(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch (24 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It will be the best work we can do.”

 

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

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

I only wish I could say the same,
thought Chert. Behind him the work gang was also quiet as they made their way through the mazy tomb. It was not the idea of mortal spirits that disturbed him, of ghosts—although in this dark, quiet place he was not quick to dismiss the thought—but of the ultimate futility of things.
Do what you will, you will come to this. Whether you sit lonely in your house and store up money, or sing loud in the guildhall, buying tankards of mossbrew for all your friends and relations, in the end you will find this—or it will find you . . .

He paused beside one niche. On the coffin lid was carved a man in full armor, his helmet in the crook of his elbow, his sword hilt clasped upon his chest. His beard was wound with ribbons, each wrought in careful, almost loving detail.

“Here lies the king’s father,” he told Flint. “The old king, Ustin. He was a fierce man, but a scourge to the country’s enemies and a fair-dealer to our people.”

“He was a hard-hearted bastard,” said one of the work gang quietly.

“Who said that?” Chert glared. “You, Pumice?”

“What if I did?” The young Funderling, not three years a guild member, returned his stare. “What did Ustin or any of his kind ever do for us? We build their castles and forge their weapons so they can slaughter each other—and us, every few generations—and what do we get in return?”

“We have our own city . . .”

Pumice laughed. He was sharp-eyed, dark, and thin. Chert thought the youth had somehow got himself born into the wrong family.
He should have been a Blackglass, that one.
“Cows have their own fields. Do they get to keep their milk?”

“That’s enough.” Some of the others on the work gang were stirring, but Chert could not tell whether they were restless with Pumice’s prating or in agreement with him. “We have work to do.”

“Ah, yes. The poor, sad, dead prince. Did he ever step into Funderling Town, ever in his life?”

“You are speaking nonsense, Pumice. What has got into you?” He glanced at Flint, who was watching the exchange without expression.

“You ask me that? Just because I have never loved the big folk? If someone needs to explain, I think it’s you, Chert. None of the rest of us have adopted one of
them
into our own household.”

“Go out,” Chert told the boy. “Go and play—there is a garden up above.” A cemetery, in truth, but garden enough.

“But . . . !”

“Do not argue with me, boy. I need to talk to these men and you will only find it boring. Go out. But stay close to the entrance.”

Flint clearly felt he would find the conversation anything but boring, but masked his feelings in that way he had and walked across the tomb and up the stairs. When he was gone, Chert turned back to Pumice and the rest of the work gang.

“Have any of you a complaint with my leadership? Because I will not lead men who grumble and whine, nor will I chief a job where I do not trust my workers. Pumice, you have had much to say. You do not like my feelings about our masters. That is your privilege, I suppose—you are free and a guildsman. Do you have aught else to say about me?”

The younger man seemed about to start again, but it was an older man, one of the Gypsum cousins, who spoke instead. “He doesn’t talk for the rest of us, Chert. In fact, we’ve spent a bit too much time listening to him lately, truth be told.” A few of the other men grunted agreement.

“Cowards, the lot of you,” Pumice sneered. “Slaving away like you were in the Autarch’s mines, working yourselves almost to death, then down on your knees to thank the big folks for the privilege.”

A sour smile twisted Chert’s mouth. “The day I see you working yourself almost to death, Pumice, will be a day when all the world has finally gone wheels-over-ore-cart.” The rest of the men laughed and the moment of danger passed. A few rocks had tumbled free, but there had been no slide. Still, Chert was not happy that there had been such ill-feeling already on the first day.

Maybe old Hornblende just didn’t want to work with Pumice. Reason enough to have a bad back, perhaps . . .
Less than an hour past dawn and already his head hurt. “Right, you lot. Whatever some of you may think, these are sad times and this is an important chore. So let’s get to work.”

“I cannot sit through this,” Barrick abruptly declared.

Briony felt ambushed that he should turn on her in front of Avin Brone and the other nobles. “What do you mean?” she whispered. Her voice seemed a sharp hiss like a snake; she could feel the councillors, all men, looking at her with disapproval. “Shaso has not confessed, Barrick. It is not a certain thing that he has killed Kendrick. After all these years, you owe the man something!”

Barrick waved his hand—dismissively, it seemed, and for a moment Briony felt a stab of anger sharp as any Tuani knife. Then she saw that Barrick’s eyes were closed, his face even more pale than usual. “No. I do not . . . feel well,” he said.

So terrible had this morning been, so topsy-turvy, that despite the clutch at her heart to see his waxy face—so frighteningly like Kendrick’s bloodless, lifeless mask—she still felt a squeezing suspicion. Did Barrick want nothing to do with what was coming next, for some reason? Had Lord Constable Brone and the others been talking to him already?

Her brother staggered a little as he got up. One of the guards stepped forward to take his elbow. “Go on,” Barrick told her. “Must lie down.”

Another and even more horrifying thought:
What if he is not just ill—what if he has been poisoned?
What if someone had set on a track of killing all the Eddons? Horrified and frightened, she murmured a quick prayer to Zoria, then dutifully asked the Trigon’s help as well. Who would do such a thing? Who could even conceive of such moon-madness?

Someone who wanted the throne . . .
She looked at Gailon of Summerfield, but the duke looked quite normally concerned to see Barrick so sweaty and weak. “Get him straight to bed, and send for Chaven,” she directed the man holding his arm. “No, let one of the pages fetch Chaven now, so that he can meet my brother in his chambers.”

When Barrick had been helped from the room, Briony noted with some approval that her own mask was still in place—the public mask of imperturbability that her father had taught her to make of her features. She had despised Avin Brone for a heartless bully on the night of Kendrick’s murder, but she was grateful to him for reminding her of her duty. She had a responsibility to the Eddon family as well as to her people: she would not give away the truth of her feelings so easily again. But, oh, it was hard to be stiff and stern when she was so frightened!

“My brother, Prince Barrick, will not be coming back,” she said. “So there is no sense in making our guest wait longer. Send him in.”

“But, Highness . . . !” began Duke Gailon.

“What, Summerfield, do you think I have no wit at all? That I am a marionette who can only speak when one of my brothers or my father is present to work my strings? I said bring him in.” She turned away.
Zoria give me strength,
she prayed.
If you have ever loved me, love me now. Help me.

The intensity with which the councillors whispered among themselves would in ordinary circumstances have made Briony very uneasy, but circumstances were not ordinary and they might never be so again. Gailon Tolly and Earl Tyne of Blueshore did not even try to hide their anger at her. These men had seldom had to take an order from any woman, even a princess.

I cannot afford to care what they think, and I cannot even be as forbearing with them as Father. In him, they think it an odd humor. In me, they will be certain to mark it as weakness . . .

The door opened and the dark man was led in by the royal guard. Guard Captain Ferras Vansen was again pointedly not looking at her—another man, she felt certain, who held her as worthless. Briony had not decided yet what she wanted to do with Vansen, but surely some example would have to be made. Could the reigning prince of the March Kingdoms be murdered in his bed and no more come of it than if an apple were stolen off a peddler’s cart?

At her nod the guards stopped and allowed the man they had escorted to continue by himself to the foot of the dais and the twins’ two chairs, which for the moment stood side by side in front of King Olin’s throne.

“My deepest condolences,” said Dawet dan-Faar, bowing. He had exchanged his finery of a few days before for restrained black. On him, it somehow looked exotically handsome. “Of course there is nothing I can say to ease your loss, my lady, but it is painful to see your family so bereft. I am certain that my lord Ludis would wish me to send his deep sympathies as well.”

Briony scanned his face for some trace of mockery, the faintest gleam of dark amusement in his eye. For the first time she could see that he was not a young man, that he was perhaps only a decade younger than her own father, though his brown skin was unlined, his jaw firm as a youth’s. Beyond that, she saw nothing untoward. If he was dissembling, he did it splendidly.

Still, that is his skill—it must be. Were he not a veteran dissembler and flatterer he would not be an envoy for ambitious Ludis.
And there was also the story of Shaso’s daughter, which Barrick had told her—another reason to despise this man. But there was no denying he was good to look upon.