Shadowheart (108 page)

 

The salt had been sprinkled and Sisel had just begun to chant the final prayer meant to guide the spirit of the departed king when Ferras Vansen felt a stirring among the mourners, as if the crowd were a field of flowers rippled by the wind. Was something amiss? He looked quickly to Briony, who had felt it, too.

A procession was coming up the road between the armory and Wolfstooth Spire; the people at the far end of the commons had already turned to watch it. At first Vansen could see little of the newcomers as they passed through the tower’s shadow, but as their leader stepped out into the sun Vansen saw hair that dazzled like flame. Barrick Eddon had arrived at his father’s funeral. The prince wore clothes of loose-fitting white cloth and a hooded white cloak, much as Queen Saqri had done the few times Vansen had seen her; Vansen realized now that white must be the Qar’s mourning color.

He glanced again to Briony Eddon, but her expression was unreadable. Barrick and the company of fairies who came with him made their silent way up the colonnade beside the commons and then emerged into the sunshine again just short of the residence’s front steps and the king’s body, where Barrick stopped and stood, straight as a sentry.

After a confused few moments Hierarch Sisel continued the prayer. When it was ended the mantises came with their rattles and flutes to lead the procession, and the pallbearers lifted the coffin onto the wagon that would carry it toward the graveyard. It seemed the Eddons meant to keep using their family vault, Vansen noted, no matter what had taken place there or what lay beneath it. But before the pallbearers could take a step, Barrick abruptly stepped forward and laid two sprigs atop the coffin, one of meadowsweet and one of mistletoe, the Orphan’s flowers of immortality. As he did so, he paused for a moment. A look of pain and confusion twisted Barrick’s features and he snatched back his hand—the one that had once been withered and useless—almost as though he had burned it.

The prince and his followers did not accompany the coffin all the way to the graveyard, but turned away near the crumbled walls of the Throne hall and walked back toward the Raven’s Gate and their camp in Funderling Town. Some in the crowd turned to watch them depart, making the sign for the pass-evil, but most paid scant attention, as if the king’s son and his odd companions were only another clutch of mourners.

The funeral feast had ended nearly an hour before, and many of the guests had already retired, though a group of older nobles remained in the residence’s long, low dining room drinking wine and telling tales of the late king and of all that had happened since last Olin had sat on Anglin’s throne. Doubtless, many of them also expressed quiet reservations over the fitness of his daughter to rule, and questioned why her brother had made himself so absent from the business of governing the country, but Vansen ignored their conversations as he pulled a few of his more trustworthy guards from their duties in the dining room and led them to the residence parlor that served as Briony’s royal retiring room. The princess was waiting there already, her face carefully empty. To Ferras Vansen, her expression was like a sort of wound: it hurt him to see it.

When his guards had filed in, he turned to Briony. “Shall I go and get Lord Brone, Your Highness?”

She nodded, but scarcely seemed to see him.

To Vansen’s surprise, Avin Brone was waiting just outside the door of the hall—he had arrived while Vansen had been arranging the guards. The big man nodded. “It is good to see you, Captain Vansen. I assume you will not remain much longer in that low rank . . . ?”

“No one has spoken to me of any promotion, Lord Brone.”

“Ah, but I am sure you will be rewarded. I hear you did noble, brave-minded work since your return to Southmarch. Many say that if you hadn’t stiffened the Funderling resistance we would all be slaves now. You must tell me everything that happened one day, Vansen. I wish to hear what you saw. I trust your eyes and thoughts more than any others save my own.”

“Thank you, your lordship.”

The count smiled but he looked tired. “Let us not keep our mistress waiting. After all, she will soon be our queen.” He walked past Vansen to the door.

When Brone had bowed to Briony (not without a little difficulty; the old man had gotten even stouter and his limp was now pronounced) she asked for a bench to be brought so he could sit down.

“Before we get to the meat of things,” she said, “I have a question for you, Brone. Berkan Hood will soon be captured or dead. The post of lord constable is empty. Do you have anyone to recommend?”

Brone cleared his throat. “I can think of no one better than this man here, Ferras Vansen.”

“Not yourself, Lord Brone? You held the post a long time. Do you no longer have confidence in your own abilities?”

“With respect, Highness, do not play games with me. I am too old for that, and also too old to try to be what I was. If you did not want my advice, you should not have asked.”

“Very well, then, let’s not circle like two tavern bullies.” Briony’s smile was hard. “You were my father’s trusted adviser, Brone. You were that to my brother and to me as well.”

“I have been lucky enough to serve the throne and the people of the March Kingdoms. That is well known. Many would say I did it well.”

“Many would, yes—but that is not my complaint.” For the first time, Vansen saw that the emotion she had hidden was not weariness or fear, but rage. Her cheeks were red and her eyes narrowed in fury; for the first time he saw how much like her brother she really was. “You betrayed us, Brone, or you planned to. You schemed to see us all dead—my father, my brothers, and me. What do you say to that?”

Brone did not burst out into a torrent of denials, which made Vansen feel even more that the world had tilted on its foundations. Instead, the old man pressed his chin deep into his beard and frowned with his bushy brows until he seemed like a bear staring out of a cave. “And why do you say that, Your Highness? Who has told you such a thing of me?”

“That is not your affair. But a person I trust has told me that you had a list, and on this list was the name of every member of my family and also the method by which each would be apprehended, imprisoned, and then murdered at your order. Do you deny it?”

Ferras Vansen realized he was holding his breath, and even the guards, his best men, looked startled. Only Avin Brone himself, of all in the long room, did not seem unduly troubled. “No,” he said. “I do not deny it.”

Briony let out a ragged gasp like someone struck a painful blow. “So,” she said at last, her voice barely under control. “You told me to trust no one, Avin Brone. I thank you for the honesty of that lesson.”

“Do you not wish to know the reason why?”

“No. No, I don’t. Guards, take him away. The stronghold held a less guilty man in Shaso—it will serve for this villain, too.”

Brone sat, unmoving, as at Ferras Vansen’s signal a quartet of guards in Eddon black and silver surrounded him. “Will you really do this again, Princess?” the old man asked in a mild tone.

“What do you mean?” Briony had pushed her feelings back behind the mask again: she stared like a statue of Divine Retribution.

“You imprisoned Shaso dan-Heza without learning the truth. You regretted it later, as you make clear. Would you repeat that error?”

“Error?” Briony almost jumped out of her chair. “You have admitted you planned to murder my family, Brone! What could you say that would make any difference?” But she did not repeat the order for his removal and Vansen, sensing something afoot, signaled his men to wait. “Speak,” Briony said at last. “It is late and I am tired and sad. I have just buried my father, and I want to go to bed.”

“I loved him, too, Briony.”

“But you planned to kill him!”

“My duty is first and foremost to the throne, Princess. That has always been true. Your father himself was careful to make certain I understood that. Yes, I planned his death—but it was with Olin’s own knowledge.”

“What?” Briony seemed about to spring from her chair and attack him. “Do you claim he wanted see his own family slaughtered . . . ?”

“No!” Now for the first time Brone lost his temper. “No, of course not, Highness! But your father knew he had an illness that no one could cure—an illness of the blood that brought raging madness upon him. For ten years or more, he also knew that Barrick had that same distemper of the blood. You and Kendrick did not seem afflicted, but who could tell?”

“What does my father’s . . . blood have to do with . . . ?”

“He did not trust himself—and to be honest, I could not afford to trust him entirely, either. He was the king, but at least one night every month he was also a beast—a madman. How could I defend the country without planning to deal with the king himself if he went utterly mad? How could I protect the March Kingdoms if his heirs were also infected? If your father lost his mind beyond saving, I was under orders to lock him away—to lock you all away as well until we knew if one of you was trustworthy. And if none of you were, then there would be no point in leaving you alive to foster unrest among the people, who would not understand. I was prepared to put another relative on the throne if necessary, perhaps one of the Brennish cousins—yes, even to kill you all if no other choice was left to me! But I did not wish to, and I only imagined it because your father, may the gods bless his bravery and foresight, ordered me to do so.” So saying, the count of Landsend folded his hands across his belly and stared back at her. “So if you still wish to execute me, Princess, then do so. I will not resist.”

At first, Vansen thought Briony was going to scream at the old man—her face had flushed so deeply he feared for her health. But when she spoke, her words were little more than a whisper.

“Do you have some letter from my father that will prove this?”

He shrugged. “I have letters from him that allude to the plan. I can assemble them for you. All my papers from the time I served your father are yours now, in any case, Princess, though you might prefer to have someone more trustworthy than myself go through them. But choose that person carefully, Briony.” His smile was mirthless. “I suspect there are traitors around you still uncovered. ...”

“Get out of my sight, Brone.” She spoke as if she had a mouth full of poison. “I will send guards with you to collect the papers. Until I decide what to do, you will confine yourself to the inner keep. You will most especially
not
return to your house in Landsend.”

Avin Brone dipped his head in a small bow, scarcely more than a nod. “You are my sovereign, Princess. Of course I will do what you say.”

Vansen had finished dividing the guard, keeping double Princess Briony’s standard pair on duty but sending the rest away, and was waiting now as she had asked, but Briony deliberately ignored him as she finished a cup of wine.

Briony knew she should have been happy Brone had a plausible excuse—she could not remember ever dreading a meeting more—but instead she was just as angry as before but with no certain target for it. A tiny part of her had hoped he would laugh at the accusation, that it would turn out to be so transparently absurd she could soon laugh, too, but the greater part of her certainty had been that Brone was guilty, that his warnings to her to trust no one had been a form of thinly veiled confession. And when he had admitted it, every hard, protective thing inside her had clanged down like the portcullis of Raven’s Gate. Now she was still furious with the old man, but just as angry with herself. If Brone’s story was true, what else should he have done but followed her father’s orders? But if he couldn’t prove what he claimed? What then?