Jeddin scrambled to his feet. “Of course, respected cousin. You grace us with your presence.” He bowed to her, then to his other guest. He did it with some grace, but that didn’t surprise Qinnitan, she imagined that even for a soldier, bowing well must be almost as important in the autarch’s court as handling a sword or a gun. “I wish you could stay longer.”

“Propriety forbids it,” said Luian shortly, setting sad for the door with her servants and Qinnitan fluttering in her wake like gulls. The huge Favored guard fell in behind them in the corridor, mute and sleepy-eyed.

“Did I do something wrong, Luian?” Qinnitan asked after they had walked for some distance in silence and were nearing the gate to the Seclusion Luian only waved her hand, whether because of discretion or irritation was hard to say.

When they had left the immense guard behind and were back within the walls, Luian leaned toward her and said, in a harsh whisper that might or might not have been too quiet for the Tuani servants to hear, “You must be careful. And Jeddin must not be a fool.”

“What do you mean? Why are you angry with me?”

Luian frowned. The paint on her lips had begun to smear a little into her face powder, and for the first time she appeared grotesque to Qinnitan and even a little frightening. “I’m not angry with you, although I will remind you that you are no longer a low-caste girl in the alleys behind Feather Cape Row. You have been given great honors, but you hve in a dangerous world.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh? You couldn’t see what I could see as clearly as my own hand at the end of my arm? That man is in love with you.”

Even in her astonishment, Qinnitan could not help thinking that the anguish on Luian’s face seemed less like that of a guardian unheeded than a lover scorned.

16. The Grand, and Worthy Nose

Collum Dyer had been cheerful all through the day’s ride, full of mocking remarks and droll assessments of life in Southmarch, and had managed to coax a few weak smiles out of the merchant Raemon Beck, but even Collum was grimly silent as they reached the crossroad. Dyer came from near the Brennish borderlands in the east and had never seen the old Northmarch Road. Ferras Vansen had passed this crossroad many times, but still found it a disturbing place.

“Gods,” said Collum. “It’s huge—you could drive three team-wagons abreast on it.”

“It is not that much wider than the Settland Road,” said Ferras, feeling a need to defend the more mundane thoroughfare that had so entranced him in his youth, which had led him to Southmarch and his current life.

“But look, Captain,” said one of the foot soldiers, pointing along the last clear stretch of the huge and disturbingly empty Northmarch Road before it vanished into the mist. “The ground drops away there on either side, but the road stays high.”

“They built it that way,” Vansen told them. “Because north of here it gets even wetter in the wintertime months. They built the roadbed up with stones and logs to keep it above the muck. They did things right back then. In the old days wagons and riders were going back and forth between Northmarch and Southmarch every day, and also the Westmarch Road joined it just on the other side of those hills.” He pointed, but the hills could only be seen m his memory; the mists were so thick today that someone might have draped a huge white quilt across the forested lands. It was strange to think of so much life here once, merchants, princes with their retinues, travelers of all sorts in what was now such a desolate place.

A thought flitted across his mind, quick and startling as a bat. Perin’s Hammer, what if we have to ride into the mist? What if we must pursue the caravan across the Shadowline into that… nothingness? In his life he had heard half a dozen people claim to have come back from the far side of that boundary, but he had not believed any of them. The one man of his village that everyone knew for certain had crossed the Shadowline and returned had never claimed anything. In fact, he had never spoken at all after his return, but had haunted the fringes of the village like a scavenging dog until the winter killed him. As a child, Ferras had seen that man’s constant expression of astonished horror—a look that suggested whatever had happened to him across the Shadowline was happening to him still and would continue happening every moment of every day. Although no one had said anything but what was correct and pious, everyone in the village had been relieved when the mad old man had died.

Collum’s question yanked him back to the here and now. “How far does the road lead?”

Ferras shook his head. “Northmarch Castle was about four or five days’ ride from here, I think. So the old gaffers in my village said, although it was at least a century before their time when anyone could still go there. And its lands and towns extended a good way farther north, I think.”

Collum Dyer clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Mesiya’s teats! And just think—now it’s all empty.”

Vansen stared at the wide road cutting across the hummocky land to where the fogs swallowed it. “So you think. So we hope. But I don’t want to consider it just now, to speak the plain truth. I don’t like this place.”

Collum turned and nodded toward Raemon Beck, sitting on his horse at the far side of the troop of guards, staring resolutely southward with a face pale as a fish’s belly. “Neither does he.”

FerrasVansen felt a tug of yearning as they rode along the Settland Road past the towns and villages of Daler’s Troth—Little Stell, Candlerstown, and Dale House, the seat of Earl Rorick Longarren, who would have wed the young woman stolen from Raemon Beck’s caravan. Vansen had not returned to his hilly home since he was still a raw young soldier, and it was hard not to think about how some of the men in Creedy’s Inn at Greater Stell would sit up to see him at the head of an entire troop, undertaking a mission at the direct order of the princess regent.

Yes, a mission that’s httle better than a banishment, he reminded himself.

But he was not much moved by the idea of preening in any case. His mother’s death a year before had left httle to tie him to this land of his childhood His sisters and their husbands had followed him to Southmarch Town. The folk here that he remembered would scarcely remember him, and in any case, what was the enjoyment of trying to make them feel worse about their hardscrabble lives? It was only the children of the really wealthy farmers, the ones who had mocked him for his shabbiness, for hisVuttish father’s strange way of speaking, that he would have wished to humiliate, and if they had inherited their fathers’ holdings they were undoubtedly richer than any mere guard captain, even the guard captain to the royal family.

There truly is nothing here for me now, he realized, with some surprise. Only my parents’ graves, and those are a half day’s ride off the road.

A light rain had begun to fall; it took him a moment to pick Raemon Beck from the crowd of hooded riders. Vansen guided his horse over to the young merchant’s side.

“You have a wife and some young ones at home, I think you said.”

Beck nodded. His face was grim, but it was the grimness of a child who was one harsh word away from tears. “What are their names?”

The young merchant looked at him with suspicion. Not all of Collum Dyer’s rough jokes had been kind, and clearly he wondered whether Vansen was going to make sport of him, too. “Derla. My wife’s name is Derla. And I have two boys.” He took a deep breath, let it out in an unsteady hiss. “Little Raemon, he’s the eldest. And Finton, he’s still… still in swaddling…” Beck turned away.

“I envy you.”

“Envy? I have not seen them in almost two months! And now…”

“And now you must wait -weeks longer. I know. But we have sent them word that you are well, that you are doing the crown’s business…”

Beck’s laugh had a ragged edge. “Weeks… ? You’re a fool, Captain.You didn’t see what I saw. They’re going to take you all, and me with you. I will never see my family again.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps the gods mean our end. They have their own plans, their own ways.” Ferras shrugged. “I would fear it more if I had more to lose, perhaps I honestly hope you come safe to your family again, Beck. I will do my best to see that it happens.”

The young merchant stared at his horse’s neck. Beck had a good face, Vansen thought, with strong nose and clear eyes, but not much of a chin. He wondered what the man’s wife looked like. Depends on Beck’s prospects with the family venture, he decided: a man could become surprisingly taller and handsomer merely by the addition of wealthy relatives.

“Do you… are you married?” Beck asked him suddenly.

“To the royal guard!” shouted Collum Dyer from a few yards away. “And it is a warm coupling—the guard gives us all a swiving every payday!”

Ferras grunted, amused. “No, not married,” he said. “Nor likely to be. One thing Dyer says is true—I am married to the guard.” There had been a few over the years he had almost thought possible, especially a merchant’s daughter he had met in the marketplace.They had liked each other, and had met and spoken several times, but she had already been pledged and so was duly married to a Marnnswalk furrier’s son with lucrative Brennish connections. Other than that, his dalliances had reached too low or too high, the taverner’s daughter at an inn called the Quiller’s Mint, friendly but twice widowed and five years his senior, and when he had first joined the guard, a woman of the minor nobility whose husband ignored her.

Too high… ? he thought. No, that was not too high —not compared to the madness that is in my heart these days. The image of Princess Briony’s face as she sent him away came to him, the strangeness of it, as though she did not entirely hate him after all. A year now I have felt it, this terrible, hopeless ache. There is nothing higher that I could aspire to, or more foolish How could I marry someone else, except for companionship? But how could I settle for any woman when I would think only of her?

Well, he thought, perhaps her wish will come true. Perhaps this journey will provide me with a chance to die honorably and everyone will be satisfied.

No, not everyone would be satisified, he realized. What Ferras Vansen really wanted was to live honorably, even happily. And to marry a princess, although that would not happen in this world or any other he could imagine.

He was meeting her near Merolanna’s chambers, in the back hallway of the main residence, known as the Wolf Hall for the faded tapestry of the family crest that took up a large portion of its south wall. It had too many stars and a mysterious crescent moon hung above the wolf’s snarling head, showing it to be a remnant of some earlier generation of Eddons. How long it had hung there no one could remember or even guess.

Like Briony, he had promised Merolanna he would come alone—no guards, no pages. She had been forced to speak sharply to Rose and Moina to get them to let her be, of course. Clearly her ladies feared she had an assignation with Dawet, but their resistance upset her just enough that she did not bother to tell them otherwise.

She watched her brother saunter up the corridor through the slanting colums of autumn light that filtered down from the windows, uneven light that made the passage seem as though it were under water and which turned the bucket and mop left inexplicably in the middle of the floor and the small offering-shrine to Zoria on the broad table into dully glimmering things that might have spilled from the belly of a sunken ship. For a moment, as Briony noted by the way her twin held his arm close to his body that it was hurting him, they might have been children again, escaped from their tutors for a morning to play scapegrace around the great castle.

But something was different, she saw. He seemed better—he no longer moved like a dying man, draggled and slow—but instead of becoming again the disdainful, unhappy Barrick Eddon she knew nearly as well as herself, he had a bounce in his step that seemed equally foreign, and his eyes as he neared her seemed to burn with a mischievous vigor.

“So someone in our family finally agrees to speak to us.” Barrick did not stop to give her a kiss, did not stop at all, but swept past, still talking swiftly, leading her toward Merolanna’s door as though he had been waiting for Briony, not the other way around. “After our stepmother, I begin to think they fear taking the plague from me.”

“Anissa said she did not feel well herself. She is pregnant, after all.”

“And it came on an hour before we were to dine with her? Perhaps that is all it is Perhaps.” “You are jumping at shadows.”

He turned to look at her, and again she wondered if the fever had truly left him. Why otherwise this eye bright as a bird’s, this strange air, as though at any moment he might fly into pieces? “Shadows? A strange word to use.” He paused and seemed to find himself a little. “All I’m saying is, why won’t our stepmother talk to us?”

“We will give her a few more days. Then we will make it a command.”

Barrick arched an eyebrow. “Can we do that?”

“We’ll find out.” She reached out and knocked on Merolanna’s door. Ellis, the duchess’ little serving maid, opened it and stood for a long moment stock-still and blinking like a mouse caught on a tabletop. At last she made a courtesy, found her voice. “She’s lying down, Highnesses. She wants me to bring you to her.”

Inside, several older women and a few young ones sat doing needlework. They rose and made their own courtesies to the prince and princess Briony said a few words to each. Barrick nodded his head, but smiled only at those who were young and pretty. He was bouncingly impatient, as though he already wished he had not come.

Merolanna sat up in bed as the serving maid drew the curtain. “Ellis? Bid the other ladies go, please. You, too. I want to be alone with Barrick and Briony.” Their great-aunt did not look ill, Briony thought with some relief, but she did look old and tired. These days Briony was not used to seeing Merolanna without face paint, so it was hard to know for certain whether the changes were real or just the ordinary punishments of time left unhidden, but there was no mistaking the swollen eyes. The duchess had been crying.

“There,” the old woman said when the room was clear. “I cannot abide being listened to.” There was an unusual violence in her voice. She fanned herself. “Some things are not for others to know.”

“How are you, Auntie? We’ve been worried about you.”

She manufactured a smile for Briony. “As well as can be expected, dear one. It’s kind of you to ask.” She turned to Barrick. “And you, boy? How are you feeling?”

Barrick’s smile was almost a smirk. “The grip of old Kernios is a bit more slippery than everyone thinks, it seems.”

Merolanna went quite pale. She brought her hand to her breast as though to keep her heart inside it. “Don’t say such things! Merciful Zoria, Barrick, don’t tempt the gods. Not now, when they have done us so much mischief already.”

Briony was irritated with her brother, not least because it did seem foolish to make such a boast, but she was also puzzled by Merolanna’s reaction, her frightened eyes and trembling hands. All through the time before Kendrick’s funeral their great-aunt had been the strongest pillar of the family and the household. Was it just that her strength had run out?

“I’ll say it again, Auntie.” Briony reached out and took her hand. “We have been worried about you. Are you ill?” A sad smile. “Not in the sense you mean, dear. No, not like our poor Barrick has been.” “I’m well now, Auntie.”

“I can see that.” But she looked at him as though she did not entirely believe it. “No, I have just . . had a turn, I suppose. A bad moment. But it frightened me, and made me think I’ve not done right. I’ve spent time, a great deal of time lately, talking to the Hierarch Sisel about it, you know. He’s a very kind man, really. A good listener.”

“But not to Father Timoid?” It seemed odd—usually Merolanna and the Eddon family priest were a conspiracy of two. “He’s a terrible gossip.”

“That’s never bothered you before.”

Merolanna gave her a flat look, almost as though she spoke to a stranger. “I’ve never had to worry about it before.”

Barrick laughed suddenly, harshly. “What, Auntie? Have you begun a love affair with someone? Or are you plotting to take the crown yourself?”

“Barrick!” Briony almost slapped him. “What a terrible thing to say!”

Merolanna looked at him and shook her head, but to Briony’s eyes the old woman still seemed oddly detached. “A few weeks ago, I would have been after you with a stick, boy. How can you talk like that to me, who raised you almost like a mother?”

“It was a jest!” He folded his arms and leaned against the bedpost, his face a resentful mask. “A jest.” “What is it, then?” Briony asked. “Something is happening here, Auntie. What is it?” Merolanna fanned herself. “I’m going mad, that’s all.”

“What are you talking about? You’re not going mad.” But Briony saw Barrick lean forward, his sullenness gone. “Auntie?” she asked.

“Fetch me a cup of wine. That pitcher, there. And not too much water.” When she had the cup in her hand, Merolanna sipped it, then sat up straighter. “Come, sit on the bed, both of you. I cannot bear to have you standing there, looking down on me.” She patted the bed, almost begging. “Please. There. Now listen. And please don’t ask me any questions, not until I finish. Because if you do, I will start crying and then I’ll never stop.”

It was finally Godsday, with Lastday to follow; Chert welcomed the days of rest. His bones ached and he had a hot throb in his back that would not go away. He was glad to bid the tennight good-bye for other reasons, too. The prince’s funeral that began it, with its weight of hard work and terrible sadness, had taken much out of him, and the boy’s disappearance that day had frightened him badly.

What is he? Chert wondered. Not just his strangeness, but what is he to us? Is he a son? Will someone, his true parents, come and take him away from us? He looked at Opal, who was sniffing at a row of pots she had set up on the far side of the table. My old woman will be stabbed in the heart if the boy leaves us.

As will I, he realized suddenly. The child had brought life to the house, a life that Chert had never realized was missing until now.

“I don’t think this bilberry jam is much good,” Opal said, “although it cost me three chips. Here, try it.” Chert scowled. “What am I, a dog? ‘Here, this has gone off, you try it’?”

Opal scowled back. She was better at it than he was. “Old fool—I didn’t say it had gone off, I said I don’t think it’s much good. I’m asking your opinion.You’re certainly quick enough to give it most other times.”

“Very well, pass it here.” He reached out and took the pot, dipped a piece of bread into it, lifted it to his nose. It smelled like nothing more or less than bilberry jam, but it raised a strange thought: if the old stories were true, and there were Funderlings before ever there were big folk, then who grew the vegetables up in the sunlight? Who grew the fruits? Did the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone create us to eat moles and cave crickets with never a bit of fruit, let alone bilberry jam? But if not, where would such things have come from? Did the Funderlings of old have farms under the sun? It seemed strange to think of such a thing, but stranger still to think of a world with no… “Jam, old man. What do you think of the jam?”

Chert shook his head. “What?”

“I take it back—you don’t have the wits to be a fool, old man.You don’t pay enough heed.The jam!” “Oh. It tastes like jam, no more, no less.” He looked around. “Where is the boy?” “Playing out in front, not that you’d notice if he’d gone off to drown in the Salt Pool.” “Don’t be cross, Opal. I’m tired. It was an uncomfortable piece of work, that tomb.” She took the pot of jam. “I’m sorry, old fellow. You do work hard.” “Give us a kiss, then, and let’s not quarrel.”

Opal had gone off to visit her friend Agate, wife of one of Chert’s cousins, and after checking to make sure the boy Flint was still erecting his complicated miniature fortifications of damp earth and bits of stone outside the front door, Chert poured himself a mug of mossbrew and pulled out the mysterious stone Flint had found. A week or so had not made it any more familiar the cloudy, unusually rounded crystal still matched nothing he had seen or even heard of Chaven was traveling for a few days, visiting the outlying towns with a colleague to check the spread of the disease that had almost killed Prince Barrick, and now Chert was wishing he had spoken with the physician about it before he left. The stone troubled him, although except for the fact that it seemed like something that might have come from behind the Shadowline he couldn’t say why. He had half a dozen other Shadowline stones right here in the house, after all—those which no one had wanted to buy, but which Chert had found too interesting to discard—and had not given any of them a second thought. But this.

I could take it to the Guild, he thought. But he felt strangely certain they would not recognize it either—maybe old High Feldspar would have, a man who had known more stonework and stone-lore than the rest of Funderling Town put together, but Feldspar’s ashes had been returned to the earth three years ago and Chert did not think there were many in the Guild now who knew more than he did himself. Certainly not about Shadowline stones.

“When are you going to the talking and singing place?" a voice said behind him, making Chert jump and slosh his mug. Flint stood in the doorway, hands so dirty it looked like he was wearing dark gloves. As if he had been caught doing something wrong, Chert dumped the weird stone back into his purse and pulled the string.

“Talking and singing place?" He remembered the boy’s reaction his first day in the tomb. “Oh I’m not going to work today, lad, but if you don’t like going there other days, you can stay home with Opal instead. She’d love to…” “I want you to go there. Go now.”

Chert shook his head. “This is a day of rest, lad. Everyone gets their days of rest each tennight, and this is one of mine.”

“But I have to go there.” The child was not angry or upset, merely fixed as a hard-driven wedge. “I want to go to where you work.”

Flint could not or would not explain his sudden interest, but neither would he be talked out of it Chert suddenly wondered if it had something to do with the stone—after all, the boy had claimed he found it out in the temple-yard, near the tomb. “But I can’t work today,” Chert explained. “It’s Godsday—none of the other men will come. And in any case, clattering away with picks and cold chisels would be offensive to the others having their rest.” Both above and below ground, he could not help thinking. He had become a bit leery of working in the tomb, although he still thought of himself as unmoved by big-folk superstition. Still, he would not be sad when the job was finished and he could move on to other tasks in other places.

“Then will you just come with me?" Flint said. “Will you take me there?"

Chert could not help being astonished. The child was ordinarily well-behaved, if a bit strange, but this was the most he had talked in days, and the only time Chert could remember that he had ever asked for anything, let alone asking this way, with the doggedness of an army laying siege.

“You want me to take you to the tomb?”

The boy shook his head. “To the temple-yard. That’s what it’s called, isn’t it? Well, near there.” He frowned, trying to think of something. “Just come.” He held out his hand.

Feeling as though he had entered his own front door and found himself in someone else’s house, Chert rose and followed the boy into the street.

“We won’t go through the Funderling roads,” the boy said matter-of-factly. “I don’t want to go near the talking, singing place.”

“If you’re talking about the Eddon family vault, there aren’t any tunnels from here that go there, or even close to it.” Flint gave him a look that seemed almost pitying. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll go up on top of the ground.”

“Boy, don’t you understand that my back aches and my feet ache and I just want to sit down?" Chert had barely kept up with the child, who seemed able to walk only for a moment or two before breaking into a sprint, then circling back like a dog anxious to be after the quarry. Chert’s only chance to catch his breath had been at the Raven’s Gate. The guards there were now used to the Funderling man with the adopted big-folk son, but they still found the situation amusing. This one time, Chert was grateful that they made him and the boy wait to pass through while they thought of clever things to say.

Finally, as the two of them walked through the winding ways of the inner keep, heading toward the temple-yard and the family vaults, he grabbed at the boy’s shirt to hold him back—he had already had one experience of how fast the child could disappear.

“Where are we going?”

“Up there.” Flint pointed to the roof of one of the residences. “They’re waiting for me.”

“Waiting for you? Who?” It took a moment to sink in. “Hold a bit—up there? On the roof? I’m not climbing that thing, boy, and neither are you. We have no business up there.”

“They’re waiting for me.” Flint was entirely reasonable and very firm. “Who?”

“The Old People.”

“No, no, and definitely no. I don’t know why you think…” Chert did not get a chance to finish his sentence. He had made the mistake of letting go of Flint’s collar and the boy now bolted off across the temple-yard. “Come back!” Chert cried. It was one of the more useless things he had ever said.

“I’ve never taken the strap to a child…” Chert growled, then had to close his mouth as stone-dust and mortar and bits of dried moss pattered down on him from his own handhold. You’ve never had a child to take a strap to, he told himself sourly. His backache was worse than ever, and now his arms and legs felt as though he’d spent the entire morning wielding one of the heavy picks, something he hadn’t done since his youth. And you’ll never take a strap to anyone if you fall and break all your bones, so give attention to what you’re doing Still, he was furious and more than a little startled. He had not known a child could look you in the face like that, then disobey you. Flint had been a child with his own mind and his own secret thoughts since he had come to stay with them, but he had never been troublesome like this.

Chert looked down and wished he hadn’t. It was years since he had been a scaffold man, and there was in any case something different about looking down at the distant ground when the rock ceiling of Funderling Town curved soothingly above your head. Climbing the outside of a building beneath the naked sky, even this wall with its relatively easy handholds, was altogether different and quite dizzying.

Shuddering, he lifted his gaze and looked around, certain that at this very moment a guard had noticed the intruder climbing the residence wall and was nocking an arrow, preparing to spit him like a squirrel. He had seen no one, but how long could that last?

“I’ve never taken the strap to a child, but this time…”

When he reached the top at last, it was all he could do to pull himself onto the tiled roof, gasping for air, arms and legs trembling. When he could at last drag himself up into a crouch and look around, he saw Flint only a short distance away, seated just below the crest of the roof with his back against one of the large chimney pots, waiting calmly and expectantly—but not for his adopted father, it appeared, since he was not even looking at him. Chert wiped the sweat from his face and began to clamber cautiously up the mossy slope toward the boy, cursing with every breath. Heights. He did not like heights. He didn’t really think he liked children either. So what in the name of the Earth Elders was he doing on the roof of Southmarch Castle, chasing this mad boy?

His legs were shaking so badly by the time he reached the chimney that he had to cling to the bricks while he stretched and worked out the cramps. Flint looked at him with the same sober stare he employed in all other places and situations.

“I am angry, boy,” Chert growled. He looked around to see if anyone could see them from an upper window, but the boy had picked a spot where the low roof was blocked by taller parts of the residence, window-less walls that turned this section into a kind of tiled canyon, protected from the view of any of the near towers. In fact, even the top of mighty Wolfs-tooth Spire was barely visible above them, blocked by the overhang of a nearby roof. But Chert still had a strong urge to whisper. “Did you hear me? I said I’m angry… !”

Flint turned to him and laid his finger across his lips. “Sssshhh.”

Just before Chert lost his mind entirely, he was distracted by a flicker of movement along the crest of the roof. As he stared in utter astonishment, a figure appeared there. For the first moments he thought the tiny man-shape must be someone standing on the uppermost point of some distant tower, a tower which itself was blocked from his view by the roof on which he and the boy were sitting—what else could explain such a sight? But as the figure began clambering down the roof toward them, moving with surprising grace and speed along the moss-furred spaces between tiles, Chert could no longer pretend the newcomer was anything but a finger-high man. He sucked in air with a strangled wheeze and the little fellow stopped.

“That’s Chert.” Flint explained to the tiny man. “He came with me I live in his house.”

The minuscule fellow began to descend again, faster now, almost swinging from one handhold to another, until he reached Flint. He stood by the boy and peered past him at Chert with—as far as Chert could read in a face the size of a button—a measure of suspicion.

“And tha say un be good, so will I believe ‘ee.” The tiny fellow’s voice was high as the fluting of a songbird, but Chert could make out every word.

“A Rooftopper.” Chert breathed. It was amazingly strange to see an old story standing in front of you, living and breathing and no bigger than a cricket. He had thought the Rooftoppers, if not entirely invented by generations of Funderling mothers and grannies, to be at least so distantly lost in history as to be the same thing. “Fissure and fracture, boy! Where did you find him?"

“Find me?” The little creature stepped toward him, fists cocked on his hips. “What, Beetledown the Bowman but a child’s toy, found and dropped again. “Bested me in fair fight, un did.”

Chert shook his head in confusion, but Beetledown didn’t seem to care Instead, he turned and produced a tiny silver object from the inside of his jerkin and put it to his lips. If it made a noise, it was too quiet or high-reaching for Chert’s old ears, but a moment later an entire crowd of diminutive shapes appeared over the crest of the roof, moving so quickly and silently that for a moment it seemed a small carpet was sliding down the tiles toward them.

There were at least two or three dozen Rooftoppers in the gathering or delegation or whatever it was. Those in the front were mounted on gray mice and carried long spears. Their plate armor looked to be made from nutshells and they wore the painted skulls of birds as helmets, as they pulled up their velvet-furred mounts, they regarded Chert balefully through the eyeholes above the long beaks.

The rest of the group followed on foot, but in their own way they were just as impressive. Although their clothes were almost uniformly of dark colors, and made of fabric too heavy and stiff to drape like the clothes of Funderling and big folk, they had clearly spent much time on these garments—the outfits were intricate in design, and both the men and the women moved with the gravity of people wearing their finest raiment.

All this, he thought, still sunk in the haze of astonishment, to meet Flint?

But even as the tiny men and women stopped in a respectful semicircle behind the mouse-riders, it became clear that the day’s surprises were not over. The fellow who called himself Beetledown again raised his silver pipe and blew. A moment later an even more bizarre spectacle appeared on the roofline—a fat little man just slightly bigger than Chert’s thumb, riding on the back of a hopping thrush. As the bird made its awkward way down the roof toward the rest of the gathering, Chert saw that the creature’s wings were held fast against its body by the straps of the tall, boxlike covered saddle on its back. The fat man below the awning pulled aggressively on the reins, trying to direct the bird’s track down the tiles, but it seemed to make little difference: the bird went only where it wanted to go.

I’ll try to remember that if someone offers me a ride on a thrush someday, Chert thought, and was less amused by his own joke than he was impressed he could even conceive of one under the circumstances. The whole thing was like a dream.

When the thrush had finally lurched to a halt behind the mice, its rider was dangling halfway out of the saddle, but waved away two of the mouse-riders when they started forward to help him. He righted himself, then clambered down out of the covered seat with surprising mmbleness for his bulk. His climb was hampered a little by his clothes—he wore a fur-collared robe and a shiny chain on his breast. When he reached the tiles, he accepted deep bows from the other Rooftoppers as though they were his due, then stared squintingly at Chert and Flint as he stepped closer to them—but not so close as to advance more than a pace or two beyond the protective line of mouse-riders.

“Is he the king?” Chert asked, but Flint did not reply. The Rooftoppers themselves were watching the tiny fat man with wide-eyed attention as he leaned his entire head forward and… sniffed.

He straightened up, frowning, and then sniffed again, a great intake of air so powerful that Chert could hear it as a thin whistle. The fat man’s frown became a scowl, and he said something in a quick high-pitched voice that Chert couldn’t understand at all, but the other Rooftoppers all gasped and shrank back a few steps, looking up in fear at Chert and Flint as though they had suddenly sprouted fangs and claws.

“What did he say?” asked Chert, caught up in the drama.

Beetledown stepped forward, his face pale but resolute. He bowed. “Sorry, I be, but the Grand and Worthy Nose speaks the tongue of giants not so well as we men of the Gutter-Scouts.” He shook his head gravely. “Even more sorry, I be, but he says tha canst not meet the queen today, because one of tha twain smells very, very wicked indeed.”

“It was long ago—so long ago,” Merolanna told them. “When I first came here from Fael to wed your great-uncle Daman. You do not remember him, of course—he died long before you two were born.”

“His picture is in the long hall,” said Briony. “He looks… very serious.”

“I told you, dear, you may not interrupt. This is difficult enough. But, yes, that is how he looked. He was a serious man, an honorable man, but not… not a kind man. At least, not kind as your father is, or as Daman’s brother the old king was when he was in his cups or otherwise in good cheer.” She sighed. “Don’t take what I say wrongly, children. Your great-uncle was not cruel, and in my way, I came to love him. But that first year, taken from my own family and brought to a country where I scarcely spoke the language, married to a man almost twice my age, I was very sad and frightened and lonely. Then Daman went to war.”

Barrick was finding himself hard-pressed to sit still. He was full of ideas, full of vigor today. He wanted to do things, to make up for the time lost during his illness, not sit here all day listening to his great-aunt’s stories. Merolanna’s earlier talk of madness had caught his attention—almost it had seemed that she was about to confess the same night-visitations that had plagued him, but instead she seemed to be wandering into a story of events so ancient as to have taken place in an entirely different world. He wanted to get up off the bed, perhaps even to leave, but he saw Briony stiffen from the corner of his eye and decided to stay quiet. Everything had been so difficult of late he couldn’t bear the idea of having to fight with his stubborn sister.

“It was a small thing, just short of war, actually,” Merolanna was explaining. “One of the sea barons of Perikal—a dreadful man, I cannot remember his name now—was harrying the shipping on the western coast, and Ustin sent his brother to the assistance of the King of Settland Daman went away and I was even more lonely than I had been, day after day by myself in this unfamiliar, cloudy place, all these dark stones, under all these frowning old pictures.

“There is no excuse, as I said to Hierarch Sisel, but… but after some months I found myself keeping company with one of the young men of the court. He was the only one who bothered to visit me, the only one who treated me as anything other than an outsider too clumsy with her new language to speak wittily, too removed from the center of court life to have any interesting gossip to share. He alone seemed to admire me for who I was. I fell in love with him.” The old woman sat up a little straighter, but her eyes were fixed on the ceiling. She had stopped moving the fan. “More than that. I gave myself to him. I betrayed my husband.”

It took Barrick a moment to understand what she was saying, then he was astonished and disgusted. It was one thing to understand that older people at one time must have felt the lusts of the body, another to be told about it and then be forced to imagine it. But before he could say anything, Briony s hand tightened hard on his arm.

“You were alone in a strange place, Auntie,” his sister said gently. “And it was a long time ago.” But Briony looked shocked, too, Barrick thought.

“No, that is just the thing,” Merolanna said. “It would seem that way to you—that to someone my age it must be so far back that it can scarcely be remembered. But one day you will see, dear, you will see. It seems like it was yesterday.” She looked at Barrick, then Briony, and there was something in her face that overcame Barrick’s dislike of what she was saying, something lost and sad and defiant. “More than that. It seems like today.” “I don’t understand,” Briony said. “What was the man’s name, Auntie? Your… lover.”

“It doesn’t matter. He is even longer dead than Daman. All gone, all of them.” Merolanna shook her head. “And in any case, by the time Daman came back from the fighting in the west, it was all over. Except my shame. And the child.”

“The child… ?”

“Yes. You do not think I would be so lucky, do you? To have my one transgression end so easily, so . . harmlessly?” Merolanna laughed a little, dabbed at her eyes. “No, there was a child, and although when I found out I thought I might pass it off as my husband’s since he was expected home soon, he was delayed by storms and squabbling among the victorious captains and did not return for almost a year. The Sisters of Zoria helped me, bless them. They saved me—took me into their temple at Helmingsea for the final months while all in the castle thought I had returned to my family in Fael to wait for my husband’s return. Yes, well you may look, dear. Deception upon deception. Did you ever think your great-aunt was such a wicked woman?” She laughed again. Barrick thought it sounded like something broken and rasping. “And then… then my baby came.”

Merolanna took a moment to regain her breath and her composure. “I could not keep him, of course. The Zorian sisters found a woman who would have him to raise, and in return I brought the woman back to Southmarch with me, to live on a farm in the hills outside the city. She is dead now, too, but for years I quietly sold some of my husband’s gifts every year to pay for her living there. Even after the child was taken.”

“Taken?” Barrick became interested again. “Taken by who?”

“I’ve never known.” The old lady dabbed at her eyes. “I used to visit him, sometimes, the little boy. Oh, he was bonny, fair as fair could be! But I could not go there often—too many would notice, and some would have become curious. My husband was the king’s brother, after all So when the woman told me he had been stolen, I didn’t really believe her at first—I thought her somewhat simpleminded greed had at last turned into something worse, that she had hidden the child and was going to threaten to tell my husband if I did not pay her more, but I saw quickly that she was truly heartbroken. She was a poor woman, and of course she blamed it on the Twilight People— ‘The fairies took him!’that’s what she said. Just a little less than two years old, he was.” The duchess stopped to blow her nose. “Gods, look at me! Fifty years ago and it could have been yesterday!”

“But after all those years, why does it pain you so much now, Auntie?” asked Briony. “It is terrible and sad, but why have you taken to your bed like this?”

“Such pain never really goes away, dear. But there is a reason my heart is so sore. Merciful Zoria, it is because I saw him. At Kendrick’s funeral. I saw my child.”

For a moment Barrick could only look at Briony. He felt queasy and strange Nothing made sense anymore, and the duchess’ confession was just another crumbling of what was ordinary and safe. “A shadow,” he said, and wondered again what Merolanna’s dreams were like. “The castle is full of them these days.”

“Do you mean you saw your child grown? Maybe you did, Auntie. No one ever told you he was dead…”

“No, Briony, I saw him as a child. But not even the child he was when I saw him last. He had grown. But only a little. Only… a few years…” And she was weeping again.

Barrick grunted and looked to his sister again for help making sense of this, but she had clambered across the bed to put her arms around the old woman.

“But, Auntie,” Briony began.

“No.” Merolanna was fighting to keep the tears from overwhelming her. “No, I may be old—I may even be mad—but I am not foolish. What I saw, ghost or figment or waking nightmare, it was my own child. It was my boy—my child.The child I gave away!”

“Oh, Auntie.” Suddenly, to Barrick’s immense discomfort, Briony was crying too. He could think of nothing to do except to get up and pour Merolanna another cup of wine and then stand beside the bed holding it, waiting for the storm of tears to pass.

17. Black Flowers

The Grand And Worthy Nose, larger and fatter than his fellow Rooftoppers but still no taller than Chert’s finger, had spoken these strangers smelled of wickedness. There was to be no meeting with the queen. Chert didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed—in fact, he didn’t know much of anything. When he had risen this morning, the idea that he might end up on the roof of the castle with a crowd of people smaller than field mice had not even occurred to him.

Most of the Rooftoppers had backed away in fear from their two large visitors after the Nose’s pronouncement. The boy Flint looked on, his thoughts and feelings well hidden as always. Only the tiny man named Beetledown seemed to be actively thinking, his little forehead pinched into wrinkles.

“A moment, masters, I beg ‘ee,” Beetledown said suddenly, then skittered across the sloping roof with surprising quickness to the Grand and Worthy Nose and said something to that plump dignitary in their own tongue, a thin, rapid piping. The Nose replied. Beetledown spoke again. The assembly of courtiers all listened raptly, making little noises of wonder like the cheeping of baby sparrows.

Beetledown and the Nose trilled back and forth at each other until Chert began to wonder again if he had lost his mind, if this entire spectacle might be happening only in his own head. He reached out to the roof tiles and stroked the fired clay between his fingers, poked at the damp moss between them. All real enough. He wondered what Opal would make of these creatures. Would she put them all in a basket, bring them tenderly home to hand-feed them with crumbs of bread? Or would she chase them off with a broom?

Ah, my good old woman —what madness have we gotten ourselves into with this stray boy?

At last, Beetledown turned and trotted down the roof toward them. “I beg grace of ‘ee once more, masters. The Grand and Worthy Nose says tha can meet our queen, but only if we can put bowmen on shoulders of each of tha twain. ‘Twas my idea, and I be sorrowed for its ungraciousness.” He did indeed look ashamed, crushing his little cap in his hands as he spoke.

“What?” Chert looked to Flint, then back to Beetledown. “Are you actually saying you want to put little men with bows and arrows on our shoulders? What, so they can shoot us in the eyes if we do something they do not like?”

“ ‘Tis all that the Grand and Worthy Nose will agree,” said Beetledown. “My word did be bond enough for the young one, but you, sir, be a stranger to even me.”

“But you heard him. You heard him say that he lives with me—that I am his… stepfather, I suppose.” Despite his anger, Chert couldn’t help being a bit amused to find himself arguing with this absurd manikin as though with any ordinary man. Then he had a sudden, grim thought: was this how the big folk felt about him—that even treating him like a real person was an act of kindness on their part? He was ashamed. A Funderling, of all folk, ought to know better than to judge another person by his size. “Is that all they wish to do? Ride our shoulders and prevent us from doing wrong?” He realized he was as much worried for Flint as himself. Fissure and fracture, I am truly becoming a father, will it or not. “What if one of us coughs? Stumbles? I am not anxious to get an arrow in my eye, even a small one, over a misstep or a sudden chill on my chest.”

The fat Rooftopper offered something else in his shrill voice.

“The Grand and Worthy Nose says we could bind ‘ee, hands and feet,” explained Beetledown To his credit, he sounded a little dubious “ ‘Twould take some time, but then no one would fear wrongdoing.”

“Not likely,” said Chert angrily. “Let someone tie my hands and feet, up here on a high, slippery roof? No, not likely.”

He saw that Flint was watching him, the boy was expressionless but Chert couldn’t help feeling rebuked, as though he had pushed himself in where he was not wanted and was now spoiling it for everyone.

Well, perhaps I wasn’t wanted. But should I have simply let the boy climb the roof without a word, without trying to follow him? What sort of guardian would I be? Still, it seemed it was up to him to make things right.

“Very well,” he said at last. “Your archers may perch on me like squirrels on a branch, for all I care. I will move slowly, and so will the boy—do you hear me, Flint? Slowly. But tell your men that if one of them pinks me or the child without reason, then they will meet an angry giant for certain.” Despite his irritation and fear, he was startled to realize that to these folk he was just that—a huge and fearsome gian.t Chert the Giant. Chert the Ogre.

I could scoop them up by the handful and eat them if I wished, just like Bram-binag Stoneboots out of the old stones.

He did not, of course, share these thoughts with the Rooftoppers, but sat as still as he could while two of the mice, each bearing a rider, begin to climb his sleeves. The scratchy little claws tickled and he was tempted simply to lift the bowmen and their mounts into place, but he could imagine such a gesture being taken wrongly. The faces of the little men were frightened but determined within their bird-skull helmets, and he had no doubt their tiny arrows and pikes were sharp.

“What is this in aid of, by the way?" he asked when the guards were in place on his shoulders. “Lad, you have not told me why you are here, how you met these folk, anything. What does this all mean?"

The boy shrugged, “They want me to meet the queen.”

“You? Why you?"

Flint shrugged again.

It is like trying to chip granite with apiece of soggy bread, Chert thought. The boy, as usual, was as talkative as a root.

He was distracted by a murmur in the crowd of tiny people, the courtiers all so carefully dressed in their rude homespun, ornamented with what looked like bits of butterfly wing and flecks of crystal and metal and feathers so small they might have come from the breasts of hummingbirds. They were all turning toward the roofcrest in anticipation. Even Chert found himself holding his breath.

Like the Grand and Worthy Nose, she came riding a bird, but this one was either more successfully trained or the restraints were hidden: the snow-white dove had no band around its wings. The tiny shape atop it did not teeter in a boxy covered saddle like the Nose, but rode directly between the dove’s wings with her legs curled beneath her and the reins little more than a sparkling cobweb in her hands. Her gown was brown and gray, rich with ornament, and her hair was dark red.

The dove stopped. All the courtiers and guards had gone down on their knees, including those on the shoulders of Flint and Chert, although Chert could feel the needle-fine point of one of the soldiers’ pikes resting against his neck—perhaps as a precaution. Even the Grand and Worthy Nose had prostrated himself.

Beetledown was the first to raise his head. “Her Exquisite and Unforgotten Majesty, Queen Upsteeplebat,” he announced.

From what Chert could make out, the queen was not so much pretty as handsome, with a fine, strong-boned face and eyes that looked up to him without any discernible fear. Chert found himself bowing his head. “Your Majesty,” he said, and for a moment there was no incongruity. “I am Chert of the Blue Quartz family. This is my… my ward, Flint.”

“The child we know of already.” She spoke slowly, but her Marchlands speech, although a bit musty in its sound, was far clearer than Beetledown’s. “We give you both welcome.”

The Nose laboriously lifted himself from his abasement and came forward, chattering something.

“Our adviser says there is a wicked scent about you,” the queen reported. “I smell it not, but he has always been a trusted help to our person. He is the sixth generation of those who are First to the Cheese—his nostrils are of true breeding. But we also can see no wickedness in you or the boy, although we think there are other stories in the child, stories untold. Are we right, Chert of Blue Quartz? Is wickedness absent in truth?”

“As far as I know, Your Majesty. I did not even know your people still existed until an hour ago. I certainly bear you no ill will.” Chert was realizing that the size of a queen meant little. This one impressed him and he wanted to please her. Wouldn’t that make Opal spit if she knew!

“Fairly spoken.” Queen Upsteeplebat waved; two of her soldiers sprang forward to help her down from the dove’s back. She looked up briefly at the windowless stone walls all around. “This is a place well-chosen for a meeting—although it is long since we or our predecessors have used it for a gathering of this sort. You will forgive us, Chert of Blue Quartz, but we are unused to the manner of speaking with giants, although we have practiced the old ways to be ready for just such a day, unlikely as we thought its arrival.”

“You speak our tongue very well, Majesty.” Chert snatched a look at Flint. The boy was watching, but he seemed to think this no more interesting than any other conversation between adults. Why had they invited Flint in the first place? What did they hope to get from him?

The queen smiled and nodded. “Though our folk live in your shadows, and make our lives often beneath your tables and in your cupboards, generations have passed since we have spoken, one to the other. But times now demand it, we believe.”

“I’m a bit confused, Majesty. Times demand what?”

“That your folk and ours should speak again. Because we of the high places are frightened, and not just for ourselves. That which we had thought asleep—we had in our royal keeping too much knowledge to think it dead—is now awakening. That which we so happily fled long ago now reaches out again . . but it is not only the Sm ‘sni ‘snik-soonah who must fear it.” The rapid click seemed a sound that only a squirrel or a mockingbird should be able to make.

“Not only who?”

“My people. Rooftoppers, in your tongue.” The queen nodded her head. “So you must help us decide what is to be done. The boy finding Beetledown—we think we sense the Hand of the Sky in it. Certainly it has been a stretchingly long time since any of the giants has seen us against our will. We cannot help thinking that perhaps it truly is time for us to make common cause with your kind. Perhaps you will not listen to us and we must flee again, although fleeing will do us little good, I fear, but perhaps you will listen. That alone will not save us, but it would be a start.”

Chert shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this, I’m afraid. But I’m trying. Because the boy caught one of your people, you Rooftoppers want to make common cause with the big folk? Why?”

“Because although we have lived hidden in your shadows for long years, Old Night is a shadow that will cover all, and none of us will find our way out again.” The royal mask seemed to slip a little; for the first time, Chert could see the fear she had hidden. “It is coming, Chert of Blue Quartz. We would have guessed in any case, but the truth has been directly spoken to us by the Lord of the Peak…” Watching her speak so gravely, so carefully, Chert did not doubt that she was an able ruler Despite her size, he could not help finding her very admirable. “The storm that we have feared since before my grandmother’s grandmother’s day is coming,” said Queen Upsteeplebat. “It will be here soon.”

“May the gods protect us,” murmured Raemon Beck, but the young man didn’t sound as though he believed that they would Ferras Vansen stared in silence at the valley spread before them. It disturbed him, too, but it took a moment for him to understand why it seemed so particularly frightening. Then he remembered the old woman’s house and what he had found there. He had been only eight or nine years old that day, already nearing a man’s height but thin as a bowstave. He had thought himself very brave, of course.

Ferras’ mother was concerned about the widow who lived on the next farm, perhaps because with her own husband so short of breath these days and barely able to get out of bed she had been anticipating her own upcoming widowhood. She at least had children, though, the old neighbor had none. Now they had not seen her for several days and her goats were wandering across the green but summer-dry hills. Fearing the old woman might have become too ill to take care of herself his mother sent Ferras, her eldest, across the dale to look in on her with a jug of milk and a small loaf.

He recognized something in the silence of the place while he was still yards away, but without quite understanding what he sensed. The little wooden house was a familiar place —Ferras had been there several times with his sisters, bringing the old woman a baked festival sweet or some flowers from his mother. The old woman had never had much to say, but she always seemed happy to see the children and would always press some gift on them in return, although what she had to spare was seldom anything more than a shiny wooden bead from a necklace that had lost its string or a bit of dried fruit from one of the stubby trees in her dooryard. But now some new element was present and young Ferras felt the hairs on his arms and neck rise and tingle.

The wind was in the other direction or he would have smelled the body a long time before he reached the threshold. It was high summer, and as he pushed open the ill-fitting door the stench leaped out and clawed at his nose and eyes, sending him stumbling back, gagging and wiping away tears. Still holding the jug, generations of crofter thrift preventing him from spilling a drop of milk no matter the circumstances, Ferras paused a few steps from the house, uncertain what to do. He had smelled death before he knew well enough now why they had not seen the old woman lately. Still, with the first shock lessened, he felt a powerful tug, a wondering, a needing to know.

He pinched his nose and stepped into the doorway. A little daylight spilled past him through the door, but the hut had only one window and it was shuttered, so it took him a moment to see anything but darkness.

She was dead, but she was alive.

No, not alive, not truly, but the thing that lay in the center of the rush-strewn dirt floor—facedown, he realized after staring for long moments, as though she had tried to crawl toward the doorway—was rippling with movement. Flies, beetles, and countless other crawling things he could not identify covered her entirely, a person-shaped mass of glinting, wriggling life, other than a few wisps of white hair, there was scarcely anything to see of the old woman’s body. It was horrifying, and yet in a way weirdly exciting as well, although he was ever after ashamed of the feeling, the memory would stay with him forever. All that life feeding off one death.

In the dim light, the old woman seemed to be dressed in glittering black armor, something like the “caparison of light” he had heard the priest speak of on festival day, the raiment in which dead heroes would be dressed when they went to meet the gods.

“What is it, Captain? Are you ill? What’s happened?” Vansen shook his head, unable to answer Collum Dyer’s question. It had been a strange day already, full of weird discoveries. The patches of bright-blooming meadow flowers they had found along the roadside had been strange enough, months out of season, bending nearly sideways in brisk autumn winds they were never meant to suffer. Then there had been the deserted village a few miles back where Vansen and the others had left the road to water the horses—a very small village, admittedly, the kind that sometimes emptied when a plague struck the livestock or the only well ran dry, but it had clearly been recently occupied. Ferras Vansen had stood in the midst of those empty houses holding a carved wooden toy he had found, a charmingly well-made horse that no child would willingly leave behind, growing increasingly certain that something disturbing was at work all across this quiet land. Now, as he stared out at the scene before them, there was no longer any doubt in his mind that the village and the unseasonal flowers were something more than happenstance.

Unlike the village, the valley before them was very much alive, but in a way more like the dead widow woman than Vansen would have liked. Its colors were… wrong. It was hard to say why at first—the trees had brown trunks and green leaves, the grass was yellowed but not beyond what seemed natural for this time of the year, before the heavy rains came—but there was definitely something amiss, some mischief of light that at first glance he had thought a freak of the low clouds. It was a cold, gray day, but he felt sure that alone could not make the valley’s colors seem so bruised, so … oily.

As the company tramped down into the valley itself, Vansen could see that although the trees and meadowed hillsides did indeed seem to have taken on an unnatural hue, much of the strangeness was because of a single kind of plant, a brambly creeper that seemed to be choking out the other vegetation, which had made its way almost everywhere along the valley, even down to the edge of the broad Settland Road. Its leaves were so dark as to be almost black, but the color was nowhere near that simple: on close inspection he saw shades of purple and deep blue and even deeper slate gray, colors that almost seemed to move; the leaves gleamed like grape-skin after a rain and the coiling vines seemed quietly fearsome, like sleeping snakes. A chill breeze ruffled the plants, but he almost fancied they were moving more than the soft wind should warrant, that they had a tremor of independent life like the horrid carpet of insects in the crofter-wo man’s house.

The vines also had thorns, nasty spikes half the length of his finger, but the strangest thing of all were the flowers, big velvety cabbage-shaped blossoms as night-dark as the robe of a priest of Kernios.The valley seemed to be choking in black roses.

“What is all this?” Dyer asked again from a tight throat. “Never seen anything like.” “Nor have I. Beck, do you recognize this?”

The face of the merchant s nephew was quite pale, but also oddly resigned, as though he were seeing something in the waking world that had long come to him in evil dreams. Still, he shook his head. “No. When we… where they came… there was nothing out of the ordinary. Only the mist I told you of, the long reach of mist.”

“There’s a house up there in the hill,” Vansen said. “A cottage. Should we go look to see if someone’s there?”

“Those vines are all over it.” Collum Dyer had not made many jokes today; he sounded like it might be a while until he made any more. “There’s no one left inside. That other village had emptied without any cause we could see, so who would stay around and wait for this mucky stuff to crawl over them? No point looking—they’re gone.”

That had been his thought, too. Ferras Vansen was secretly relieved. He had not been anxious to wade toward a deserted house through these vines that sighed and rippled in the wind.

“You’re right,” he told his lieutenant. “We ride on, then, since we will not make camp here, I think.” Dyer nodded. He, too, was happy to keep traveling. Raemon Beck had his eyes closed and seemed to be praying. They passed through the valley without speaking, looking to all sides as though riding through wild, foreign lands instead of following the familiar road to Settland.The hills leaned close and the huge flowers bounced gently beneath the wind’s unseeable fingers, leaves rubbing, so that it almost seemed like Vansen and his men were surrounded by whispering watchers.

To the relief of Ferras Vansen and the rest of the company, the tangle of black vines did not extend beyond the valley, although the woods beside the hilly road remained unusually quiet.

What could happen to scare even the birds away? Vansen wondered. The same things that took the caravan? Or am I only making worries? Perhaps whatever plague emptied that village has scattered the animals and birds, too. Wild things know much we have forgotten.

The lowering skies and his own mood had made an ordinary hill-road look almost otherworldly. He couldn’t help wondering what this land had been like before settlers. The Twilight People —if the stories are true, they were here for long, long centuries before our ancestors arrived. What did they do here? What did they think when they first saw us, the rude tribes that would have come across the water or up from the south? Did they fear us?

Of course, he realized, the shadow folk would have been right to fear the new creatures. Because those creatures would soon take their land from them.

All this place belonged to them once. It was a thought that had first come to him in childhood, on a day when through inattention he found himself a long way from home as the light began to fail in the fastness of the hills. There had been a stillness to the dales both frightening and magical, a change in the light, as though the sky itself had taken a breath and was holding it for a short while before blowing out the candle of the sun, and the dark world of a hundred fireside stories had risen up in his mind like smoke. All this was theirs —the other people. Tlte Old Ones.

And what if now they want it back? he thought. The court physician had said the Shadowline was moving. What if this was more than the matter of a single plundered caravan? What if the Twilight People, like an eldest son returned from the wars to find his young brothers spoiling his inheritance, had decided to take all these lands back?

And, if so, what of us? Pushed out… or simply destroyed?

Two of Vansen’s men found her while they were out picking up deadfall for the evening’s campfire. It was a tribute to the mood they were all in that although she was young and might even have been passing pretty under the dirt, there were few rough jests. They held her arms as they brought her to him, although she did not seem interested in escaping. No fear showed in her dark-eyed face, only blankness alternating with moments of confusion and what almost seemed like flashes of secretive amusement.

“Wandering,” one of her captors told Vansen. “Just looking up at the sky and the trees.”

“She’s talking nonsense,” the other man said. “Do you think she’s taken an injury? Or is it the fever?” He suddenly looked nervous, let go of the girl and stared at his hands as though some sign of plague might be seen there like a stain. There had been rumors about the sickness that had made its way into Southmarch, the fever that attacked Prince Barrick, though it spared his life, but which also killed several old people and more than one small child in the town.

“Leave her with me.” Vansen led the girl in the ragged peasant smock a little way back from the fire, but not so far that the men wouldn’t be able to see him. He wasn’t so much worried about what they might think of his motives as he was concerned with what they were all feeling, the sensation of being lost in a strange place instead of camping beside a familiar road in the March Kingdoms on the northern edge of Silverside.

The girl looked like she had been living out-of-doors for some time. Her matted hair and the grime on her face and hands made it hard to tell how old she was: she could have been anything from a child just reaching womanhood to someone almost his own age.

“What is your name?”

She gave him a calculating look from behind the tangle of her hair, like a merchant who had been offered a ridiculously low price but suspected that bargaining might produce something better. “Puffkin,” she said at last.

“Pufflun!” He let out a startled laugh. “What kind of name is that?”

“A good name for a cat, sir,” she told him. “And she was always good, until the weather changed, my Pufflan.” She had the local accent, not that different from what Vansen grew up with. “Best mouser in the kingdom, till the weather changed. Sweet as soup.”

Vansen shook his head. “But what is your name?”

The girl’s hands were in her lap, tugging at loose threads in her wool smock. “I used to be frightened of the thunder,” she murmured. “When I was a little one…”

“Are you hungry?”

She was shaking now, suddenly, as though beset by fever. “But why are their eyes so bright?” She moaned a little. “They sing of friendship but they have eyes like fire!”

It was no use talking to her. He wrapped his cloak around her shoulders, then went to the fire, dipped up soup with his horn cup, and brought it back. She held it carefully and seemed to enjoy the warmth, but did not appear to understand what to do with it. Vansen took it from her hands and held it to her mouth, giving her little sips until she at last took it herself.

It was good to be able to do a small kindness, he realized as he watched her swallowing. She held out the cup for more and he smiled and went to get some. It was good to be able to take care of someone. For the first time in a disturbing day, and although all the mysteries were growing deeper rather than otherwise, he was almost content.

The clouds had passed, moving east. Another armada of them waited above the ocean, ready to sweep in, but for the moment much of Southmarch Castle s inner keep was in thin, bright sunlight. Barrick found a spot where there was no shade at all. Soaking up warmth, he felt like a lizard who had just crawled out of a dark, damp crevice.The sunlight was glorious, and for the first time in days a stranger would have realized that the keep’s great towers, newly washed by rain, were all different colors, from the old soot-colored stones of Wolfstooth Spire to the green-copper roof of the Tower of Spring, Autumn s white-and-red tiles, Summer’s hammered-gold ornamentation, Winter’s gray stone and black wrought iron. They might have been part of some titanic bouquet.

Briony was still indoors, finishing up her day’s lessons with Sister Utta. Barrick could not quite understand what more there was to learn when you were already a regent of the land—it was not as though, like a chandler’s apprentice or a squire, you could aspire to bettering yourself, could you? Except for continued training in combat and tactics of war, he had finished his own formal education and couldn’t imagine why he might need more. He could read and write (if not quite as fluently as Briony.) He could ride and hawk and hunt as well as his mangled arm allowed, and identify the heraldic emblems of at least a hundred different families— which, as old Steffans Nynor, the castellan, had once told him, was very important in a war so that one could decide who would be the best opponent to capture for ransom. He knew a great deal about his own family, starting with Anglin the Great, a reasonable amount of the history of the March Kingdoms, a few things about the rest of the nations of Eion, and enough of the tales of the Trigon and the other gods that he could make sense of the things Father Timoid said, when he bothered to pay attention.

He didn’t know everything, of course watching Briony preside over the law courts, full of opinions and concerns about things that seemed to him to matter very little, made him feel almost an outsider. His sister sometimes stopped the day’s proceedings for as much as an hour to argue with the various clerks over a fine point of fairness that she deemed important, leaving dozens of petitioners pushed back to the next day’s docket and grumbling. “Better justice delayed than denied,” was her defense of this foolishness.

He wondered if half a year ago he would have been the same—not with law, of course, which he had always found boring in the extreme, but in ferreting out the truth behind the attack on the caravan, or even trying to make certain of Shaso’s guilt In the early days of Kendrick’s regency Barrick had entertained ideas about what he would do if he were in his brother’s place, all the things he would do better Now he was in his brother’s place, but most days, after another night of haunted sleep, he could scarcely find the resolve to walk out into the courtyard and sit in the sun.

It was the dreams, of course, and the weight of his awful secrets, that held him back—not to mention the fever that had nearly killed him. Surely anyone could understand that? He had almost died, but sometimes it seemed that no one would have minded much if he had. Even Briony.

No, he told himself. That’s a wicked voice. That’s not true. And that was another problem: somehow the fever had not entirely gone. He had walked in his sleep and suffered with bad dreams as long as he could remember, even before the night that had changed everything for the worse. Once or twice in his childhood he had even been found outside the residence in the morning, shivering and confused. But now almost every single night his ragged sleep was alive with creeping things, with shadowy hands and bright eyes, and even when he was awake, they didn’t entirely leave him. And the dreams seemed to get into his head and speak to him as well, telling him things that he usually did not believe, and certainly did not want to believe—that everyone around him was false, that they were whispering behind his back, that the castle was full of enemies in disguise who had slowly usurped those he knew and were only waiting until their numbers were so great as to be undefeatable before… before…

Before doing what? He sat up, suddenly quivering in every muscle. Perhaps it’s all real! Despite the unbroken sunlight, the stone warming beneath his thighs so that he could feel its pleasant heat through his woolen hose, he had to fold his arms across his chest until the trembling passed. It was the residue of his illness, of course, nothing more, and so were the strange thoughts, the voices that plagued him. Briony was still Briony, his beloved, inseparable other half, and the people and things around him were unchanged. It was only the fever. He was certain of that. Nearly certain.

Distracted by such thoughts, he nevertheless recognized the young woman by her walk before anything else. Although her figure, displayed in a sea-green dress, was still desperately alluring, she seemed to have lost weight. Her face was thinner than he remembered, but the swaying of her hips was unchanged.

He stood as she reached the center of the courtyard where she noticed him for the first time, blinked, stopped for a moment. “Prince Barrick?” She put her hand to her mouth when she realized she had not made a courtesy and quickly remedied the omission.

“Hello, Selia.” His stepmother’s maid was an awkward distance away, several yards: too far for an ordinary conversation. He wished she would come toward him. Perhaps she was afraid to approach, to intrude on his private thoughts. “Please, come join me for a moment. The sun is lovely today, isn’t it?” There, he thought with some satisfaction. Surely the famous bard Gregor of Syan himself could not have spoken more delicately to a lady.

“If Your Highness is certain…” She approached slowly, like a deer ready to leap at any noise. The new thinness of her face made her eyes seem even larger, and he could see that under the powder they were shadowed. For the first time, Barrick remembered what Chaven said about her.

“You have been ill. You had what I had.”

She looked at him. “I had fever, yes? But certain that Your Highness was more ill than me.”

He waved his hand in the manner of true nobility comparisons were unworthy. He was pleased with this gesture, too, and the girl also seemed impressed. “How are you feeling now??"

She glanced down at her hands. “Still a little strange, I think Like the world is not quite being as it should Yes? Do you understand me?"

“I do?” Although the nearness of her had narrowed his attention very strongly—he felt that he could see every tiny hair against her neck where they spilled free from the headdress, that he could count each shining dark strand in an instant without even trying—he also felt a little strange, as though he had been too long in the sun. He looked up, suddenly certain that someone was watching from one of the rooftops, as improbable as that seemed, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“Oh? Are you knowing you are well again, Prince Barrick?"

He nodded, took a deep breath. “Yes, I suppose so. Sometimes I feel like that, too. Like the world is not quite what it should be.”

Her face was solemn. “It is frightening to have this feeling, yes? For me, anyway. Your stepmother thinks I am not listening to her, but it is only that sometimes I am… made confused.”

“You will feel better,” he said, on absolutely no authority but the wish to say something reassuring to a pretty young woman. “How old are you, Selia?"

“Seventeen years, I have.”

Barrick frowned a little. He wished he were older—surely a girl who might be as much as two years his senior was only interested in him because he was the prince. On the other hand, she did seem content at the moment anyone might come to the prince regent’s command, but she did not seem in a hurry to leave. Experimentally, he took her hand. She didn’t resist. The skin was surprisingly cool. “Are you sure you are well enough to be out of bed?” he asked. “You have a chill.”

“Oh, yes, but sometimes I am warm, very warm,” she said with a little laugh. “Sometimes I cannot even keep the blankets on me even when the night is cold, and my clothes are too hot when I sleep and I must take them off. This gave Barrick a picture to think about that promised to make concentration even more difficult. “Your stepmother, she scolds with me very much for badly sleeping.” She looked down and her wide eyes grew wider. “Prince Barrick, you are holding my hand.”

He let go, guiltily sure that she had put up with it only because of his high station. He had always loathed men who use their power to compel women’s surrender, had watched with disapproval as Gailon Tolly and other nobles, and even his own brother, took advantage of serving girls. He remembered now with some pain that only a few months earlier he had started a shouting argument with Kendrick about the treatment of one such, a pretty little lady’s maid named Grenna who Barrick had admired in silence for months. Kendrick had honestly not been able to understand his younger brother’s anger, had pointed out that unlike some men, he never compelled any woman to do anything by force or threat, that the girl herself had been a willing partner and had accepted several expensive gifts before the dalliance played itself out. Kendrick had also suggested that his younger brother was becoming a prig before his time and that he would do better to concentrate on his own affairs rather than comment on those of his elders.

But you must treat them like birds, had been Barrick s only confused thought, then and now You must let them fly or they are not truly yours. But no one had ever been his, so what right did he have to think he knew?

Meanwhile, even though he had let go of her hand, Selia had still not taken the opportunity to escape.

“I did not say that holding me was a bad thing.” A smile curled her lips, but she was interrupted by the appearance of someone else at the edge of the courtyard.

“Barrick? Are you out here?”

He had never been less happy to see his sister Briony, however, was already walking along the cobbled path toward the place where he and Selia were sitting, shading her eyes with her hand Something was odd about her garb, but he was so frustrated with the mere fact of her arrival that he did not at first understand what it was.

She hesitated as she neared them. “Oh, I’m sorry, Barrick I didn’t know you were speaking to someone Selia, isn’t it? Anissa s maid?”

Selia stood and made a courtesy. “Yes, Highness.”

“And how is our stepmother? We were disappointed not to be able to dine with her.” “She had disappointment, too, my lady. But she was not feeling well because of the baby that is coming.” “Well, give her our best and say we look forward to another invitation, that we miss her.”

Barrick had finally realized what was odd: Briony was wearing a riding skirt, split down the middle and far too informal for court functions. “Why are you dressed like that?" he asked her. “Are you going out for a ride?” He devoutly hoped it was true and that she was going right this moment.

“No, but it’s too difficult to explain now. I need to speak with you.”

“I should leave,” said Selia quickly. She cast a shy glance toward Barrick. “I have already left my lady’s errand too long and she will be wondering where I am.”

Barrick wanted to say something but the rout had already been effected; he had been forced into surrender without a blow struck. Selia made another courtesy. “Thank you for your kindly conversation, Prince Barrick I am happy to see that you are more well now, too.” She moved off, perhaps still not her former self, but with that fine and life-enhancing sway to her walk that Barrick could only watch with immense regret.

She wasn’t angry I held her hand, he thought. Or just putting up with it. At least I don’t think so… “If you can drag your eyes away from her backside for a moment,” Briony said, “you and I have things to talk about.” “Like what?” he almost shouted.

“Temper, lad.” Her grin flickered a little, then her face grew more serious. “Oh, Barrick, I’m sorry. I didn’t interrupt on purpose.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“See here, I may not approve of a little baggage like that, but I’ve said my piece once already. I love you, you’re my dear, dearest brother and friend, but I’m not going to follow you around trying to make certain you only do what I want.”

He snorted. “Strange, because that’s how it worked out.” For a moment he felt real anger. “And she’s not a little baggage! She’s not.You don’t even know her.”

Briony’s eyes widened. “Fair enough. But I know you and I know what a turtle you are.” “Turtle?”

“Yes, with your hard shell on the outside. But the reason a turtle has a shell is because he is defenseless on the inside. I fear that someone will get inside your shell—someone I don’t trust to do right by you. That’s all.”

He was oddly touched by her concern but also infuriated. His twin sister thought he was helpless, that he had no defenses. It was as good as calling him simple—or worse, weak. “Just you keep out of my shell, too, Briony. It’s mine, after all.” It came out a bit more harshly than he intended, but he was angry enough to leave it that way.

She stared. It seemed she might say more about this, perhaps apologize again, but the moment passed. “In any case,” she said briskly, “we have other things to talk about. And I’ve come to you about one of them. Father’s letter.”

“We have another letter?” As always, it filled him with both happiness and fear. What will I be like when he returns? A chill passed through him. And what if he doesn’t return? What then? All alone . .

“No, not another letter—the last one.”

It took him a moment to understand. “You mean the one that came with that envoy from Hierosol, the Tuani fellow. Your… friend.”

She didn’t rise to the unpleasant tone. “Yes, that letter. Where is it?” “What do you mean?”

“Where is it, Barrick? I haven’t read it—have you? I didn’t think so. Nor has Brone, or Nynor, or anyone else as far as I’ve heard. The only person who actually saw it was Kendrick. And now it’s gone.”

“It must be among some of the other things he had in his chamber. Or in his secretary, that one with the Envor carvings on it. Or Nynor has it in with the accounts and doesn’t know it.” His mood darkened. “That, or someone is lying to us.”

“It’s not among Kendrick’s things. I’ve been looking. There are a lot of other matters we’ve got to deal with that are waiting there, but no letter from Father.”

“But what else could have happened to it?”

Briony shook her head fiercely; for a moment he saw the warrior queen she could someday be and was sad to think he might not be around to see it; love, pride, and anger mixed in him, swirled like the clouds blowing in overhead. “Stolen—by his murderer, perhaps,” she said. “Maybe there was something written there that someone didn’t want us to see. In fact, I’m certain of it.”

Barrick felt a wave of dread. Suddenly the darkening courtyard seemed an exposed place, a dangerous place, and he knew why lizards were so quick to slither back into the cracks at any sound—but he realized an instant later that his father’s secret, his own secret, would not be the kind of thing that King Olin would commit to a letter, even a letter to his eldest son. Still,just the brief thought had been terribly disturbing.

“So what do we do?” he asked. The day had gone sour. “We find that letter. We must.”

She came to him in the middle of the night, climbed under the heavy cloak and pressed herself against him. For a moment he took it as part of his dream and pulled her close, calling her by a name he knew he should not utter even half-asleep, but then he felt her trembling and smelled the smoke and damp in her clothes and he was awake. “What are you doing?” Vansen tried to sit up, but she clung. “Girl, what do you think you’re doing?” She pushed her head against his chest. “Cold,” she moaned. “Hold me.”

The fire was nothing but embers now. A few of the horses moved restlessly on their tethers, but none of the other men were stirring. The girl slid her hard, thin little body against him, desperate for comfort, and for a moment his loneliness and fear made the temptation great. But Vansen remembered the frightened-child look, the terror that he had seen peering out of her eyes like a wounded animal driven into a thicket. He pulled free and sat up, then wrapped the cloak around her and tugged her close, using the heavy wool to help pinion her arms. After all, he could only take so much of her blind, needy rubbing before his resolve would crumble like walls made of sand. “You are safe,” he told her. “Don’t fear You are safe. We are soldiers of the king.”

“Father?” Her voice was hoarse and confused.

“I am not your father. My name is Ferras Vansen. We found you wandering in the forest—do you remember?”

There were tears on her cheeks; he could feel them as she rubbed her face against his neck. “Where is he? Where is my father? And where is Collum?”

For a moment he thought she was talking about Collum Dyer, but it was a common enough name in the March Kingdoms—he supposed it might be a brother or sweetheart. “I don’t know. What is your name? Do you remember how you came to be walking in the forest?”

“Quiet! They will hear you. At night, when the moon is high, you can only whisper.” “Who? Who will hear me?”

“Willow, the sheep are gone. That’s what he said. I ran out and the moonlight was so bright, so bright! Like eyes.” “Willow? Is that your name?"

She burrowed in against his chest, struggling beneath the confining cloak to get as close to him as possible Her neediness was so startling and pitiable that his few lingering thoughts of lovemaking drained away. She was like a puppy or kitten standing beside its dead mother, nosing at a body gone cold.

What happened to her father, then? And this Collum? “How did you come to be in the forest, Willow? That is your name, isn’t it? How did you come to be in the forest?”

Her blind groping slowed, but more from the exhaustion of fighting against the folds of the heavy cloak, he thought, than from diminishing fear. “But I didn’t,” she said slowly, and lifted her face In the moonlight the darks of her eyes seemed shrunken, mere pinpoints with white all around. “Don’t you know? The forest came to me. It… swallowed me.”

FerrasVansen had seen such a look before and it stabbed at him like a knife. The old madman back in the village where he had grown up so long ago had worn a stare like that—the old man who had crossed the Shadowline and returned.

But we are still miles and miles from where the caravan was taken, he realized. The nodding black flowers, the deserted village. By the gods, it is spreading fast.

18. One Guest Less

The mad muddle of life, Chert thought, was enough to make a person want to lie down on the ground, close his eyes, and become a blindworm Surely blindworms didn’t have to put up with nonsense like this?

“Mica? Fissure and fracture, have you nothing better to do with your time and mine than argue?”

Hornblende’s nephew looked around for his brother. Both of them could be difficult by themselves, but they were much less willing to put up a fight when they were on their own. “It’s not right, Chert, putting tunnels here. It’s too deep, too close to the Mysteries. If it collapses through to the next level, they’ll be right on top of where they shouldn’t be!”

“It is not your place to decide. The king’s people want this tunnel system made bigger and that’s what we’re going to do. Cinnabar and the other chiefs of the Guild have approved the plans.”

Mica scowled. “They haven’t been here. Most of them haven’t worked raw stone in years, and it’s been even longer since any of them have been here.” He brightened as his brother approached. “Tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Chert took a deep breath. It had been a strange last few days since the bizarre miniature pageant on the castle roof; his head was so full of confusing thoughts and questions he could scarcely keep his mind on his work. That was the problem, of course—Hornblende’s nephews and the rest of the men needed his full supervision. Funderlings always had a difficult time working so close to the royal family’s residence and graves—superstition and resentment were never far away—but this growing proximity to the Funderlings’ own sacred places was even more of a problem. He couldn’t afford to be attending to his work with only half his usual attention.

“That we want to go before the Guild Council,” said Mica’s brother Talc. He was the older and more levelheaded of the two. “We want to be heard.”

“Heard, that’s what you young people always want—to be heard! And what is it you want to be heard about? That you’re feeling mistreated. That you have to work too hard. That what you’re given to do isn’t fair or kind or… or something.” Chert took another long breath. “Do you think your uncle or I ever got to ask so many questions? We took the work we were given to do and were grateful for it.” Because his own apprenticeship had been in the last days of the Gray Companies, Chert remembered but did not say—because the big folk were frightened in those years and there had not been much work even for skilled Funderling craftsmen. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, had left their ancestral home under Southmarch in search of labor and had never returned, settling in spots all over the middle and south of Eion where the big folk had previously had to do their own stonework. But during Chert’s own lifetime things had changed: even small cities now built great temples and underground baths, not to mention countless funeral vaults for rich merchants and clerics, and most of the Southmarch Funderlings found themselves in demand right here at home in the March Kingdoms.

Talc shook his head. He was stubborn, but he was also smart—the worst kind of shirker, Chert thought. Or was he a shirker at all? Chert suddenly felt empty and tired, like a rock face with the seam of valuable stone chiseled out of it.

Maybe they feel some of the same things I do. What did the tiny queen say? “Because we of the high places are frightened, and not just for ourselves. “ I am frightened myself, but it is because of things I have seen, felt…

He did his best to clear his head of all the jibber-jabber. “Very well. I shall ask the Guild to grant you a hearing, if you will get on and finish this day’s work. There is shoring and bracing to do in the new tunnels, if you are not too frightened to work alongside your fellows there.”

Hornblende’s nephews were still grumbling as they walked away, but there was a jauntiness to their step that suggested they secretly felt they had won a victory. It made Chert feel tired all over again.

Thank the Old Ones that Chaven has come back. I will go see him when the men stop to eat Tins time, though, I will go in by the front door.

As he made his way through the twisting byways of the inner keep, ignoring the people who felt that it was acceptable to stare at a Funderling simply because he was a Funderling, Chert was grateful that the boy Flint was spending the day with Opal at the market. She had accepted Chert’s astonishing report of meeting the Rooftoppers with a complacency that was almost more dumbfounding than the Rooftoppers themselves.

“Of course there are more things under the stones and stars than we will ever know,” she had told her husband. “The boy is a burning spark —you can just see it! He’ll do wonderful things in this world. And I always believed there truly were Rooftoppers, anyway.”

He wondered now if it had been some kind of intentional ignorance His wife was a clever woman—surely she couldn’t think this was the ordinary way of life Was she afraid of what these many new things portended— Flint himself, the Shadowline, this news of fabled creatures hiding in the roofs who talked of coming disaster—and so she covered it all in a blanket of the familiar’.

Chert realized he had shared very little of his own fear with Opal. A part of him wanted to continue that way, protecting her, which felt like his rightful duty. Another part realized that such a duty could become very lonely.

It was not the young man Toby who opened the door at the Observatory House but the physician’s old, long-whiskered manservant, Harry. He seemed flustered, even nervous, and for a moment Chert feared that Harry’s master might be ill.

“I’ll tell him you’re here,” the old man said, leaving Chert to wait in the front hall. A shrine to Zona with lit candles was set there, which struck Chert as odd—surely if the court physician were going to have a shrine to the gods of the big people, shouldn’t it be a Tngonate altar? Or perhaps to Kupilas, the god of healing? Then again, he had never been able to make much sense out of the big folk and their baskets full of gods.

Harry came back, his expression still unsettled, and beckoned Chert down the corridor toward the chambers in which Chaven conducted his experiments. Perhaps that explained the manservant’s behavior; his master was doing something that he thought was dangerous.

To his surprise, Chert found when he stepped into the dark room with its long, high table piled with books and unfamiliar equipment—measuring devices, lenses, things for grinding and mixing substances, bottles and jars, and candles on seemingly every one of the very few empty surfaces—that Chaven was not alone. I have seen this young fellow before… he thought for a puzzled moment. The red-haired youth looked up as the door closed behind Chert. “It’s a Funderling!” Chaven turned, and smiled at Chert. “You say that as though it were a surprise, Highness. Yet I imagine you have noticed that everyone in this room is aware that my friend Chert is a Funderling.”

The boy frowned. He was dressed from head to foot in black—shoes, hose, doublet, even his soft hat. Chert knew who he was now, and tried to keep the astonishment off his face as the boy complained, “You are mocking me, Chaven.”

“A little, Highness.” He turned to Chert. “This is one of our regents, Prince Barrick. Prince Barrick, this is my friend Chert of the Blue Quartz family, a very good man. He has recently done your family the helpful deed in a sad time of hurrying the construction of your brother’s tomb.”

Barrick flinched a little, but to his credit, smiled at the new arrival. “That was kindly done.”

Chert did not quite know what to do. He made a bow as best he could. “It was the least we could offer, Highness. Your brother was well-loved among my people.” Most of my people, he amended silently Well, a decent proportion.

“And what brings you to see me today, good Chert?” asked Chaven. He seemed in an expansive mood—strangely so for someone who had been out viewing the sick and the dying.

How can I talk about the things I have seen in front of the prince regent? Chert wondered. He could not help contemplating the urge to hide anything unusual from those with more power. There was also an opposing impulse that was nearly as strong, the desire to pass any strange situation on to someone else. I am more the type who wishes to know what I am doing first, Chert decided. And certainly I am not going to blurt out this mishmash of fears and suspicions and old-tales-come-to-life in front of one of the royal family.

“I wished only to hear of your journeying,” he said out loud, then reallzed he did not want to wait days more before sharing his concerns with the physician. “And perhaps talk a little more of that matter we discussed last time…”

Prince Barrick rose from the stool on which he had been perched off-balance and almost tipping over, Chert realized, like any ordinary young man. “I will not keep you, then,” he told the physician. The prince spoke lightly, but Chert thought he heard disappointment and something else in the boy’s words—anger? Worry? “But I would speak to you again. Tomorrow, perhaps?”

“Of course, Highness, I am at your service always. In the meantime, perhaps a glass of fortified wine before bed would help a bit. And please remember what I said. Things always look different when night is on the world. Let me escort you to the door.”

Barrick rolled his eyes. “My guards are in the kitchen bothering your housekeeper and her daughter. Since Kendrick was killed, I cannot go anywhere without bumping elbows with men in armor. It was all I could do to convince them I did not want them in the room with me here.” He waved his good hand. “I will find my own way out. Perhaps I can sneak past the kitchen and have an hour to myself before they know I’m gone.”

“Don’t do that, Highness!” Chaven’s voice was hearty, even cheerful, but there was an edge to it. “People are frightened. If you disappear, even for a short time, some of those guardsmen will suffer.”

Barrick scowled, then laughed a little. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll go and give them some warning before I run for it.” He nodded in a distracted way toward Chert as he left.

“The Rooftoppers, eh?” Chaven took off the spectacles perched on his nose and wiped them on the cuff of his robe—a robe surprisingly stained considering he had worn it while receiving royalty—then put them back on and gave Chert a shrewd look. “It is very unusual news, this, but I confess that there are many you could tell it to who would be more surprised than me.”

“You already knew?”

“No—or at least I have never seen them, let alone met their queen in such an unusual audience. But I have encountered… signs over the years that suggested to me that the Rooftoppers might be more than fable.”

“But what does it mean? All this talk of shadows and the coming storm? Is it because the Shadowline is moving? There is talk back home in Quarry Square that something came across the Shadowline in the hills to the west and took an entire caravan.”

“For once, the talk is right,” said Chaven, and quickly told his guest the merchant Raemon Beck’s story. “Even now the prince and princess have sent a company of soldiers to the place it happened.”

Chert shook his head. “I cannot believe it—I am more than ever certain that the old tales are coming to hfe. It is a curse to live in such times.”

“Perhaps. But out of great fear and danger, heroism and beauty can come, too.” “I am not your man for heroes,” said Chert. “Give me a soft seam and a hot meal at the end of the day.”

Chaven smiled. “I am not so fond of heroism myself,” he said, “but there is a part of me—my curiosity, I suppose—that dislikes too much comfort. It is, I think, the despoiler of learning, or at least of true understanding.”

Chert suppressed a shudder. “Whatever sort of lessons the Rooftoppers spoke of—Old Night! That has a terrible sound. And the Lord of the Peak who warned them, some Rooftopper god, no doubt In any case, those are the sort of lessons I would rather avoid.”

“The Lord of the Peak?” Chaven’s demeanor seemed to grow a little cool. “Is that what they said?”

“Y—yes—didn’t I tell you? I must have forgot. They said the truth of all this was spoken to them by the Lord of the Peak.”

Chaven stared at him for a moment as from a distance, and Chert feared he had offended somehow against their old but constrained friendship. “Well, I expect you are right,” the physician said at last. “It is some god of theirs.” He moved suddenly, rubbed his hands together. “It is good of you to bring this all to me.Your pardon, but you have given me much that is new to think on, and I have more than the royal family’s physical bodies in my care.”

“It… it was strange to see Prince Barrick. He is so young!”

“He and his sister are both growing older quickly. These are harsh times. Now I hope you will pardon me, good Chert—I have much to do.”

With the distinct feeling that he was being hurried out, Chert had almost reached the door when he remembered. “Oh! And I have something else for you.” He fumbled in the pocket of his jerkin, withdrew the unusual stone. “The child Flint, the one you met—he found this near the Eddon family graveyard. I have lived with and worked with stone as man and boy, but I have never seen anything like it. I thought perhaps you could tell me what it is.” A sudden thought: “It did not occur to me, but it was with me when I met the Rooftoppers. Their little Nose-man said he could smell evil. I thought perhaps it was the scent of the shadowlands still on Flint… but perhaps it was this.”

Chaven took it, gave it a quick glance. He did not seem impressed. “Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps it was all part of the incomprehensible politick of the Rooftoppers—they are an old race about which we know little in these days. In any case, I will examine it carefully, good Chert.” He gave it another look, then slipped it into one of the sleeves of his robe. “And now, good morning. We will talk longer when I am not just come back from the countryside.”

Chert hesitated again. Chaven had never before made him feel unwelcome. He wanted to probe the unfamiliar situation like a sore tooth. “And your journey went well?”

“As well as could be hoped. The fever that struck the prince has come to many houses, but I do not think it was what I once feared—something that comes from beyond the Shadowline.” He stood patiently by the door.

“Thank you for your time,” the Funderling told him. “Farewell, and I hope I will see you again soon.” “I shall look forward to it,” Chaven said as he closed the door firmly behind him.

The sky was high and clear today, but cold air stabbed down from the north and Briony was glad of her warm boots. Not everyone seemed to approve of her manlike choice of clothing: woolen hose and a tunic that had once been Barrick’s; Avin Brone took one look at her and snorted, but then hurried into the day’s business as if he did not trust himself to comment on her apparel. Instead, he complained about the fact that her brother apparently could not be bothered to attend.

“The prince’s time and reasons are his own,” Briony said, but secretly she was not displeased. She had reasons to hurry, and although she did her best to attend to the matters to be settled, the taxes to be assessed, the countless stories whose only desired audience was her royal self, she was distracted and paid only intermittent attention.

Finished, she stopped and went to a meal of cold chicken and bread in her own chambers. She would rather have had something warmer on such a day, but she had an assignation to keep…

What a way to think of it! She was amused and a little ashamed. It is business — the crown’s business, and overdue. But she couldn’t completely convince even herself.

Rose and Moina were in a frenzy of disapproval of her behavior today, both her immodest, masculine garb and her choice of meetings. Although they were neither of them forward enough to say much, it quickly became clear that the young noblewomen had been intriguing between themselves and would not be sent away without a fuss. After Briony’s heated words were met with fierce resistance—but couched in the terms of purest obedience to their mistress’ commands, of course—she gave up and allowed them to accompany her. It is just as well, she told herself. It is perfectly innocent, after all, and now there will be no whispering gossip. But she couldn’t help being just the smallest bit resentful Mistress of all the northern lands—well, alongside her brother—and she could not have a meeting without being surrounded by watchful eyes, as though she were a child in danger of hurting herself.

He was waiting in the spice garden. Because of the argument with her two ladies, he had waited longer than she would have liked. She couldn’t help wondering whether chill weather like this felt more cruel to someone brought up in hot southern lands, but if Dawet dan-Faar was suffering, he was too subtle to show it.

“I had planned we would walk here,” she said, “but it is so fearfully cold Let us go across the way into Queen Lily’s Cabinet instead.”

The envoy smiled and bowed. Perhaps he was indeed glad to go somewhere warmer. “But you seem to have dressed for the weather,” he commented, looking her up and down.

Briony was disgusted to find herself blushing.

The cabinet room was modest in size, just a place where Anglin’s granddaughter had liked to sit and sew and enjoy the smells of the spice garden. At first all of Briony’s guards seemed determined to join her in the cozy little paneled room, but this was too much, she sent all but two out again. This pair took up positions near the door where they could watch Rose and Moina doing needlework, then all four of them settled down to keep a close if covert eye on their mistress.

“I trust I find you well, Lord Dawet?” she asked when they had both been served with mulled wine.

“As well as can be expected, Highness.” He sipped. “I confess that days like this, when the wind bites, I miss Hierosol.”

“As well you might. It is very unwanted, this cold weather, but the season finally seems to have changed. We had been having unusually warm days for Dekamene, after all.”

He seemed about to say something, then pursed his mouth. “And is it truly the weather that causes you to be dressed this way, Highness?” He indicated the thick hose and the long tunic—one of Barrick’s that he never wore—that she had so carefully altered to fit her own slimmer waist and wider hips.

“I sense you do not approve, Lord Dawet.”

“With respect, Highness, I do not. It seems to be a sin against nature to dress a woman, especially one as young and fair as yourself, in this coarse manner.”

“Coarse? This is a prince’s tunic, a prince’s doublet—here, see the gold fretwork! Surely it is not coarse.”

He frowned. It was a much greater pleasure than she would have guessed to see him discomfited—like watching a supercilious cat take a clumsy fall. “They are men’s clothes, Princess Briony, however rich the fabric and workmanship. They make coarse what is naturally fine.”

“So the mere fact of what I wear can make me less than fine, less than noble? I fear that leaves me very little room in which to maneuver, Lord Dawet, if I am already so close to coarseness that a mere doublet can carry me to it.”

He smiled, but it was a surprisingly angry expression. “You seek to make sport of me, Highness. And you may. But you seemed to ask whether I approved, and I would be honest with you I do not.”

“If I were your sister, then, would you forbid me to dress this way?"

“If you were my sister or any other woman whose honor was given into my keeping, yes, I would certainly forbid you.” His dark gaze suddenly touched hers, angry and somehow demanding. It was startling, as though she had been playing with what she thought was a harmless pet that had suddenly shown it could bite.

“Well, in point of fact, Lord Dawet, that is why I asked you to attend me.” “So it is not ‘we’ and ‘us,’ Highness?”

She felt her cheeks warming again. “We. ‘Us.’ You overreach yourself, Lord Dawet.”

He bowed his head, but she glimpsed the tiniest hint of a smile—the old one, the self-satisfied one. “I have been unclear, Highness. I apologize. I simply meant that you did not say ‘we,’ so I wondered if this was not then an audience with you and your royal brother, as I had been given to understand. I take it that instead you wish to speak more … informally?”

“No.” Damn the man! “No, that is not what I meant, although of course I act today as co-regent and with my brother’s approval. You make me regret speaking to you in a friendly way, Lord Dawet.”

“May the Three Highest bring rum on my house if I intended any such thing, Princess—if I intended anything other than respect and affection. I simply wished to know what sort of meeting we are having.”

She sipped at her wine, taking a moment to recover her confidence. “As I said, your remark about me being a woman in your care was to the point. Only a few weeks gone, I might have been just such a forlorn creature, sent with you to marry your lord, like… like a bit of tribute. Do not forget, Lord Dawet, you come here as the ambassador of our enemy.”

“You have greater enemies than my master Ludis, Highness. And I fear you also have friends who are even less trustworthy than me. But forgive me—I have interrupted you. Again, I am unforgivably rude.”

He had flustered her again, but the anger gave her something to grip, a certain leverage. “It is finally time for the crown of Southmarch and the March Kingdoms to return an answer to your master, the Protector of Hierosol, and his offer of marriage. While my older brother was regent, there might have been a different answer, but now, as you may guess, the answer is no. We will ransom my father with money, not my maidenhood. If Ludis wishes to beggar the northern kingdoms, then he will find that when the Autarch comes to his front door, Hierosol will get no assistance from the north. Rather, though we hate the Autarch and would not ordinarily wish to see him gain even a handful of Eion’s soil, we will rejoice at the defeat of Ludis Drakava.” She paused, slowing her breath, making her voice firm. “But if he sees another way—if King Olin might be released for something less than this exorbitant amount of gold, for instance—then Ludis might discover he has allies here that will stand him well in days ahead.” Dawet raised an eyebrow. “Is that the message you wish me to give him, Princess Briony?” “It is.”

He nodded his head slowly. “And do I take this to mean that I am no longer a prisoner? That my escort and I are free to go back to Hierosol?”

“Do you doubt my word?”

“No, Highness. But sometimes things happen beyond the echo of a prince’s voice.” “Avin Brone, the lord constable, knows my wishes… our wishes. He will return your men’s arms. Your ship is prepared already, I think.”

“Your castellan was kind enough to arrange that no harm should come to it, and that I could keep on it a small crew to see that things stayed in order.” Dawet grinned. “I confess that although I will in many ways regret leaving, it is good to know I will have my freedom again, even though you will be one guest the less.”

“Guest, indeed. Whatever you believe, Lord Dawet, I do not think you can say we treated you much like a prisoner.”

“Oh, a valued prisoner, at the worst,” he said. “But that is small solace to one who has spent years of his life living on horseback, never sleeping in the same place twice.” He stirred. “Do I have leave to go and begin the preparations?”

“Of course. You will want to sail before the weather turns for good.” She was oddly disappointed, but knew this was happening as it must. He and his Hierosoline company were a distraction in the castle; they attracted rumor and hostility as honey drew flies.Yes, he was a very distracting presence, this Dawet dan-Faar. Now that Brone had convinced her and Barrick beyond doubt that there was no way the envoy or his company could have been materially involved in her brother’s murder, it made no sense to keep them and feed them through the long winter. He bowed, took a few steps backward, then stopped. “May I speak frankly, Highness? Princess Briony?” “Of course.”

He glanced at the guards and her ladies-in-waiting, then came back and sat on the bench beside her. This close, he smelled of leather and some sweet hair oil. Briony saw Rose and Moina exchange a look. “I will take you at your word, Mistress, and hope you have played me fairly,” he said quietly. “Listen carefully to me, please.

“I am glad you did not accept the suit of my lord Ludis. I think you would not have found life at his court very enjoyable—mostly, I suspect my master’s interests and amusements would not have been to your taste. But I hope someday you can see the southlands, Princess, and perhaps even Xand… or at least those parts of it not choking under the Autarch’s control. There are beauties you cannot imagine, green seas and high mountains red as a maiden’s blush, and broad jungles full of animals you can scarcely imagine. And the deserts—you will remember I told you something of the silent, stark deserts. You may become a great queen someday, but you have seen little of the world, and that seems to me a shame.”

Briony was stung. “I have been to Settland and Brenland and… and Fael.” She had been only a child of five when her father took her to visit Merolanna’s relatives—she remembered little except a great black horse given to her father by Fael’s lord as a present, and of standing on a balcony above the sea watching otters at play in the water below.

Dawet smirked—there was nothing else to call it. “Forgive me if I do not count Settland and Brenland among the gods’ greatest triumphs, my lady.” Abruptly the smile dropped away. “And my wish for you to see more of the world is in part an idle and selfish wish… because I wish I could be the one to show these things to you.” He lifted a long, brown hand. “Please, say nothing. You told me I could speak honestly. And there is more I would tell you. “ His voice dropped all the way to a whisper. “You are in danger, my lady, and it is closer to you than you think. I cannot believe that Shaso is the one who killed your brother, but I cannot prove he did not either. However I can tell you, and tell you from knowledge, that one who is much closer to you than me means you ill. Murderously ill.” He held her gaze for a long moment; Briony felt lost, as though she were in an evil falling dream. “Trust no one.”

“Why would you say such a thing?” she whispered harshly when she had found her voice again. “Why should I believe that you, the servant of Ludis Drakava, are not merely trying to stir unhappiness between me and those I trust?”

The smile returned one last time, with an odd twist to it. “Ah, the life I have led means I deserve that many times over. Still, I do not ask you to act on my words, Princess Briony, only to consider them—to remember them. It could be that the day will come when we can sit together once more and you can tell me whether I wished you ill this day… or well.” He stood, donning his guise of easiness again like a cloak. “I hope you will be more suitably dressed, of course.” He took her hand in a most ostentatious manner, brushed his lips upon it. Everyone else in the room was staring openly. “I thank you and your brother for your generous hospitality, Princess, and I grieve for your loss. I will give your message to my master in Hierosol.”

He bowed and left the cabinet.

“I am quite sick of watching the two of you murmur,” Briony growled at her ladies-in-waiting. She didn’t quite know what she was feeling, but it was not pleasant. “Go away. I want to be by myself for a while I want to think.”

By day the dark-haired girl Willow came back to herself a little, although in some ways she seemed so childish that Ferras Vansen wondered if her problems were solely caused by having crossed the Shadowline—perhaps, he thought, she had already been a bit simpleminded Whatever the case, under the small bit of sun that leaked through the clouds she became the most cheerful of the generally silent company, riding in front of Vansen and chattering about her family and neighbors like a small child being taken to the market fair.

“She is so little, but she is the most stubborn of the lot. She will push the other goats away from the food—even the biggest of her brothers!”

Collum Dyer listened to her babble with a sour expression on his face. “Better you than me, Captain.”

Ferras shrugged. “I am happy she is talking. Perhaps after a while she will say something that we will thank Perin Cloudwalker we learned.”

“Perhaps. But, as I said, better you than me.”

In truth, Ferras Vansen was almost glad of the distraction. The land through which they passed was less obviously strange than the previous two days’ stretch of road, deserted and a bit gloomy but otherwise about what he would have expected as they neared the halfway point of the journey, and thus not particularly interesting With the largest cities of Settland and the March Kingdoms several days’ ride away in either direction, these lands had emptied in the years since the second war with the Twhght People, leaving only crofters and woodsmen of various sorts and the occasional farmer. The few small cities like Candlerstown and Faneshill had grown up south of the Settland Road, well away from the Shadowlme (These towns were also too far out of the way to be worth visiting this trip, a fact much mourned by Dyer and the rest of Vansen’s men ) Winters were also milder closer to the water to the east or west few felt the need to live out here in such dramatic solitude. The Settland Road passed through low hills and scrub that were even more undistinguished than the lands where Ferras had spent his childhood.

They could see the line again now, just a few miles away to the north, or at least they could see the breakfront of mist that marked it. It was wearying to ride hour after hour with it hovering so close, hard not to think of it as a malevolent thing watching them and waiting for an opportunity to do harm, but Ferras was much happier knowing where it was, able to see that there was still a crisp delineation between his side and the other.

Willow had moved from goats to the topic of her father and swine, and was explaining what her sire had to say about letting the hogs scavenge for mast—for the “oak corns” as she called them. Vansen, who had spent most of the last ten years of his life trying to forget about raising hogs and sheep, leaned over and asked her, “And what of Collum? Your brother?”

Either his guess was correct or she was madder than he supposed. “He would rather pick rushes than follow the pigs. He is a quiet one, our Collum. Only ten winters Such dreams he has!”

“And where is he now?" He was trying to discover if there was any sense or meaning behind some of the things she had said.

Her look turned sad, even frightened, and he was almost sorry he’d asked. “In the middle of the night, he went. The moon called him, he said I tried to go, too—he is just a little one!—but our father, he grabbed me and would not let me through the door.” As if the subject caused her pain, she began talking again about cutting the rushes for rush candles, another activity Vansen knew only too well.

It would not have taken much calling by the moon or anything else to make me run away, Vansen thought. But somehow I do not think this girl’s brother has gone to the city to make his fortune.

Late afternoon, with the sun falling fast, Vansen decided to make camp. The road had led them through the low, sparsely covered hills all day, but they were about to pass through a patch of forested ground. The stand of trees before them was not a place he wanted to wander in the growing dark.

“Look!” shouted one of the men. “A deer—a buck!”

“We’ll have fresh meat,” another cried.

Ferras Vansen looked up to see the creature standing just inside the shadows at the edge of the trees, half a hundred steps away. It was large and healthy, with an impressive spread of antler, but seemed otherwise quite ordinary Still, something about the way it looked at them, even as a few of the men were nocking arrows, made him uneasy.

“Don’t shoot,” he said One of the soldiers raised his bow and aimed. “Don’t!” At Vansen’s shout, even though it had been looking straight at them, the stag for the first time seemed to understand its peril It turned and with two long leaps vanished into the cover of the trees.

“I could have had him,” snarled the bowman, the old campaigner Southstead whose grumbling ways had been the reason Vansen brought him instead of leaving him home to gossip and spread dissatisfaction among the rest of the guardsmen.

“We do not know what is natural here and what is not.” Ferras was careful to keep anger out of his voice. “You saw the flowers. You have seen the empty houses. We have enough to eat in our packs and saddlebags to keep us alive. Kill nothing that does not threaten you—do you all hear me?”

“What,” demanded Southstead, “do you think it might be another girl, magicked into a deer?” He turned to the other guards with a loud, angry laugh. “He’s already got one—that’s just greedy, that is.”

Vansen realized that the man was frightened by this journey through lands grown strange. As are we all, he told himself, but that makes such talk all the more dangerous. “If you think you know better than me how to lead this company, Mickael Southstead, then say so to me, not to them.”

Southstead’s smile faltered. He licked his lips. “I meant only a jest, sir.” “Well, then Let us leave it at that and make camp. Jests will be more welcome over a fire.”

When the flames were rising and the girl Willow was warming her hands, Collum Dyer made his way to Vansen s side. “You’ll have to keep an eye on our Micka, Captain,” he said quietly. “Too many years of too much wine has curdled his heart and brains, but I had not thought him so far gone as to mock his captain. He never would have dared it in Murray’s day.”

“He’ll still do well enough if there’s something to do.” Vansen frowned. “Raemon Beck, come here.”

The young merchant, who had spent most of the journey like a man caught in a nightmare from which he couldn’t awaken, slowly made his way toward Vansen and Dyer.

“Are you an honorable man, Beck?”

He looked at Ferras Vansen in surprise. “Why, yes, I am.” “Yes, Captain,” grunted Dyer.

Vansen raised his hand it didn’t matter. “Good. Then I want you to be the girl’s companion. She will ride with you. Trying to get sense from her is like sifting a thousandweight of chaff for every grain of wheat, anyway, and you may recognize better than I can if she says something useful.”

“Me?”

“Because you are the only one here who has been through something like what I believe she has seen and heard and felt.” Ferras looked over to where the men were gathering more deadfall for the fire. “Also, to be frank, it is better if the men are angry with you than angry with me.”

Beck did not look too pleased at this, but Collum Dyer was standing right beside him, cleaning his dirty fingernails with a very long dagger, so he only scowled and said, “But I am a married man!”

“Then treat her as you would want your wife treated if she were found wandering ill and confused beside the road. And if she says anything that you think might be useful, anything at all, tell me at once.”

“Useful how?"

Vansen sighed. “In keeping us alive, for one thing.”

He and Dyer watched as a chastened Beck walked back to the fire and sat himself down beside the near-child Willow. “Do you think we’re in such danger, Captain?” asked Dyer.

“Truly.”

“Because of a few flowers and a daft girl?”

“Perhaps not. But I’d rather come home with everyone safe and be laughed at for being too cautious—wouldn’t you?"

The night passed without incident, and by midmorning the road had led them so deep into the trees that they could no longer see the dreary hills or the looming Shadowline. At first that seemed a blessing, but as the day wore on and the sun, glimpsed only for brief moments through chinks in the canopy, passed the peak of the sky and began to slide into the west, Vansen found himself wondering whether they would have to spend the night surrounded by forest, which was not a comfortable thought. As they took their midday meal of roadbread and cheese, he called Raemon Beck to his side again.

“There is nothing to tell,” Beck said sullenly. “I have never heard so much prattling about pigs and goats in my entire life. If we were to come upon her father’s farm now, I think I might put a torch to it myself.”

“That is not what I wished to ask you. These woods—when you were riding through them, how long did it take you? On the way out toward Settland, I mean.” He tried a kind smile. “I doubt you were paying much notice to such things on your ride back.”

Beck’s look was almost amused, but it didn’t hide his misery. “We went through no forest like this on the way out.” “What do you mean? You traveled on the Settland Road, did you not?”

The merchant’s nephew looked pale, weary. “Don’t you understand, Captain? Everything has changed. Everything. I remember scarcely half these places from my journey.”

“What nonsense is that? It was only a week or two ago. You must have passed through this wood. A road is not a river—it doesn’t flood its banks and find a new channel.”

Beck only shrugged. “Then I must have forgotten this wood, Captain Vansen.”

The afternoon wore on. The cleared space where the road passed through the trees was quiet and gloomy, but there were signs of life—a few deer, squirrels, a pair of silvery foxes that passed through a clearing beside them like midday moonlight before vanishing into a thicket, and a raven that for a while seemed to keep pace with them, fluttering from branch to branch, cocking its head to examine them with bright yellow eyes. Then, one of the men on foot who could no longer stand the raven’s persistence and silence chased it away with a stone Vansen did not have the heart to scold him.

At last, as the sharp shadows of leaves and branches on the road began to blur into a more general murkiness, he decided that they could not go on any longer in the hope of outlasting the forest. It would be dark within an hour. He bade the company stop and set camp at the edge of the trees, beside the road.

He was kneeling in front of the first gathering of kindling, trying to strike a light from his recalcitrant flint, when one of the youngest guardsmen came racing toward them along the edge of the forest.

“Captain! Captain!” he shouted. “There is someone on the road ahead.” Vansen stood. “Armed? Could you tell? How many?”

The young soldier shook his head, wide-eyed. “Just one—an old man, I think. And he was walking away from us. I saw him! He had a staff and wore a cloak with the hood up.”

Vansen was struck by the young man’s almost feverish excitement. “A local woodsman, no doubt.” “He… he seemed strange to me.”

Ferras Vansen looked around. Work setting up camp had stopped and all were now watching him. He could feel their curiosity and discomfort. “Well, then, we’ll have a look.You come with me. Dyer? You, too. Perhaps we can all shelter somewhere a bit more comfortable tonight, if this old fellow lives nearby.”

The pair climbed onto their horses and followed the young guard along the road, past the point where it turned and took them out of sight of the camp. There was indeed a small, dark figure hurrying along ahead of them. Although the shape was bent,Vansen thought that if he was an old man, he must be a very spry old man.

They left the young foot soldier and spurred ahead, thinking to catch up to the cloaked shape in a matter of moments, but it was growing dark quickly and somehow even though the road curved again only a little, they could not find him.

“He’s heard us coming and stepped into the trees,” said Collum Dyer.

They rode a little farther, until they could see a clear stretch of road before them. Even in the poor light it was quite clear no one was hurrying ahead of them. They turned and made their way back, riding slowly, peering into the thicket on either side of the road to see if their quarry was hiding there.

“A trick,” Dyer said. “Do you think he was an enemy? A spy?”

“Perhaps, but…” Vansen suddenly pulled up in the middle of the road. His horse was restive, pawing at the ground impatiently. A little evening mist had begun to rise from the ground. “We’ve come back two bends of the road,” he said. “Collum, where is the camp?”

Dyer looked startled, then scowled. “You’ll frighten us both, Captain. A little farther ahead—we’ve just mistaken how far in this failing light.”

Vansen allowed himself to be led, but after they had been riding for a while longer, Dyer suddenly reined up and began to call.

“Hallooo! Hallooo! Where are you all? It’s Dyer—halloooo!” No one answered.

“But we are still on the same road!” Collum Dyer said in panic and fury. “It’s not even full dark!” Ferras Vansen found he was trembling a little, although the evening was not particularly cold. Mist twined lazily between the trees. He made the sign of the Trigon and realized he had been silently murmuring prayers to the gods for some time. “No,” he said slowly, “but somewhere, somehow, without even knowing it… we have crossed the Shadowline.”

19. The God-King

As usual, the high priest did not enter the dark room until Qinnitan had already been led through an exhausting series of prayers and the steaming golden cup had been set before her. High Priest Panhyssir was another Favored, and was at least as large and imposing as Luian, but seemed to have studied the ways of real men as carefully as Luian had studied those of natural women. He also seemed to have kept his stones until after he had reached manhood—his beard was wispy but long, and he had a surprisingly deep voice, which he used to great effect.

“Has she completed the day’s obeisances?” he demanded When the acolyte nodded, the high priest crossed his arms on his chest. “Good. And the mirror-prayers—has she said them all?”

Qinnitan swallowed her irritation. She didn’t like being talked about as if she were only a child who couldn’t understand, and considering that the hours-long prayer rituals in this small, mirror-lined chamber in the temple never changed, and that she had never been allowed to skip even one of the dozens of intricate chants (those many-named invocations of the different characters of Nushash spoken into the largest of the sacred mirrors, praising the god in his incarnations as the Red Horse, the Glowing Orb of Dawn, the Slayer of Night’s Demons, the Golden River, the Protector of Sleep, the Juggler of the Stars, and all the others) Qinnitan thought it was a bit much for the priest to act as if during his absence she might have been doing something else instead.

“Yes, Great One, O treasured of Nushash.” The subordinate priest, also one of the Favored, had the voice and smooth skin of a young boy, although he was clearly full grown. He was vain, too. he liked to observe himself in the sacred mirrors when he didn’t think Qinnitan was looking. “She is prepared.”

Qinnitan accepted the cup—a splendid thing of gems and hammered gold in the shape of the winged bull that drew Nushash’s great wagon across the sky, worth more than the entire neighborhood in which she had grown up—and did her best to look solemn and grateful. High Priest Pan-hyssir, after all, was one of the most powerful men in the world and probably held her life in his hands. Still, she could not help wrinkling up her face a little as she took the first swallow.

It was lucky that the young priest always said his invocation so loudly— it made it easier for her to drink slowly, and not to worry about the noises she made as she forced the dreadful stuff down. The elixir, the Sun’s Blood as they called it, did taste a little bit like actual blood, salty and with a smoky hint of musk, which was one of the reasons Qinnitan had to force herself not to gag on it. There were other flavors as well, none of them particularly nice, and although it wasn’t spicy, it made her entire mouth tingle as though she had eaten too many of the little yellow Marash peppers.

“Now close your eyes, child,” Panhyssir told her in his deep, important voice as she finished draining the cup. “Let the god find you and touch you. It is a great, great honor.”

The honor came more quickly than usual, and it was no mere brush this time, no dreamy caress as in past days, but more like being grabbed and shaken by something huge. It started as a feeling of heat at the back of her stomach and then spread swiftly up and down her spine, both directions at the same moment like a crackle of fire through dry grass, flaring at last behind her eyes and between her legs so that she would have fallen off the chair if the younger priest had not grabbed her. She felt his hands as though they were far, far away, as though they touched a statue of her rather than the real Qinnitan. The rush of noise and darkness into her head was so powerful that for long moments she was certain she would die, that her skull would burst like a pine knot in a cook fire.

“Help me!” she screamed—or tried to, but the words only existed in her own thoughts. What came out of her mouth instead were animal grunts.

“Lay her down,” Panhyssir commanded. His voice seemed to come from another room. “It has well and truly taken her this time.”

“Is there anything… ?” Qinnitan could not see the young priest—she was in a night-dark fog—but he sounded frightened. “Will she… ?”

“She is feeling the touch of the god. She is being prepared. Lay her back on the cushions so she does not harm herself. The great god is speaking to her…”

But he’s not, Qinnitan thought as Panhyssir’s voice grew fainter and fainter, leaving her alone at last in blackness. No one’s speaking to me. I’m all alone. I’m all alone!

It grew thick around her, then—although she didn’t know, couldn’t even guess, what “it” was. She was having enough difficulty just holding what she was and who she was in her heart: the darkness threatened to suck it all away, all of what made her Qinnitan, just as winter nights of her childhood had yanked the warmth from her face when she ran outside in a sweat after jumping and playing with her cousins.

Now the darkness began to change. She still could not see anything, but the emptiness around her began to harden like crystal, and every new thought that passed through her mind seemed to make it ring, a deep, slow tolling like a monstrous bell of ice. She was heavy, heavier and older than any mere living thing. Qinnitan could understand what it was to be a stone, to lie in the earth without moving, measuring out thoughts as deliberate as mountains rising, how it felt to live not just flitting moments but millennia, each dream an aeon long.

And then she could feel something outside herself, but close—frighteningly close, as though she were a fly walking all unknowing on the belly of a sleeping man.

Sleeping? Perhaps not. For now she could sense the true size of the thoughts that surrounded and penetrated her, thoughts that she had for a moment imagined were her own, although she realized now that she could no more make sense of these vast ideas than she could speak the language of an earth tremor’s rumble.

Nushash? Could it be the great god himself?

Qinnitan did not want to be locked in this diamond-hard, resonant darkness anymore. The horrid shudder of the god’s slow pondering was too much for her frail thoughts, so far from her and so, so much greater than she or any mere man or woman could ever be, big as a mountain—no, big as Xand itself, bigger, something that could he across the whole night sky and fill it like a grave.

And then whatever it was finally noticed her.

Qinnitan came up thrashing, her heart battering at her ribs as though trying to leap from her breast. As she woke to the burning brightness of the lanterns in the small temple room, she was weeping so hard she thought her bones would break, with a taste in the back of her mouth like corpse flesh. The younger Favored priest held her head as she vomited.

At last, an hour later, when the female servants had cleaned up after her and bathed her and robed her, she was taken back to Panhyssir. The paramount priest held her face in his hard hand and stared into her eyes, not in sympathy, but like a jewel merchant evaluating facets.

“Good,” he said. “The Golden One will be pleased. You are progressing well.” She tried to speak but couldn’t, as weary and sore as if she had been beaten.

“Autarch Sulepis has called for you, girl. Tonight you will be prepared. Tomorrow you will be taken to him.” With that he left her.

The preparations were so exhausting and kept her up so late that even as she was being hustled down the hallways of the Orchard Palace to her morning meeting with the autarch, and having got out of bed only an hour before, Qinnitan was stumbling with fatigue. She was also still suffering the effects of the potion the high priest had given her the previous day, feeling it much more strongly than she ever had before. Even in these shadowed halls the light seemed too painfully bright, the echoes too persistent—it made her want to run back to bed and pull something over her face.

At the golden doors of the autarch’s reclining chamber, she and her small retinue had to step back and wait as the great litter she had seen once before was maneuvered somewhat awkwardly out into the passage. The crippled Scotarch Prusas pulled a curtain aside with his cramped fingers to watch the proceedings, then he caught sight of Qinnitan and his head twisted toward her, mouth hanging open as though in shock, although she thought that was more the slackness of his jaw than any real surprise at seeing a minor bride-to-be waiting for an audience with the autarch. He looked her up and down, his head trembling on his thin neck, and if the look he gave her was not contempt or even hatred, she was certain it was something close, a chilly examination made more disturbing still by his twitches and little gasps of breath.

Why would the most powerful man in the world pick such a frail, mad creature as this for his scotarch? Qinnitan could not even guess. The scotarchy was an old tradition of the Falcon Throne, meant to make sure an heir was always in place until an autarch’s own son was old enough to take power; it was designed to forestall crippling warfare that had often broken out between factions when the autarch died without an heir ready. The strongest and oldest part of the ritualistic tradition, however, was that if the scotarch died it meant that the autarch had lost favor with heaven and thus he had to give up his throne as well. This had been meant to stave off treachery from sons and relatives not likely to be named as heir, and because of this ancient Xixian constraint on even their god-kings, scotarchs were chosen not so much for their actual worthiness to rule but for health and likely endurance, prized like racehorses for brightness of eye and strength of heart Until a few generations back, they had always been chosen during ceremonial games in which all contestants but the winner might die. This had been deemed fitting, since the path to the Falcon Throne for aspiring autarchs also tended to work the same way, except that the deaths were not generally so public.

As Qmnitan watched the trembling figure of Prusas withdraw into the cushioned depths of his litter with a stammering cry that his bearers should hurry on, she could only wonder how anyone, especially someone like Sulepis with no suitable male heirs even born, let alone ready to rule, could have chosen such a pathetic creature as Prusas for his scotarch, a cripple who looked to be tottering on the lip of the grave (Qinnitan was not alone, of course: nobody in the Seclusion seemed to know the answer to that question, although it was much guessed-at throughout the entire Orchard Palace. Some brave ones whispered that it proved that Autarch Sulepis was either the maddest of his unstable family or, putting a more pleasant face on it, touched by the gods.)

The tall doors had barely swung shut behind the scotarch’s litter before they swung open again for Qinnitan and her pair of attendant maids and complementary pair of Favored guards.

The Reclining Chamber with its slender purple-and-gold columns was only slightly smaller than the great throne room, although there were many fewer people in it, only a dozen soldiers mostly ranged at the back of the dais and another two dozen servants and priests In any other circumstances it would have felt strange to be the object of so many male stares after so long in the Seclusion, but even with Jeddin one of those watching her, the Leopard captain’s eyes rapt but his thoughts hidden as though behind a curtain, Qinnitan’s gaze was drawn to the man on the white stone bench as though by a lodestone. It was not just the autarch’s obvious power that seized her attention, the way the others in the room stayed as close to him as they could while still obviously fearing him, like freezing peasants around a huge bonfire, or even the fierce madness of his eyes, pitiless as a hunting bird’s, whose force she could feel even from a dozen paces away. This time, there was another reason for her fascination except for the golden circlet in his hair and the golden stalls on his fingertips, the autarch was completely naked.

Qinnitan realized that her cheeks were growing hot, as though the god-king really did burn with some kind of flame. She didn’t quite know where to look. Nakedness itself did not bother her, even that of a grown man— she had often seen her father and brothers bathe themselves, and the people of Great Xis did not wear much even when they were walking in the crowded, sun-blasted streets—and the autarch’s golden-brown limbs although long and thin were by no means ugly. Still, there was a disturbing heedlessness to Sulepis that made his unclothed form seem somehow more like that of an animal that did not know it was naked than a man who knew and reveled in it. There was a shiny film of sweat on all his skin. His member lay against his thighs, limp and long as the snout of some blind thing.

“Ah,” the autarch said in a bored tone that didn’t match the expression in his eyes, “here she is, the young bride-to-be. Am I not right, Panhyssir? Is this not her?”

“You are right, as always, Golden One.” The priest stepped out from behind the slaves with the fans and waited behind the couch.

“And her name was… was.

“Qinnitan, Golden One—daughter of Cheshret of the Third Temple.”

“Such an unusual name you have, child.” The autarch lifted his hand, crooked a long, shining finger at her. “Come closer.”

Never in her life had she wanted more fervently to turn and run away as fast as she could, a beast-panic that struck her as shockingly as if a jar of cold water had been dashed against her skin. For a moment she could teel again the endless depths that had suddenly opened before her after drinking the Sun’s Blood elixir it seemed that if she did not do something, she would fall into blackness and never stop falling. Qinnitan stood, desperate to escape although she couldn’t quite say why, but in any case unable to do so and fighting for breath.

“Step forward,” Panhyssir said harshly. “The Golden One has spoken to you, girl.”

His eyes held hers now and she found herself taking one small step forward, then another. The gold-tipped finger curled and she moved still closer, until she stood beside the couch with the god-king’s long face only a handsbreadth or two below her own. She had never seen such eyes, she knew now, she could not imagine such bright, mad depths attached to anything that walked on two legs. Beneath the attar of roses and other perfumes lurked something base and disturbing, a salty tang like blood or even hot metal—the autarch’s breath.

“Her parentage shows, I think.” The mightiest man on earth reached up his hand to touch her. She flinched, then held steady as his fingertip in its little basket of warm gold mesh drew a line down her cheek that in her imagination rasped her skin and left behind a bloody path. She closed her eyes, feeling as though at any moment some terrible joke would be revealed and someone would step forward, throw her down, and hack off her head. It almost seemed it might come as a relief.

“Open your eyes, girl. Am I so frightening? The Seclusion is full of women who have felt my touch with joy, and many others still praying I will come to them soon.”

She looked at him. It was very difficult. There seemed nothing else in the great room—no columns, no guards, nothing but herself and those eyes the color of old linen.

“Do not fear,” he said quietly. “Rather, rejoice. You will be the mother of my immortality, little bride-to-be. An honor like no other.”

She could not speak, could not even nod until she swallowed down the lump in her throat.

“Good. Do what the old priest bids you and you will have a wedding night that lifts you in glory above all others.” He let his hand slide from her face to her breast and she felt her nipples harden as if with fever-chill beneath the thin robe. “Remember, all this belongs to your god.“ His hand slipped down over her belly, the finger-stalls hard and cruel as a vulture’s talons as he carelessly cupped her groin. She could not suppress a little grunt of shock. “Prepare and rejoice.”

He let her go and turned away, lifted his hand. A cupbearer sprang forward to give him something to drink. The autarch was clearly finished with her. Panhyssir clapped and the guards led her toward the door. Qinnitan was trembling so badly as she left the Reclining Chamber that she almost fell and had to be steadied. Beneath her robe she thought she could still feel every instant of his touch, as though his fingers had left a burning stain.

20. Lost in the Moon’s Land

Barrick was furious, to be summoned across the huge residence to Avin Brone’s chamber in the middle of the night as though he were a mere courtier. He growled at the small boy who opened the lord constable’s door when the child did not get out of the way fast enough, but he was disturbed as well by the urgent words of Brone’s messenger.

“The lord constable begs you to come to his rooms, Highness,” the page had told him. “He respectfully asks that you come quickly.”

Barrick s sleep had been plagued again, as so often, by evil dreams; as the door opened a sickly fearful part of him wondered if the big man planned some treachery. Barrick almost flinched when the lord constable came across the small sitting room toward him, dressed in a monstrous nightgown, his buckled shoes pulled directly onto his bare feet. When Brone did nothing more suspicious than to bow slightly and hold the door open, another fear occurred to Barrick.

“Where is my sister? Is she well?”

“To the best of my knowledge. I imagine she will arrive any moment.”

Brone gestured to a chair, one of two placed side by side. “Please, Highness, sit down. I will explain all.” His beard, uncombed and unribboned, strayed all over his face and chest like a wild shrub: apparently whatever had caused this unlikely summons had come after the Lord of Landsend was in bed.

When Barrick had seated himself, Brone lowered his own large frame onto a stool, leaving the other chair empty. “I have sent the boy for some wine. Forgive the meagerness of my hospitality.”

Barrick shrugged. “I will take some mulled.”

“Good choice. There is an ugly chill in the corridors.”

“There certainly is,”Briony announced from the doorway. “I’m sure you have good reason for getting me out of my warm bed, Lord Brone.”

Briony’s huge, hooded velvet mantle did not entirely disguise the fact that she, too, was in her nightdress. Of the three, only Barrick wore day-clothes. He did not like preparing himself for bed, these days, and preferred falling asleep in a chair while still dressed. Somehow it seemed as though that might make it harder for the bad dreams to find him.

“Thank you, Highness.” Brone rose again and made a bow before leading Briony to the other chair. He winced a little as he moved. Barrick was at first merely interested—the lord constable had always seemed, like Shaso, a man made of something sterner than mere flesh—but a moment later he felt a pang of worry. What if Brone died? He was not a young man, after all. With their father and the master of arms both prisoners, and Kendrick dead, there were few people left that the Eddons could trust who knew all the political business of Southmarch. Barrick suddenly felt more than ever like a child sent out to do a grown man’s chore.

The lord constable must have seen something of this thought in Barrick’s face. His smile was grim. “These cold nights are a trial to my old joints, Highness, but nothing I cannot weather. Still, I am glad that you have many, many years ahead of you before you must worry about such things.”

Briony seemed more interested in her brother than in the lord constable’s infirmities. “Have you not been to bed, Barrick?”

He didn’t like being asked in front of Avin Brone, as though she were his older sister, or even his mother, instead of his twin. “I was reading. Does that meet with your approval, Your Highness?” She flushed a little. “I only wondered…”

“I have been meaning to ask you, Princess,” the lord constable asked, “whether my niece Rose Trelling was giving you good service.” He did not meet her eye. Brone’s look was distracted, almost confused, as though they had woken him up rather than the other way around. “We were very grateful for your kindness to her. She is a good girl, if a little silly sometimes.”

“I am very happy with Rose.” Briony stared at him. “But I cannot believe you woke us after the midnight bell to ask whether my ladies-in-waiting are serving me well.”

“Forgive me, Highness, but I am waiting our true business until…” The lord constable fell silent, nodding significantly as the page returned with three flagons of wine. The boy knelt by the fire and heated them one by one with a poker, then served Briony first. It was clear Avin Brone wouldn’t speak until the boy had left, so they all sat and watched the seemingly endless process, the room silent but for the quiet rumble and crackle of the fire.

When the boy was gone, Brone leaned forward. “Again, I apologize for calling you both here, out of your beds. The fact is, it is easier for me to empty my rooms of listening ears and less conspicuous to do so. If I had come to you and asked for all your pages and maids and guards to be sent away, it would be the talk of the castle tomorrow.”

“And you do not think anybody will know or discuss the fact that Barrick and I came across the castle to your rooms?”

“It will not occasion as much speculation. And there is another reason to meet here, which you will see.”

“But why this alarm?” Barrick couldn’t lose the twist of fear in his guts. Was this what being a king was always like? Fearful midnight summonses? Distrust and doubt all the time? Who would want such a thing? He had a sudden horror—he prayed it was only a horror and not some kind of premonition—of Briony lost or dead and himself left alone to rule. “What is so urgent?” he almost shouted. “What cannot wait for morning and needs to be held secret?”

“Two things, two pieces of information, both of which reached me this evening,” said Brone. “One of them will require you to get up, so I will begin with the other while you finish your wine.” He took a long swallow from his own flagon. “Thank Erilo for the blessed grape,” he said fervently. “If I could not have a cup or two of warm wine at night so I can bend my old legs, I would have to sleep standing up like a horse.”

“Talk,” said Barrick through clenched teeth.

“Your pardon, Highness.” Brone tugged at his gray-shot beard. “Here are the first tidings, whatever they may mean. Gailon Tolly seems to have disappeared.”

“What?” Barrick and Briony spoke at the same time. “The Duke of Summerfield”” he asked, unbelieving.” That Gailon Tolly?”

Avin Brone nodded. “Yes, my prince. He never reached Summerfield Court.”

“But he left here with a dozen armed men,” Briony said. “Surely, so many knights can’t simply vanish. And we would have heard something from his mother, wouldn’t we?”

“That’s right,” said Barrick. “If anything had happened to Gailon that old cow would be at our gate by now, screaming murder.”

Lord constable raised his broad hands in a gesture of helplessness. “They have only just begun to realize at Summerfield Court that he is missing. He sent word by a fast courier when he left here, and they expected him back a week ago, but no one was surprised he hadn’t arrived— I imagine they thought he had stopped for some hunting, or to visit one of his . . his cousins.” He looked at Briony, then quickly away. “It was only the day before yesterday that people began to grow alarmed. A horse that belonged to his friend, Evon Kinnay, son of the Baron of Longhowe—you remember young Kinnay, of course . . ?”

“A weasel,” snapped Barrick. “Always going on about how he wanted to become a priest, and touching up the servant girls.”

“. . Kinnay’s horse, still with saddle and saddle blanket, was found wandering a few miles from the grounds of Summerfield Court. Gailon had mentioned in his letter to his mother that Kinnay was one of the men coming back with him. The Tollys have now searched the area all around the forest. No trace.”

Briony put down her wine cup. She looked now like Barrick had felt since he first received Brone’s summons. “May the gods preserve us from evil. Do you think it is something like what happened with that merchant caravan? Could it be… the Twilight People?”

“But Summerfield Court is miles and miles south of the Shadowline,” Barrick hurriedly pointed out. He didn’t like the thought of dark things slipping past that barrier and roaming the lands of men. He hadn’t had even a single good night since the news of the caravan. “We are much closer than they are.”

“Nothing is impossible,” admitted Avin Brone. “I want you also to consider the possibility of something closer to home. Gailon Tolly left Southmarch a very angry man—a very powerful man, too, especially now that your brother Kendrick is dead. I do not have to tell you that there are many people of influence in the land who think you two are too young to rule. Some even say that you are my puppets.”

“Perhaps you should consider that the next time you make us walk across the castle to your chamber in the middle of the night, Brone.” Anger helped Barrick feel a little better—it was like dipping the hot poker into the wine, sharing the heat.

“What does it matter what people think?” his sister demanded. “We did nothing to Gailon! I was glad to see the back of him.”

“But think on this,” said the lord constable. “Imagine that Gailon appears again some days from now. Imagine that the Tollys cry that you sent soldiers after him to kill him, that you feared his claim on the throne…”

“What nonsense! Claim? Gailon has a claim only if our father and all of his family are dead!” Barrick’s anger returned, so strong that he had to get up and pace. “That means Briony and I would have to be dead, too. And our stepmother’s child as well.

Brone held up a hand, requesting quiet. Barrick stopped talking but could not make himself sit down again. “I only ask you to imagine a possibility, Highnesses. Imagine if Gailon were to reappear in a few weeks and say you tried to murder him—perhaps claim that the two of you were going to avoid paying your father’s ransom so you could continue to rule and that he had objected, or something like that.”

“That would be treachery—revolution!” Barrick slumped down in his chair again, feeling suddenly weak and miserable. “But how could we prove it wasn’t so?"

“That is the problem with rumors,” said Avin Brone. “It is very hard to prove that things are not true—much more difficult than proving they are.”

“But why do you propose such an unlikely possibility?” asked Briony. “I don’t much like Gailon, but, surely, even if the Tollys had designs on the throne, he would wait until there is some problem—a bad crop, or a plague of fevers much worse than the one that Barrick and others have had—wait until people are truly frightened before trying to turn them against us? They hardly know my brother and me. We have reigned only scarcely a season.”

“Which is exactly why they might believe lies spread about you,” said Brone.

Briony frowned. “But even so, aren’t you stretching for an answer? If Gailon is truly lost and not just hunting, as people thought, there are a dozen explanations more likely than him preparing to accuse us of trying to harm him.”

“Perhaps.” The big man stood slowly, putting his hand on the seat of the stool to steady himself. He picked up an oil lamp and the room’s shadows writhed. “But now we come to the next part of my concern. Will you come with me?”

They followed him out of the sitting room and down a narrow, unornamented hallway Brone paused outside a door. “This is why I am not in my own bed tonight, Highnesses.” He pushed the door open.

The room was lit by many lamps and candles—far more than would seem normal in a bedchamber. At first, even with all this light, Barrick had trouble making sense of the knot of shapes at the center of the bed: only after a few moments had passed could he see that it was one man kneeling atop the bed next to another, the kneeling one with his head pressed against the other’s chest in a pose almost like a lover’s embrace. The one on top held a finger against his lips, asking for silence. His lined face was familiar to Barrick, something he thought he had seen in one of the nightmares, and he had to suppress a gasp of fear.

“I think you two must both know Brother Okros of the Eastmarch Academy of scholars,” Brone said. “He came to help you when you were ill, Barrick. Now he is caring for… for one of my servants.”

There was blood on the bed, on the sheets; Brother Okros’ hands were wet with it. The monk gave them a quick, distracted smile. “You will forgive me, Highnesses. This man is not yet beyond danger and I am very occupied.”

The man on the red-smeared sheets had a dark, untammed beard, and his skin, hair, his clothes were all very dirty, but even groomed and clean he would not have made anyone look twice. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, his teeth clenched as if to hold in his straining, rasping breath. His shirt had been pulled open and Brother Okros had his fingers deep in a ghastly hole in the man’s chest just below the shoulder.

“Just a moment,” said the physician-priest, and finally Barrick recalled the voice if not the face, remembered hearing it float through one of his fever dreams, talking about correct alignments and improved balances. “There is a broken arrowhead still lodged here. I . . ah! There it is.” Brother Okros sat up, a pair of bloodied tongs clutched in his fingertips with a small piece of what looked like metal between the tines. “There. At least this will not now make its way to his lungs or his heart.” He rolled his patient over, gently but firmly—a deep groan came up from the wounded man, only partially muffled in the bed linens—and began to wipe at another bloody hole above the man’s shoulder blade. “This is where it went in—do you see? I will need to pack the wound with comfrey and a willow bark poultice…”

Briony’s face was pale, as Barrick felt sure his own was, but his sister swallowed and spoke calmly. “Why is this man lying bloodied in your rooms, Lord Brone? And why is Brother… Brother Okros… tending him? Why not our castle doctor? Chaven has been back several days.”

“I will explain everything in a moment, but I wanted you to hear this from the man’s own lips. Turn him back over, Okros, I beg of you. Then we will leave you alone to bind his wounds and give him whatever other physick he needs.”

Together Brone and the little priest got the bearded man onto his back again. Okros held pieces of cloth tightly against the wounds on both sides.

“Rule,” said the lord constable. “It’s me, Brone. Do you recognize me?” The man’s eyes flickered across him. “Yes, Master,” he grunted.

“Tell me again what you saw at Summerfield Court, Rule. Tell me what sent you riding back here in such a hurry, and probably earned you an arrow in the back.” Brone looked at the twins. “This man should have died on the road. Clearly someone thought he would.”

Rule groaned again. “Autarch’s men,” he said at last. “In Summerfield.” He fought to moisten his lips, swallowed hard. “The cursed Xixy bastards were… honored guests of the old duchess.”

“The Autarch’s men… ? With the Tollys?” Barrick couldn’t help looking around as though at any moment the shroud-faced men of his nightmares might appear from the shadows.

“Aye.” Brone was grim. “Now come and I will tell you the rest of the tale.”

Paying the cold night its due, Brone had wrapped a blanket around his massive shoulders. Half his beard was covered. He looked like a giant from an old story, Barrick thought, like something that gnawed bones and toppled stone walls with his hands.

How much do we really know about him? Barrick was struggling to keep his mind straight. He felt light-headed, as though fever were plucking at him again with fingers both hot and cold. Our father trusted him, but is that enough? Someone has killed Kendrick. Now Brone tells us that Gailon Tolly has disappeared, and also that Gailon’s family makes alliance with the Autarch What if the criminal is our lord constable himself? I might not like Tolly —in fact, I never liked him or his bloody father, with his red nose and his shouting voice —but is it enough just to take Brone’s word or the word of his spy that he’s some kind of traitor?

As if she shared his thoughts, his sister said, “We are certainly grateful for your efforts on behalf of the crown, Count Avin, but this is a bit much to swallow in one mouthful. Who is that man on the bed? Why didn’t you summon the royal physician?”

“More to the point, where’s Gailon?” Barrick asked. “It’s convenient that he’s not around to defend himself and his family.”

What Barrick felt sure was an angry light glinted for a moment in the lord constable’s eye. Brone paused to drink more wine; when he spoke, his voice was even. “I cannot blame you for being surprised, Highnesses, or for being mistrustful. And for the last question I have no answers. I wish I did.” He scowled. “This has gone cold—the wine, I mean.” He stumped to the fireplace and began heating the poker. “As to the other matters, I will tell you and then you must make up your own minds.” He grunted, flashed a sour smile. “As you always do.

“The man Rule is, as you’ve guessed, a spy. He is a rough fellow, not the sort I would prefer to use in a place like Summerfield Court, but I have had to make shift. Do you remember that musician fellow, Robben Hulligan? Red hair?”

“Yes,” said Briony. “He was a friend of old Puzzle’s. He died, didn’t he? Killed by robbers on the South Road last year.”

“By robbers… perhaps. He died on his way back from Summerfield, within a few weeks after we heard that your father was a prisoner, although even I did not think much of it at the time, except the inconvenience to me. It may or may not surprise you to learn that much of what I knew about the Tollys and Summerfield came from Hulligan. He was close with many in the court there and the old duchess loved him. He was allowed to roam where he pleased, like a pet dog.” “You think… you think he was killed? Because he was your spy?”

Brone grimaced. “I do not want to jump at every shadow. The only certain thing is that since Robben’s death I have known little about what happens in Summerfield, and it has bothered me enough that I sent Rule. He has many skills and usually has little trouble finding work in a great house— tinkering, fletching, acting the groom.” “These spies,” Barrick said slowly. “Do you have them in all the great houses of the March Kingdoms?”

“Of course. And to save you a question, Highness—yes, I have spies in this household as well. I hope you do not think I could do without them. We have already lost one member of the royal family.”

“Which your spies did nothing to prevent!”

Brone looked at him coolly. “No, Highness, they did not, and I have lost many nights’ sleep thinking about just that, wondering what I might have done more carefully. But that does not change what is before us. Rule is a careful man. If he says there are agents of the Autarch at Summerfield Court, I believe him, and I suggest very strongly you do not dismiss what he has to say.”

“Before we go on,” Briony said, “I still wish to know why that priest was seeing to him, not Chaven.”

Brone nodded. “Fair enough. Here is the answer. Brother Okros was not in the castle when your brother was killed. Chaven was.”

“What?” Briony sat up straight. “Do you suspect Chaven of my brother’s murder? A brutal stabbing? He is the family physician! Surely if he wanted Kendrick dead, he could poison him, make it appear an illness…” She broke off, looking suddenly at her twin. It took him a moment to understand her thoughts.

“But I’m alive,” Barrick said. “If someone tried to kill me, they failed.” All the same, he did not feel well. Barrick shook his head, wishing he had never come to the lord constable’s rooms, that he had stayed in bed, struggling against nightmares that were at least arguably imaginary. “Brone, are you saying that Chaven might have murdered Kendrick, or been in league with whoever did?”

The old man slid the poker into his flagon, then blew the steam away so he could watch the wine bubble. “No. I am saying no such thing, Prince Barrick. But I am saying that I trust almost no one, and until we know who did kill your brother, everyone who could come near to him is suspect.”

“Including me?” Barrick almost laughed, but he was furious again. “Including my sister?” “If I had not had you watched, yes.” Avin Brone’s smile was a grim twitch deep in his beard. “The next in succession are always the likeliest murderers. Take no offense, my lord and lady. It is my duty.”

Barrick sat back, overwhelmed. “So we can trust no one except you?”

“Me least of all, Highness—I have been here too long, know too many secrets. And I have killed men in my day.” He looked hard at them both, almost challenging them. “If you have no other sources of information than me, Prince Barrick, Princess Briony, then you are not being careful enough “ He stumped back to his stool. “But whatever else you may learn tonight, this news of the Autarch’s men in Summerfield is very grave, and of that there is no question. I cannot but fear that Gailon Tolly’s disappearance may have something to do with it. And certainly someone took enough of a dislike to Rule to put an arrow in his back as he rode up the Three Brothers Road, heading back here. If he were not a tough old soldier and made mostly of sticks and leather, we would not have this information.” Briony drank her wine. She was pale, miserable. “This is too much What are we to think?”

“Think whatever you like, as long as you do think.” Brone grunted in discomfort as he tried to find a more comfortable position. “Please understand, I have no serious reason to doubt Chaven’s loyalty, but it is an unfortunate fact that he is one of the very few people in the castle who knows much about the Autarch. Did you know his brother was in the Autarch’s service?”

Barrick leaned forward. “Chaven’s brother? Is this true?”

“Chaven is Ulosian—you knew that, I’m sure. But you did not know that his family was one of the first to welcome the Autarch into Ulos, the first conquest of Xis in our lands of Eion.The story is that Chaven fell out with his brother and father over just that matter and fled to Hierosol, and that is why your father King Olin brought him here—because he knows many things more than just how to physick the ill, not least the gossip that his own family brought back from the Xixian court. He has never shown himself to be anything other than loyal, but as I said, from my point of view it is unfortunate that he is one of the few who knows much of the Autarch. One of the few others with any direct knowledge is locked in the stronghold even as we speak.”

“Shaso,” said Briony heavily.

“The same. He fought the Autarch and lost—well, in truth he fought against this Autarch’s father. Then, later, he fought your own father and lost. Even if Shaso were not in all likelihood your brother’s murderer, I do not know how much use his advice would be—almost anyone can advise on how to lose battles.”

“That is not fair,” Briony responded. “No one has beaten Xis—not yet. So no one can give any better advice, can they?”

“True enough. And that is why we are speaking now,just you two and I. I fear the threat from the south more than I do any fairies on our doorstep.” Brone reached into his pocket and pulled out a pile of creased papers. “You should read this. It is your fathers letter to your brother. He mentions the Autarch’s growing power.”

Briony stared at him. “You have the letter!”

“I have only just discovered it.” Brone handed her the papers. “There is a page missing. What is gone seems of little import—talk about maintaining the castle and its defenses—but I cannot be sure. Perhaps you will notice something I did not.”

“You had no right to read that!” Barrick cried. “No right! That was a private letter from our father!” The lord constable shrugged. “These days, we cannot afford privacy. I needed to see if there was anything in it that might speak of immediate danger—it has been missing for some time, after all.”

“No right,” Barrick said bitterly. Was it his imagination, or was Brone looking at him oddly? Had there been something in it that had made the Count of Landsend suspect Barrick’s secret?

Briony looked up from the letter. “You said you found it. Where? And how do you know there is a page missing?”

“The letter was in a pile of documents Nynor left for me in my workroom, but he says he knew nothing of it and I think I believe him. I believe someone crept in and slipped it among the other papers on my table, perhaps because they wanted to make it look as though Nynor or myself had taken it in the first place—perhaps even implicate us in…” He frowned. “I also read it because I wondered if it had something to do with your brother’s death, of course.”

“The missing page… ?”

He leaned over and shuffled through the pages with his thick forefinger. “There.”

“This page ends with Father talking about the fortifications of the inner keep…” Briony squinted, turning between the two pages of the letter. “And the next page he is finishing up, asking us to have all those things done. You are right, there is something missing. ‘Tell Brone to remember the drains.’ What does that mean?” “Waterways. Some of the gates on the lagoons are old. He was worried that they might be vulnerable in a siege.” “He was worrying about a siege?” Briony said. “Why?”

“Your father is a man who always wishes to be prepared. For anything.” “For some reason, I don’t believe you, Lord Brone. About that, anyway.”

“You wrong me, Highness, I assure you.” The lord constable seemed almost uninterested, too tired to fight.

Barrick, his worst alarm past, was also beginning to feel lethargic. What good all this posturing and imagining? What difference in what their imprisoned father might have written, or what it might have meant? Whoever killed Kendrick had ended the prince regent’s life in the midst of all the power of Southmarch, such as it was. If it was the Autarch, who has already conquered an entire continent and now begins to gulp at this one as well, bite by bite, how can a tiny kingdom like ours hope to save itself? Only distance had protected them so far, and that would not be a bulwark forever. “So one way or other, there is a traitor in our midst,” said Barrick.

“The person who had the letter may have no connection to Prince Kendrick’s death, Highness.”

“There is another question,” Briony said. “Why return it at all? With a page missing, it is as much as proclaiming that someone else has read a letter from the king to the prince regent. Why make that known?”

Avin Brone nodded. “Just so, my lady. Now, if you will pardon me, I will ask you to take the letter with you. You may think of some suitable punishment for my reading it as well, if you choose. I am old and tired and I still must find someplace to sleep tonight—I doubt Brother Okros will let me move Rule out of my bed. If you wish to talk to me about what it says, send for me in the morning and I will come at once.” Brone swayed a little; with his great size, he looked like a mountain about to topple and Barrick could not help taking a step backward. “We are come on grave times, Highnesses. I am not the only one relying on you two, for all your youth. Please remember that, Prince Barrick and Princess Briony, and be careful of what you say and to whom.”

Courtesy was the victim of exhaustion. He let them find their own way out.

It was not proving easy to make a fire. The forest was damp and there was little deadfall. Ferras Vansen eyed the small pile of gathered wood in the center of their ring of stones and could not help a longing look at the great branches stretching overhead. They had no ax, but surely an hour’s sweaty work with their swords and he and Collum Dyer might have all the wood they wanted. But the trees seemed almost to be watching, waiting tor some such desecration he could hear whispers that seemed more than the wind We will make do, he decided, with deadfall.

Collum was working hard at the pyramid of sticks with his flint. The noise of the steel striking echoed out through the clearing like the sound of hammers deep in the earth. Vansen couldn’t help but think of all the stories of his youth, of the Others who lurked in the shadowy woods and in caves and burrowed in the cold ground.

“Done it.” Dyer leaned forward to blow on the smoldering curls of red, puffing until pale flames grew. The mists had cleared a little around them, revealing sky beyond the distant crowns of the trees, a sprinkling of stars in a deep velvety darkness. There was no sign of the moon.

“What time of the clock is it, do you think?” Dyer asked as he sat up. The fire was burning by itself now, but it remained small and sickly, shot through with odd colors, greens and blues. “We have been here for hours and it is still evening.”

“No, it’s a bit darker.” Vansen raised his hands before the fire, it gave off only a little heat. “I can’t wait for bloody daylight.” Dyer chewed on a piece of dried meat. “I can’t wait.”

“You may not get it.” Vansen sighed and sat back. A wind he couldn’t feel made the tops of the trees wave overhead. The campfire, weak as it was, seemed a kind of a wound in the misty, twilit clearing. He couldn’t help feeling the forest wished to heal that breach, to grow back over it, swallowing the flames and the two men, scabbing the injury over with moss and damp and quiet darkness. “I do not think it is ever full daylight here.”

“The sky is above us,” said Dyer firmly, but there was a brittle sound to his voice. “That means the sun will be there when day comes, even if we can’t see it. Not all the mists in the world can change that.”

Vansen said nothing to this Collum Dyer, veteran of many campaigns, dealer and risker of death, was as frightened as a child. Vansen, an elder brother in his own family, knew you did not argue with a frightened child about small matters until the danger had passed.

Small matters Like never seeing the sun again.

“I will take first watch tonight,” he said aloud.

“We must keep calling for the others. “ Dyer rose and walked to the edge of the clearing, cupping his hands

“Halloooo! Adcock! Southstead! Halloooo!”

Ferras Vansen couldn’t help flinching at the noise, which was quickly swallowed by the trees. His every instinct told him to stay quiet, to move slowly, not to attract attention. Like a mouse on a tabletop, he thought, and was bitterly amused. Don’t want to wake anyone. “I think by now the others must have made camp,” he said. “And if shouting were enough, they would have found us hours ago.”

Dyer came back and sat by the fire. “They will find us. They are looking for us. Even Southstead, although you might doubt it, Captain. The royal guard won’t walk away while two of their number are lost.”

Vansen nodded, but he was thinking something quite different. He suspected that somewhere the rest of the guards and poor Raemon Beck and the mad girl were just as lost and frightened as he and Dyer. He hoped they had the sense to stay put and not to wander. He was beginmng to understand a little of what happened to the girl, and even to the madman in his own childhood village who had come back from beyond the Shadowline.

“Try to sleep, Collum. I’ll take first watch.”

At first he thought it merely a continuation of the strange dreams that had seeped into his increasingly desperate attempts to stay awake. It was not full night-dark—he sensed it would never be fully dark because the mists were shot through with the glow of the moon, which had at last appeared in the sky above the trees, round and pale as the top of a polished skull—but it was definitely the dog-end of night. He should have woken Dyer hours ago. He had fallen asleep, a dangerous thing to do in such a strange place, leaving the camp unguarded. Or was he asleep still? It seemed so, because even the wind seemed to be quietly singing, a wordless chant, rising and falling. Something was moving in the trees along the edge of the clearing.

His breath caught. Vansen fumbled for his sword, reached out with his other hand to wake Collum Dyer, but his companion was gone from the spot where he had lain sleeping only a short while earlier. Vansen had only a few heartbeats to absorb the terror of that discovery, then the movement at the clearing’s rim became a white-shrouded, hooded figure, as strangely translucent as a distillation of mists. It seemed to be a woman, or at least it had a woman’s shape, and for a moment he was filled with the unlikely hope that the girl Willow had gone sleep-wandering from the guards’ camp, that the rest of the company were somewhere nearby after all and Dyer had been right. But the hairs rising on the back of his neck proved it was a lie even before he saw that the figure’s feet did not touch the earth below her faintly shimmering gown.

“Mortal man.“ The voice was in his head, behind his eyes, not in his ears. He could not say whether it was old or young or even male or female. “You do not belong here.“ He tried to speak but couldn’t. He could see little more of her face than pallid light and faint shadows, as though it were hidden behind many veils of glimmering fabric. All that was truly visible were her eyes, huge and black and not at all human. “The old laws are ended,” the specter told him. The world seemed to have collapsed into a single dark tunnel with the luminous, vague face at the other end. “There are no riddles left to solve. There are no tasks by which favors can be won. All is moving toward an ending. The shadow-voices that once cried against it have gone silent in the House of the People.”

The figure moved nearer. Vansen could feel his heart thundering in his breast, beating so hard that it seemed it must shake him to pieces, but yet he could not by choice move a single muscle. A gauzy hand reached out, touched his hair, almost seemed to pass through him, cool and yet prickly along his cheek like sparks from a campfire settling on damp skin.

“I knew one like you once.” Some tone was in the voice that he almost recognized, but in the end the emotion was too strange to grasp. “Long he stayed with me until his own sun had worn away. In the end he could not remain.” As the face loomed closer it seemed charged with moonlight. Vansen wanted to close his eyes but could not. For a brief instant he thought he could see her clearly, although what or who he was seeing he couldn’t entirely understand—a beauty like the edge of a knife, black eyes that were somehow full of light like the night sky full of stars, an infinitely sad smile—yet during that moment it also felt as though a chilly hand had tightened on his heart, squeezing it into an awkward shape from which it would never completely recover. He was gripped as though by death itself but death was fair, so very fair. Ferras Vansen’s soul leaped toward the dark eyes, toward the stars of her gaze, like a salmon climbing a mountain rill, not caring whether death was at the end of it.

“Do not look for the sun, mortal.” He thought there was something like pity in the words and he was dashed. He didn’t want pity—he wanted to be loved. He wanted only to die being loved by this creature of vapor and moonlight.

“The sun will not come to you here. Neither can the shadows be trusted to tell you anything but lies. Look instead to the moss on the trees. The roots of the trees are in the earth, and they know where the sun is, always, even in this land where his brother is the only lord.”

And then she was gone and the clearing was empty except for the quiet hiss of wind in the leaves. Vansen sat up gasping, heart still stuttering. Had it been a dream? If so, part of it had proved true, anyway—there was no sign of Dyer. Vansen looked around, dazed at first, but with increasing fear. The fire was all but out, little glowing worms of red writhing in the blackness inside the stone circle.

Something crackled behind him and he leaped up, fumbling at the hilt of his sword. A figure staggered into the clearing.

“Dyer!” Vansen lowered his blade.

Collum Dyer shook his head. “Gone.” The soldier’s voice was mournful. “I could not catch up to…” Now he seemed to see Vansen truly for the first time and his face twisted into a mask of secrecy. For an instant Ferras Vansen thought he could read the other man’s clear thoughts, see him decide not to share his own vision.

“Are you well?” Vansen demanded. “Where were you?”

Dyer made his way slowly back to the fire. He would not meet his captain’s eye. “Well enough. Had… a dream, I suppose. Woke up wandering.” He eased himself down and covered himself with his cloak and wouldn’t talk anymore.

Vansen lay down, too. One of them should keep watch, he knew, but he felt as though he had been touched by something wild and strong, and was somehow certain that touch would keep other things of this place at bay… for this night anyway.

He was as tired as if he had run for miles. He fell asleep quickly beneath the trees and the strange stars.

Ferras Vansen woke to the same dim gray light—a little more milky, perhaps, but nothing like morning. The wind was still talking wordlessly. Collum Dyer had slept like a dead man, but he awakened like a sick child, full of moans and sullen looks.

The words of the midnight visitant, whether ghost or dream, were still in Vansen’s head. He allowed Dyer time only to empty his bladder, waiting impatiently in the saddle while the soldier did up the strings of his breeches.

“Can’t we even light a fire?” Dyer asked. “Just to warm my hands. It’s so bloody cold.”

“No. By time we make one, we will be tired again, and then we will sleep. We will never get away. We will stay here while this forest swirls around us like an ocean and drowns us.” He did not know exactly what he meant, but he felt it unquestionably to be true. “We must ride while we can, before the place sucks away all our resolve.”

Dyer looked at him strangely. “You sound as though you know a great deal about this country.”

“As much as I need to.” He didn’t like the accusing tone in the man’s voice, but didn’t want to be pulled into an argument. “Enough to know I do not wish to end up like that girl-child Willow, wandering mad in the woods.”

“And how will we find our way out again? We searched for hours We’re lost.”

“I was raised on the edge of these woods, or at least something like them.” He suddenly wondered whether they were even in the world he knew, or wandering in a place more distant than the land of the gods. It was a harrowing thought. What had the phantom said? “Even in this land where his brother is the only lord.” Whose brother? The sun’s? But the moon was a goddess, surely—white-breasted Mesiya, great Perin’s sister.

It was too much to think about Vansen forced himself back to what was before them now, the hope of escape. It was hard to think, though—the voice of the wind was ever-present and insinuating, urging sleep and surrender. “The moss will grow thickest on the southern side of the trees,” he said. “If we continue south long enough, surely we will find our way back into wholesome lands again.”

“Leaving this place behind,” Dyer said quietly, thoughtfully. It was strange, but to Vansen he sounded almost unwilling, a notion that sent a pulse of fear chasing up the guard captain’s backbone.

The morning, or at least the stretch of hours after waking, slid by quickly. There was moss everywhere, on almost every tree, deep woolly green patches. If it grew more thickly on one side than another, it was a minute difference, after a while, Vansen began to doubt his own ability to distinguish. Still, he had no other plan and he was growing increasingly frightened. They had lost the road in a thicket of black-leaved trees too thick to pass and they had not found it again. He had not seen a single thing that looked familiar. It was hard not to feel that the forest was continuing to grow around him, that its borders were stretching outward faster than he and Dyer could ride, and that not only wouldn’t they find their way out again, the shadow-forest would soon cover everything he had ever known, like wine from an upended jug spreading across a tabletop.

Dyer’s mood also worryed him. The bearded guardsman had grown increasingly more distant, even as their horses strode shoulder to shoulder; he hardly spoke to his captain, but talked much to himself and sang snatches of old songs that Vansen felt he should recognize but didn’t. Also, the man kept looking at him oddly, as though Dyer were harboring doubts of his own—as if he no longer quite recognized someone who had been his daily companion for years.

There is something in the air here, Vansen thought desperately. Something in the shadows of these trees. This place is eating us. It was a terrible idea, but once it lodged in his mind, he could not shift it. He had a dreamlike vision of himself and Dyer lying beside the lost road, dead and decaying like the woman he had once found in her cottage, yet it was not insects that would devour them but the forest itself—tendrils of green growing into their mouths and noses and ears, seeds sprouting out damp, dark vegetation from their bellies and skulls, filling the vaults of their rib cages.

Maybe it is a true vision, he thought suddenly. Perhaps we are already dead, or nearly so. Perhaps our bodies are already disappearing under the moss and we only dream we are riding on through this dark land beneath the endless, gods-cursed trees…

“I feel the fires,” Dyer said abruptly.

“What fires?” The horses had stopped; they stood weirdly still and silent. A forested valley leaned close above the two guardsmen on either side, as though they were in the mouth of some huge thing that in a moment would close its jaws and shut them away from the light forever.

“The forge fires,” the bearded guardsman replied in a distant voice. “The ones that burn under Silent Hill. They make weapons of war, Bright Fingers, Chant-Arrows, Wasps, Cruel Stones. The People are awake. They are awake.”

As he struggled to make sense of Dyer’s bizarre statement, Vansen felt a sharp but noiseless wind come hurrying down the canyon. The mists swirled upward, rising and parting, and for a brief instant he thought he could see an entire city at the top of the valley, a city that was also part of the forest, a mass of dark trees and darker walls, the two almost indistinguishable, with lights burning in a thousand windows. His horse reared and turned away from the vision, dashing back down the path they had followed. He heard Dyer’s horse’s hoofbeats close behind him, and another sound, too.

His companion was singing quietly but exuberantly in a language Vansen had never heard.

Dyer was still behind him, but silent now: he wouldn’t answer any of his captain’s questions, and Vansen had given up asking, simply grateful not to be alone. The twilight had grown thicker. The guard captain could no longer distinguish any difference in the thickness of the moss on the trees— could barely tell the trees from the darkness. The voices in the wind had crawled deep inside his head now, cajoling, whispering, weaving fragments of melody through his thoughts that tangled his ideas just as the thickening brambles tugged at their horses’ hooves, making them walk slower and slower.

“They are coming,” Dyer abruptly announced in the voice of a frightened dreamer. “They are marching.” Ferras Vansen did not need to ask him what he meant: he could feel it, too, the tightening of the air around them, the deepening of the twilight gloom. He could hear the triumph in the wordless wind-voices, although he still couldn’t hear the voices themselves except where they echoed deep in the cavern of his skull.

His horse abruptly reared, whinnying. Caught by surprise, Vansen tumbled out of the saddle and crashed to the ground. The horse vanished into the forest, kicking and bounding through the undergrowth, grunting in terror. For a moment Vansen was too stunned to rise, but a hand clutched him and dragged him to his feet. It was Collum Dyer, his horse gone now, too. The guardsman’s face was alight with something that might have been joy, but also looked a little like the terror that Vansen himself was feeling, a pall of dread that made him want to throw himself back down on the ground and bury his head in the spongy grass. “Now,” Dyer said. “Now.”

And suddenly Ferras Vansen could see the road again, the road they had sought for hours without success. It was only a short distance away, winding through the trees—but he barely noticed it. The road was full of rolling mist, and in that mist he could see shapes. Some of the figures, unless the mist distorted them, were treetop-tall, and others impossibly wide, squat, and powerful. There were shadow-shapes that corresponded to no sane reality, and things less frightening but still astonishing, like human riders dimly seen but achingly beautiful, sitting high and straight on horses that stamped and blew and made the air steam. Many of the riders bore lances that glittered like ice. Pennants of silver and marshy green-gold waved at their tips.

An army was passing, hundreds and perhaps thousands of shapes riding, walking—some even flying, or so it seemed: teeming shadows fluttered and soared above the great host, catching the moonglow on their wings like a handful of fish scales flung glittering into the air. But although Vansen could feel the tread of all those hooves and feet and paws and claws in his very bones, the host made no sound as it marched. Only the voices on the wind rose in acclaim as the great troop passed.

How long was a sleep? How long was death? Vansen did not know how much time passed as he stood in amazement, too moonstruck even to hide, and watched the host pass. When it had gone, the road lay all but naked, clothed only in a few tatters of mist.

“We must… follow them,” Vansen said at last. It was hard, painfully hard, to find words and speak them. “They are going south. To the lands of men. We will follow them to the sun.”

“The lands of men will vanish.”

Vansen turned to see that Collum Dyer’s eyes were tightly closed, as though he had some memory locked behind his eyelids that he wished to save forever. The soldier was trembling in every limb and looked like a man cast down from the mountain of the gods, shattered but exultant.

“The sun will not return,” Dyer whispered. “The shadow is marching.”

21. The Potboy’s Dolphin

There was a tower in Qul-na-Qar whose name meant something like “Spirits of the Clouds” or “The Spirits in the Clouds,” or perhaps even “What the Clouds Think”—it was never easy to make mortal words do the dance of Qar thought—and it was there the blind kingYnnir went when he sought true quiet. It was a tall tower, although not the tallest in Qul-na-Qar: one other loomed above all the great castle like an upheld spear, a slender spike that was simply called “The High Place,” but its history was dark since the Screaming Years and even the Qar did not visit it much, or even look up at it through the fogs that usually surrounded their greatest house.

Ynnir din’at sen-Qin, Lord of Winds and Thought, sat in a simple chair before the window of one of Cloud-Spirit Tower’s two highest rooms. His tattered garments fluttered a little in the winds but he was otherwise motionless. It was a clear day, at least by the standards of Qul-na-Qar: although as always there was no sun visible in the gray sky, the afternoon’s sharp winds had chased away the mists: the slender figure who waited patiently in the chamber’s doorway for Ynnir to speak could see all the rooftops of the vast castle spread out below in a muted rainbow of different shades of black and deep gray, glittering darkly from the morning’s rains.

The one who waited was patient indeed: nearly an hour passed before the blind king at last stirred and turned his head. “Harsar? You should have spoken, old friend.”

“It is peaceful to look out the window.”

“It is.”Ynnir made a gesture, a complex movement of fingers that signified gratitude for small things. “All morning I listened to the anger of the Gathering, all that arguing about the Pact of the Glass, and thought about the time when I would come here, away from it all, and feel the breeze from M’aarenol on my face.” He lifted his fingers and touched them to his eyes once, twice, then a third time, all with the precision of ritual. “I still see what was outside it on the day I lost my sight.”

“It has not changed, Lord.”

“Everything has changed. But, come, you have waited for me patiently, Harsar-so. I do not believe the view alone has brought you here.”

Harsar inclined his hairless head ever so slightly. He was of the Stone Circle People, a small, nimble folk, but was tall for his kind: whenYnnir rose and Harsar stepped forward to help him, his head reached almost to the king’s shoulder. “I have good news, Lord.”

“Tell me.”

“Yasammez and her host have crossed the frontier.” “So quickly?”

“She is very strong, that one. She has been waiting long years for this, preparing.” “Yes, she has.”The king nodded slowly. “And the mantle?”

“She carries it with her, at least for now, but the scholars in the Deep Library think it will not sustain itself if stretched too far. But everywhere she has raided the mantle has spread, reclaiming that which is ours, and even when it will spread no farther, she will go on with fire and talon and blade.” Even patient Harsar could not keep his voice altogether even; a hint of exultation writhed in his words. “And everywhere she goes, the sunlanders will wail behind her, searching for their dead.”

“Yes.”Ynnir stood silent for a long time. “Yes. I thank you for these tidings, Harsar-so.”

“You do not seem as pleased as I would have thought, Lord.” The councillor was startled by his own words and lowered his head. “Ah, ah. Please forgive my discourtesy, Son of the First Stone. I am a fool.”

The king lifted a long-fingered hand, made a gesture that signaled “acceptable confusion.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, friend. I simply have much to consider. Yasammez is a mighty weapon. Now that she has been loosed, all the world will change.” He turned his head toward the window once more. “Do me the favor of excusing me, Harsar-so. It was good of you to come so far to give me this news.” His long face was grave and still; a hovering mote of light like a pale lavender firefly had begun to flicker above his head. “I must think I must… sleep.”

“Forgive me for imposing myself, great Ynnir. Will you permit one more unforgivable imposition? May I offer my company on your journey down to your chambers? The stairs are still damp.”

A tiny smile came to the blind king’s face. “You are kind, but I will sleep here.”

“Here?” There was only one couch in the Cloud-Spirit Tower and it was a place of power, of shaped and directed dreams. A moment later, the man of the Stone Circle People brought his hand to his mouth. “Forgive me, Lord! I do not mean to question you again. I am a fool today, a fool.”

This time Ynnir’s response was a degree or two closer to frost. “Do not distress yourself, Councillor. I will be well.” Harsar bowed and bowed again, backing out of the room so quickly that an observer might have feared the councillor himself was in greater clanger of tumbling down the long, steep stairwell than the blind king, but he spun neatly on his heel at the edge of the steps before starting his descent. Many of the towers of Qul-na-Qar had stairs that yielded quiet music, and of course the infamous steps of the High Place moaned softly, like children in troubled sleep, but the stairway of Cloud-Spirit Tower surrendered no noise except that of a visitor’s tread. Ynnir listened to his councillor’s velvet-soft footfalls grow fainter and fainter until he could no longer hear them above the skirling wind.

Ynnir din’at sen-Qin moved through a door in the wall that separated this highest place in the tower into two rooms. That other chamber, that twinned space, had its own window, facing not across the expanse of the castle and its countless rooftops glinting wet as beach stones but away into the misty south—toward the Shadowline and the great host of Lady Yasammez and the lands of mortals. Like the other room, it was sparsely furnished. That room had a chair: this one had a low bed. The king lay down on it, lavender light glittering above his brow, then folded his arms across his breast and began to dream.

Chert had barely slept at all. The long watches of the night had passed like guests who sensed they were unwelcome and were all the slower to leave because of it.

We’re caught up in bad things. It was in his every thought. For the first time he understood what the big folk must mean when they asked him how he could stand to live in a cave under the ground. But it was not the stone of Funderling Town that oppressed him any more than a fish was oppressed by water; it was the feeling that he and his small family were surrounded and enwebbed by a faceless, invisible something, and it was precisely because he did not know what it was that he felt so miserable, so helpless. We’re caught up in bad things and they’re getting worse.

“What in the name of the Mysteries are you up to?” Opal’s voice was muzzy with sleep. “You’ve been twitching all night.”

He was tempted to tell her it was nothing, but despite their occasional squabbling, Chert was not one of those fellows who felt more comfortable in the company of other men than with his own wife. They had come far together and he knew he needed not only her comfort, but her good wits, too. “I can’t sleep, Opal. I’m worried.”

“What about?” She sat up and pushed at the strands of hair escaping from her nightcap. “And don’t talk so loud—you’ll wake the boy.”

“The boy is part of what worries me.” He got up, padded to the table, and picked up the jar of wine. Funderlings seldom used lamps in their own homes, making do with the dim, dim glow spilling in from the street lanterns, and found it amusing that the big folk couldn’t seem to blunder around aboveground without a blaze of light. He took a cup from the mantel shelf. “Do you want some wine?” he asked his wife.

“Why would I want wine at this hour?” But her voice was definitely as worried as his, now. “Chert, what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure. Everything, really. The boy, those Rooftoppers, what Chaven said about the Shadowline.” He brought his cup of wine back to bed and slid his feet under the heavy quilt. “It wasn’t simply an accident that child appeared, Opal. That he was brought out of that place and dumped here on the very same day I find that the Shadowline has moved for the first time in years.”

“It’s not the boy’s fault!” she said, her voice rising despite her own injunction to quiet. “He’s done nothing wrong. Next you’re going to say he’s some kind of… spy, or demon, or… or a wizard in disguise!”

“I don’t know what he is. But I know that I’m not going to go another night wondering what’s in that bag around his neck.”

“Chert, you can’t. We have no right… !”

“That’s nonsense, woman, and you know it. This is our house. What if he brought home a poisonous snake—a fireworm or somesuch? Would we have to let him keep it?”

“That’s just silly…”

“Well, it’s at least as silly when there are dangers all around, when the Twilight People may walk right out of the old stories and come knocking at our very doors, to pretend as though this was an ordinary time and ordinary circumstances. We found him, Opal, we didn’t birth him. We don’t know anything about who he is—or even what he is—except that he came from behind the Shadowline.You didn’t see the way those Rooftoppers treated him—like he was an old friend, an honored ally…”

“He helped one of them. You said so!”

“And he’s carrying something we haven’t looked at that might tell us about his past.” “You don’t know that.”

“No, and you don’t know that it doesn’t. Why are you fighting me, Opal? Are you so afraid we might lose him?”

There were tears in her eyes—he needed no light to know that: he could hear it in her voice. “Yes! Yes, I’m afraid we might lose him. And mostly because you wouldn’t care if we did!”

“What?”

“You heard me You treat him well enough because you’re a kind man, but you don’t… you don’t. . you don’t love him “ She was fighting to be able to speak now. “Not like I do.”

For a moment anger and astonishment ran together in him. She turned onto her side. Her sobs shook the mattress and something in the brokenhearted sound of it pushed everything else away. This was his Opal, weeping, terrified. He curled his arms around her.

“I’m sorry, my old darling. I’m sorry.” He heard himself saying it, regretted it even as the words left his mouth. “Don’t worry, I… I won’t let anyone take him from you.”

“Isn’t there any other way?” she asked. They had lit one of the smallest lamps; her face was red and her eyes swollen. “It seems a terrible thing to do—it seems wrong.”

“We are parents now,” Chert said. “I suspect we must get used to feeling terrible about some things we must do. I suspect it is the tunnel-toll for having a child.”

“That’s just like you,” she whispered, half angry, half not. “Anything you take up, you decide you know all about it. Just like with those racing moles.”

The sleeping boy, who as usual had kicked his blanket off, was lying belly-down, face turned to the side like a swimmer taking a breath, pale hair white as frost. Chert stared with a mixture of fondness and fear. He knew he had just signed a treaty of sorts, that in return for getting a look at the contents of the sack he had as good as promised that whatever they might be, he would abide by Opal’s judgment. And he knew in his heart that unless they found evidence that the child had actually committed murder—and not just any old murder, but something important and recent— she would not consider it grounds to send the boy away.

How did that happen so quickly? Chert wondered. Are all women like that — ready to love a child, any child, just as a hand is ready to grasp or an eye ready to see? Why don’t I feel the same way? Because although he knew he truly did care for the child, there was nothing in him like the fierce possessiveness that his wife felt, the almost helpless need. Does she burn too hot? Or is my heart too cold?

Still, watching as the boy moaned a little and shifted, looking at the helpless, smoothly vulnerable neck, the open mouth, he found himself hoping that they discovered nothing damning.

Someone is using this child. Chert suddenly felt certain of this, but did not know why he thought so or what it meant. For good or for ill, there is another will behind him. But what is he? A weapon? A messenger? An observer?

Confused by these thoughts, Chert got down on his knees and carefully slid one hand under the shirt the boy used as a cushion. His fingers touched something solid, but Flint’s head rested firmly on top of it; he would rouse the boy if he tried to pull it free. He put a hand under the child’s shoulder and gently pushed.

“You’ll wake him up… !” Opal whispered.

Would that be so bad? Chert wondered. There was no reason they needed to hide what they were doing, surely. In fact, he would have gladly waited until morning, except that he knew he would not sleep if he did Still, as the boy yawned and rolled onto his side, allowing Chert to pull the sack and its cord out from under the rolled shirt, he did feel more than a little like a thief.

At least he hasn’t hidden it, Chert thought. Tliat’s a good sign, isn’t it? If he knew it was something bad, he would hide it, wouldn’t he… ?

Chert carried it out of their bedchamber to the table, Opal as close behind him as if it were not simply a possession of Flint’s but an actual piece of the boy. Chert had been distracted last time by the discovery of the strange stone, the one that he had passed to Chaven. Now he examined the bag all over again. It was the size of a hen’s egg but almost flat, only as thick as a finger. The needlework was exquisite and complex, in many colors of thread, but the design was a pattern, not a picture, and told him very little. “Have you ever seen work like that?”

Opal shook her head. “Some eyestitch from Connord I saw in the market once, but that was much simpler.”

Chert took it gently in his hands, prodded at it with his finger. It gave beneath his touch with a faint, springy crunch, but there was something hard at the middle of it, hard like bone. “Where’s my knife?”

“That clumsy thing?” Opal was already walking across the room toward her sewing box. “If you’re going to steal the boy’s possessions and cut them open, you don’t have to do it like some butcher’s prentice.” She returned and lifted out a tiny blade with a handle of polished maker’s-pearl. “Use this. No, I’ve changed my mind. Give it back. I’ll be the one who has to sew the thing up again after you’ve finished poking around in it.”

Assuming it’s something that can be put back in a sack as though nothing has happened, Chert thought but didn’t say. The boy himself certainly hadn’t been like that, so why should this be different?

Opal carefully sliced away a few of the threads down one side, where the ornamental stitchery was minimal. Chert had to admit that he wouldn’t have thought of that, that he would have opened the top and spoiled much more of the embroidery.

“What if… what if the stitchery itself is some kind of shadow-magic?” he said suddenly. “What if we’ve spoiled it by cutting it, and whatever’s inside won’t be held in there anymore?” He didn’t know exactly what he was he trying to say but in these deep hours of the night it was hard not to feel they were trespassing on unfamiliar and perhaps hostile ground.

Opal gave him a sour look. “That’s just like you to think of that after I’ve started.” But she paused, and suddenly her face was worried. “Do you think there’s something alive in here? Something that… that bites?”

“Give it to me, then,” Chert said, trying to make a joke of it. “If someone has to lose a finger, it shouldn’t be the one who’s going to sew the thing up again.”

He squeezed it a little to force the snipped seam open, held it up to the light. All he could see was something that looked like bits of dried flowers and leaves. He leaned forward and sniffed it cautiously. The scent was exotic and unrecognizable, a mix of spicy odors. He probed inside with his finger, trying to be gentle, but he was crushing the dried plant material and the smell was getting stronger. At last he touched something hard and flat. He tried to pull it out, but it was almost the same size as the sack.

“You’ll have to cut more threads,” he said, handing it back to Opal.

She sniffed the open side. “Moly and bleeding-heart. But that’s not all. I don’t recognize the rest.” When she had widened the gap all the way down to the bottom and even a little beyond, Chert took it back.

He pulled, gently. Dried petals fell to the table. He pulled again and at last the object slid out. It was an oval of polished white—a quick glance told him it was made not of stone but something more recently and aggressively animated—which had been carved in a decorative manner that, like the embroidery, was not meant to represent anything obvious. For a moment he could only stare at it in surprise—why would anyone spend so much care carving and polishing a simple round of ivory or bone like this?—but Opal took it for a moment, nodded, then put it back on his palm, this time with the other side facing up.

“It’s a mirror, you old fool.” There was relief in her voice. “A hand mirror like a highborn lady might have. I daresay your Princess Briony owns a few of these.”

“My Princess Briony?” He fell into their old rhythms because it was the easiest thing to do; he, too, was relieved, although not as completely as his wife. “She’ll be very entertained to hear that, I’m sure.” He stared at the mirror, lifted it up, turned it until it caught the reflection of the lamp. It did seem quite ordinary. “But why does the boy have a mirror?”

“Oh, can’t you see?” Opal shook her head at his obtuseness. “It is as clear as skyglass.This must have belonged to his… his true mother.” She did not like saying the words, but she continued bravely. “She likely gave it to him as… a sort of reminder. Perhaps she was in danger and they had only a few moments before she had to send him away. She wanted whoever found him to know that he came of a good family, that his mother had loved him.”

“It seems strange,” Chert said, unable to hide his disbelief completely, “that a woman would keep her mirror sewed up so tightly in a bag.”

“She wouldn’t! She sewed it up so that he wouldn’t lose it.”

“So you’re saying that a noblewoman with only moments left to spend with her little son—perhaps with her castle under siege and on fire, like in one of those big-folk ballads that you like to listen to when we go to the market upground—took the time to sew this bag shut with these careful little stitches?"

“You’re just trying to make trouble about it.” Opal sounded amused, not irritated. She could afford to be magnanimous, since she had obviously won the day. It was only a mirror, not a ring with a family crest or a letter detailing Flint’s heritage or confessing a dreadful crime Just to make sure, Chert pulled the rest of the dried leaves and flowers out onto the tabletop while Opal made little tutting sounds, but there was nothing else in the sack.

“If you are quite finished making a mess, give all that to me.” The glow of triumph was unmistakable now. “I have a lot of work to do to make that right again before the boy wakes up. You might as well go back to bed, old man.”

And he did. But he still did not sleep, although it was not the quiet sounds Opal made as she plied her needle that kept Chert awake. What was in the sack had not turned out to be something terrible. Nothing would change, at least not for the moment. But that was part of the problem.

I will tell Chaven about it when next I get the chance. He was tired, so tired, and desperate for sleep. He was even more desperate to believe that Opal was right, that there was nothing to worry about, but something still nagged at him. Yes, Chaven, if he’ll see me. He didn’t seem very pleased with my company the last time. But there is no one else to ask. Yes, Chaven is versed in such things. Perhaps he can tell me what it might signify —whether a mirror could be anything more than simply a mirror.

Briony had been carrying it for hours, looking at the familiar handwriting again and again, as though it were her father’s actual face and not merely words he had written. She had not realized how much she missed him until she had read it, and in reading it she had heard his dear voice speaking to her as though he were in the room with her instead of hundreds of miles away and half a year gone. Could such a homely, intimate thing have possibly been the cause of Kendrick’s murder?

But for an object so freighted with family sorrow, its meaning was somewhat opaque. It did speak of the Autarch, as Brone had said, and of King Olin’s concerns about the southern conqueror.

“Here we come to the meat of your father’s concern, Kendrick, my son,” she read for the sixth or seventh time, “which is that all the talk of the Autarch’s spreading empire that has come north to us is not exaggerated. All the continent of Xand above the great White Desert has fallen under the sway of Xis, and while his father and grandfather were content merely to conquer and exact tribute, this newest Autarch is not a gentle ruler to these subjects. It is said that he considers himself not just king but god, and that all these subject lands must worship him as the true child of the sun itself—yes, the sun that shines in the sky! He has not yet pressed such harsh demands on our cities and states of Eion that have fallen to his influence, but I cannot doubt he will want the same from them when his grip has become adequately tight.

“Do not think, however, that because he is mad he is also foolish. This Autarch was forged of hot metal indeed. He was born Sulepis, third youngest of twenty-six brothers in the royal family of Xis—a nest of vipers that became legendary even in troubled Xis, which has never had any shortage of savagery and murder among its ruling clans. The stories say that only one of his brothers, the youngest of the family, was still alive when Sulepis finally ascended to the throne a year after their father’s death. After this younger brother set the crown on Sulepis’head at the coronation, the poor wretch was taken away and dipped into molten bronze. After the tortured figure cooled, the Autarch had it set in front of the royal palace. A traveler told me that the Autarch likes to tell horrified visitors this ornament is meant to represent. The Importance of Family.

“His grip on Xand is nearly complete, but although he has made conquests in Eion, they are all small states with poor harbors or no harbor at all. He knows that none of them will provide him a suitable base for an invasion, and that without a secure foothold his conscripted army, no matter how large, will not defeat determined men fighting for their own lands, especially if Syan and Jellon and the March Kingdoms stand together…”

Briony put the letter down, as angry as the first time she read it. Jellon— that swamp of treachery! How like her father, to continue to believe even as he languished in prison because of Jellon’s greed, that he could convince that pig King Hesper to do the right thing, to make common cause against a greater enemy.

And he probably will convince him, given enough time, Briony thought. Then what will I do? What if we do make common cause and they send that oily Count Angelos back here, and I must treat him as an ally instead of sticking my sword in his heart as I would rather? She promised herself she would go to the armory this afternoon and practice with the blade for a while. If Barrick still felt too ill to trade blows, she could always spend an hour pretending that the sawdust-stuffed dummy was Angelos or his master Hesper. It would be good to hit something.

As for the letter’s missing section, she couldn’t guess what might have drawn someone to steal it. From what she could make of the beginning and the end, it seemed only to have been a general and workaday conversation about maintaining the castle walls and gates. Could some spy of the Autarch’s, or some nearer enemy, have taken it because they thought Olin might mention some weakness in Southmarch’s defenses? How could they think her father would be foolish enough to trust information that might endanger his family and home to the hands of Ludis Drakava’s envoy? They didn’t know him. As Brone had said, Olin Eddon was a man who took nothing for granted.

She skipped down to the bottom of the letter, although she knew it would make her cry again to read his farewell.

“And give my best love to Briony, too, tell her that I am sorry I am detained and cannot be there for the birthday she and Barrick share. There is a cat here in this rather drafty old castle who has taken to sleeping at the foot of my bed, and by the way she has grown stout, I suspect soon she will become a mother. Tell Briony that not only will I come back to my family presently, I will bring with me a small surprise, and that she may spoil it all she likes, because unlike dogs or most children, a cat cannot be ruined by too much affection.”

She was pleased with herself. She didn’t cry. Or at least, only a few drops, and they were easily wiped away before Rose or Moina returned.

Despite his useless arm, Barrick’s greater strength ordinarily made him more than her equal at swordplay, but her brother was still feeling the effects of his illness: his face quickly grew flushed, and before very long he was breathing harshly. Slower than usual, he took several blows to the body from Briony’s padded sword and managed to touch her only once in return. After a much shorter span than Briony would have liked, he stepped away and threw his falchion down with a muffled clatter.

“It’s not fair,” he said. “You know I’m not well enough yet.”

“All the more reason to build up your strength again. Come on, gloomy, let’s try just once more. You can use a shield this time if you want.”

“No. You’re as bad as Shaso. Now that he’s not here to plague me, do you think I’m going to let you take his place?”

There was something more than ordinary anger in his tone, and Briony fought down her own resentment. She was resdess, full of fury and unhap-piness like storm clouds. All she wanted after days of sitting and listening to people talk at her was to move her limbs, to swing the sword, to be something other than a princess, but she knew trying to force Barrick to do anything was useless. “Very well. Perhaps we should talk instead. I read Father’s letter again.”

“I don’t want to talk. Perin’s Hammer, Briony, I’ve done enough talking lately! Plots and intrigues. It makes me weary. I’m going to go have a nap.”

“But we’ve hardly spoken about all the things Brone told us—about Gailon Tolly, and the letter, and the Autarch…”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Brone is a troublemaker. If there is no intrigue, no mysterious plots to protect us from, he has no influence.” Barrick scarcely untied his chest padding before yanking it off, peevish as a child sent away from the supper table.

“Are you saying we have nothing to worry about? When our brother was murdered under our own roof… ?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying! Don’t twist my words! I said that I don’t trust Avin Brone to tell us any truth that doesn’t do himself benefit. Don’t forget, he’s the one who convinced our father to marry Anissa. Nynor and Aunt Merolanna argued against it, but Brone would not let go until he convinced Father to do it.”

She frowned. “We were so young—I scarcely remember it.”

“I do. I remember it all. It’s his fault we’re saddled with that madwoman.”

“Madwoman?” Briony didn’t like the look on her twin’s face—an edge of savagery she was not used to seeing. “Barrick, I don’t like her either, but that is a cruel thing to say and it’s not true.”

“Really? Selia says she is acting very strangely. That she allows no one to visit her except women from the countryside. Selia says that she has heard several of them have the name of witches in the city…” “Selia? I didn’t know you had seen her again.”

His high color, which had begun to subside, suddenly came flooding back. “What if I have? It is any business of yours?”

“No, Barrick, it isn’t. But aren’t there other girls more worthy of your interest? We know nothing about her.” He snorted. “You sound just like Auntie Merolanna.”

“Rose and Moina both admire you.”

“That’s a lie. Rose calls me Prince Never-Happy, says that I always complain.You told me.” He scowled.

She kept her face sober, although for the first time since the conversation began she was tempted to smile. “That was a year ago, silly. She doesn’t say it anymore. In fact, she was very worried about you when you were ill. And Moina… well, I think she fancies you.”

For a moment something like honest wonder came over his face, coupled with a look of yearning so powerful Briony was almost shocked. But an instant later it was gone, and he had put on the mask she knew far too well.

“Oh, no, it’s not enough for you that you’re the princess regent. You act like you wish you were the queen—like I wasn’t even around to interfere with things. Now you want to tell me who I can and can’t talk to, and maybe even set one of your ladies on me to pretend she likes me so that she can keep an eye on me. But you can’t, Briony.” He turned, dropping the rest of his practice gear, and walked out of the armory. Two of the guards who had been standing discreetly along the back wall followed him out.

“That’s not true!” she called. “Oh, Barrick, that’s not true… !” But he was already gone.

She didn’t really know why she had come. She felt as though she were walking through a high wind and trying to hold together some fantastically complex and delicate thing, like one of Chaven’s scientific instruments but a hundred times larger and more fragile. There were moments when it seemed to her that the entire family was under a curse.

The heavyset guard would not open the door to the cell. She argued, but even though she was the princess regent and could do what she liked, it was clear that if she insisted on her sovereignty the guard would go straight to Avin Brone and she didn’t want the lord constable to know she had come. She didn’t really understand this herself, and couldn’t imagine trying to explain to the dour and practical Brone.

In the end she stood at the cell door’s barred window and called him. At first there was no reply. She called again and heard a stirring, a dull clink of iron chains.

“Briony?” His voice had only a shadow of its old strength. She leaned forward, trying to see him in the shadows of the far wall. “What do you want?”

“To talk.” The stink of the place was terrible. “To… ask you a question.”

Shaso rose, the darkness moving upon itself as though the shadows had by magic taken human form. He walked forward slowly, dragging behind him the chain that bound his ankles, and stopped a little way from the door. There was no light in his stronghold cell: only the torch that burned on the wall behind her illumined his face, but it was enough for her to see how thin he had become, the shoulders still wide but the long neck almost fragile now. When he twisted his head so that he could better see her—she must be only a silhouette in front of the torch, she realized—she could make out the shape of his skull beneath the skm. “Merciful Zoria,” she murmured.

“What do you want?”

“Why won’t you tell me what happened?” She fought to keep her voice even. It was bad enough to weep in the privacy of her chamber. She would not cry in front of this stern old man or the guard who stood only a few yards away, pretending not to listen. “That night? I want to believe you.”

“You must find it lonely.”

“I am not the only one. Dawet does not believe you would kill Kendrick.” For long moments he did not answer. “You spoke to him? About me?”

Briony couldn’t tell if he was stunned or enraged. “He was the envoy of our father’s kidnapper. He was also someone who might have been the murderer. We spoke many times.”

“You say ‘was.’ ”

“He’s gone. Back to Hierosol, back to his master, Drakava. But he told me that he thought you were too honorable to have broken your oath to the Eddon family, no matter what the appearance.”

“He is a liar and a murderer, of course .” The words came cold and heavy. “You can trust nothing he says.”

She was righting a losing battle to keep anger out of her own voice. “Even when he proclaims a belief in your innocence?”

“If my innocence hinges on that man’s word, then I deserve to go to the headsman.”

She struck the door so hard with the flat of her hand that the guard jumped in surprise and took a few hurried steps toward her. She angrily waved him away. “Curse you, Shaso dan-Heza, and curse your stiff neck! Do you enjoy this? Do you sit here in the dark and rejoice that now we have finally shown how little we truly appreciated you, gloat over how poorly we have repaid all your services over the years?” She leaned forward, almost hissed the words through the barred window. “I still find it hard to believe that you would kill my brother, but I begin to think that you would allow yourself to be killed—that you would murder yourself, as it were—out of pure spite.”

Again Shaso fell silent, his great head sagging to his chest. He did not speak for so long that Briony began to wonder if, worn down by the rigors of confinement, he had somehow fallen asleep standing up, or had even died on his feet as the poems claimed the great knight Silas of Perikal did, refusing to fall even with a dozen arrows in his body.

“I can tell you nothing about that night except that I did not kill Kendrick,” Shaso said at last. His voice was weirdly ragged, as though he fought back tears, but Briony knew there was nothing in the world more unlikely. “So I must die. If you truly do wish me any kindness, Princess— Briony—then you will not come to see me again. It is too painful.”

“Shaso, what… ?”

“Please. If you indeed are the single lonely creature in this land who thinks I have not betrayed my oath, then I will tell you three more things. Do not trust Avin Brone—he is a meddler and there is no cause as dear to him as his own. And do not trust Chaven, the court physician. He has many secrets and not all of them are harmless.”

“Chaven… ? But why him—what has he… ?”

“Please.” Shaso lifted his head. His eyes were fierce. “Just listen. I can give you no proof of any of these things, but… but I would not see you harmed, Briony. Nor your brother, for all he has tried my patience. And I would not see your father’s kingdom stolen from him.”

She was more than a little stunned. “You said… three things.”

“Do not trust your cousin, Gailon Tolly.” He groaned. It was a sudden, weird, and terrible sound. “No. That is all I can say.”

“Gailon.” She hesitated—almost she wanted to tell him the news of Gailon’s disappearance, and more important, of Brone’s assertion that the Tollys had hosted agents of the Autarch, but she was suddenly confused. Shaso said that neither Brone nor Gailon were to be trusted, so then which one was the betrayer, the Duke of Summerfield or the lord constable? Or was it both?

Tell him? Am I going mad? The thought was like a splash of icy water, sudden and shocking. This man may have killed my brother, whatever I wish to believe. He could be the arch-traitor himself, or in the employ of someone even more dangerous like the Autarch of Xis. It’s bad enough I have come down here by myself, without Barrick —should I treat him as though he were still a trusted family counselor?

“Briony?” Shaso’s voice was faint, but he sounded concerned.

“I must go.” She turned and walked away, tried to nod to the guard as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but by the time she reached the steps up out of the stronghold she was practically running, wanting only to get out of that deep, dark place.

Matty Tinwright woke in his little room beneath the roof of the Quiller’s Mint with a head that felt as though it were full of filthy bilgewater. Notwithstanding his two years’ residence above the tavern (and thus his presumed familiarity with the room’s confines) he managed to strike his head on a beam as he stood—lightly, only lightly, praise to Zosim, godling of both drunkards and poets (a useful coupling since one was so often the other)—and fell back on the bed, groaning.

“Brigid!” he shouted.”Damned woman, come here! My pate is broken!” But of course she had gone. His only solace was that she must be back in the inn tonight, since she was employed downstairs, and he could tax her then with her cruelty for deserting him. Perhaps it would result in a row or a show of sympathy. Either was acceptable. Poets needed excitement, the rush of feeling.

It was increasingly clear that no one was going to bring him anything. Tinwright sat up, rubbing his head and making self-pitying sounds. He emptied his bladder into the chamber pot, then staggered to the window.

If it had been earlier or later in the day, he would have dispensed with the pot as an unnecessary intermediate stage, but Fitters Row was crowded. It was caution rather than courtesy that led him to empty the pot carefully in a place where no one was walking: only last month a burly sailor had objected to being pissed on from a high window and Tinwright had barely escaped with his life.

He made his way down what seemed like an endless succession of stairs to the common room. The bench where Finn Teodoros and Hewney had kept him up past midnight with their cruel drinking game was empty now, although there were silent men sitting on a half dozen of the other benches, laborers from Tin Street drinking an early lunch. Matty Tinwright couldn’t understand how the poet-clerk and the playwright could both be twenty years his senior and yet hold so much drink, forcing him to match them to preserve honor and thus giving him this head like a broken pot in a bag. It was dreadful the way they carried on, and terrible the way they led a young man like Tinwright into bad habits.

There was no sign of Conary, the proprietor. The potboy, Gil—boy in name only, since he looked to be at least a decade older than Tinwright—sat on a stool behind the plank, guarding the barrels. He had an odd, distracted look on his face at the moment, but he was no bright spark at the best of times. He had already been at the Quiller’s Mint when Tinwright had first arrived, and in all that time had never said anything remotely interesting.

“Ale,” the poet demanded. “I must have ale quickly. My stomach is like a storm at sea—only the sunshine that is pent in the brewer’s hop can quiet this tempest.” He leaned on the counter, belched sourly. “Do you hear? Thunder!”

Gil did not smile, although he was usually polite enough about Tinwright s jokes in his quiet way. After a little more fumbling than usual, he slid a tankard across the plank. The potboy was blinking like an owl in daylight and seemed even more befuddled than usual; Tinwright was delighted to notice that he did not demand payment. Conary no longer gave his lodger even a sniff without coin in hand, and was threatening to evict him from the tiny closet-room at one edge of the top floor as well. Unwilling to risk losing this windfall, Tinwright was preparing to retreat with the tankard to his room before the potboy realized what he had done, and was heartbroken to hear Gil say, “You are a poet… ?”

It was too far to the stairs to pretend he had not heard. He turned, an excuse ready on his lips. “I mean, you can write, can’t you?” the thin-faced man asked him. “You have a good hand?”

Tinwright scowled. “Like an angel using his own quill to dip ink. A great lady once told me that my ode to her would be just as beautiful and useful -were the words to be assembled in a completely different order.”

“I wish you to help me write a letter. Will you do that?” Gil saw Tinwright’s hesitation. “I will pay you money. Would this be enough?” He extended his hand. Nestled in the palm like a droplet of raw sunshine was a gold dolphin. Tinwright gaped and almost dropped his tankard. He had always imagined Gil to be a little simpleminded, with his staring and his silences, but this was idiocy like a gift from the gods. Zosim had heard a simple poet’s prayers, it seemed, and they had reached the god on a generous morning.

“Of course,” he said briskly. “I would be happy to help you. I will take that…” he plucked the coin out of the potboy’s hand, “and you will come up to my room when Conary has come back.” He drained the tankard in a long, greedy swallow and handed it to Gil. “Here—I will save you having to carry it down later.”

Gil nodded, his face still as expressionless as a fish lying in a dockside stall. Tinwright hurried up the stairs, half certain that when he reached his room beneath the sloping ceiling the dolphin would be gone, vanished like a fairy-gift, but when he opened his fist it was still there. For the first time a suspicion flared within him and he bit at the coin, but it had the soft solidity of the true stuff. Not that Tinwright had found many chances to bite on gold during his twenty years of life.

Gil stood just inside the door with his arms at his sides.

He truly is more strange than usual, Tinwright thought, but it’s brought me nothing but good. He couldn’t help wondering if Gil had any other little tasks that might need Matty Tinwright’s help—-mending his shirt, perhaps, or helping him off with his boots. If he has more dolphins, I’ll be proud to call him employer, be he ever so stupid. A thought came to him for the first time. But where would a potboy come by gold like this? Killed someone? Well, let us just hope it was somebody who won’t be missed…

At last, Gil spoke. “I want to send a letter. Write the words I say. Make them proper if they need changing.”

“Of course, my good fellow.” Tinwright took up his writing board, one of the few things left he had not been forced to pawn, and sharpened the quill with an old knife stolen from Conary’s kitchen. With this gold, he realized, I will be able to get my bone-handled penknife back. Hah! I will be able to buy one with an ivory handle! “I do not know greetings such as would go on a letter. You write them.” “Splendid. And who is the letter for?”

“Prince Barrick and Princess Briony.”

Tinwright dropped his quill. “What? The prince and princess?”

“Yes.” Gil looked at him with his head tilted to one side, more the expression of a dog or a bird than a person. “Can you not write this?”

“Of course,” Matty Tinwright said hurriedly. “Without doubt. As long as it is nothing treasonous.” But he was worried. Perhaps he had been too quick to give thanks to Zosim, who after all was a very capricious sort of godling.

“Good.You are kind,Tinwright. I write to tell them important matters. Write this, the things I will say.” He took a breath. His eyes were almost closed, as though he were remembering rather than inventing. “Tell the prince and princess of Southmarch that I must speak to them. That I can tell them important things that are true.”

Tinwright breathed a sigh of relief as he began an elaborate greeting, since it was clear the letter would be nothing but the self-important ram-blings of an unlettered peasant that the royal twins would doubtless never even see— ”To the noble and most honorable Barrick and Briony,” he wrote, “Prince and Princess Regent of Southmarch, from their humble servant…” But what is your name? Your full name?”

“Gil.”

“Have you no other name? As mine is not just Matthias, but Matthias Tinwright?”

The potboy looked at the poet with such incomprehension that Tinwright could only shrug. “… From their humble servant, Gil,” he wrote. “Potboy at the inn known as…”

“Tell them that the threats they face are worse than they know. That war threatens. And to show them I know the things I speak of, I will tell them what happened to the Prince of Settland’s daughter and her blue dower-stone, and why the merchant’s nephew was spared. You must use just the words I will tell you.”

Tinwright nodded, writing happily as Gil stuttered out his message. He had earned a magnificent wage for the simplest of tasks. No one would take this dream-born nonsense seriously, least of all the royal family.

When he had finished he gave the potboy the letter and bade him goodbye—Gil was going to take it himself to the great keep and give it to the prince and princess, he said, although Tinwright knew the poor fool would get no farther than an amused or irritated guardsman at the Raven’s Gate. As the potboy’s descending footfalls sounded on the stairs, Tinwright lay back on his bed to think of all the ways he would spend his money. His head no longer ached. Life had suddenly become very good.

Gil did not return to the Quiller’s Mint that afternoon. Tinwright was arrested by the royal guard an hour before sunset, with ink stains on his fingers and his gold still unspent.

22. A Royal Appointment

At least, Matty Tinwright reflected, they hadn’t put him in chains, but nothing else about the experience had been very pleasant at all. He had almost pissed himself when the guards arrived at the Mint to arrest him. Then, seeing the castle’s stronghold for the first time, smelling the dank, ancient stones and the various scents of miserable, confined humanity, he had nearly done it again. It was one thing to write couplets about the sufferings of Penkal’s Silas in the fortress of the cruel Yellow Knight, but the actuality of a dungeon was far more unsettling than he had imagined.

He let out a sigh, then worried that it might sound like a complaint. He didn’t want these very large guards with their big, callused hands and scowling faces to be angry with him. Two of them were sitting on a low bench talking while a third stood only a few yards away on his other side, pike in hand. This was the one who was making him most uncomfortable, he kept looking at Tinwright as though he was hoping the prisoner would make an attempt to escape so he could spit him like broiled hare on a sharpened stick.

But the poet wasn’t going to move. His mind was fixed on passivity like a compass needle pointing north. If the bloody castle suddenly fell down, I’d still sit right here on the floor. That evil-eyed whoreson’s getting no excuse from Matty Tinwright.

From where he sat he could see the potboy Gil slouching on the floor on the far side of the guards’ table. Tinwright hoped it was a good sign that there were three guards between Gil and the door and only one for him, that it meant they thought Gil was the true miscreant. Not that the potboy looked any more likely than the poet to attempt escape. His thin face was blank and he stared at an empty spot on the opposite wall as though he were someone’s befuddled grandfather left at the market by accident.

The guard who had been giving Tinwright unpleasant looks took a few steps toward him, mail clinking, until he stood just over him. The man carefully—but not too carefully—lodged the point of his pike in the cracks of the stone floor only inches from Tinwright’s groin If this had been an important occasion, or at least the nicer sort of important occasion, it would unquestionably have been crimping Matty’s codpiece.

“I saw you in the Badger’s Boots,” the guard said. Painfully conscious of the pike planted between his thighs like a conqueror’s flag, Tinwright was momentarily bewildered, thinking that he had been accused of stealing the footwear of some guard-troop mascot. “Did you hear me, little man?"

Suddenly, his wits began to work again. The man was talking about a tavern by the Basilisk Gate that Tinwright had visited a few times, usually in the bibulous company of the playwright Nevin Hewney. “No, sir, you mistake me,” he said with all the honesty he could feign. “I have never passed the door I am a partisan of the Quiller’s Mint in Squeakstep Alley. A fellow like yourself would not know the Mint, of course—it is a low; low place.”

The guard smirked. He was young, but already with a sizable belly on him and a doughy, unpleasant face. “You took my woman away from me. Told her she would enjoy being with a clever fox like you more than the pig who was squiring her.”

“I’m sure you’re wrong, good sir.”

“You said she had breasts like fine white cake and an arse like a pomegranate.”

“No, a peach, surely,” said Tinwright, remembering how drunk he had been that night and horrified to think he might have employed a simile as clumsily unlovely as “pomegranate.” A moment later he clapped a hand over his mouth in horror, but it was too late. His unruly tongue had betrayed him again.

The guard favored him with a gap-toothed grin that the poet felt sure did not have much to do with concern for his well-being or appreciation for an adept bit of flirtation. The guard leaned close and reached out with his thick fingers, then took Tinwright’s nose and twisted it, hanging on until the poet let out a terrified squeak of pain. The guard bent until his cheese-stinking maw was only a finger’s breadth away, which meant there was one small benefit of Tinwright’s nose being at this moment so agonizingly crimped shut. “If the lord constable doesn’t want your head off—and if he does, I’ll be first in line for the chore—then I’ll be over to see you at Quiller’s Mint, and soon. I’ll cut some bits off you,”—he gave the nose another twist for emphasis,”—and then we’ll see how the ladies like you.”

The door to the stronghold rattled open. The guard let go of Tinwright’s snout and straightened up, but not before giving it a last cruel tweak. Tinwright was left with tears welling in his eyes and a feeling like someone had set fire to the center of his face.

“Perin’s smallclothes, is the swindler crying?” a voice boomed from just above him. “Are there no true men left in this kingdom who are not soldiers? Are all the rest just pimps and coney-catchers and womanish weepers like this one?” The vast shape of Lord Constable Avin Brone loomed over him, his beard a gray-black thundercloud. “Are you grizzling because of your crimes against the crown, man? That may help you with the Trigonate priests, but not with me.”

Tinwright blinked away the tears. “No, my lord, sire, I am guilty of nothing.” “Then why are you blubbing?”

Somehow Tinwright did not think it would be a good idea to mention what the guard had done. That might turn the beating the man intended to give him into something more likely to prove fatal. “I… I have a catarrh, sire. It strikes me like this, sometime. This damp air…” He waved his hand to indicate the surroundings, but then had another moment of panic. “Not that I have any complaint against the place, sire. I have been excellently well treated.” He was babbling now. Tinwright had never seen Brone from closer than a stone’s throw: the fellow looked as though he could crush a poet’s skull with one meaty hand. “The walls are very sturdy, my lord, the floor well-made.”

“I suspect someone struck you,” said the lord constable. “If you don’t shut your mouth now, I will probably do it again myself.” He turned to one of the royal guards who had risen from the bench. “I’m taking both prisoners.” He waved to one of the pair of soldiers whom he had left waiting by the stronghold door; both wore the livery of Landsend, Brone’s own fiefdom. “Fetch this pair along,” he told his man. “Beat them if you have to.”

The stronghold guard looked a little surprised. “Do… are the prince and princess… ?” “Of course they know,” Brone growled. “Who do you think has bid me bring them out?” “Ah. Yes. Very good, my lord.”

Tinwright scrambled to his feet. He was determined to go without trouble. He did not want to be hurt anymore, and he certainly did not want the huge and frightening lord constable to get any angrier.

Despite his terror,Tinwright couldn’t help but be surprised when Brone and the two soldiers took them a long, winding way through the back of the great hall and at last into a small but beautifully appointed chapel. One look at the paintings on the wall told him that it must be the Erivor Chapel itself, dedicated to the Eddons’ patron sea god, one of the most famous rooms in all of Southmarch. The decor seemed appropriate in a way, because Gil the potboy had walked all the way there as slowly and distractedly as if he were in water over his head. Tinwright was puzzled to be in such a place, but felt a little better: surely they would not just kill him outright, if for no other reason than fear of getting blood on the celebrated wall frescoes.

Unless they strangle me. Didn’t they used to strangle traitors? His heart raced. Traitors! But this is mad —I am no traitor! I only wrote the letter because that criminal Gil blinded me, a poor poet, with his ill-gotten gold!

By the time Avin Brone was seated on a long bench that had been set near the altar, Tinwright was almost crying again.

“Quiet,” Brone said. “My lord, I… I…”

“Shut your mouth, fool. Do not think that because I have sat down I will not get up and hit you. The pleasure will be worth the exertion.”

Tinwright subsided immediately. The fists sucking out of the man’s lace cuffs were the size of festival loaves. The poet stole a look at Gil, who not only did not seem frightened, but actually seemed mostly unaware of what was going on around him. Curse you and your gold! Matty Tinwright wanted to scream at him. You are like some poison-elf out of a story, bringing bad luck to everyone.

Figuring the best way to keep himself out of trouble would be to squeeze shut his eyes and mouth and pray to the god of poets and drunkards (even though the answer to his last prayer seemed to have led him to the doorstep of a traitor’s cell), he was not aware for a moment that newcomers had entered the room. It was the girl’s voice that startled his eyes open. “These two?”

“Yes, Highness.” Brone pointed at Gil. “This is the one who made the claims. The other says he only wrote it for him, although I have my doubts—you can see which one looks more likely to have put the other up to mischief.”

Tinwright had a strong desire to shriek out his innocence, but he was slowly learning how to behave in a situation where he had no power. A half dozen new people had entered the chapel. Four of them were royal guards, who had established themselves near the door and were exchanging mildly contemptuous glances with the lord constable’s red-and-gold-clad Land-senders; the other two, he was astonished to recognize, were King Olin’s surviving children, Princess Briony and Prince Barrick.

“Why here?” the fair-haired princess asked.Tinwright had to look twice to make sure she was the one speaking. She was pretty enough in a tall, bony sort of way—Matty Tinwright liked his women soft, pale, and round-edged as a summer cloud—but her hair was loose and she was dressed very strangely in a riding skirt and hose and a long bluejacket like a man’s. Her wan, red-ringleted brother was all in black. Tinwright had heard of the prince’s perpetual mourning attire, but it was quite astounding to see Barrick Eddon so close, as though he were just another drinker in the Mint— to see both of the young regents here in front of him, as close and as real as could be, as though Tinwright himself were a court favorite they had come to visit. A fantasy about it warmed him for a flickering instant. Ah, what bliss that would be, to have royal patrons… !

“We are here because it is private,” Brone said.

“But you said they were only trying to trick us into giving them money for false information.” Tinwright suddenly lost interest in patronage and how the prince and princess were dressed. In fact, he was having great difficulty swallowing: it felt as though a hedgehog had crawled into his throat If they decided that he was guilty of trying to defraud the royal family, they might very well have his head, at the least, he would be banished to one of the smaller islands or sent to work the fields until he was old, until even a tinker’s skinny wife would not slip him a copper for his charming speech (and more physical attentions.) Trying to swindle the royal family! He pressed his legs tightly together so as not to piss himself in front of the Eddon twins.

“I said that’s what I suspected,” Brone replied, patiently ignoring the prince’s quarrelsome tone. “But if either or both of them actually do know something, I thought it would be better we found out here instead of in front of the entire court.”

Briony, who had been looking at Tinwright in a way that did not seem entirely unkind—although it did not appear particularly sympathetic either—suddenly turned to lantern-jawed Gil. “You. They say you are a potboy at an alehouse in the outer keep. How could you know anything other than tavern gossip about what happened to that Settland caravan?”

Gil stirred, but he seemed to have trouble fixing his eyes on her. “I… I do not know. I only know that I had dreams, and that those dreams showed me things.”

“Say, ‘Your Highness,’ scum,” Brone snarled.

Briony waved her hand. “He is I don’t know, simpleminded, I think. Why are we troubling with him at all? With either of these two lackwits?"

Tinwright wished he had the courage to bristle, to protest. It was disappointing that the princess seemed to be unaware of his small but growing reputation, but surely it must be obvious from looking at him that he was not of the same mettle as poor Gil.

“She’s right,” said Prince Barrick. He spoke more slowly and haltingly than reports of his mercurial nature would have suggested. “That merchant fellow probably told everyone in Southmarch what happened to him. And spread it over half the countryside before he even got here, as well.”

“If you look at the letter these two sent us,” Brone told them patiently, “it says, ‘I can tell you of the Prince of Settland’s daughter and why she was taken, with her guards and her blue dower-stone.’ That’s why we’re bothering with these lackwits.”

“I don’t understand,” said the princess.

“Because the merchant Beck didn’t know about the great sapphire the girl was bringing to Earl Rorick as part of her dowry. Nobody in the caravan knew, not even the guards, because her father was afraid of theft I only know myself because I received a letter out of Settland a few days ago, carried to me by a monk. The prince wrote to ask after his daughter and her safety, since he had heard disturbing rumors, and he specifically mentioned the sapphire she was carrying—in fact, it seemed almost as important to him as his child, so it is either a very expensive stone or he is a less than doting father. In any case, how…?”

“How can a mere potboy know about the stone?” Briony finished for him. She turned to Gil. “And you claim this came to you in dreams? What else can you tell us?”

He shook his head slowly. “I have forgotten some of what I meant to say, some of the things I heard and saw when I was sleeping. I was going to have Tinwright put it all down in writings for me, but the guards came and took me away from the Quiller’s Mint.”

“So even if he did somehow know something,” said Barrick, his words ripe with disgust, “he doesn’t know it now.” “I know you saw the ones in black,” Gil told the prince.

“What?”

“The ones in black. The walls aflame. And the man with the beard, running, calling you. I know you saw it…”

He did not finish because Barrick leaped forward and wrapped his hands around the potboy’s neck. Although Gil was a grown man, he offered no resistance. Barrick shoved the scrawny figure down to the floor and climbed onto his chest, shouting, “What does that mean? How could you know about my dreams?”

“Barrick!” Briony rushed forward and grabbed at his arms. The potboy was not struggling, but his face was turning a terrible, hectic red. “Let go— you’ll kill him!”

“How could you know? Who sent you? How could you know?”

As Tinwright watched in astonishment, the lord constable—moving with surprising swiftness for all his bulk—yanked the boy off the gasping, but still unresisting Gil. “I beg your your pardon, Highness, but have you lost your wits?” he demanded.

The prince squirmed free of the big man’s clutch. Barrick was breathing harshly, as though he had been the one strangled instead of the other way around. “Don’t say that! Don’t you dare say that!” he shouted at Brone. “Nobody can speak to me like that!” He seemed about to cry or to scream again, but instead his face suddenly went stony as a statue. He turned and walked out the chapel door, although it was a walk that was only one headlong step away from becoming a run. Two of the guards exchanged a weary look, then peeled off and followed him.

The potboy was sitting up now, wheezing quietly.

“How could you know about my brother’s dreams?” Briony Eddon demanded. Gil took a moment to answer. “I only tell what I saw. What I heard.”

She turned to Brone. “Merciful Zoria preserve me, I think sometimes I’m going mad—I must be, because otherwise I can make no sense of the things that happen in this place. Do you understand any of this?”

The lord constable did not answer immediately. “I… for the most part, I am as puzzled as you, my lady. I have a few ideas, but I think it unwise to share them in front of these two.” He jabbed his bearded chin toward Tinwright and the potboy.

“Well, we must do something about them, that’s sure.” Briony frowned. Tinwright still did not find her particularly fetching, but something about the princess definitely drew his attention, and it was not just her fame and power. She was very… forceful. Like one of the warrior goddesses, he thought.

“Clearly we must at least keep the potboy until we find the secret of his knowledge,” Brone said, giving the poet a spark of hope. Perhaps they would let him go! “Not to mention discovering how he got his hands on that gold dolphin he gave to this so-called poet. I suppose I can find a place for the potboy in the guard room—he’ll be under many eyes there. But I am not sure we want this other one gossiping in the taverns about what he’s seen.” Brone frowned. “I imagine you won’t simply let me kill him.” Suddenly breathless, Tinwright could only hope it was meant as a joke. He was relieved when the princess shook her head. “Too bad,” Brone told her, “because there is little need for his shiftless sort, and Southmarch already has armies of them.”

“I don’t care what you do with the one who wrote the letter.” Briony was staring fixedly at Gil; Tinwright had an inexplicable twinge of jealousy. “I doubt he has anything to do with this matter—the potboy cannot write and needed someone to do it. Send the poet back home and tell him we’ll cut his head off if he whispers a word. I need to think.”

Tinwright had suffered a series of glum realizations. If he went back to the Quiller’s Mint, he would soon be getting that promised visit from the guard whose woman he apparently stole; not only would he be brutally beaten, but it would be for something he couldn’t even remember—drinking with Hewney nearly always ended in oblivion. He could only hope the wench had been pretty although, looking at the guard, he rather doubted it. But since the lord constable had confiscated his gold dolphin, he couldn’t afford to move elsewhere. There was no well-heeled lady in his life at the moment to take him in, only Brigid who lived at the Mint. And the cold weather had come. It would be a bad time to live in the streets.

Tinwright was now feeling extremely sorry for himself. For a moment he considered concocting a story of his own to make himself more useful and important, pretending that he shared some of the potboy’s strange knowledge, but one look at the massive Brone convinced him of the folly of that. For some reason, Gil actually did know things he shouldn’t, but Tinwright could summon no such weaponry, even in bluff. He contemplated the distracted princess and an idea struck him so abruptly that he couldn’t help wondering if Zosim was trying to make up for the fickle cruelty of his other gift. He dropped to his knees on the floor.

“My lady,” he said in his most sincere voice, the one that had kept him in food and drink since he first ran away from home, “Highness, may I beg a favor? It is far too much and I am far too lowly, but I beg you at least to hear me. She looked at him. That was a first step, at least. “What?”

“I am a poet, Princess—a humble one, one whose gifts have not always been rewarded, but those who know me will tell you of my quality.” She was losing interest so he hurried ahead. “I came here in fear and trepidation. My attempt to do a kindness for my simple friend the potboy has caused you and your brother pain. I am devastated.” She smiled sourly. “If you tell anyone about this, you certainly will be devastated.”

“Please, only hear me, Highness. Only hear your humble servant. Your attention to the cares of the land have doubtless prevented you from knowing of the panegyric I am writing about you.” That, and the fact that he had been writing no such thing before this moment.

“Panegyric?"

“A tribute to your astonishing beauty.” He saw her expression and quickly added, “And most importantly, to your wisdom and kindness. Your mercy.” She smiled again, although it still had a nasty little curl to it. “In fact, as I sit here, fortunate enough finally to be within the radiant glow of your presence instead of worshiping you like the distant moon, I see that my central conceit was even more accurate than I had hoped—that you are indeed… indeed.

She got tired of waiting. “I am indeed what?”

“The very embodiment of Zoria, warrior goddess and mistress of wisdom.” There. He could only hope that he had guessed correctly, that her odd way of dressing and her solicitation of the goddess’ mercy were not chance occurrences. “When I was young, I often dreamed of Perin’s courageous daughter, but in my dreams I was blinded by her glow—I could never truly imagine the heavenly countenance. Now I know the true face of the goddess. Now I see her born again in Southmarch’s virgin princess.” He suddenly worried he had gone a bit too far: she didn’t look as flattered as he had hoped she would, although she didn’t look angry either. He held his breath. “Shall I have him beaten before I take him back to that brothel?” Brone asked her.

“To tell the truth,” Briony said, “he… amuses me. I have not laughed in days, and just now I almost did. That is a rare gift in these times.” She looked Tinwright up and down. “You wish to be my poet, do you? To tell the world of my virtues?”

He was not sure what was happening, but this was not a moment to be wasted on truth of any sort. “Yes, my lady, my princess, it has always been my greatest dream. Indeed, Highness, your patronage would make me the happiest man on earth, the luckiest poet upon Eion.”

“Patronage?” She raised an eyebrow. “Meaning what? Money?"

“Oh, never, my lady!” In due time, he thought. “No, it would be a boon beyond price if you simply allowed me to observe you—at a distance, of course!—so that I could better construct my poem. It has already been years in the making, Highness, the chief labor of my life, but it has been difficult, composed around a few brief glimpses of you at public festivals. If you favor me with the chance to witness you even from across a crowded room as you bring your wise rule to the fortunate people of Southmarch, that would be a kindness that proves you are truly Zoria reborn.”

“In other words, you want a place to stay.” For the first time there was something like genuine amusement in her smile. “Brone, see if Puzzle can find a place for him. They can share a room—keep each other company.”

“Princess Briony… !” Brone was annoyed.

“Now I must talk to my brother. You and I will meet again before sunset, Lord Constable.” She started toward the door, then stopped, looked Tinwnght up and down. “Farewell, poet. I’ll be expecting to hear that ode very soon. I’m looking forward to it.”

As he watched her go, Matty Tinwnght was not quite sure whether this had been the best day of his life or the worst. He thought it must be the best, but there was a small, sick feeling m his stomach that surely should not be part of the day he had become an appointed poet to the royal court.

At first, it seemed that Collum Dyer would be able to follow the fairy host like a blind man tracking the sun despite the confusion of the fogbound forest and the serpentine inconstancy of the road, the guard set off in a way that Vansen would have called confident, except that the rest of the man’s demeanor spoke of nothing so humble and human as confidence. In fact, Dyer might have been a sleepwalker, stumbling and murmuring to himself like one of the crazed penitents that had followed the effigies of the god Kermos from town to town during the days of the Great Death.

Quickly, though, it became clear that if Dyer was a blind man following the sun, that sun was setting. Within what seemed no more than an hour they were staggering in circles. So maddening was the forest-maze that Vansen would not even have known that for certain except that Dyer stepped on his own sword belt, which he had lost far back in the day’s march.

Exhausted, devastated,Vansen sank to the ground and crouched with his face in his hands, half expecting that Dyer would go on without him and mostly not caring Instead, to his surprise, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Where are they, Ferras? They were so beautiful.” Despite the dark beard, Collum Dyer looked like nothing so much as a child, his eyes wide, his mouth quivering.

“Gone on,” Vansen said. “Gone on to kill our friends and families.”

“No.” But what he had said troubled Dyer. “No, they bring something, but not death. Didn’t you hear them? They only take back what was already theirs. That is all they want.”

“But there are people living on what was already theirs. People like us.” Vansen only wanted to lie down, to sleep. He felt as though he had been endlessly, endlessly swimming in this ocean of trees with no glimpse of shore. “Do you think the farmers and smallholders will simply get up and move so your Twilight People can have their old lands back? Perhaps we can pull down Southmarch Castle as well, build it again in Jellon or Perikal where it won’t interfere with them.”

“Oh, no,” said Dyer very seriously. “They want the castle back. That’s theirs, too. Didn’t you hear them?”

Vansen closed his eyes but it only made him dizzy. He was lost behind the Shadowline with a madman. “I heard nothing.”

“They were singing! Their voices were so fair… ?" Now it was Dyer who squeezed his eyes shut. “They sang… they sang…” The child-face sagged again as though he might burst into tears. “I can’t remember! I can’t remember what they sang.”

That was the first good thing Vansen had heard in hours. Perhaps Dyer’s wits were returning. But why am I not mad, too? he wondered.

Then again, how do I know I’m not?

“Come,” said the guardsman, pulling at his arm. “They are going away from us.”

“We can’t catch them. We’re lost again.” Vansen pushed down his anger. Whatever the reason that Collum Dyer’s wits were clouded and his own were not, or at least not as badly, it was not Dyer’s fault. “We do have to get out of here, but not to follow the Twilight People off to war.” A few tattered scraps of duty seemed to be all that held him together. He clutched them tight. “We have to tell the princess about this… and the prince. We have to tell Avin Brone.”

“Yes.” Collum nodded. “They will be happy.”

Vansen groaned quietly and set about looking for enough damp sticks to try to make a fire. “Somehow I don’t think so.”

After a succession of terrible dreams in which he was pursued by faceless men through endless mist-cloaked gardens and unlit halls, FerrasVansen gave up on sleep. He warmed his hands beside the fire and fretted over their dismal circumstances, but he was exhausted and without useful ideas: all he could do was stare out at the endless trees and try to keep from screaming in despair. A child of the countryside, he had never imagined he could grow to hate something as familiar as a forest, as common as mere trees, but of course nothing here was mere anything. Outwardly familiar—he had seen oak and beech, rowan and birch and alder, and in the high places many kinds of evergreen—the dripping trees of this damp shadow-forest seemed to have a brooding life to them, a silence both purposeful and powerful. If he half-closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was surrounded by ancient priests and priestesses robed in gray and green, tall and stately and not very kindly disposed toward his intrusion into their sacred precincts.

When Collum Dyer finally woke, he also seemed to have awakened from the evil fancy that had gripped his mind. He looked around him, blinking slowly, and then moaned. “By Perin’s Hammer, when will day come in this cursed place?”

“This is as much day as you’ll see until we are in our own lands again,” Vansen told him. “You should know that by now.”

“How long have we been here?” Dyer looked down at his hands as though they should belong to someone else. “I feel ill. Where are the others?”

“Don’t you remember?” He told the guardsman all that had happened, what they had seen. Dyer looked at him mistrustfully.

“I remember none of that. Why would I say such things?”

“I don’t know. Because this place sends people mad. Come—if you’re feeling like yourself again, let’s get moving.”

They walked, but even the small idea that Vansen had of which direction might lead them back across the Shadowline toward mortal lands quickly failed. As the day wore away, with Dyer cursing fate and Vansen biting back his own anger at his companion—he hadn’t had the luxury of being mad for two days, and had suffered this endless, defeating landscape the whole time Collum Dyer had been babbling about the glories of the Twilight folk—it began to seem that not only would they have to sleep in the forest again, they might never find their way out. They were hopelessly lost and almost out of food and drink. Vansen did not trust the water in this land’s quiet streams, but it seemed they soon must drink it or die.

Somewhere in the timeless and arbitrary middle of their day, Vansen spotted a group of figures traveling away from them, struggling along a ridgetop at what looked like half a mile’s distance. He and Dyer were down in a small canyon, hidden by trees, and at first his strong impulse was to hide until these creatures were gone. But something about the stockiest of the climbing shapes snagged his attention; after a moment, attention turned to incredulous delight.

“By all the gods, I swear that must be Mickael Southstead! I would know his walk anywhere, like he had a barrel between his legs.”

Dyer squinted. “You’re right. Bless him—who would ever have thought I’d be happy to see that old whoreson!”

Energies renewed by hope, they ran until they no longer had the breath for it, then continued the climb up the steep hillside at a slower pace. Dyer wanted to shout—he was terrified that they would lose their comrades again—but Vansen did not want to make any more noise than was necessary it already seemed as though the very land was disapprovingly aware of them.

They reached the top of the ridge at last, staggering up onto the crest and stopping to gasp for breath. When they straightened up, they could see the others just a few hundred yards ahead along the ridgetop, still laboring forward, unaware of Vansen and Dyer. This joyful sight was undercut slightly by the view from the crest. The forest stretched as far as they could see on all sides with no landmark more recognizable than a few hilltops like the one on which they stood, jutting up at irregular intervals from the mists that blanketed the shadow-country like islands in the Vuttish archipelago surrounded by the cold northern sea.

Vansen was still winded, but Dyer sprinted ahead. Now that they were so close, Vansen could see that there were only four other survivors, and that one of them was the girl Willow. His heart lifted—the idea that he had brought the poor, tortured creature back to the place that had affected her so badly the first time had been troubling him in his more lucid moments—but only a little. Far more troubling was the rest of his missing guardsmen. Until now he had been able to convince himself that the rest of the troop was together and looking for them. Now he had to admit the problem was not simply that Vansen and Dyer had got themselves lost, but rather that Ferras Vansen, a captain of the royal guard, had lost most of his men.

The princess was right, he thought bitterly as he started after Dyer. I am not to be trusted with the safety of her family. And I should not have been trusted with the lives of these men, either.

Dyer had caught them and embraced Mikael Southstead though he had never liked him much. As Dyer threw his arms around the other two soldiers—Balk and Dawley, it appeared—Southstead turned to Ferras Vansen with a self-satisfied grin. “There you are, Captain We knew we’d find you.”

Vansen was vastly relieved to see even this small portion of his men alive, but was not quite certain he agreed with Southstead’s idea of who had found whom. “I am pleased to see you well,” he told Southstead, then clapped the man on the shoulder. It was a little awkward, but he wanted no embraces.

“Father?” the girl said to him. She looked more ragged than the others, her dress torn and muddy, and her face had lost the cheer it had possessed even in madness. He had a terrible notion of what might have happened in his absence, but also knew that there was nothing he could do about it, nothing. He beckoned her toward him.

“I am not your father, Willow,” he told her gently. “But I am happy to see you. I am Ferras Vansen, the captain of these men.”

“They wouldn’t let me go home, Father,” she said. “I wanted to, but they wouldn’t let me.”

Vansen couldn’t help shuddering, but when he turned back to the others all he said was, “We will make camp, but not here. Let us move down into the valley where we’re not so easy to see.”

Between them, Vansen and the remains of his troop scraped together enough biscuit and dried meat for a meager meal, but that was the last of their provisions gone and their waterskms were also nearly empty Soon they would have to drink from the shadow-streams and perhaps eat shadow-food as well. He had already had difficulty restraining Dyer from eating berries and fruit while they traveled, some of which looked quite familiar and wholesome, so how much more difficult would it be now that he had five of them to watch?

It quickly became apparent that Southstead and the others had experienced some of the same things as Vansen and Dyer, but not all, the Shadowline had crept over them while they slept, and the rest of the men and the merchant Beck apparently went mad much as Dyer had done, disappearing with the horses and leaving Southstead, Dawley, Balk, and the girl Willow stranded on foot. But Southstead and his company had not seen the host of the Twilight People on the march, and with the return of his wits Collum Dyer did not truly remember it either, leaving Vansen as the lone witness. He fancied that the others looked at him strangely when he spoke of it, as though he might have invented it all. “What would they be doing, Captain?” young Dawley asked. “I mean, going to war? With whom?”

“With us,” Vansen said, trying to keep his temper. “With our kind. Which is why we must hope we can get back to Southmarch with the news before that army of unnatural things gets there.”

It also quickly became clear that despite his claim of finding Vansen, Southstead and the other two guardsmen had been completely lost, wandering hopelessly, although Southstead claimed he would have found his way out of the woods, “given a proper chance.” The fact that these three guardsmen, none of whom Vansen thought of as very clever, had not been driven mad by the magic of the shadow-forest made him a little more uncertain about his own resistance. There seemed to be no reason for who was completely overcome and who was only buffeted by the strangeness of the place. More disturbing, resistance did not seem to give them the ability to find their way out again, but Dyer in his former madness had seemed certain he knew which way to go.

As the men argued about who would stand watch, Vansen suddenly had an idea: although he still feared his men had mistreated the girl Willow, perhaps even raped her, he realized he might in his anger have misunderstood something she was trying to tell him.

She was sitting close to him, not speaking, but clearly more comfortable near the man she sometimes imagined was her father. “You said they would not let you go home,” he said to her quietly. “What do you mean?”

She shook her head, wide-eyed. “Oh, I can see the road! I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen. The one who looks like our old bull pup said he knew where to go and that I should keep my mouth shut.” She slid closer to him. “But you will let me go home. I know you will.”

Vansen almost laughed at the girl’s description—the jowly Southstead did indeed look more than a little like a bulldog—but what she had said was important. She found her way out of shadow once, he thought, before we found her. He patted her on the head, carefully disengaged his hand from hers—she had a good, tight grip on it—and stood up. “I’ll take first watch,” he announced. “The rest of you play drop-stones or whatever you wish to settle your turns. Tomorrow you follow a new leader.”

Southstead did not look happy, but he grinned anyway. “As you wish, Captain, o’ course. But you and Dyer did no better than us.”

“I’m not going to be leading,” he said. “She will.”

Despite the grumbling of the men, after the little troop had been up and following Willow through the gray forest for a few hours Vansen actually saw the moon for the first time since they had fallen into shadow. It was only a glimpse when some unfelt wind in the heights scattered the mists for a moment, and he was a little disturbed to think it might be the middle of the night when his body had been telling him it was day, but he still regarded it as a good sign. The girl seemed certain of where she was going, walking on ahead of them in her tattered white dress like a ghost leading travelers to the place of its murder.

Perhaps it was hunger—the younger the man, Vansen had learned during his time as a guard captain, the more they thought about food—but somewhere during what everyone except Mesiya’s pale orb believed was the afternoon, Dawley suddenly stopped in his tracks.

“There’s something in that thicket,” he whispered to Vansen, who was closest to him. He took his bow off his shoulder and pulled out one of the two arrows he had saved from the collapse of their mission and the disappearance of the horses and packs. “If it’s a deer, Captain, I’m going to shoot it. I don’t care if it’s the King of Elfland in disguise, I’ll eat it anyway.”

Vansen laid a hand on the young soldier’s arm as he nocked the arrow, squeezed the arm hard. “But what if it’s Adcock or one of the other guards wandering lost, maybe wounded?” Dawley slowly lowered the bow. “Good. Take Dyer and Balk and see if you can move in quietly.”

While Vansen and Southstead and the young woman watched in silence, the men closed in on the thicket. Dawley abruptly dove into the deepest part of the undergrowth and Balk clambered in after him. The leaves were rattling, and both Dawley and Balk were shouting to each other.

“There! It’s running there!” “It’s a cat!”

“No, it’s a bloody ape! But it’s fast!”

Dyer waded in last and the three converged. The branches thrashed furiously, then Dyer straightened up with something the size of a small child struggling in his arms.Vansen and the others hurried forward. “Perin’s Balls!” swore Vansen. “Don’t get scratched, Collum.What is it?”

The whining, scratchy cries of the thing as it fought helplessly against the much larger Dyer were disturbing enough, but hearing it suddenly speak the Common Tongue was terrifying. “Let go me!” it shrilled.

Startled, Dyer almost did let it go, but then he squeezed until it subsided. The guardsman was breathing hard, his eyes wide with fear, but he was holding the thing tightly now. Vansen could understand why the others mistook it for an ape or a cat. It was vaguely man-shaped, but long of arm and short of leg, and was furred all over in shades of gray and brown and black. The face was like a demon-mask that children wore on holidays, although this demon seemed to be as frightened as they were.

“What are you?” Vansen asked.

“Something cursed,” said Southstead, his voice cracking.

The thing stared at the guardsman with what looked like contempt, then turned its gaze onVansen.The bright yellow eyes had no white and only. thin black sideways slits for pupils, like a goat’s. “Goblin, am I,” it rasped. “Under-Three-Waters tribe.You dead men, all.”

“Dead men?”Vansen repressed a superstitious shiver.

“She bring white fire. She burn all you houses until only black stones.” It made a strange hissing, spitting sound. “Wasted, my leg, old and bent. Fell behind. Never I see the beauty of her when she ends you.” “Kill it!” Southstead demanded through clenched teeth.

Vansen held out a hand to still him. “It was following the army of the Twilght People. Perhaps it is one of them—it’s certainly their subject. It can tell us things.” He looked around, trying to think of what they could use to bind the creature, which was struggling again in Dyer’s grasp.

“Never,” the thing said, the words raw and strangely-shaped. “Never help sunlanders!” A moment later it squirmed abruptly and violently, contorting itself m such a way that it seemed to have no backbone, and sank its teeth into Collum Dyer’s arm. He screamed in pain and surprise and dropped the thing to the ground. It scrambled away from them, but one of its legs was clearly lame and dragged behind it. Before Vansen could even open his mouth to shout, young Dawley took two steps and caught up to it, then smashed it to the ground with his bow. A moment later Dyer was there as well, holding his bloody arm against his body as he began to kick the writhing shape. Southstead caught up to them with his sword out and his mouth full of angry curses. The other two stepped back as he began hacking and hacking. All three men were making sounds like dogs baying, howls of terror and rage.

By the time Vansen reached them the goblin was long dead, a bloody tangle of meat and fur on the mossy forest floor, its lantern eyes already going dull.

Barrick still refused to see her, but Briony was determined. Her brothers outbursts and anger had been bad enough before, but now he was truly frightening her. He had always been prickly and private, but this strangeness about the potboy was something else again.

She leaned down close to the wide-eyed page, who had his back against the prince’s chamber door as though he meant to defend it with his ten-year-old life. “Tell my brother that I will be back to speak with him after the evening meal. Tell him we unll speak.”

As she walked away, she heard the page hurriedly open the door and then almost slam it closed behind him, as though he had just escaped from the cage of a lioness.

Are there people here who fear me as much as they fear Brone? As they fear Barrick’s moods? It was an odd thought. She had never conceived of herself as frightening, although she knew she was not always patient with what she deemed foolishness or dithering.

Zoria, virgin warrior, Zona of the cunning hands, give me the strength to be gentle. The prayer reminded her of that fool of a poet, and her sudden whim. Why had she decided to keep such a creature around? Just to annoy Barrick and the lord constable? Or because she truly did enjoy even such ridiculous flattery’.

Her mind muddled with these thoughts, she walked down the long hall beneath the portraits of her ancestors living and dead, her father and her grandfather Ustm and her great-grandfather, the third Anglin, without really seeing them. Even the picture of Queen Lily, scourge of the Gray Companies and the most famous woman in the history of the March Kingdoms, could not hold her attention today, although there were other times when she would stand for hours looking at the handsome, dark-haired woman who had held the realm together in one of its bleakest hours, wondering what it would be like to make such a mark on the world. But today, although the familiar sight of her other clansmen and clanswomen had not moved her, the picture of Sanasu, Kellick Eddon’s queen, caught her eye.

It was unusual for Briony to give the portrait more than a glance. What little she knew of Queen Sanasu was dreary, of her painfully long years of mourning after the great King Kellick died, an obsessively silent, solitary widowhood that had made her a phantom to her own court. So detached had Sanasu become in the last half of her life, family stories related, that the business of the kingdom had fallen entirely to her son years before he became king in fact, something that made the responsible Briony loathe the woman without knowing anything more about her. But today, even as absorbed in worries as she was, Briony could not help staring at something in the likeness she had never really noticed before. Sanasu looked very much like Barrick—or rather Barrick, her many-times-great grandson, looked much like Sanasu, which was accentuated by the black mourning garb they both favored. And these days, with his pallor and striking, haunted eyes accentuated by his bout with the fever, Barrick looked more like the long-dead queen than ever.

Briony stood on her toes for a better look, wishing the light in the ancient hall were better. The artist who had made the portrait had no doubt prettified his queen, but even so, the Sanasu in the picture had the almost transparent look of someone very ill, which only made her red hair even more shocking, like a bloody wound. She also seemed astonishingly young for someone who had lost her husband in middle age Her face was odd in other ways, too, although it was hard to say exactly why.

I can see Father’s eyes in her, too, and his coloring. Briony suddenly wished she knew more about great Kellick’s widow. The portrait made Sanasu look mysterious and foreign. Briony couldn’t recall being told anything about where the melancholy queen had come from before marrying Kelhck, but whatever distant land might have spawned her, it had now been part of the family heritage for centuries. Briony was suddenly struck by how the blood of the Eddons, her own blood, was like a great river, with things appearing and disappearing and then appearing again. And not just looks, but moods and habits and ruling passions, too, she thought Queen Sanasu had famously stopped talking to those around her and exiled herself to Wolfstooth Spire, so that she was seen by only a few servants and became all but invisible for the two or three decades before her death Was that what was in store for her moody, beloved Barrick?

That ghastly thought, and the continuing fascination of Sanasu’s white, otherworldly face, had grasped Briony’s interest so firmly that she nearly screamed when the ancient jester Puzzle stepped out of the shadows nearby.

“By the gods, fellow,” she demanded when her heart had slowed again, “what are you doing?You startled me out of my wits, creeping up like that.”

“I am sorry, Princess, very sorry I just I was waiting for you “ He seemed to be considering whether he should get down onto one extremely creaky knee.

Briony reminded herself of her own prayer for Zonan patience. “Don’t apologize, I will live What is it, Puzzle?” “I… it is just…” He looked as anxious as Barricks page. “I am told that someone will share my room.” She took a breath. Patience Kindness. “Is that too much trouble? It was a sudden thought. I’m sure we can find somewhere else to put this newcomer. I thought he might be company for you.”

“A poet?” Puzzle couldn’t seem to grasp the connection. “Well, we will see, Highness. It is possible we will get on. Certainly I do not speak to many people since… since your father has gone. And since my friend Robben died. It might be nice to have…” He blinked his rheumy eyes. It was possible that her father Olin was the only person on the continent of Eion who had ever found Puzzle amusing, or at least amusing in the way the jester tried to be. What must it be like, she wondered, to be supremely unfitted for your life’s work? Even if she was impatient with him now, Briony couldn’t help regretting the way she and Barrick had teased the bony old fellow all these years.

“If it turns out not to your liking, tell Nynor and he will find the poet some other place. Thinwight, or whatever his name is, is young and should be agreeable. Bad poets need to be agreeable.” She nodded. “Now I have much to do…”

“My lady,” the old man said, still having trouble meeting her eyes, “it was not that which I wished to speak about—well, not as much.”

“What else?”

“I have a very great worry, my lady. Something that I have remembered, and that I fear I should have told earlier.” He stopped to swallow. It did not look easy for him. “I think you know I visited your brother on the night of his death. That he called for me after supper and I came to his chamber to entertain him.”

“Brone told me, yes.” She was alert now. “And that I left before Lord Shaso came.”

“Yes? So? By the gods, Puzzle, don’t make me work it out of you word by word!”

He winced. “It is just… your brother, may the gods grant his soul peace, sent me away that night. He was . . not kind. He said that I was not diverting, that I never was—that my tricks and jests only made him feel… made him feel even more that life was wretched.”

Kendrick had only told the truth, but she knew he must have been distressed indeed to be rude to old Puzzle Her older brother had always been the most mannerly of the family. “He was unhappy,” she told him. “It was an unhappy night. I am sure those were not his true thoughts. He was worried about me, remember, about the ransom for the king and whether he should send me away.”

The jester shook his head in confusion and defeat. He was bareheaded, but the gesture was so familiar she could almost hear the tinkle of his belled cap. “That is not what I wanted to tell you, Highness. When Lord Brone asked me about that night, I told him what I remembered, but I forgot something. I think it is because I was so disturbed by what Prince Kendrick had said—a hard blow for someone who has devoted his life to the pleasure of the Eddons, you must admit…”

“Whatever the reason, what did you forget?” Gods defend me! He certainly does test a person’s patience.

“As I left the residence, I saw Duke Gailon walking toward me. I was in the main hall, so it did not occur to me he might be going to see your older brother and I did not mention it to the lord constable after… that terrible event. But I have been thinking and thinking—sometimes I lay awake at night, worrying—and I think now that he was walking the wrong direction to be going to his own chambers. I think he might have been going to see Prince Kendrick.” He bowed his head. “I have been a fool.”

Briony didn’t bother to reassure him. “Let me understand this. You are saying that you saw Gailon Tolly heading toward the residence as you were leaving. And you saw nothing of Shaso?”

“Not that night, but I went straight to my bed from there. Are you very angry, Highness? I am an old man, and sometimes I fear I am becoming a witling…”

“Enough. I will have to think about this. Have you told anyone else?”

“Only you. I… I believed you would .” He shook his head again, unable to say what he believed. “Shall I go to tell the lord constable?”

“No.” She had said it too forcefully. “No, I think for now you should tell no one else. This will be our secret.” “You will not put me in the stronghold?”

“I suspect that sharing a room with that poet fellow will be punishment enough. You may go, Puzzle.” Long after the old man had tottered away she remained, standing beneath the pictures of her forebears, thinking.

23. The Summer Tower

He practically had to fight his way through the women to get to her. The physician could feel their resentment, as though . he were some long-absent lover who had put this baby in her and then left her shamed and alone. But the king is the father here, not me, and Olin is not absent by choice.

Queen Anissa had grown so round in the belly that it made the rest of her slight frame seem even smaller. Seeing her in the center of the bed, surrounded by gauzy curtains like trailing cobwebs, he had a momentary image of her as a she-spider, gravid and still. It was unfair, of course, but it set him thinking.

“Is that Chaven?” To make room for him, she pushed away one of her small dogs, which had been sleeping against the curving side of her stomach like a rat dreaming of stealing a hippogriff’s egg. The dog blinked, growled, then stumbled down to join its companion who snored near her feet. “Come here, quickly. I think I will give birth at any moment.”

From the look of her, she might have been right. He was surprised by the dark circles under her eyes. In this room of draped windows, the only light an unsteady glow from the candle-studded altar, she looked as though she had been beaten.

“You need more air in this bedchamber.” He took her hand and gave it a quick, formal kiss.The skin was dry and warm—a little too much of both. “And you look like you aren’t getting enough sleep, my queen.”

“Sleep? Who could sleep in such a time? Poor Kendrick murdered in our own house by a trusted servant, and then plague all through the town? Do you wonder I keep the windows covered to keep out bad airs?”

Calling Shaso a trusted servant seemed an interesting way of characterizing him, and the fact that she had not counted her husband’s absence in her list of worries might also have been thought strange, but Chaven did not respond to her words. Instead, he busied himself examining the queen’s heartbeat and the color of her eyes and gums, then leaned in to smell her breath, which at the moment was a little sour. “The plague is all but spent, Highness, and I imagine you were in far greater danger from your own maid when she had it than from it floating in from the town.”

“And I sent her away until she was better, you can be sure. Didn’t I, Selia? Where has she gone? Has she gone for seeing why I have no breakfast yet? Aah! Must you poke me so, Chaven?”

“Just wishing to be certain that you are well, that the baby is well.” He let his hands move across the drum-taut arc of her stomach. The old midwife was still staring at him in a way that was a little less than friendly. “What do you think, Mistress Hisolda? The queen seems well enough to me, but you have more experience with such things.”

The old woman showed a crooked smile, perhaps recognizing his gambit. “She is stronger than she looks, though the baby is a big one.”

Anissa sat up. “That is just what I am feared of! He is big, I can tell-how he kicks! One of my sisters died birthing such a child—they saved the baby, but my sister died all… washed in blood!” She made a southern sign against evil happenstance. She was afraid, of course, Chaven could see that, but there was also a hint of falsity to her words, as though she played up her fear in hopes of sympathy. But why shouldn’t she? It was a frightening business, childbirth, especially the first time. Anissa was already well past twenty winters, he reminded himself, not yet in the time of danger for first mothers but certainly past her prime according to all the learned men who had written about it.

This was also the first time Chaven had heard her refer to the baby as “he.” The royal physician did not doubt that the midwife and her coven of helpers had been at work, perhaps dangling a pendulum over Anissa’s stomach or reading splatters of candle wax. “If I order you a medicinal draught, will you promise to drink it every night?” He turned to Hisolda. “You will have no trouble finding the constituents, I’m sure.”

The old woman raised her eyebrow. “If you say so, Doctor.”

“But what is it, Chaven? Is it another one of your binding potions that will turn my bowels to stone?”

“No, just something to help you sleep. The baby will be strong and hearty, I am sure, and so will you be if you do not sit up nights frightening yourself! He stepped over to the midwife and listed the ingredients and their proportions—mostly wild lettuce and chamomile, nothing too strong. “Every night at sundown,” he told the old woman. He was beginning to doubt that flattery worked on her, so he tried another tack, the truth. “I am a little frightened to see her so restless,” he whispered.

“What are you saying?” Anissa moved herself heavily toward the edge of the bed, disturbing the dogs and setting them growling. “Is something wrong with the child?”

“No, no.” He came back to her side, took her hand. “As I said, Highness, you are frightening yourself without need. You are well and the child is well. The plague seems to have passed us by, praise to Kupilas, Madi Surazem, and all the gods and goddesses who watch over us.”

She let go of his hand, touched her face. “I have not been out of this place so long—I must look a dreadful monster.” “You look nothing of the sort, Highness.”

“My husband’s children think I am. A monster.”

Chaven was surprised. “That is not true, my queen. Why would you say such a thing?”

“Because they do not come to see me. Days go by, weeks, and I do not see them. “ When she was excited her accent grew thicker. “I do not think they will love me like a mother, but they treat me like a serving maid.”

“I don’t believe Princess Briony and Prince Barrick feel that way at all, but they are much occupied,” he said gently. “They are regents now, and many things are happening.

“Like that handsome young Summerfield. I heard. Something bad has happened to him. Didn’t I say that, Hisolda? When I heard he left the castle, I said ‘Something is not right there,’ didn’t I?”

“Yes, Queen Anissa.”

Chaven patted her hand. “I know nothing for certain of Gailon Tolly except that there are many rumors. But rumors are not to be trusted, are they? Not in a household already so upset by death and your husband’s absence.” She grabbed his hand again. “Tell them,” she said. “Tell them to come to me.”

“You mean the prince and princess?"

She nodded. “Tell them that I cannot sleep because they shun me—that I do not know what I have done so they are angry with me?"

Chaven resolved to pass the message along in a slightly less heated form. It might be useful to convince the twins to come and visit their stepmother before the child arrived, for any number of reasons.

He removed his hand, disguising the escape as another kiss across her knuckles, then bowed and bade her farewell. He suddenly found that he wanted to be alone to think.

The little page had been roused from his pallet on the floor and sent to make his bed anew in the outer chamber. They were finally alone.

“What’s troubling you so?” Briony sat down on the edge of the bed. “Talk to me.”

Her brother pulled the fur lap robe up across his chest and huddled deeper into the blankets. It was not a warm night, not with true winter on the doorstep and Orphan’s Day less than a month away, but Briony did not find the room particularly cold. Is he still suffering with that fever? It had been at least a tennight but she knew some fevers did not loose their grip for a long time, or came back again and again.

“Why did you say that idiot poet could stay in the household?”

“He amused me.” Was she going to have to discuss it with everyone? “In truth, I thought he might amuse you, too. He tried to convince me he was writing an epic poem about me—a ‘pangegync,’ whatever that is. Comparing me to Zona hersele. The gods alone know what he’ll compare you to Perin, probably… no, Erivor in his seahorse chariot.” She tried to smile. “After all, Puzzle isn’t as diverting as he used to be—I think I’m beginning to feel too sorry for him I thought it would do the two of us good to have someone new to make fun of. Which reminds me, Puzzle came to me when I was leaving your room earlier today. Told me that on the night Kendrick was killed, he saw Gailon in the hallway.”

Barrick frowned. He seemed not just sleepy but a little dazed. “Kendrick saw Gailon… ?”

“No, Puzzle saw Gailon.” She quickly repeated what the old jester had told her.

“He has heard that Gailon has disappeared,” Barrick said dismissively. “That is all. He wishes to be remembered as denouncing him if it turns out that Gailon is a traitor.”

“I don’t know. Puzzle never bothered with politicking before.”

“Because Father was here to protect him.” Barrick’s expression suddenly changed into something vague, distant. “Do you like him?”

“Who?”

“The poet. He is handsome. He speaks well.”

“Handsome? I suppose, in a prettified sort of way. He has an absurd beard. But that is certainly not why I said he could…” She realized she had been led astray again. “Barrick, I don’t want to waste any more breath on that callow fool. If you dislike the poet so much, give him some money and send him away, I don’t care. I’m convinced he’s nothing to do with the greater matter. Which is what we’re going to talk about.”

“I don’t want to.” He spoke with all the dolefulness that he had made his art. Briony wondered if other siblings felt this way, sometimes loving and hating at the exact same moment. Or was it only twins, so close that it often seemed she had to wait for Barrick to breathe before she could get air into her own lungs?

“You will talk. You almost killed that potboy Why, Barrick?” When he didn’t reply, she leaned across the bed and clutched his arm. “Zoria preserve us, this is me! Me! Briony! Kendrick is dead, Father is gone—we only have each other.”

He looked at her from beneath his lashes like a frightened child. “You don’t really want to know. You just want me to behave well. You just hate it that I embarrassed you in front of Brone and… and that poet.”

She blew out breath in exasperation. “That’s not true. You are my brother. You’re . . you’re nearly the other half of me.” She found his eye and held it, but it was like trying to keep a skittish animal from bolting. “Look at me, Barrick. You know that’s not what happened. The potboy said something about… about dreams. About your dreams. Then you tried to throttle him.”

“He had no right to talk about me that way.” “ What way, Barrick?”

He pulled the blankets even tighter, still deciding. “You said you read the letter from Father again,” he said at last. “Did you notice anything interesting?”

“About the Autarch? I already told you…”

“No, not about the Autarch. Did you notice anything interesting in it about me?”

She stopped, confused. “Anything… no. No. He sent you his love. He said to tell you his health had been good.” He shook his head. His face was grim, as though he were stepping out onto some narrow prominence, trying not to look down at a great distance opening before him. “You don’t understand.”

“How can I? Talk to me! Tell me what has you so upset.You tried to kill an innocent man… !”

“Innocent? That potboy’s no man, he’s a demon. He saw into my dreams, Briony. He spoke about them in front of you and Brone and that mongrel quill-carver!” Despite the chill, Barrick had a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “He is probably talking about them still to anyone who’ll listen. He knows. He knows!” He turned and rammed his face against the cushion. His shoulders heaved.

“Knows what?” She grabbed at his arm with both hands and shook him. “Barrick, what have you done?” He turned, eyes damp, red-rimmed. “Done? Nothing. Not yet.”

“I can’t make any sense of this at all.” She combed a tangle of damp red hair back offhis brow with her fingers. “Just talk.Whatever is -wrong, you’re still my brother. I’ll still love you.”

He let out a snort of disbelief but the storm had passed. He let his head fall back on the cushion and stared up at the timbered ceiling. “I’ll tell you what Father’s letter said. ‘Tell Barrick that he should be glad for me. Although I am a captive, my health has actually been much better this last half year. I almost think it has done me good to get away from the damp northern airs.’ That’s what he wrote.”

Briony shook her head. “What, do you think he means that he is happier being away from us—from you? He is jesting, Barrick. Trying to make light of a terrible situation…”

“No. No, he’s not. Because you don’t know what he’s talking about and I do.” The fire in him had died down. He closed his eyes. “Do you remember the nights when Father couldn’t sleep? When he would go to the Tower of Summer and sit up all night with his books?” She nodded. The first few times Olin’s ability to slip away had been the cause of much alarm around the residence, until his family and the guards had learned to look for him in his library in the tower. The king had returned each time from these midnight excursions with an embarrassed air, as if he had been found in drunken sleep on the throne-room floor. Briony had always believed that it was thoughts of his dead wife that tormented him so badly on those nights that he could not sleep: he always spoke of their mother Meriel as though he had loved her very much, even though the marriage had originally been arranged by his father, King Ustin, when Olin and Meriel, the daughter of a powerful Brennish duke, were both very young. Everyone in the household knew that her death had been a hard, hard blow for him.

“And you remember that he would always bar the door?”

“Of course “ Locked out, the guards had only been able to rouse the king by banging on the door until he came to open it, blinking like an owl and wiping at sleepy eyes. “I… I think he cried. He didn’t want anyone to see him weeping. Over our mother.”

Barrick showed a strange, tight-lipped smile. “Weeping? Maybe. But not over our mother.” “What… what do you mean?”

He glanced up at the ceiling and took a few deep breaths, as though he were not merely standing on some high, lonely place but preparing to jump. “I… I went there one night. I had a nightmare. I think I must even have been walking in my sleep—it might have been the first time—because I woke up outside his chamber and I was very frightened and I wanted him to . to tell me things would be all right I went in and he wasn’t there, even though his servants were all there, sleeping I knew he must be in his library So I went out of the residence by that back chapel door so the guards wouldn’t stop me. It was near Midsummer, I think—I only remember it was warm and it felt so strange being out in the courtyard in my nightshirt and bare feet. I felt like I could go anywhere—-just walk where I wanted to, even walk to another country, as though the moon would stay up and bright as long as the journey would take, and that when I woke up there, I would be a different person.” He shook his head. “It was a full moon, very big I remember that, too.”

“How long ago was this?”

“The year that part of the roof fell off Wolfstooth. And the cook with the skinny arms died and we weren’t allowed to go in the kitchen all spring.”

“Ten years ago. You mean the year… the year you hurt your arm.”

He nodded slowly. She could sense that he was balancing something, trying to decide. She tried to sit quietly, but her heart was beating fast and she was unexpectedly frightened.

“The downstairs door was locked, but the key was still in the other side and he hadn’t turned the lock all the way. It popped open when I wiggled the latch, then I went up the steps all the way to the library. There were no guards at the tower, no one there at all. I didn’t think it was strange while it was happening—the whole night seemed like a dream, not just that—but I should have wondered why he’d sent them away, or slipped away from them, just to be by himself. But I wouldn’t have wondered long. When I reached the door, I could… hear him.”

“Was he crying?”

Barrick took a moment to answer. “Crying, yes. Making all kinds of noises, although I could barely hear them through the door. Laughing, it almost sounded like. Talking. At first I thought he was having an argument with someone, then I thought perhaps he was asleep and having a nightmare, just like the one that had woken me up. So I knocked on the door. Quietly at first, but the noises on the other side just went on. So I banged on it with my fists and shouted, ‘Father, wake up!’Then he opened the door.” For a moment it seemed Barrick would continue, but instead his shoulders heaved and he took in a ragged gasp of air. He was sobbing.

“Barrick, what is it? What happened?” She climbed up onto the bed and wrapped her arms around him. His muscles were as tight as the cording on a knife hilt and he trembled as though in the full grip of fever again. “Are you ill?”

“Don’t… ! Don’t talk. I want…” He sucked in another rough breath. “He opened the door. Father opened the door. He… he didn’t recognize me. I don’t think he did, anyway. His eyes… ! Briony, his eyes were wild, wild like an animal’s eyes! And his shirt was off and he had scratches on his belly—bleeding. He was bleeding. He took one look at me and then grabbed me, pulled me into the library. He was talking nonsense—I couldn’t understand a word—and he was pulling at me, growling at me. Like an animal! I thought he was going to kill me. I still think it.”

“Merciful Zoria!” She didn’t know what to believe. The world was upside down. She felt like she had been thrown from Snow’s saddle and all the air had been knocked out of her chest. “Are you… could you have dreamed it… ?”

His face was twisted with pain and rage. “Dreamed it? That was the night my arm was crippled. Do you think I dreamed that?”

“What do you mean? Oh, by all the gods, that was when it happened?”

“I broke away from him. He chased me. I was trying to get to the door but I kept tripping over books, knocking over piles of them. He had every book in the library on the floor, stacked up like towers, with candlesticks on top of each one. I must have knocked over half a dozen trying to get away—I still don’t know why that wretched tower didn’t burn down that night. I wish it had. I wish it had!” He was breathing hard now, like someone near the end of a race. “I got to the door at last. He kept chasing me, growling and cursing and talking nonsense. He grabbed me at the top of the stairs and tried to pull me back to the library again. I… I bit him on the hand and he let go. I fell down the stairs.

“When I woke up, it was the next day and Chaven was setting the bones of my arm—or trying to. I could barely think from the pain, and from the way my skull had been rattled when I fell. Chaven said that Father had found me at the foot of the steps in the Tower of Summer, which was probably true, that he had carried me to Chaven himself, crying over my injuries, begging him to heal me. That was probably true, too. But Chaven says that Father brought me to him at dawn, which means that I had been left lying there the rest of the night. The story told was that I had come looking for him and had fallen down the stairs in the dark.”

Briony could barely think. Like Barrick on that night, she was in a waking nightmare. “But… Father? Why would he do such a thing to you? Had he… was he drunk?” It was hard to imagine her abstemious father drinking himself into that kind of roaring, black mood, but nothing else made sense.

Barrick was still shaking, but only a little now. He tried to slide out of her arms, but she held on. “No, Briony. He was not drunk. You haven’t heard the rest, although I’m sure you won’t want to believe me.”

She didn’t want to hear any more, but she was afraid to let Barrick go, afraid that if she did he would somehow fly away like that half-tamed pigeonhawk she had lost when its creance snapped and it had gone spiral-mg out from her, never to return. She tightened her grip so that for a moment they were almost wrestling, rucking the covers around Barrick’s legs until he gave up trying to escape her. “I have always had nightmares,” he said at last, quietly. “Dreamed that there were men watching me, men made of smoke and blood, following me all through the castle, waiting to catch me alone so they could steal me away, or somehow make me one of them. At least, I always believed they were dreams. Now, I’m not so certain. But after that night, I began to have one that’s worse than the others. Always him—his face, but it isn’t his face. It’s a stranger’s face. When he came after me, he looked… like a beast.”

“Oh, my poor Barrick…”

“You may want to be more careful with your sympathies.” His voice was partially muffled by the cushion. He seemed to have grown smaller in her arms, curled into himself. “You remember I was in bed for weeks. Kendrick came to bring me things, you came and played with me every day, or tried to…”

“You were so quiet and pale. It frightened me.”

“It frightened me, too. And Father came, but he never stayed more than a few moments. Do you know, I might even have believed it had all been a nightmare—that I really had just been sleepwalking and then fell down the steps—except for the way he could not be around me without fidgeting and avoiding my eyes. Then, one day, when I was finally up and limping around the household instead of confined to that cursed bed, he called me into his chambers. ‘You remember, don’t you?’ was the first thing he said. I nodded. I was almost as frightened then as the night it happened. I thought I was the one who had done something terribly wrong, although I wasn’t sure what it was. I half thought he might try to murder me again or have me thrown in the stronghold to rot in a cell. Instead he burst into tears—I swear it’s true. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him and kissed my head, all the time crying so hard that he got my hair wet. He was hurting my arm badly, which was tied up in a sling. Once I stopped being frightened, I hated him. If I could have killed him at that moment, I would have.”

“Barrick!”

“You wanted the truth, Briony. This is what it looks like.” He finally wriggled himself free of her. “He told me that he had done a terrible thing and begged my forgiveness. I took him to mean that chasing me so that I fell down the stairs and shattered my arm, crippling myself so that I could never play or ride or draw a bow like the other boys was the terrible thing, but as he clutched me and talked I began to understand that the terrible thing he had done was to sire me in the first place.”

“What?”

“Be quiet and listen!” he said fiercely. “It is a madness that Father has. It came on him when he was a young man—first as terrible dreams, later as a restless, monstrously angry spirit that, on the nights when it takes him, grows so strong it cannot be resisted. He has it and one of his uncles had it. It is a family curse. He told me that it had grown so strong in him that although months might go by and it remained absent, on the nights he felt it coming back he could only lock himself away to rage by himself. That was how I had found him.”

“A family curse… ?”

He showed her a bitter smile. “Fear not. You don’t have it and neither did Kendrick.You are the lucky ones—the yellow-haired ones. Father told me that he had studied the Eddon family histories, and that he had never found any trace of the curse in any of the fair-haired children. Only the gods know why. You are the golden ones, in more ways than one.”

“But you have…” She suddenly understood. Again, it was like being struck a hard blow. “Oh, Barrick, you are afraid you might have this, too?”

“Might have it? No, Sister, I already do. The dreams started even earlier for me than they did for Father.” “You had a fever… !”

“Long before the fever.” He let out a shaky breath. “Although, since then, they have been worse. I wake up in the night cold with sweat, thinking only of killing, of blood. And since the fevers, I… I see things, too. Waking, sleeping, it almost makes no difference. I am watched. The house is full of shadows.”

She was stunned, helpless. She had never felt so distant from him, and for Briony that was a shocking, raw feeling, as though a part of her own body had been torn away. “I hardly know what to say—this is all so strange! But… but even if Father has some… madness, he still has managed to be a good man, a loving father. Perhaps you are worrying too…”

Again he interrupted her. “A loving father who threw me down the stairs. A loving father who told me he should never have sired me.” His face was stony. “You have not been listening very carefully. It started early in me. My madness won’t be mild, like Father’s—a few days a year when he must shut himself away from the rest of mankind. That is what he meant in the letter, do you see now? That he has not suffered badly from the madness since he has been captive. It is nothing to do with making jokes, he was talking to me about something ugly we both share—our tainted blood. But his will seem mild next to mine. Mine will grow and grow until you have no choice but to lock me away in a cage like a beast—or to kill me.”

“Barrick!”

“Go away, Briony.” He was weeping again, but without much movement this time and with his eyes half shut: the tears came out of some deep, hard place, like water through a cracked stone. “You know what you came to learn. I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“But I… I want to help you.” “Then leave me alone.”

The mists had grown so thick that they all had to travel like blind pilgrims, each one clinging to the one before him and being clung to in turn. Only the girl Willow who led them was not hung between two fellows front and back. She walked more slowly now in the smothering whiteness, but still with purpose, always forward.

Dab Dawley had hold of Vansen’s cloak. Sound was confused in the mist and it was sometimes hard to hear even words spoken in a loud voice by a man a few yards away, butVansen thought the young guardsman might be whimpering.

They had slept two times and walked for most of the waking hours between those sleeps, yet still had found no end to the terrible forest. Ferras Vansen did not have the sense they were walking in circles in the aimless way he and Collum Dyer did before, but he was still disheartened that two days’ march had not taken them back to the fields of men.

I could be that even if we’re not going in circles, we’ve turned the wrong direction. Perhaps I’ve trusted in the girl too much. The moon, after an initial appearance when they were setting out, had been as scarce as the sun. But perhaps we are going in the right direction, only the Shadowline has continued to spread. It was a hard, chill thought. Perhaps all the lands everywhere are now truly under shadow.

“Are you sure you know where home is?” he whispered to the girl when they were all standing together on a shelf of rock above what sounded like either a quiet stream just beneath them or a very noisy one far below. Whatever the distance stretching beneath them, they were taking no chances; they leaned back against the cliff face side by side as they rested.

She smiled at him. Her thin, dirty face was weary, but some of the early expression of almost religious ecstasy had worn away, along with some of the fear and confusion.”! will find it. They have just dragged it far away.”

“Dragged what?”

Willow shook her head. “Trust in the gods. They see through all the darkness.They see your good works.”

And my bad ones, Vansen couldn’t help thinking. The two days or however long it had been, struggling step by slow step through the murk, had left him much time to brood on his failures of command. Now that the worst shock of losing most of his company had worn down to a persistent, painful ache, he felt almost as wretched about losing the merchant’s nephew, Raemon Beck. He couldn’t help seeing Beck’s miserable face in his mind’s eye Hie poor fellow was certain something like this would happen — that we would drag him back into shadow, that he would meet his doom here. And it seems he was right. But perhaps Raemon Beck and the other guardsmen were alive, merely lost as he and Dyer had been lost. Perhaps he might even discover them before leaving the shadowlands. It was something to cling to, a hope to make the bleak hours a little less haunting.

“What’s that?” Dawley said in a sharp whisper, yanking Vansen’s thoughts back to the damp, mist-shrouded hillside where the company was resting.

“I heard nothing. What was it?”

“A tapping sound—there it is again! It sounds like… like claws clicking on stone.”

A thought that would make no one any happier, Vansen knew. He himself could not hear it, but Dawley had by far the sharpest ears of any of them. “Let’s move on, then,” Vansen said, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “Willow? We need you to lead us again, girl.”

“Lead us where, I’m asking?” said Southstead. “Right into the nest of some great cave bear or something like.” “None of that,” Dyer told him sharply. They had found something a little like military discipline again, but it was fragile.

They moved carefully along the narrow trail. Vansen held onto the girl’s tattered shift only lightly, wanting to be able to move his arms quickly if he stumbled and lost his balance. The unknown distance to the side of them began to feel even more frightening as they hurried along. In his imagination, Vansen could almost feel the invisible bottom of the ravine grow deeper, dropping away from them like water running out of a leaky bucket.

“There’s something there!” shouted Balk, the last in line; his voice seemed to come to them down a long tunnel. “Up there! Behind us!”

Vansen tightened his grip on the girl’s smock and turned to look back. For a moment he could see it coming along the top of the cliff face behind them, a grotesque, drawn-out shape like a scarecrow going on four legs, but more tattered and less comprehensible, then it reared up to an unbelievable height, stiltlike legs pawing, before the mist folded around it again.

Terror set his heart rattling in his chest. “Perin save us! Faster, girl!”

She did her best, but the trail was narrow and untrustworthy. The men behind him were cursing and even sobbing. Gravel slid from beneath Vansen’s feet.

Now he could hear the thing just above them, clicking and scratching like the armored claws of a crab dragging across the wet rock between tide-pools. The mists had grown thicker. He could barely see the girl moving before him as she climbed a short rise, even though he was still clinging to her hem. A shower of stones fell between them and he looked up to see a dark and indistinct shape loom out of the curtaining fogs only half a dozen yards above. If that was the thing’s head, it was misshapen as the stump of a twisted tree. For a moment he could hear it breathe, a deep, scratchy wheeze, as a scrabbling leg probed down the rock face. Vansen let go of Willow’s garment so he could draw his sword, but the ragged limb stopped short. The thing was still too far above them. It drew back into the mists.

“Go—quick as you can to open ground!” he told the girl, then turned to shout back to the others. “Let go and draw your swords, but don’t get separated! Dawley, do you have arrows still?” He heard the young guardsman grunt something he could not quite make out. “Try to get a shot if you can see it well enough.”

Vansen scrambled up the path behind the girl, doing his best to lean in toward the hillface despite every screaming sense telling him to lean back, away from the reaching arms of the thing that stalked just up the slope. Behind him the men had become a disorganized rout, but he did not know what else to do; to make them try to continue walking while holding onto each other and their weapons would be to invite disaster. They needed to find their way to some open space where Dawley’s bow and their swords might save them.

He staggered and put his foot down on loose soil, then windmilled his arms to keep from tipping out into the misty invisibility behind him. As he regained his footing, another scrabbling noise came from behind him, then a strange wooden creaking and a sudden screech from one of the men—a sound of such naked animal terror that he could not even tell who was making it. He turned, blade held high, to see the huge thing had lunged downward out of the fogs like a spider gliding down a web.The men around it were screaming and hacking away. In the instant it was among them, it still had no semblance or shape of anything he could understand—spindly arms long as tree branches, hanging rags of skin or fur almost like singed parchment. It was a madness, an obscenity. For an instant only he saw in the chaos what seemed to be a sagging hole of a mouth and a single empty black eye, then the huge thing went scuttling backward up the cliff face with a kicking, shrieking bundle clutched in its folding limbs. Beside him, Dawley cursed and wept as he loosed a single arrow at the shape, then it disappeared into the mists again. It had taken Collum Dyer.

They staggered now in silence, Vansen choked with despair. The thing had caught what it wanted and they did not see it again, but it was as though it had reached down and plucked their hearts away with their comrade. Vansen had known Collum Dyer since he first came to Southmarch. He found his thoughts turning helplessly again and again to that moment, to Dyer’s screams. Once he had to stop and be sick, but there was little in his stomach to vomit out.

When they finally reached the edge of the cliff path they stopped, gasping for breath as though they had been running at uttermost speed, although they had spent most of the hour since the attack barely at walking pace. Mickael Southstead and Balk were gray with fear; they knelt on the ground, praying, although to what gods Vansen couldn’t guess. The girl Willow was clearly frightened, too, but sat on a stone as patiently as a child being punished.

Young Dawley stood with his bow still in his hand and his last arrow on the string, tears in his eyes. “What was it?” he asked his captain at last.

Ferras Vansen could only shake his head. “Did you hit it?"

It took Dawley a moment to reply, as though he had to wait for Vansen’s voice to blow down a long canyon. “Hit it?” “You shot at it. I want to know what happened, in case it comes back. Did you hit it?”

“I wasn’t trying to hit it, Captain.” Dawley wiped at his face with the back of his hand. “I was… was trying to kill Collum . before it took him away. But I couldn’t see if… if I…”

Vansen closed his eyes for a moment, fighting back tears of his own. He put his hand on the young guardsman’s quivering shoulder. “The gods grant you made a good shot, Dab.”

So bleak and quiet was the company, so defeated, that when Vansen saw the moon again he didn’t speak of it, not wanting to raise hopes that had been so often dashed. But after an hour more trudging silently behind the girl he could not ignore the fact that the mists were clearing. The moon was not alone—there were stars, too, speckled across the sky as cold and bright as ice crystals.

They walked on through the high grass of wet hillside meadows and through thinning stands of trees, still alert to any sound, but after a while Vansen was certain that something truly had changed. The moon was far down in the sky now, a sky that had always before been blurry with fog and cloud.

They were all staggeringly tired, and for a few moments he considered stopping to build a fire so they could dry out wet clothes and snatch a little sleep, but he was afraid that if he closed his eyes he would open them again to find everything submerged in silvery nothingness again. Also, the girl was striding determinedly forward despite her weariness, like a horse on the path back to the barn at the end of a long day, and he didn’t want to disturb her. Now that the mists had thinned, he let go of her ragged smock and dropped back to walk for a little while with each of the men in turn, Southstead, Dawley, Balk, saying nothing unless they spoke to him, trying to turn his savaged company back into something whole again, or at least into something human. He couldn’t pretend that he was not overseeing a disaster, but he could make the best out of what he had.

They trooped on through shadowy glens and over moonlit hills.The sky began to change color, warming from black to a purple-tinted gray, and for the first time in days Vansen began to believe they might actually find their way out again.

But where? Into the middle of that fairy army? Or will we find that we have been wandering for a hundred years, like one of the old tales, and that all the world and the folk we knew are gone?

Still, even with these heavy thoughts in his head, he couldn’t help smiling when he saw the first gleam of sunrise on the horizon. His eyes welled up, so that for a moment the patch of bright sky smeared. There would be some kind of day after all. There would be east and west and north and south again.

The sun didn’t burn through the mist until it was high into the sky, but it was the real sun and the real sky, beyond doubt. No one wanted to stop now.

Most astonishingly of all, before the sun was halfway up the morning sky, they struck the Settland Road. “Praise all the gods!” shouted Balk. He ran forward, did a clumsy dance on the rutted dirt that covered the ancient stones and timbers. “Praise them each and every one!”

As the other men tumbled down into the grass by the roadside, laughing and clapping each other on the back in joy,Vansen looked up and down the road, not completely ready to trust. It was the same road, but what arrested him was what part of the road it was.

“Perin Cloudwalker!” he murmured, half to himself. “She’s brought us back to the place where we met her. That’s miles from where we crossed over. And miles closer to Southmarch, thank the gods!” He staggered on aching legs to where the girl stood, smiling a little, staring around her in calm confusion. He grabbed her and kissed her cheek, lifted her up and put her down again. He had a sudden thought then and hurried eastward down the road with the men shouting questions after him. Sure enough, at the next long straight stretch he found a height where he could climb up and see that mists had enveloped the road not a mile away to the east. She’s brought us back to our side of the Shadowline, but also we’re now between the shadow-army and the city, bless her! But how could that be? He tried to understand what had happened but could only guess that the substance of the lands behind the Shadowline was different than that of other lands, and not just because of mists and monsters. Somehow the girl had managed to find her way across a fold of shadow and bring them back to the place where she herself first crossed over, long before they even found her.

He hurried back to the others. “We will rest for a short while,” he said, “but then we have to find horses and ride as fast as we can. Southmarch is ahead of us and the enemy is behind us, but who knows how long until they catch up? The girl has given us a precious gift—we must not waste it, or waste the lives of our comrades either.” He turned to Willow. “I may wind up in chains for my part in all this, but if Southmarch survives, I’ll see you dressed in silks and laden with gold first.You may have saved us all!”

24. Leopards and Gazelles

Qinnitan groaned. “Why do I feel so ill?”

“Get up, you!” Favored Luian slapped at one of her Tuam servants, who ducked with a practiced shrug so that the blow only grazed the girl’s black-haired head. “What are you doing, you lazy lizard?” Luian shrieked. “That cloth is dry as dust.” She reached out and gave the girl’s arm a cruel pinch. “Go and get Mistress Qinnitan some more water!”

The slave got up and refilled the bowl from the fountain splashing quietly in the corner of the room, then returned with it and resumed cooling Qinnitan’s forehead.

“I don’t know, my darling,” Luian said as if the outburst had not happened. “A touch of fever, perhaps. Nothing dreadful, I’m sure. You must say your prayers and drink dishflower tea.” She seemed distracted by something more than Qinnitan’s miseries, her eyes flicking from side to side as though she expected to be interrupted at any moment.

“It’s that potion they give me every day, I’m sure.” Qinnitan tried to sit straight, groaned, and gave up. It was not worth the expenditure of strength.

“Oh, Luian, I hate it. It makes me feel so wretched. Do you think they’re poisoning me?"

“Poisoning you?” For a moment Luian actually looked at her. Her laugh was harsh and a bit shrill. “My small sweet one, if the Golden One wished you dead, it would not be poison that killed you, it would be something much…” She paled a little, caught herself. “What a thing to say! As if our beloved autarch, praises to his name, would want you dead, in any case. You have done nothing to displease him. You have been a very good girl.”

Qinnitan sighed and tried to tell herself Luian must be right. It didn’t quite feel like being poisoned, anyway, or at least not how she imagined such a thing would feel. Nothing hurt, and she wasn’t exactly ill—in fact, generally her appetite was extremely good and she slept well, too, if a little too long and deeply sometimes—but something definitely felt strange. “You’re right, of course You’re always right, Luian.” She yawned. “In fact, I think I feel a little better now. I should go back to my room and have a nap instead of lolling around here and being in your way.”

“Oh, no, no!” Luian looked startled at the suggestion. “No, you… you should come for a walk with me Yes, let us take a walk in the Scented Garden. That would do you more good than anything. Just the thing to brush away those cobwebs.”

Qinnitan had been living in the Seclusion too long not to see that something was troubling Luian, and it was strange for her to suggest the Scented Garden, which was on the opposite side of the Seclusion, when it would have been much easier to stroll in the Garden of Queen Sodan. “I suppose I can bear a walk, yes. Are you certain? You must have things to do…”

“I can think of nothing more important than helping you feel better, my little dear one. Come.” The Scented Garden was warmer than the halls of the Seclusion, but the canopies atop its high walls kept it cool enough to be bearable and its airs were very sweet and pleasant, suffused with myrtle and forest roses and snakeleaf after a short while Qinnitan began to feel a little stronger. As they walked, Luian spouted a litany of petty complaints and irritations in a breathless voice that made her seem far younger than she was. She was more sharp-tongued with her servants than usual, too, so savage in her scolding of one of the Tuanis when the girl bumped her elbow that several other people in the garden, wives and servants, looked up, and the usually expressionless slave girl curled her lip above her teeth, as though she were about to snarl or even bite.

“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” Luian said suddenly. “I left my nicest shawl in that little retiring room here yesterday—there, in the corner.” She pointed to a shadowed doorway far back between two rows of boxwood hedges. “But I’m so hot, I think I’ll just sit down on this bench. Will you be a dear and get it for me, Qinnitan? It’s rose-colored.You can’t miss it.”

Qinnitan hesitated. There was something strange about Luian’s face. She suddenly felt frightened. “Your shawl… ?” “Yes. Go get it, please. In there.” She pointed again.

“You left it… ?” Luian almost never came to this garden, and it was famously warm. Why bring a shawl here? Luian leaned close and said, in a strangled whisper, “Just go and get it, you silly little bitch!” Qinnitan jumped up, startled and more fearful than ever. “Of course.”

As she approached the dark doorway, she could not help slowing her footsteps, listening for the breath of a hidden assassin behind the hedges. But why would Luian resort to something so crude? Unless it was the autarch himself who had decided it had all been a mistake, that Qinnitan was not the one he wanted. Perhaps the mute giant Mokor, his infamous chief strangler, was waiting for her inside the doorway. Or perhaps she wasn’t important enough and her death would be effected instead by someone like the so-called gardener, Tanyssa. Qinnitan looked back, but Luian was looking in another direction entirely, talking rapidly and a little too loudly with her slaves.

Her nerves now stretched tight as lute strings, Qinnitan let out a muffled shriek when the man stepped from the shadows.

“Quiet! I believe you are looking for this,” he said, holding out a shawl woven of fine silk. “Do not forget it when you go out again.”

“Jeddin!” She threw her hand over her mouth. “What are you doing here?” A whole man in the Seclusion—what would happen to him if they were caught? What would happen to her?

The Leopard captain quickly and easily moved between her and the door, cutting off her escape. She looked frantically around the small, dark room. There was nothing much in it but a low table and some cushions, and no other way out.

“I wished to see you. I wished to… speak with you.” Jeddin stepped up and caught her hand in his wide fingers, pulled her deeper into the room. Her heart was beating so quickly she could scarcely take a breath, but she could not entirely ignore the strength of his grip or the way it made her feel. If he wished, he could throw her over one of his broad shoulders and carry her away and there would be nothing she could do.

Except scream, of course, but who could guess what she would earn for herself if she did? “Come, I will not keep you long,” he said. “I have put my life in your hands by coming here, Mistress. Surely you will not begrudge me a few moments.”

He was looking at her so searchingly, so intently, that she found she could not meet his eye. She felt hot and feverish again. Could this all be some mad dream? Could the priest’s elixir have driven her mad? Still, Jed-din looked disturbingly solid, huge and handsome as a temple carving. “What do you want with me?”

“What I cannot have, I know.” He let go of her hand, made his own into a fist. “I . . I cannot stop thinking of you, Qinnitan. My heart will not rest. You haunt my dreams, even. I drop things, I forget things…”

She shook her head, really frightened now. “No. No, that is…” She took a step toward him and then thought better of it—his arms had risen as if to pull her toward him, and she knew that more than his strength would make it hard to break away again. “This is all madness, Jeddin . . Captain. Even if… if we forget why I am here in the Seclusion, who has brought me here…” She froze at a noise from outside, but it was just two of the younger wives shrieking with laughter as they played some game. “Even if we forget that, you scarcely know me. You have seen me twice . !”

“No, Mistress, no I saw you every day that I was a child and you were a child. When we were children together. You were the only one who was kind to me.” The look on his face was so serious that it would have been comical if she had not been in terror for her life. “I know it is wrong, but I cannot bear to think that you will… that you are for… for him.”

She shook her head at this blasphemy, wanting only to be far away. There was something about the young Leopard chieftain that made her heart ache, made her want to comfort him, and there was no question she felt something for him that went beyond that, but she could not push away her growing fright. Each moment that passed she felt more like the quarry of some ruthless hunting pack. “All that will happen is that we will both be killed. Whatever you think, Jeddin, you scarcely know me.”

“Call me Jin, as you once did.”

“No! We were just children.You followed my brothers. They were cruel to you, perhaps, but I was no better. I was a girl, a shy girl. I said nothing to any of my brother’s friends to stop them.”

“You were kind. You liked me.”

She let out a murmured groan of frustration and anguish. “Jeddin! You must go away and never do this again!” “Do you love him?”

“Who? You mean the… ?” She moved closer, so close she could feel his breath on her face. She put a hand on his broad chest to keep him from trying to embrace her. “Of course I don’t,” she said quietly. “I am nothing to our master, less than nothing—a chair, a rug, a bowl in which to clean his hands. But I would not steal a washing bowl from him, and neither would you. If you try to steal me, we’ll both be killed.” She took a breath. “I do care for you, Jeddin, at least a little.”

The anxious lines on his forehead disappeared. “Then there is hope. There is reason to live.”

“Quiet! You did not hear me out. I care for you, and in another life perhaps it could be more, but I don’t wish to die for any man. Do you understand? Go away. Never even think of me again.” She tried to pull away, but he caught her now in a grip she could not have broken in a thousand years. “Let go!” she whispered, looking in panic toward the doorway. “They will be wondering where I’ve gone.”

“Luian will distract them a while longer.” He leaned forward until she almost whimpered from the size and closeness of him. “You do not love him.”

“Let me go!”

“Ssshh. I am not long for this place. My enemies want to throw me down.” “Enemies?”

“I am a peasant who became chieftain of the autarch’s own guards. The paramount minister Vash hates me. I amuse the Golden One—he calls me his rough watchdog and laughs when I use the wrong words—but Pinim-mon Vash and the others wish to see my head on a spike. I could kill any one of them with my bare hands, but in this palace it is the gazelles that rule, not the leopards.”

“Then why are you giving them this chance to destroy you? This is beyond foolishness—you’ll murder us both.”

“No. I will think of something. We will be together.” His eyes went distant and Qinnitan’s speeding heart bumped and seemed to miss a beat. In that moment he looked nearly as mad as the autarc.h.”We will be together,” he said again.

She took advantage of his distraction and yanked her wrist out of his grasp, then backed hurriedly toward the doorway. “Go away,Jeddin! Don’t be a fool!”

His eyes were suddenly shiny with tears. “Stop,” he said. “Don’t forget.” He threw her the rose-colored shawl. “I will come to you one night.”

Qinnitan almost choked. “You will do no such thing!” She turned and hurried out the door, back into the heavy air of the Scented Garden.

“Are you mad, too?” she whispered to Luian as she handed her the shawl. A few of the other wives were watching her, but with what she prayed was no more than a bored interest in the comings and goings of a fellow prisoner. “We will all be executed! Tortured!”

Luian did not look at her, but her face was mottled with red underneath the heavy face paint.”You do not understand.” “Understand? What is there to understand? You are…”

“I am only one of the Favored. He is the chief of the autarch’s Leopards. He could have me arrested and killed on almost any pretext he chose— who would believe the word of a fat castrate in women’s clothes over the master of the Golden One’s muskets?”

“Jeddin wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“He would indeed—he said so. He told me he would.”

Qinnitan was shocked. “He thinks he is in love,” she said at last. “People do mad things when they feel that way.”

“Yes.” Luian faced her now, and there were tears in the Favored’s long-lashed eyes. One had made a track down the powder of her cheek. “Yes, you silly little girl, they do.”

25. Mirrors, Missing and Found

Chert had already sat down on the bench to rest his tired legs when he realized Opal had not followed him in, but was still standing in the doorway, peering out into Wedge Road. “What is it, my dear?”

“Flint. He’s not with you?”

He frowned. “Why -would he be with me? I left him home with you because he’s such a distraction where we’re working right now—won’t stay with me because he doesn’t like it there, but won’t stay where I tell him aboveground either…” He felt a clutch in his chest. “You mean he’s gone?”

“I don’t know! Yes! He went with me to Lower Ore Street.Then, when I came back, he was playing beside the road, piling up stones and making those walls and tunnels and whatnot he likes so much—the dust that comes in on that boy!” Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, and I don’t know—I went out to call him in to eat, hours ago, and he was gone. I’ve been up and down the roads, down to the guildhall—I even went to the Salt Pool and asked little Boulder if he’d been there. Nobody’s seen him at all!”

He got himself up despite his aching legs and hurried to put his arms around her. “There, my old darling, there. I’m sure he’s just up to some pranks—he is a boy, after all, and a very independent lad at that, the Earth Elders know. He’ll be back before our evening meal is over, you’ll see.”

“Evening meal!” she almost shrieked. “You old fool, do you think I’ve had time to prepare an evening meal? I’ve been hurrying all around town the length of the afternoon with my heart aching, trying to find that boy. There is no evening meal!” Sobbing out loud now, she turned and stumbled back toward their bed and wrapped herself in a blanket so all that could be seen was a shuddering lump.

Chert was troubled, too, but he couldn’t help feeling that Opal was getting a bit ahead of things. Flint would not be the first boy in Funderling Town—or the last—to wander off on some childish quest and lose track of time. It had only been a short while ago he had disappeared during the prince regent’s funeral. If he wasn’t back by bedtime, they could start fretting in earnest. In the meantime, though, Chert had put in a long day and his stomach felt shrunken and empty as a dried leather sack.

He halfheartedly examined the larder. “Ah, look, we have greatroots in!” he said loud enough for Opal to hear. “A bit of cooking and those would go down a treat.” She didn’t answer. He picked through the other roots and various tubers. Some were looking a bit whiskery. “Perhaps I’ll just have a bit of bread and some cheese.”

“There isn’t any bread.” The lump under the blanket shifted. It did not sound like a happy lump. “I was going to go back out and get the afternoon’s baking, but… but…”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Chert said hurriedly. “Never fear. Still, it’s a shame about the greatroots. A bit of cooking…” “If you want them cooked, cook them yourself If you know how.”

Chert was sadly chewing a piece of raw greatroot—he had not realized how much more bitter they tasted if they had not been boiled in beet sugar—and beginning to admit to himself that the boy was not coming back for his evening meal. Not that a raw root and a piece of hard cheese was particularly worth coming back for, but Chert couldn’t deny that the pang of disquiet was growing inside him; although his mug of ale had helped to wash down the fibrous root and remove a little of the worst of the throbbing of his legs and back, it had not gone very far toward soothing his mind. He had been out into Wedge Road several times. The dimmer stonehghts were lit for evening and the streets were nearly empty as families finished their suppers and prepared for the night. The children must all be in bed now. The other children.

He decided to take a lamp and go out looking.

Could the boy have gone into one of the unfinished tunnels, he wondered, been caught by a slide in one of the side corridors where the bracing was less than adequate? But what would he be doing in such a place? Chert let his mind run across other possibilities, some happier and others much more frightening. Could he have gone home with another child? Flint was so unworldly in some ways that Chert could easily imagine he would forget to send word of where he was, let alone ask permission, but he had never really made friends with any of the Funderling children, even those in nearby houses who were of his own age. Where else? Down in the excavations where Chert had been working, near the Eddon family tomb? Certainly there were treacherous spots there, but Flint had made it clear he hated the place, and in any case how could Chert have missed him?

The Rooftoppers—the little people. Perhaps the boy had gone to see them and either stayed or not been able to get back before dark. Unbidden, a horrid vision came to him, of the boy fallen from a roof and lying helpless in some shadowy, unvisited courtyard. He put the greatroot down, sickened.

But where else could he be?

“Chert!” Opal shouted from the bedchamber. “Chert, come here!”

He wished she did not sound frightened. Suddenly, he didn’t want to walk through the door and see what she had found. But he did.

Opal had not found anything—in fact, rather the reverse. “It’s gone!” she said, pointing at the boy’s pallet, at the blanket and shirt lying across it in twisted coils like weary ghosts. “His bag. With that… that little mirror in it. It’s gone.” Opal turned to him, eyes big with fear. “He never puts it on anymore, never wears it—it’s always here! Why isn’t it here now?” Her face suddenly grew slack, as though she had aged five years in a matter of moments. “He’s gone away, hasn’t he? He’s gone away for good and so he took it with him.”

Chert could think of nothing to say—or, in any case, nothing that would make either of them feel better.

“By the gods, Toby, are you falling asleep again? You’ve jogged the glass!” The young man stood up quickly, raising his hands in the air to show that he couldn’t possibly have done such a thing, his look ot wounded honor suggested that he was always awake and at his best in the midnight hours and that Chaven was being needlessly cruel to suggest otherwise. “But, Master Chaven.

“Never mind I expect you to be a man of science and I suppose that is asking too much.” “But I want to be! I listen! I do everything you say?"

The physician sighed. It was not really the lad’s fault. Chaven had put too much stock in the recommendation of his friend, Euan Dogsend, who was the most learned man in Blueshore but perhaps not its best judge of character. The young man worked hard for his age but he was distracted and touchy at the best of times, and worst of all, although he was by no means stupid, he seemed to have an unquestioning pattern of mind.

It is like trying to make my dear mistress Kloe pursue friendship with the mice and rats.

Still, the young man was standing right there with his face screwed up in a look of furious attention, so Chaven tried again. “See, the perspective glass must not move once we have found the spot we seek Leotrodos down in Perikal says that the new star is in Kossope Once we have set the eye of our glass on Kossope, we must tighten the housing so that it does not move—thus, we can make measurements, not just tonight, but other nights. And we most certainly must not lean on the perspective glass while we are making those measurements?"

“But the sky is full of stars,” said Toby “Why is it so important to measure this one?”

Chaven closed his eyes for a moment “Because Leotrodos says he has found a new star. A new star has not been seen in hundreds of years—perhaps even thousands, since the methods of the ancients are sometimes obscure and thus open to question More importantly, it raises many doubts about the shape of the heavens “ The boy’s puzzled look told him all he needed to know “Because if the heavens are fixed, as the astrologers of the Trigonate so loudly tell us, yet there is a new star in the sky, where did it come from ?"

“But, Master, that doesn’t make sense,” Toby said, yawning but a little more awake now. “If the gods made all the spheres, couldn’t the gods just make a new star?"

Chaven had to smile. “You are doing better. That is a proper question, but a more important question is, why haven’t they done it before now?”

For a moment, just a moment, he saw something ignite in the young man’s eyes. Then caution or weariness or simply the habit of a lifetime dulled the expression again. “It seems like a lot of thinking about a star.”

“Yes, it is. And one day that thinking may teach us exactly how the gods have made our world. And on that day, will we not be nearly gods ourselves?”

Toby made the pass-evil. “What a thing to say! Sometimes you frighten me, Master Chaven.”

He shook his head. “Just help me get the perspective glass fixed on Kos-sope again, then you can take yourself to bed.”

It was just as well he was now alone, Chaven thought as he wrote down the last of the notations. Even Toby might have noticed the way his hands had begun shaking as the hour he was waiting for came nearer. It was powerfully strange, this feeling. He had always coveted knowledge, but this was more like a hunger, and it did not seem to be a healthful one. Each time he used the Great Mirror, he felt more reluctant to cover it up again. Was it simply lust for the wisdom that he gained or some glamour of the spirit which gave that wisdom to him? Or was it something else entirely? Whatever might have caused the craving, he could barely force himself to take the time to drape his long box full of rare and costly lenses with its heavy covering, and only the sharp chill of the night air persuaded him to add even more delay so that he could crank shut the door in the observatory roof, shutting out those intrusive, maddening stars.

His need was especially sharp because it had been so long—days and days!—since the mirror had gifted him with anything but shadows and silence. How frustrating it had been all of tonight, trying to concentrate on Kossope when it was the three red stars called the Horns of Zmeos, also called the Old Serpent, that had his deepest attention: when they appeared behind the shoulder of Perin’s great planet, as they would do tonight, he could consult the mirror again.

When the observatory room and the perspective glass were both secured, he went in search of Kloe. Tonight, if the gods smiled, her work and his offering would not lie ignored again.

Chaven’s need had grown so strong that he didn’t notice how roughly he was handling Kloe until she gave him a swift but meaningful bite on the web of his thumb and forefinger as he put her out. He dropped her, cursing and sucking at the wound as she scampered away down the passage, but although his anger was swiftly replaced by shame for his carelessness toward his faithful mistress, even that shame was devoured by the need that was roaring up inside him.

He sat before the mirror in a dark room that already seemed to be growing darker still, and began to sing. It was an old song in a language so dead that no one living could be certain they were pronouncing it correctly, but Chaven sang the words as his onetime master, Kaspar Dyelos, had taught them to him. Dyelos, sometimes called the Warlock of Krace, had never owned a Great Mirror, although he had possessed broken shards of more than one and had been able to do wonderful things with those shards. But mirror-lore as a discipline was as much about remembering and passing that memory along for the generations to come as it was about the practical manipulation of the cosmos—Chaven often wondered how many wonderful, astounding things had been lost in the plague years—and so Dyelos had taught all that he had learned to his apprentice, Chaven. Thus, on that day when Chaven had found this particular mirror, this astounding artifact, he had already known how to use it, even if he had not precisely understood every single step of the process.

Now Chaven rubbed his head, troubled by an errant thought. His brow was starting to ache from staring into the mirror-shadows and wondering if something else was looking at the shadow-mouse that lay on the shadow-floor, and whether that something would finally come. Was he doomed to failure again tonight? He was distracted, that was the problem… but he could not help being puzzled by the fact that he suddenly couldn’t remember where he had acquired the mirror that was before him now, leaning against the wall of his secret storeroom. At least it seemed sudden, this emptiness in his memory. He could recall without trouble where and when he had obtained each of the other draped glasses on the shelves, and their particular provenances as well, but for some reason he could not just at this moment remember how he had obtained the jewel in his collection, this Great Mirror.

The incongruity was beginning to feel like an itch that would not be scratched and it was growing worse. Even the powerful hunger he felt began to weaken a little as the puzzle took hold of him. Where did it come from, this powerful thing? I have had it… how long?

Just then something flared in the center of the looking glass, a great out-wash of white light as though a hole had been torn through the night sky to release the radiance of the gods that lay behind everything. Chaven threw his hands up, dazzled; the light faded a little as the owl settled, folded its bright wings, and looked back at him with orange eyes, Kloe’s sacrificial mouse in its great talons.

All his other thoughts flew away, then, as though the wings had enfolded him as well, or perhaps as though he had become the tiny thing clutched in that snowy claw, in the grip of a power so much greater than his own that it could seem a kind of honor to give up his life to it.

He came up out of the long emptiness at last and into the greater light. Music beyond explaining—a kind of endless drone that was nevertheless full of complicated voices and melodies—still filled his ears but was beginning to grow less. His nostrils also seemed still to breathe that ineffable scent, as powerful and heady-sweet as attar of roses (although such roses never grew on bushes rooted in ordinary earth, in soil steeped in death and corruption), but it was no longer the only thing he could think about.

It might have only been with him a moment, that deepest bliss, or he might have been basking in those sensations for centuries, when the voice-that-was-no-voice spoke to him at last, a single thought that might have been “I am here,” or simply, “I am.” Male, female, it was neither, it was both—the distinction was of no importance. He expressed his gratefulness that his offering had been received again, at last. What came back to him was a kind of knowing, the powerful calm of something that expected nothing less than to be adored and feared.

But even in the midst of his joy at being allowed within the circle of this great light again, something tugged again at his thoughts, a small but troubling something, just as shadows in his room of mirrors sometimes seemed to take odd shapes at the corner of his eye but never at the center of his vision.

Questions, he remembered, and for an instant he was almost himself. I have questions to ask. The Rooftoppers, he announced, those small, old ones who live in hiding. They speak of someone they call the Lord of the Peaks who comes to them and gives them wisdom. Is that you?

What came back to him was something almost like amusement. There was also a sensation of dismissal, of negation. So they do not speak of you? he persisted. It is not you who visits them with dire warnings? The shining thing—it looked nothing like an owl now, and although at this moment its shape was perfectly plain to him, he knew he would not afterward be able to explain it in words, nor even quite remember it—took a long time to answer. He felt the absence in that silence almost as a death, so that when it did speak again, he was so grateful that he missed part of what it told him.

Things had been awakened that would otherwise be sleeping, was all the sense that he could make of its wordless, fragmented thought. The shining thing told him that its works were subtle, and not meant for him to understand.

He sensed he was being chided now, there was more than a hint of discord in the all-surrounding music. He was devastated and begged forgiveness, reminded the shining thing that he only wanted to serve it faithfully, but in the one piece of his secret self which remained to him, the small sour note had allowed him to think a little more clearly Was that truly his only wish—to serve this thing, this being, this force? When he had first touched it, or it had touched him, had they not almost seemed to have been equals, exchanging information?

But what did it want to learn from me? What could I possibly have given to this power? He couldn’t remember now, any more than he could remember how the mirror, the portal to this painful bliss, had first come into his hands.

The radiant presence made it clear that it would forgive him for his unseemly questioning, but in return he must perform a task. It was an important task, it seemed to say, perhaps even a sacred one.

For a moment, but only a moment, he hesitated. A little of himself still hung back, as though the mirror were a fine sieve and not all that had been Chaven could pass through it into this singing fire. That tiny remainder stood and watched, helpless as though in a nightmare, but it was not strong enough to change anything yet. What must I do? he asked.

It told him, or rather it put the knowledge into him, and just as it had chided, now it praised, that kindness was like honey and silvery music and the endless, awesome light of the heavens.

You are my good and faithful servant, it told him. And in the end, you will have your reward —the thing you truly seek.

The white light began to fade, retreating like a wave that had crested and now ran backward down the sand to rejoin the sea Within moments he was alone in a deep, secret room lit only by the guttering flame of a black candle.

Pounding on the kitchen door brought Mistress Jennikin out in her nightdress and nightcap. She held the candle before her as though it were a magic talisman. Her gray hair, unbound for the night and thinning with age, hung in an untidy fringe over her shoulders.

“It is only me. I am sorry to rouse you at such an hour, but my need is great.”

“Doctor… ? What is wrong? Is someone ill?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, Zoria watch over us, there hasn’t been another murder… !”

“No, no. Rest easy. I must go on a journey, that is all, and I must leave immediately—before dawn.” She held the candle a little closer to his face—scanning for signs of madness or fever, perhaps. “But Doctor, it’s…” “Yes, the middle of the night. To be more precise, it is two hours before dawn by my chain-clock. I know that as well as anyone and better than most. And I know at least as well as anyone else what I must do, don’t you think?” “Of course, sir! But what do you want… I mean…”

“Get me bread and a little meat so that I can eat without stopping. But before you do that, rouse Harry and tell him I need my horse readied for a journey. No one else, though. I do not want everyone in the household watching me leave.”

“But… but where are you going, sir?”

“That is nothing you need to know, my good woman. I am going now to pack up what I need. I will also write a letter for you to take to Lord Nynor, the castellan. I hope to be gone only a day or two, but it might be more. If any of the royal family needs the services of a physician, I will tell Nynor how to find Brother Okros at the Academy—you may send anyone else who comes in search of me and cannot wait to Okros as well.” He rubbed his head, thinking. “I will also need my heavy travel cloak—the weather will be wet and there may even be snow.”

“But… but, Doctor, what about the queen and her baby?”

“Curses, woman,” he shouted, “do you think I do not know my own calling?” She cowered back against the doorframe and Chaven was immediately sorry. “I apologize, good Mistress Jennikin, but I have given thought to all these things already and will put what is needed in the letter to Nynor. Do not worry for the queen. She is fit, and there is a midwife with her day and night.” He took a deep breath. “Oh, please, take that candle back a little—you look like you intend setting me on fire.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Now go and rouse Harry—he’s slow as treacle in winter and I must have that horse.” She clearly wanted to ask him something else but didn’t dare. Chaven sighed. “What is it?”

“Will you be back for Orphan’s Day? The butcher has promised me a fine pig.”

For a moment he almost shouted again, but this was the matter of her world, after all. This was what was important to her—and in ordinary times would have been to Chaven as well, who dearly loved roast pork. So what if these were not ordinary times? Perhaps there would be no more Orphan’s Day feasts after this one—a shame to ruin it. “I am as certain I will be back before Orphan’s Day—and in fact, before Wildsong Night—as anyone can be who knows the gods sometimes have ideas of their own. Do not fear for your pig, Mistress Jennikin. I am sure he will be splendid and I will enjoy him greatly.”

She looked a little less frightened as he turned—as though despite the hour, life no longer seemed quite so dangerously topsy-turvy. He was glad that was true for one of them, anyway.

The physician’s manservant did his best to turn Chert away. The old man seemed distracted, guilty, as though he had been called away from the commission of some small but important crime and was in a hurry to get back to it.

Taking a nap, Chert guessed, although it seemed early in the morning for such things. A late lie-in, then. He would not be chased off so easily. “I don’t care if he isn’t seeing anyone. I have important business with him. Will you tell him that Chert of Funderling Town is here.” If the physician was just busy and not at home to visitors, Chert thought, perhaps he could go around through the secret underground passage—surely Chaven would not dare to ignore a summons to that door—but it would take him a very long time to manage going and then making his way back, and he bitterly resented the idea of losing so much of the day. Each hour last night spent in fruitless search for the boy had been more galling than the last and was even more infuriating now, as though Flint were on some kind of wagon or ship that sped further away with each passing moment.

The manservant, despite Chert’s protests, was about to shut the door in his face when an old woman stuck her head under the tall old man’s arm and peered out at the Funderling. He had seen her before, just as he had seen the old man, although mostly from a distance as Chaven led him through the Observatory. He couldn’t remember either of their names.

“What do you want?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

“I want to see your master. I know it is inconvenient—he may even have given orders not to be disturbed. But he knows me, and I’m… I’m in great need.” She was still looking at him with distrust. Like the old man, she had faint blue shadows under her eyes and a fidgety, distracted air. No one has had much sleep in this house either, Chert thought. After his own night stumping up and down Funderling Town and even through Southmarch above-ground, he felt like an itching skin stretched over a stale emptiness. Only fear for the lost boy was keeping him upright.

“It can’t be done,” she said. “If you need physick, you must go to Brother Okros at the academy, or perhaps one of the barbers down in the town.”

“But…” He took a breath, pushed down the urge to shout at this obstinate pair. “My… my son is missing. Chaven knows him—gave me some advice about him. He is a… a special boy. I thought Chaven might have some idea…”

The woman’s face softened. “Oh, the poor wee thing! Missing, is he? And you, you poor man, you must be heartsick.”

“I am, Mistress.”

The manservant rolled his eyes and vanished back down the hallway. The woman stepped out into the courtyard, drying her hands on her apron, then looked around as though to make sure they were safe from prying eyes. “I shouldn’t tell you, but my master’s not here. He’s had to go on a sudden journey. He left this morning, before dawn.”

A sudden suspicion, fueled only by coincidence, made him ask, “Alone? Did he go alone?” She gave him a puzzled look, but it began to shade into resentment as she answered. “Yes, of course alone. We saw him off. You surely don’t think…”

“No, Mistress, or at least nothing ill. It’s just that the lad knows your master and likes him, I think. He might have tagged along with him, as boys sometimes do.”

She shook her head. “There was no one about. He left an hour before the sun was up, but I had a lamp and I would have seen. He was in a terrible hurry, too, the doctor, although I shouldn’t speak of his business to anyone. No offense to you.”

“None taken.” But his heart was even heavier now. He had hoped at the very least that Chaven’s keen wit might strike on some new idea. “I’m sure you have a great deal to do, Mistress. I’ll leave you. When he comes back, could you tell him that Chert of Funderling Town wanted urgently to speak with him?”

“I will.” Now she seemed to wish there was more she could do. “The gods send you good luck—I hope you find your little lad. I’m sure you will.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.”

In his weariness he almost slipped twice going up the wall When he reached the top, he had to sit and gasp for some time until he had air enough to speak. “Halloo! It is Chert of Funderling Town!” He dared not shout too loud for fear of attracting attention below—it was the middle of the morning and even this less-traveled section of the castle near the graveyard was not entirely empty. “Her Majesty Queen Upsteeplebat very kindly came to meet me and my boy, Flint,” he called. “Do you remember me? Halloo!”

There was no reply, no stir of movement, although he called again and again. At last, so tired he was beginning to be concerned about the climb down, he rose to a crouch Out of his pocket he took the small bundle wrapped in moleskin. He opened it and lifted the crystal up until it caught a flick of morning light and sparkled like a tiny star. “This is a present for the queen. It is an Edri’s Egg—very fine, the best I have. I am looking for the boy Flint and I would like your help. If you can hear me and will meet with me, I’ll be back here tomorrow at the same time.” He tried to think of some suitable closing salutation but could summon nothing. He made a nest of the moleskin and set the crystal in it. What a beautiful, shining monster might hatch out of such a thing, he thought absently, but couldn’t take even the smallest pleasure in the fancy.

He picked his way with aching caution back down the wall, so heavy with despair that he was almost surprised that he did not sink deep into the ground when his feet finally touched it.

It was only a day like many others, but as she awakened in the early hours to hear the bell in the Erivor Chapel tolling as the mantis and his acolytes began the morning’s worship, Briony was almost as gloomy and disturbed as if it were the day of an execution.

Rose and Moina and her maids came into the room, exaggeratedly quiet as though the princess regent were a bear that they feared waking, but still managing to make as much noise as a pentecount of soldiers in Market Square. She groaned and sat up, then allowed them to surround her and pull off her nightclothes.

“Will you wear the blue dress today?” Moina asked with only the smallest hint of pleading in her voice. “The brown,” suggested Rose. “With the slashed sleeves. You look so splendid in that…” “What I wore yesterday,” she said. “But clean. A tunic—the one with the gold braid. A riding skirt. Tights.” The maids and the two ladies did their best not to look upset, but they were very poor mummers. Rose and Moina in particular seemed to feel that Briony’s boyish costumes were a personal affront, but on this morning the tender feelings of her ladies were of little interest to her. Briony was tired of dressing for other people, tired of the forced prettiness that she thought gave others the unspoken right to ignore what she said. Not that anyone dared completely ignore the princess regent, but she knew that when they were in private, the courtiers wished for Olin back, and not simply because he was the true king. She felt it in their glances: they did not trust her because she was a woman—worse, a mere girl. It made her almost mad with resentment.

Is there a one of them, male or female, who did not issue from a woman in the first place? The gods have given our sex charge of the greatest gift of all, the one most important to the survival of our kind, but because we cannot piddle high against a wall, we do not deserve any other responsibility?

“I don’t care if you’re angry with me,” she snapped at Rose, “but don’t pull my hair like that.” Rose dropped the brush and took a step backward, real upset on her face. “But, my lady, I didn’t mean…” “I know. Forgive me, Rosie. I’m in a foul mood this morning.”

While the women braided her hair, Briony took a little fruit and some sugared wine, which Chaven had told her was good for healthful digestion. When her ladies had succeeded in piling her tresses into a tight but intricate arrangement on top of her head, she let them pin the hat into place, although she was already anxious to be moving.

Underneath it all, threatening to pull her down like the sucking black undertow in Brenn’s Bay that sometimes formed beneath a deceptively placid surface, lay the horror of what Barrick had told her. She was frightened for her brother, of course, and she ached for him, too, he had taken to his rooms in the days since, making the excuse of a recurrence of his fever, but she felt certain that what was really going on was that he was ashamed to face her. As if she could love him any the less! Still, it was a shadow between them that made all their other differences seem small.

But even worse, in a way, was what he had told her about her father Briony had never been the kind of foolish girl who thought her father could do no wrong—she had felt Olin’s sharp tongue enough times not to feel overly coddled, and he had always been a man of dark moods—but Barrick’s story was astounding, devastating To think that all through her childhood her father had carried that burden, and had kept it secret. She didn’t know which was the stronger feeling, her pain at his suffering or her fury that he had hidden it from those who loved him best.

Whatever the case, it felt as though a hole had been torn through the walls of a familiar room to reveal not the equally familiar room presumed to be on the other side but a portal into some unimaginable place.

How could it be? How could all this be? Why did no one tell me? Why didn’t Father tell me? Is he like Barrick — does he think I’d hate him?

Briony had always been the practical child, at least compared to her twin—no brooding, no flickering changes of mood—but this went beyond anything she had experienced In some ways it was worse than Kendrick’s death, because it turned upside down all that she had thought she knew.

She was in mourning again, not for the death of a person this time, but for her peace of mind.

I’m tired I’m so tired. It was only ten of the morning. She couldn’t help being angry at Barrick. Whatever dreadful thing he was suffering, he was letting all of the duties of ruling Southmarch fall onto her.

The throne room was josthngly full of people with claims on her time, and some of those claims were inarguable. Just now the Lord Chancellor Gallibert Perkin and three gentlemen of his chambers were going into painful detail about the need either to find more money for the government of Southmarch or to use some of the ransom money collected for King Olin on expenses. The merchants were worried about the coming year, the bankers were being careful with their funds, and the crown had in any case already borrowed more than it should have, which made dipping into the ransom an attractive alternative. It was ultimately a problem without solution, although a solution would have to be found—to spend the ransom would be to betray not only her father but the people who had given, not always happily, to free him. But the household of Southmarch ate money like some gold-devouring ogre out of a folktale. Briony had never understood how much work there was in simply keeping an orderly house— especially when that house was the biggest in the north of Eion and the center of the lives of some fifty thousand souls—let alone an entire orderly country. The crown would have to come up with some other way of making money. As always, Lord Chancellor Perkin recommended levying more taxes on the people who had already given hugely toward ransoming her father.

The parade continued. Two Trigonate mantises spoke on behalf of Hierarch Sisel’s ecclesiastical court, which believed it had jurisdiction over the town court in a particular case. This, too, was about money, since the crime was a major one—a local landowner accused of the death of a tenant by negligence—and whichever court supplied the judge would keep any levies or fines. Briony had hoped that being the princess regent would mean she would get to solve problems, punish the guilty, reward the innocent. Instead she had discovered that what she mostly did was decide who else got to hear suits of law, the town magistrate, the hierarch’s justices, or— and this very occasionally, usually just in cases of nobility accused—the throne of Southmarch.

Midday came and went. The pageant of people and their problems dragged on and on like some official celebration of boredom and pettiness. Briony wished she could stop and have a rest but the line of supplicants seemed to stretch out to the ends of the earth and whatever remained undone today would need doing tomorrow, when she was supposed to have a lesson with Sister Utta. She had learned to be fierce in protecting her few moments of private time so, instead of resting, she called for some cold meat and bread and shifted back and forth in her seat to ease her aching fundament. It was strange but true that even two or three pillows could not make spending an entire day in a chair comfortable.

It was Lord Nynor the castellan who leaned in toward her now, wrapping his beard around his finger in a distracted way, waiting for her attention to return.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say? Something about Chaven?”

“He has sent me a rather odd letter,” the old man explained. Briony had been horrified and fascinated to learn that overseeing this wretched parade of denianders and complainers was the sort of thing Nynor had been doing every day of his long career, or at least through the several decades since he had become one of her grandfather Ustin’s chief courtiers. He didn’t look mad, but who would choose such a life? “The physician has had to leave on an unexpected journey,” Nynor said. “He suggests I summon Okros of Eastmarch to the castle in his absence, which he says may be a few days or perhaps even more.”

“He often goes to consult with other learned men,” said Briony. “Surely that is not so surprising.”

“But without telling us where to find him? And with the queen so close to giving birth? In any case, the letter itself struck me as strange.” Nynor s eyes were red-rimmed and watery, so that even at the happiest of times he looked as though he had been crying, but he was sharp-witted, and his long years of service to the Eddon family had proved him worth listening to.

“He says nothing that is directly alarming? Then give it to me and I will examine it later.” She took the folded parchment from the castellan and slipped it into the hartskin envelope in which she carried her seals and signet ring and other important odds and ends. “Is there anything else?”

“I need your permission to summon Brother Okros.” “Given.”

“And the poet fellow… ?” “Tinlight? Tin… ?”

“Tinwright. Is it true you wish him added to the household?”

“Yes, but not in any grand way. Give him an allowance of clothing, and of course he is to be fed…” There was a murmur in the crowd as someone pushed his way forward, a drawing back as though an animal, harmless but of doubtful cleanliness, had been set loose in the room Matty Tinwright burst out of the front row of courtiers and cast himself down on the stones at the foot of the dais.”Ah, fair princess, you remembered your promise! Your kindness is even greater than is spoken, and it is spoken of in the same proverbial way as the warmth of the sun or the wetness of rain.”

“Gah. Perin hammer us all dead,” rumbled Avin Brone, who had been lurking beside the throne all day like a trained bear, growling at those he deemed were wasting the monarchy’s time.

The poet was amusing, but just now Briony wasn’t in the mood. “Yes, well, go with Lord Nynor and he will see you served, Tinwright.”

“Do you not wish to hear my latest verse? Inspired this very day in this very room?”

She tried to tell him no, that she did not wish to hear it, but Tinwright was not the type to wait long enough for rejection—a trick he had needed to learn early, judging by his verse.“

”Dressed all in mannish black she stands, like the thunderheads of Oktamene’s dour wrath in the summer sky Yet beneath those sable billows there is virgin snow, white and pure, that will make the land in cool sweetness to he .’.”

She couldn’t help sympathizing with the lord constable’s groans, but she wished Brone might be a little more discreet—the young man was doing his best, and it had been her idea to encourage him: she didn’t want him humiliated. “Yes, very nice,” she said. “But at the moment I am in the middle of state business Perhaps you could write it down for me and send it so that I can . . appreciate its true worth without distraction.”

“My lady is too kind.” Smiling at the other courtiers, having established himself as one of their number—or at least believing so—Tinwright rose, made a leg, and melted into the crowd. There were a few titters.

“My lady is too kind by half,” Brone said quietly.

Steffans Nynor still lingered, a slightly nervous look on his face. “Yes, my lord?” Briony asked him. “May I come near the throne, Princess?”

She beckoned him forward. Brone also moved a bit closer, as though the scrawny, ancient Nynor might be some kind of threat—or perhaps simply to hear better.

“There is one other thing,” the castellan said quietly. “What are we to do with the Tollys?” “The Tollys?”

“You have not heard? They arrived two hours ago—I am shamed that I did not inform you, but I felt sure someone else would.” He gave Brone a squint-eyed look. The two were political rivals and not the best of friends. “A company from Summerfield Court is here, led by Hendon Tolly. The young man seems much aggrieved—he was talking openly about the disappearance of his brother, Duke Gailon.”

“Merciful Zoria,” she said heavily. “That is dire news Hendon Tolly? Here?”

“The middle brother, Caradon, is doubtless too pleased to find himself next in line for the dukedom to want to come stir up trouble himself,” Brone said quietly. “But I doubt he tried very hard to stop his little brother—not that it would have done him much good. Hendon is a wild one, Highness. He must be closely watched.” As the lord constable finished this little speech, one of the royal guard appeared at his shoulder and Brone turned to have words with him.

“Wild” was not the word Briony would have chosen. “Almost mad” would have been closer—the youngest Tolly was as dangerous and unpredictable as fire on a windy day. Her sigh was the only voice she gave to a heartfelt wish to be out of this, to turn back the calendar to the days when there had been nothing harder to think on than how she and Barrick would avoid their lessons.

And curse Barrick for leaving this all to me! A moment later she felt a pang of sorrow and even fear about her unkind thought: her brother needed no more curses.

“Treat theTollys with respect,” she said. “Give them Gailon’s rooms.” She remembered what Brone had said about the Summerfield folk and the agents of the Autarch. “No, do not, in case there has been some communication left behind in a secret place. Put them in the Tower of Winter so they are not underfoot and will find it harder to move around unmarked. Lord Brone, you will arrange to keep them watched, I assume? Lord Brone?”

She turned, irritated that he was not paying attention. The guardsman who had spoken to him was gone, but Brone himself had not moved and there was a look on his face Briony had never seen before—confusion and disbelief. “Lord Constable, what is wrong?”

He looked at her, then at Nynor. He leaned forward. “You must send these people away. Now.” “But what have you heard?”

He shook his great, bearded head, still as slow-moving and bewildered as a man in a dream. “Vansen has returned, Highness—Ferras Vansen, the captain of the guard.”

“He has? And what has he discovered? Has he found the caravan?”

“He hasn’t, and he has lost most of his company beside—more than a dozen good men. But, stay, Lady—that is not what is most important! Call for him. If what I hear is true, we will need to speak to him immediately.”

“If what you hear is… But what do you hear, Brone? Tell me.”

“That we are at war, Princess, or shortly will be.” “But… war? With whom?”

“The armies of all fairyland, it seems.”

26. The Considerations of Queens

He arrived with surprisingly little ceremony, not mounted on a dove this time but on a fat white rat with a fine spread of whisker. She was accompanied only by a pair of guards on foot—their tiny faces pale and drawn because of this great responsibility—and by the scout Beetledown. Chert had been sitting longer than he would have liked and was glad he was not expected to rise; he was not certain his legs would bend that well without a little limbering first. But neither could he imagine greeting a royal personage without making some show of respect, especially when he hoped to beg a favor, so he bent his head.

“Her Exquisite and Unforgotten Majesty, Queen Upsteeplebat, extends her greetings to Chert of Blue Quartz,” announced Beetledown in his small, high voice.

Chert looked up. She was watching him in an intent but friendly way. “I thank you, Majesty.” “We heard your request and we are here,” she said, as birdlike in pitch as her herald. “Also, we enjoyed your generous gift and it has joined the Great Golden Piece and the Silver Thing in our collection of crown jewels We are sad to hear that the boy is missing. What can we do?”

“I don’t know, to tell you the truth, Majesty. I was hoping you might be able to suggest something. I have searched all the places that I know—all of Funderling Town knows he is gone—but I have found no sign of him. He likes to climb and explore and I know little of the rooftops and other high places of the castle and city. I thought you might have an idea of where he might have gone, or even have seen him.”

The queen turned. “Have any of our folk seen the boy, faithful Beetledown?”

“Not hair nor hide, Majesty,” the little man said solemnly. “Asked in many holes and away down all the Hidden Hall last night, did I, without a sniff of un to be found.”

The queen spread her hands. “It seems that we can tell you nothing,” she told Chert sadly. “We, too, feel the loss, because we believe the Hand of the Sky is on that boy and thus he is important to our people, the Sm’sni’sntk-soonah, as well.”

Chert sagged. He had not truly thought that the Rooftoppers could solve the mystery, but it had been the only hope left to him. Now there was nothing he could do but wait, and the waiting would be terrible. “Thank you, anyway, Your Majesty. I am grateful that you came. It was very kind.”

She watched as he began to climb to his feet. “Hold a moment. Have you smelled for him?” “Have I what?”

“Have you smelled for his track?” When she saw Chert’s expression, she raised an eyebrow more slender than a strand of spiderweb. “Do your people know nothing of this?”

“Yes, we do, I suppose. There are animals used for hunting game and certain other things we eat. But I would not know how to try to find the boy that way.”

“Bide -with us here a while longer.” She folded her tiny hands together. “It is a pity, but the Grand and Worthy Nose is not well—a sort of ague. This often happens when the sun shines for the first time after the winter rams begin. Most pathetic he becomes, eyes red and his wonderful nose red, too. Otherwise I would send him with you. Perhaps in a few days, when the indisposition has passed…”

Chert was not exactly heartened to think that his hope of finding the boy might rest on the fat and fussy Nose, but it was something, at least, something. He tried to look grateful. “Your Majesty, if a humble Gutter-Scout can speak…” said Beetledown.

The queen was amused. “Humble? I do not think that word describes you well, my good servant.” Chert imagined that the little man was blushing, but the face was too small and too distant to be certain. “I wish only to serve ‘ee, Majesty, and that’s skin to sky. Sometimes, it is true, I find it hard to keep quiet when I must listen to the boasting of tumblers and other pillocks who are not fit to serve you. And perhaps tha wilst deem me boastful again when I say that after the Nose, some do reckon that Beetledown the Bowman has the finest nostrils in all Southmarch Above.”

“I have heard that said, yes,” said the queen, smiling. Beetledown seemed hard-pressed not to leap in the air and cheer for himself at her admission. “Does that mean you are ofFering your services to Chert of Blue Quartz?”

“Fair is what it seems, Majesty. The boy bested me and then gave me quarter, fairly as tha might please. I reckon that un has my debt, as ‘twere. Perhaps Beetledown can help bring him back safe in un’s skin.”

“Very well. You are so commissioned. Go with Chert of Blue Quartz and carry out your duties. Farewell, good Funderling.” She tapped with her stick at the white rat’s ribs; the animal chittered, then turned and began to move back up the roof. Her guards hurried after her.

“Thank you, Queen Upsteeplebat!” Chert called, although he was not really sure how much help he was going to get from a man the size of a peapod. Her hand went up as the rat disappeared over the roofcrest, but even small queens did not wave good-bye, so he imagined it must have been an acknowledgment of his gratitude. He turned to Beetledown, with whom he was now alone on the rooftop. “So… what should we do?”

“Take me to something of the boy’s,” suggested the little man. “Let me get my fill of un’s scent.”

“We’ve got his other shirt and his bed, so I suppose I should take you home. Do you want to ride down on my shoulder?”

Beetledown gave him an unfathomable look. “Seen ‘ee climb, I have. Beetledown will make un’s own way and meet up at bottom.”

Not surprisingly, the Gutter-Scout was already waiting on the ground by the time Chert set his feet on the cobbles once more. The morning sun was high behind the clouds—perhaps an hour remained until noon. Chert was tired and hungry and not very happy. “Do you want to walk?" he asked, trying to be considerate of the Rooftopper’s feelings.

“Oh, aye, if we had three days for wandering,” Beetledown replied a bit snappishly. “Said tha hast shoulder for riding. Ride, I will.”

Chert put his hand down and let the little man climb into it. It was an oddly ticklish feeling. As he put Beetledown on his shoulder, he imagined for the first time what a vast expanse even this small cobbled courtyard must seem to a man of such small size. “Have you been on the ground much?”

“Proper bottom ground? Aye, oncet or twice or more,” Beetledown said. “Not one of your stay-at-homes am I. Not afraid of rat or hawk or nowt but cats is Beetledown the Bowman, if I have my good bow to hand.” He brandished the small, slender curve of wood, but when he spoke again, he sounded a little less confident. “Be there cats in your house?”

“Scarcely a one in all Funderling Town. The dragons eat them.”

“Having sport, th’art,” said the little man with dignity. Chert suddenly felt ashamed. The tiny fellow might be a bit boastful, he might not think much of Chert’s climbing, but he was offering his help out of a sense of obligation, entering a world of monstrous giants. Chert tried to imagine what that would feel like and decided that Beetledown was entitled to a little swagger.

“I apologize. There are cats in Funderling Town but none m my house. My wife doesn’t like them much.” “Walk on, then,” said the Rooftopper. “It has been a century or more since any Gutter-Scout has been to the deep places and today Beetledown the Bowman will go where no other dares.”

“No other Rooftopper, you mean,” said Chert as he started across the temple-yard toward the gate. “After all, we Funderlings go there rather often.”

“Where is your brother? Prince Barrick should be here.” Avin Brone could not sound more disapproving if Briony had informed him that she planned to hand over governance of the March Kingdoms to an assembly of landless yokels. “He is ill, Lord Brone. He would be here if he could.”

“But he is the co-regent.

“He is ill! Do you doubt me?"

The lord constable had learned that despite the differences in their size, age, and sex, he could not outstare her. He tangled his fingers in his beard and muttered something. She was sensible enough not to inquire what he had said.

“Hendon Tolly is causing trouble already,” said Tyne Aldritch of Blueshore, one of the few nobles she had asked to join her to hear the news from the west. Aldritch was terse, especially with her, often to the point of near-rudeness, but she believed it was a symptom of basic honesty. Evidence over the years supported this conclusion, although she knew she might still be wrong—none of the people of the innermost circles around the throne were as guileless or straightforward as they seemed. Briony had learned that at a young age. Who could afford to be? Briony had ancestors in the Portrait Hall who had killed more of their own nobles than they had slain enemies on the battlefield.

“And what is my charming cousin Hendon up to?” She nodded as another, only slightly more beloved relative joined the council, Rorick Longarren. The apparent invasion seemed to be on the borders of his Daler’s Troth fiefdom, one of the few things that could lure him away from dicing and drinking. He took his place at the table and yawned behind his hand.

“Tolly showed up with his little court of complainers just as you left the throne room,” Tyne Aldritch told her, “and was talking loudly about how sometimes people try to avoid those they have wronged.”

Briony took a deep breath. “I thank you, Earl Tyne I would be surprised if he was not talking against me—against us, I mean, Prince Barrick and myself. The Tollys are admirable allies in time of war but cursedly difficult in peacetime.”

“But is this still peacetime?" the Earl of Blueshore asked with heavy significance.

She sighed. “That is what we hope to find out Lord Brone, where is your guard captain?" “He insisted on bathing before being brought to you.”

Briony snorted. “I had doubts about his competence, but I didn’t take him for a fop. Is a bath more important than news of an attack on Southmarch?"

“To be fair, Highness,” said Brone, “they rode almost without stopping for three days to get here and he has already written everything down while he waited for me to come to him from the throne room.” Brone lifted a handful of parchment. “He felt it would be discourteous to appear before you in torn and dirty clothes.”

Briony stared at the parchment covered with neat letters. “He can write?” “Yes, Highness.”

“I was told he was born in the country—a crofters son or something like. So where did he learn to write?” For some reason this did not fit the picture in her head of Vansen the guard captain, the man who had stood close-mouthed and emotionless while her brother lay dead in his own blood a few yards away, the fellow who had let her strike at him as though he were a statue of unfeeling stone. “Can he read, too?”

“I imagine so, Highness,” Brone said. “But here he comes. You may ask him yourself.”

His hair was still wet and he had put on not a dress tunic and armor but simple clothes that she suspected by their fit were not even his own, but she was still irritated. “Captain Vansen. Your news must be terrible indeed that you would make the princess regent wait for it.”

He looked surprised, even shocked. “I am sorry, Highness. I was told that you would be in the throne room until after midday and could not see me until then. I gave my news to Lord Brone’s man and then…” He seemed suddenly to realize he was perilously close to arguing with his monarch; he dropped to one knee. “I beg your pardon, Highness. Clearly the mistake is mine. Please do not let your anger at me cloud your feelings toward my men, who have suffered much and done so bravely to bring this news back to Southmarch.”

He is too honorable by half, she thought. He had a good chin, she had to admit—a proud chin. Perhaps he was one of those men like the famous King Brenn, so in love with honor that it ate him up with pride. She didn’t like the suggestion that she needed permission to be angry at someone, even permission given by the someone in question. She decided she would teach this crafty—and no doubt ambitious—young soldier a lesson by not being angry at all.

Besides, she thought, if what Brone says is true, we do have more important things to talk about. “We will speak of this some other tune, Captain Vansen,” she said. “Tell us your news.”

By the time he had finished, Briony felt as if she had stepped into one of the stories the maids used to tell when she was a child.

“You saw this… this fairy army?”

Vansen nodded. “Yes, Highness. Not very well, as I’ve said. It was…” He hesitated. “It was strange there.”

“By the gods!” cried Rorick, who had just divined the reason for his own presence, “they are coming down onto my land! They must be invading Daler’s Troth even as we speak—someone must stop them!”

Briony had not particularly wanted him present, but since it was near his fiefdom, and his bride-to-be had been kidnapped with the convoy, she could not think of a reason to keep him out of the council. Still, she found it telling that he had not mentioned the Settish prince’s daughter once. “Yes, it sounds that way, Cousin Rorick,” she said. “You will, no doubt, want to ride out as soon as you can to muster and lead your people.” She kept her tone equable, but to her surprise she saw a small reaction from Vansen, not a smile—the matters at hand were too serious—but a recognition by him that she didn’t think Rorick was likely to follow this selfless course.

Ah, but Vansen is a dalesman, isn’t he? And not as dull as I supposed him, either.

She turned her attention back to her cousin Rorick, who was not even trying to hide his fear. “Ride there?” he stammered. “Into the gods alone know what kind of terrors?”

“Longarren is right about one thing—he can do nothing alone,” said Tyne of Blueshore. “We must strike them quickly, though, whatever we do. We must throw them back. If the Twilight People are truly come across the Shadowline, we must remind them of why they retreated there in the past—make them see they will pay with blood for every yard of trespass…”

“Still, these are your lands we are talking about, Rorick,” Briony pointed out, “and your people. They do not see much of you as it is. Will you not lead them?”

“But lead them to what, Highness?” Surprisingly, it was Brone who spoke up: as a general rule, he did not think much of her cousin Rorick. “We know nothing so far. We have sent out a small party and only a few of them have come back—I think it would be a mistake for Lord Longarren or anyone else to ride off to battle without due care. What if we make a stand against these invaders and the same thing happens—the madness, the confusion—but this time to an entire army? Fear will run riot and the Twilight People will be here in these halls before spring. That conquest will not be anything like the Syannese Empire either, I suspect. These creatures will want more than tribute. What did Vansen say that his little monstrosity told him? That she—whoever that might be—will burn all our houses down to black stones.”

The enormity of it struck her now, her contemptuous prodding of Rorick suddenly seemed petty. Unless Vansen was completely mad, they were soon to be at war, and not with any human foe. As if the threat of the Autarch, Kendrick’s death, and their father’s imprisonment had not been enough! Briony looked at the guard captain and, much as she might wish it, could not believe he was telling anything other than the truth. What she had been taking for dullness or priggish honor might instead be a kind of unvarnished simplicity, something she had difficulty recognizing because of where she sat. It could be that here was a man who did not know how to scheme, who would suffocate in the daily intriguing of the castle s inner chambers like an oak trying to grow beneath the strangling vines of the Xandian jungles.

I doubt he can even keep a secret. “Vansen,” she said suddenly. “Where are those you brought back?” “The guardsmen are waiting to return to their families. There is the girl, too.

“They are not to go home, any of them, or to mix with others. Open talk of this must not be permitted or we will be struggling with our own fearful people long before we ever cross swords with this fairy army.” She turned to the lord constable, who was already dispatching one of the guards to relay her order. “Who else needs to know?"

Brone looked around the chapel. “The defense of the castle and city is my task, and I thank Perin Skyfather that he put it in my head to do the repairs on the curtain wall and the water-gate last summer. We need Nynor, of course, and all his factors—we cannot put an army on foot without him. And Count Gallibert, the chancellor, because we will need gold as well as steel to protect this place. But, Highness, we cannot put an army on foot at all without everyone learning of it.

“No, but we can do as much as we can before we must make it general knowledge.” She looked at Ferras Vansen, who seemed uncomfortable. “You have a thought, Captain?"

“If you will pardon me, Highness, my men have suffered a great deal and they will be unhappy to be confined to the keep.”

“Are you questioning my decision?”

“No, Highness. But I would prefer to explain it to them myself.”

“Ah.” She considered. “Not yet. I haven’t finished with you.”

He looked as though he might say more, but didn’t. Briony was briefly grateful for the power of the regency, for the prestige of being an Eddon, she didn’t want to waste time explaining her every thought just now. In fact, she was feeling a certain pleasure, even in the midst of her great distress at what was happening and what must happen in the days ahead, to know that she was the one who must make decisions, that the nobles must listen to her no matter what they would prefer.

Pray Zoria I make the right decisions. “Bring Nynor and the chancellor and any other nobles that must know. This evening, here. It will be a war council—but do not call it so within the hearing of anyone who will not be joining us.”

“And those bloody-minded Tollys?” asked Tyne. “Hendon will still be the brother of a powerful duke whether Gailon is alive or dead, and the Tollys cannot be ignored in this.”

“No, of course not, but for the moment they will be.” However, she knew she must not be foolish. “But perhaps you could tell Hendon Tolly that I will see him later—that we will talk privately before the evening meal. That courtesy I can give him.”

Rorick excused himself—to down a cup of wine as quickly as possible, Briony guessed. As Avin Brone and Tyne Aldritch fell into a discussion of which of the other nobles must be present at so important a council, Briony rose to stretch her legs. Vansen, thinking she was leaving the room, went down on one knee.

“No, Captain, I am not done with you yet, as I said.” It was a strange, almost giddy feeling, the power that was in her now. For a moment she thought of Barrick and was stabbed by pity and sadness, but also impatience I must give him the chance to be present for this, she reminded herself. It is his due. But she wondered at her own thoughts, because it was indeed his due she was thinking of, not her own needs she was not certain she actually wanted him to be involved, and she was disturbed by that realization. “You will wait outside until I have finished with the others,Vansen.”

He bowed his head, then rose and walked out. Brone looked at him, then at Briony, one eyebrow raised inquiringly. “Before you go, good Aldritch,” she said to Tyne, ignoring the lord constable.

He turned toward her, not sure what was coming. “Yes, Highness?”

Briony examined the earl’s familiar face, the squint of suspicion, the scar beneath his eye. There was another jagged white line on his forehead only partly hidden beneath his graying hair—a fall while hunting. He was a good man but a rigid one, a man who saw almost all change as trouble. She sensed she was about to make the first of a long series of not entirely happy choices. “With Shaso imprisoned, you and Lord Brone have taken up most of his duties between you, my lord Aldritch.”

“I have done my best, Highness,” he said, a little angry color coming to his cheeks. “But this attack from behind the Shadowline, if it is true, could not have been foreseen .”

“I know. And I know . . that is, my brother and I know… that you have done what you could in a difficult time. Now it seems the times will become more difficult still.” She was aware that she was changing, that she had begun to speak less like Briony and more like a queen, or at least a princess regent. Is this what happens? Is true royalty like some wasting illness that makes you grow farther and farther from everyone even while you remain in their midst* * * * *“I wish you to continue, and in fact to become the castle’s master of arms.” She looked quickly to Brone, not for his approval, but to see how he reacted. He, in turn, was looking at Tyne, if he disagreed or agreed with her decision he gave no sign.

Earl Tyne’s cheeks were still flushed, but he seemed relieved. “I thank you, Highness. I will do my best to fulfill your trust.”

“I’m sure you will. So here is your first duty. We must assume this danger is real. We have a few hundred guards in the castle—not enough for anything except perhaps to resist a siege, and if it comes to that, it will mean we have abandoned the outer city. How quickly can we muster a proper army?”

Aldritch frowned. “We can have my Blueshoremen and Brone’s Landsenders here in days, perhaps a week. With fast riders on the Westmarch Road we might be able to draw a few companies from Daler’s Troth soon after, if we can get around this fairy army. Any levies from Marrinswalk and Helrmngsea and the outliers like Silverside and Kertewall will take longer—at the very least two tenmghts, more likely we won’t see them for a month “ His frown became a scowl—Tyne had never been one to mask his thoughts. “A cursed shame, this whole bloody business with Gailon Tolly and his brothers, because our largest and best-trained muster always comes from Summerfield.”

“I will treat with that,” Briony said. “What seems important to me is that we meet this shadow-army, if it is truly moving on Southmarch as the guard captain fears, at least once outside the city walls.”

“With unready troops?” Tyne protested. “Most of what we will turn up here under such haste will be local musters, especially after all these years without war—perhaps only one real fighting man for every dozen who have never swung anything sharper than a hoe.”

“We must test their strength—and ours,” Briony said firmly. “We know nothing of such an enemy. And if they draw a siege around us, we will have trouble getting any more help at all from the farther marches. We will have to rely on ships to bring men as well as supplies, which will make for an even longer wait for the landbound musters.” She turned to Avin Brone. “What do you think?”

He nodded, pulling gently and meditatively on his beard. “I agree we cannot simply wait until this enemy arrives. But we do not know for certain that is what they plan. Perhaps they will harry the outlying marches first. Perhaps they seek only to expand a distance across the Shadowline, then sit on what they have won.”

“It doesn’t seem anything to count on,” said Briony. “If they have brought an entire army across the Shadowline, it seems unlikely they did it merely to burn a few fields and barns.” She almost couldn’t believe she was talking about this so calmly. People were going to die. The country had been largely at peace for her entire lifetime and the Twilight People had not stirred out of their shadows for generations. How had this fallen to her?

Brone sighed. “I agree that we must begin the muster immediately, Highness. The rest we can discuss with the other nobles later today.”

“Go, then,Tyne, and begin it,” she said. “I may be asking an impossibility, but let your messengers go out with as much secrecy as they can and take their messages straight to the local lords and mayors without stopping to discuss it in the taverns. Tell them that if anyone hears of their errand before the one to whom they are sent, they will spend the next year chained in the stronghold next to Shaso.”

“That will not keep everyone quiet,”Tyne argued. “Some will risk shackles to warn their own families.”

“No, but it will help. And we will not give the messengers any information that they do not need.” She summoned a young page from outside the chapel door. He came in as hesitantly as a cat walking on a wet floor. “Call Nynor,” she told him, and when he was gone she said, “I will send out letters under my seal.”

“Very good,” said the Earl of Blueshore. “Then they will not be able to argue they did not understand the importance or that the messenger did not tell them straightly what was needed.”

“You two go and see to it, please, and the arrangements for this evening’s council as well. Send inVansen as you go.” Brone gave her the raised eyebrow once more. “Do not be too hard on him, Highness, please. He is a good man.” “I will deal with him as he deserves,” she promised.

Chert had managed by a certain stealthiness to make his way home through the back streets of Funderling Town without having to explain why a finger-sized man was riding on his shoulder. He could not, of course, avoid giving an explanation to everyone…

“Have you found him?” Opal demanded, then her reddened eyes opened wide as she saw Beetledown. “Earth Elders! What… what is that?”

“He’s a ‘who,’ really,” her husband told her. “As for Flint, no luck. Not yet.”

The little man stood up on Chert’s shoulder and doffed his ratskin hat before making a small bow. “Beetledown the Bowman, I hight, tallsome lady. Chief one of the Gutter-Scouts, directed by Her Sinuous Majesty, Queen Upsteeplebat, to help find your lost boy.”

“He’s here to help.” Chert was tired and didn’t have much hope left—in fact, the whole thing struck him as a bit ridiculous. Opal, however, was seeing a Rooftopper for the first time and for a moment seemed almost able to forget the terrible errand that had brought this newcomer to their home.

“Look at him! He’s perfect!” She reached out a hand, as if he were a toy to be played with, but remembered her manners. “Oh! My name is Opal and you are welcome in our house. Would you like something to drink or eat? I’m afraid I don’t know much about… about Rooftoppers.”

“Nay, Mistress, not this moment, but I thank ‘ee.” He pulled at Chert’s earlobe.”It seems best tha put me down. Smell is a tricksy thing. Fades like stars at sunrise.”

“He’s going to sniff Flint’s shirt,” Chert explained. It seemed to need some additional clarification, but he couldn’t summon any.

Opal, however, seemed to find it all perfectly straightforward. “Let me carry you. I haven’t swept the floors today and I’m ashamed.” She reached out a hand and Beetledown climbed onto it. “Did your queen really send you? What is she like? Is she old or young? Is she beautiful?”

“Brave as a daw and fearful handsome,” said Beetledown with real feeling. “Hair soft as the velvet pelt of a weanling mouse.” He coughed to cover his embarrassment. “We are her special legion, we Gutter-Scouts. The queen’s eyes and ears. A great honor it gives to us.”

“Then we’re honored she wishes to help us,” said Opal as she carried the tiny man toward Flint’s bed. Chert was bemused to see how much better his wife did this sort of thing than he did. “Do you need anything?”

“Is yon great tent of faircloth un’s garment? Put me down, please ‘ee, Mistress, and I will scent what I can.” He scrambled across the folds, then dropped to his hands and knees and pressed his face against the sleeve. He worked his way up to the shoulder, sniffing as he went like a dog. At last he climbed to his feet and closed his eyes, stood silent for a moment. “I think I have it,” he said. “Easier it gives itself to me because I have scented the boy upon the rooftop and un has un’s own peculiar tang.” He opened his eyes, looked at Opal and Chert, then shuffled his feet a little on the sleeve. “No wish am I having to shame ‘ee, but to me un smells nothing like tha twain.”

Chert almost laughed. “There is no shame. He is not our blood-child. We found him and took him in.” Beetledown nodded wisely. “Found him in some strange place, thinks I. True?” “Yes,” said Opal a little worriedly. “How did you know?”

“Un smells of Farther Rooftops.” Beetledown turned to Chert. “Is it tha who will carry me now?” “Carry… ?”

“On the track. Too much of un’s scent there is here. Go where there is moving air, we must—even in these danksome caves there must be such a place, methinks.”

Carefully, Chert lifted the little man back up onto his shoulder. He was tired in heart and body, but certainly it was better to be doing something than simply waiting. “Are you coming?” he asked his wife.

“Then who would be here if he comes home?” said Opal indignantly, as though the boy had merely gone to race sowbugs with the neighbor children and would be back any time. “You go, Chert Blue Quartz, and you let this fellow do all the sniffing he has to do. You find that boy.” She turned to look at Beetledown and performed a strange, stiff courtesy, holding her apron up at the hem. She even smiled at him, although she clearly didn’t find it easy, which reminded Chert that he was not the only one who was bone-weary with sleeplessness and dread. “We thank you and your queen,” she said.

He gave Opal a kiss before leaving, wondering how many days it had been since he had remembered to do that. He couldn’t help glancing back as he opened the door, but he wished he hadn’t. In the middle of the room, his wife was rubbing her hands together and looking at the walls as though searching for something. Now that there was no longer a guest in the house, her face had gone slack with grief—it was a stranger’s face, and an old stranger at that. For the first time he could remember, Chert could no longer quite make out the lovely young girl he had courted.

Captain Ferras Vansen came back into the chapel like a condemned prisoner walking bravely to the gallows. His expression, Briony thought, was a little like the idealized face of Perin in the fresco above the door which showed the mighty god giving to his brother Erivor the dominion over the rivers and seas On the sky god the face was frozen in a mask of hard masculine beauty; Vansen, although not an unhandsome man, simply looked frozen.

He kneeled before her, head down. His hair was now almost dry, curling at the ends. She felt something almost like tenderness toward him, touched by the vulnerability of his bent neck. He looked up and she felt caught in some indiscretion, had to fight down a surge of warm anger.

“May I speak, Highness?”

“You may.”

“Whatever you think of me, Princess Briony, I ask you again not to bear ill will toward the men who traveled with me. They are good soldiers tested by things that none of us have seen and felt before. Punish me as you will, but not them, I beg of you.”

“You truly are a bit arrogant, aren’t you, Captain Vansen?” His eyes widened. “Highness?”

“You assume that you have done some great wrong for which you must be punished. You seem to think that, like Kupilas the Lifegiver, your crime is so great that you must be staked on the hillside as an example, to be picked at by the ravens for eternity. Yet, as far as I can see, you have only proved to be a soldier who has muddled a commission.”

“But your brother’s death…”

“It’s true, I haven’t forgiven you for your failures that night. But neither am I so foolish as to think someone else would have prevented it.” She paused, gave him a hard stare. “Do you think I’m foolish, Captain Vansen?”

“No, Highness…!”

“Good. Then we have a starting point. I don’t think I’m foolish either. Now let us move to more important matters. Are you mad, Captain Vansen?”

He was startled and she almost felt ashamed of herself, but these were times when she could not bend, could not be too kind and thus seem weak. There could be no whispering among the castle’s defenders that they would fail because a woman ruled them. “Am I… ?”

“I asked if you are mad, Captain Vansen. Are your wits damaged? It seems a simple enough question.” “No, Princess. No, Highness, I do not think so.”

“Then unless you are a liar or a traitor—fear not, I won’t ask you to deny those possibilities as well, we don’t have the time—what you have seen is real. Our danger is real. So let us talk about why your arrogant wish to be important enough to be punished will not be satisfied.”

“My lady… ?”

“Silence. I didn’t ask you a question. Captain Vansen, from what you’ve told me, it seems that not everyone is the same when it comes to this fairy-magic. You said that some of the men were bewildered, even bewitched, and that others were not. You were one of those who were not. True?”

“Or at least very little, Highness, as far as I could tell.” He was looking at her with something like surprised respect. She liked the respect. She did not like the surprise.

“Then I would be a fool to throw a soldier who seemed armored against such charms and snares into chains at a time when we may need that talent far more than strong arms or even stout hearts… would I not?”

“I… I take your point, Highness.”

“Here is another question. Did you see any reason, any differences in those affected, that might explain why some of you were overwhelmed by the Shadowline magic and some were not?”

“No, Highness. One of my most trusted and sensible men, Collum Dyer, was swept away into a dream very quickly, but a man who is for all purposes his opposite was not touched and, in fact, made it home with me.”

“So we have no way to know who has the weakness until it is revealed.” She frowned, biting her lip. Vansen watched her, clearly masking deeper feelings, but this time more effectively. She wondered briefly what he was hiding from her. Irritation? Fear? “Despite what you think of him, this fellow you mentioned who was not overcome by the fairy-magic must be given a role in preparing to fight this strange enemy. He and all the others who were not poisoned by this strange dreaming. He and your other survivors must all be made captains.”

“Mickael Southstead a captain?" Vansen was chagrined.

“Unless he is the lowest, vilest criminal ever born, his clear head will be worth more to us than if Anglin the Great himself were to come back from the heavens to lead us, then fall into a bewildered nightmare. As we have agreed,Vansen, I am no fool, and I don’t think you are one either. Can you not see this?"

He bowed his head again briefly. “I can, Highness. You are right.”

“Very kind of you to say so, Captain. We do not know where we will be fighting. It could be we will meet them in the hills of Daler’s Troth in an attempt to keep them away from the cities. It could just as easily happen that we cannot stop them until they reach the walls of Southmarch itself You are the only ones who have seen the enemy and returned to tell of it. You must help us prepare for them in any way you can imagine. I am not happy about it, Vansen, but I need you just as much as I need Brone and Nynor and Tyne Aldritch. The matter of my brother’s murder and your failure is not closed, but until better times I will push it from my mind, and so will you. It could be that if you serve me well if you serve Southmarch well then what is in the ledger of that night can be scraped away, or at least inked over.”

“I will do all that you ask, Highness.” This new expression was hard to unriddle, both elevated and miserable, so that for a moment he appeared to have stepped down from a different fresco altogether.

You are a strange man, Ferras Vansen, she thought. Maybe I was wrong to think you are the sort that has no secrets. “Go, then. Gather those who came back with you. See that they are fed and rested, but in no circumstance let them leave. I will speak to them myself tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Highness.” He rose, but hesitated. “Princess Briony… ?” “Speak.”

“There is a young woman, too—I believe I told you.”

A cold irritation crept over her. “What about her? We cannot let her go either, even if she is mad and suffering. I regret it. Make her comfortable.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you have some feelings for her?”

“No!” He flushed: she was certain she had touched a nerve.That made her grow even more chill, although she did not know why. “No, Highness. Responsibility, perhaps—she is like a child and she trusts me. But although she seemed just as lost in the Shadowline dream as Dyer and the others, she also found a way out again for us. She seems to be in some middle ground between the two…”

“We have no time or patience to try to make sense out of some unfortunate young woman. If the magic took her and confused her, she is no use to us. Make her comfortable. Bring me the others tomorrow at ten of the clock.”

Vansen bowed and went out, looking not exactly like one reprieved, but perhaps like one who had found out the gallows makers were all ill with a bad fever.

She sat for a long time after he was gone, her thoughts an unsettled swirl. She had only an hour or so before she had to meet with the nobles and make a plan of war. She would have liked to go to Utta—she missed the Zorian sister’s wisdom and calm—but she knew there was a more important visit she had to make. Whatever complicated feelings she might have and whatever terrors might be punishing him, she did not wish to go to this evening’s council without her twin.

The Scourge of the Shivering Plain stood on a hillside at the edge of the line of trees, looking down on the valley and the town that bestrode the river at its bottom. The sun had vanished behind the top of the hills and lamps were already being lit all along the dark valley, even though evening was still an hour away.

Yasammez turned and reached out with her thoughts, feeling back toward the Shadowline. The mantle of shadow, the web of careful, ancient enchantments that had trailed behind her for days like a cape of mists, the vast, mortal-bewildering essence of the Qar heartland that had hidden and protected her marching army, had now stretched to its limits and was beginning to thin. She knew that it would reach no farther into these fields, that where she went from now on she must do beneath the bright sun or the unclouded stars. That was why she waited for night.

The Seal of War glowed on her chest like a coal. Its weight was both comforting and terrifying. For year upon long year she had waited for this hour to come. Whatever befell would have much to do with her decisions in the days ahead, and she would have had it no other way. Still, many would die, and many of them would be her own kind. Like almost all warriors, no matter how fierce, it was not easy for her to see her own killed, whatever the need.

She turned and walked back up the hillside. Although her armor was covered in long spines and the trees grew close together here, she made no sound.

In the woods along the hilltop her army had gathered. With the mantle’s weakening their bright eyes glittered in the gathering dark like a sky full of stars as they watched her pass. No fires had been lit. Later, when she had a better idea of what she faced, had learned something of the mettle of her sunlander enemies, Lady Porcupine might find it useful to let them see her army’s fires burning on the hills and plains, let them count the blazes -with chilling blood—but not tonight. Tonight the People would come down on their foes like lightning from a cloudless sky.

Her tent was a thing woven of silence and thickened shadow. Several of her captains awaited her inside its surprisingly large expanse, seated around the dim amethyst glow of her empty helmet in a circle like the Whispering Mothers who nursed the Great Egg.

Yasammez wished she could send them all away—there was always that still moment before the noise and the blood and she preferred to spend it by herself—but first there were things she had to do and even a few hated formalities she must observe.

Mormng-in-Eye of the Changing People was waiting, her naked chest heaving. She had just run a long way. “What do you bring me?” Yasammez asked her.

“They are no more than they seem, or else they have grown a thousand times more skilled in trickery than they once were. A small garrison lives inside the town gates. There are other small forces of armed folk in the larger houses, and an armory that suggests they can muster more when need be.”

“But the armory is full?”

Morning-in-Eye nodded her sleek head. “Pikes and helmets, bows, arrows —none have been given out. They do not suspect.”

Yasammez showed nothing, but she was pleased. An easy victory would bring its own problems, but it was more important that her army’s first blooding not be too perilous. Even with all those she had mustered, the People were still vastly outnumbered by the mortals who now filled the lands that once had belonged to her folk. She relied on surprise and terror to increase the size of her host tenfold.

“Hammerfoot of Firstdeep?”

“Yes, Lady.”

“It is long since we have come against mortal men or their works. When the village is afire, take some of your women and men and pull down the walls. See to the way of their building. It is only a town, but perhaps we will see something of what we must defeat when we come against the Old Place.”

“Yes, Lady.”

She turned to Gyir, the most trusted of her captains, and for a moment their thoughts commingled. Compared to her or even many of the others present he was merely a stripling, but his ferocity and cunning were second only to hers. She tasted his cold resolve and was pleased, then spoke so that the others might hear. “When we are putting the town to fire and the people to slaughter, it is my wish that a large number be allowed to escape, or at least to believe that they are escaping.” She paused for a moment, considered unflinchingly the horror that would come. “Let them be mostly females and their young.”

Stone of the Unwilling stirred, flickered. “But why, Lady? Why show them mercy? They never showed us any —when they found my people’s hive in the last great battles they burned it and clubbed our children to death as they came out, screaming and weeping.”

“It is not mercy. You should know that I of all the People have no such failing when it comes to the sunlanders. I wish the news of what happened here to spread —it will fill their land with terror. And the females and young we allow to escape will not take up arms as their males might, but in the cities we besiege they will need to be fed and watered, taking resources from those who do stand against us.” She slipped Whitefire from its sheath and laid it beside her helmet. There was no fire in her pavilion of shadow; the sword’s lunar glow gave all the light. “We have not spilled the blood of mortals since we retreated behind the Shadowline. Now that is ended. Let the Book of Regret remember this hour even beyond the world’s end. “ She raised her hand. “Sing with me, for the sake of all the People. We must now praise the blind king and the sleeping queen and swear our fealty to the Pact of the Glass—yes, we will all swear to it together, think what we might—then we will take flame and fear to our enemies.”