(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch (32 page)

“Oh, th’art good, young master,” the tiny man cried, his voice almost inaudible from a yard and a half away. “Beetledown and un’s aftercomers will remember thee. That be promised!” He vanished over the roofcrest.

Flint sat against the chimney until the sun was high above him, until the dim moan of the chorus below had ended, then began his climb back down.

She was grateful for Rose standing beside her with the kerchief, and furious with herself for needing it. It was hard to believe how terrible a varnished wooden box could be. The funeral songs droned on and on, but she was grateful for that, too: it gave her a chance to compose herself.

It seemed shameful to carry Kendrick to the tomb in a borrowed coffin, but there had been no time to prepare a proper one. In fact, Nynor had assured her the Funderling craftsmen had done well simply to prepare the tomb. The true coffin with its carved effigy should not be hurried, he said—would she want an imperfect likeness of her brother to gaze out at eternity, as if he were forced to hide behind a crude mask? Kendrick could be moved into the stone coffin when it was finished.

Still, it seemed shameful.

Despite the presence of members of the household like Rose and Moina, a dry-eyed but somber Chaven, and even old Puzzle, hatless and dressed in black-and-gray motley, his hair smoothed across his head in thin strands, the royal family’s bench at the front of the chapel was only half full. Briony’s stepmother Anissa sat a short distance away beside Merolanna, arms folded protectively across her belly. Her face was hidden by a black veil, but she sobbed and snuffled loudly.
At least we found something that could get her out of bed,
was Briony’s bitter thought. She had not seen much of the queen lately. It was as though Anissa had turned the Tower of Spring into a sort of fortress, covering all the windows with heavy cloths and surrounding herself with women as a besieged monarch might surround himself with soldiers. Briony had never entirely warmed to her stepmother, but for the first time she was truly beginning to dislike her.
Your husband is imprisoned, woman, and one of his children is murdered. Even with a baby in your belly, surely you have more duties now than just to hide in that nest of yours like a she-crow brooding on her eggs.

The chorus finished at last and Hierarch Sisel, in his finest red-and-silver robes, stood and took his place in front of the coffin to begin the funeral oration. It was the sort of thing Sisel did best, showing why King Olin had chosen him to fill such an important post despite the objections of Sisel’s own superiors back in Syan (who had thought him too lukewarm in his support of the policies of the current trigonarch) and he spoke the familiar words with apparent compassion and sincerity. As the soothing Hierosoline litany filled the Erivor Chapel, Briony could almost let herself believe she had found one of those echoes of the past, a remnant of the days she would whisper with her brothers during services, annoying Merolanna and frustrating the old mantis Father Timoid, who knew that the children’s father would never let them be scolded for a crime Olin himself deemed so insignificant.

But I’m not a child now. There is nowhere for me to hide from this moment.

As Sisel began to speak the words of the epitaph, the nobles dutifully repeating the significant phrases, Briony was distracted by a fuss at her elbow. Moina was talking sharply but quietly with a young page.

“What does the fellow want?” Briony whispered.

“I come from your brother, Highness,” the child told her.

Held tightly around the middle by her confining garments, Briony did her best to bend toward the boy; it made her breathless. “Barrick?” But of course it had to be Barrick. If her other brother had sent her a message, it would not be carried by a young boy with a dripping nose. “Is he well?”

“He is better. He sends to say that you should not go to the cr . . . the cr . . .” The boy was nervous and couldn’t remember the word.

This little fellow is facing the Goddess of the Night, after all
, she thought.
Are you happy now, Lord Brone? I am not a weeping girl anymore—I have become a thing to scare children.
“The crypt?”

“Yes, Highness.” The boy nodded rapidly but still couldn’t meet her eye. “He says you should not go down to the crypt until you see what he is sending to you.”

“What he is sending?” Briony looked to Rose, staring in damp misery at the coffin on the altar. It was draped in a banner blazoned with the Eddon wolf and stars, but it was no less dreadful for its proud covering. Behind her, Briony could hear the courtiers whispering loudly and she felt herself growing angry at their disrespect. “Why are these fools talking? Rose, did you hear what the boy said? What could Barrick be sending?”

“Myself.”

She turned and her heart thumped painfully in her breast. With his long black cloak only imperfectly covering the white nightdress and his face even paler than usual, Barrick might have been Kendrick himself in his winding-sheet. Her twin stood in the aisle of the chapel with a royal guardsman at each elbow helping him to stand upright. Just getting here had clearly been an effort; his face was damp with sweat and his eyes did not quite meet hers.

Briony levered herself upright and pushed past Moina, grateful that she was in the front of the chapel and not wedged between two rows of benches like a caravel in a too-tight berth. She threw her arms around Barrick as well as she could manage with her heavy clothes and confining corset, then realized everyone in the chapel must be looking at them. She leaned back a little and kissed his cheek, which was still warm from fever or effort.

“But, you wonderful fool,” she said quietly, “what are you doing here? You should be in bed!”

He had been stiff in her embrace; now he stepped back, shaking off the two guardsmen who were trying to help him. “What am I doing here?” he asked loudly. “I am a prince of the House of Eddon. Did you think you would bury our brother without me?”

Briony put her hand to her mouth, surprised by his tone but even more shocked by the look of cold anger on his face. Something in her own features seemed to touch him in a way her embrace and kiss had not: his expression softened and he sagged. One of the guardsmen took his elbow. “Oh, Briony, I am sorry. I have been so ill. It was so hard to get here, I had to stop and catch my breath every few steps, but I had to . . . for Kendrick. Pay no attention. My mind has been full of so many foolish things. . . .”

“Of course—oh, Barrick, of course. Sit down.” She helped him down onto the bench beside her. Even seated, he did not let go of her hand, holding her fast in his damp, hot grip.

Hierarch Sisel, after waiting while the courtiers reseated themselves, and with only the smallest and most tasteful look of puzzlement, resumed the eulogy.

 

“ ‘Whether we are born in time of joy or time of woe, and whether we make of our lives a wonder to all eyes or a shame before Heaven, still the gods grant us only our allotted time,’ so said the oracle Iaris in the days of the splendor of Hierosol, and he spoke truth. To no man is given anything certain but death, be he ever so exalted. But be he ever so low, still can his spirit be seated with the immortals in Heaven.

“To Kernios of the black, fruitful earth, we commend this our beloved Kendrick Eddon’s mortal raiment. To Erivor of the waters, we give back the blood that ran in his veins. But to Perin of the skies, we offer up his spirit, that it may be carried to Heaven and the halls of the gods as a bird is carried on the winds until it reaches the safety of its own nest once more.

“May the blessings of the Three be upon him, this our brother. May the blessings of the Three be also upon those who must remain behind. The world will be a darker place for the light that was his and is now gone, but it will shine brightly in the halls of the gods and shall be a star in Heaven. . . .”

 

As he finished, the hierarch sprinkled a handful of earth on the coffin, then a few drops of water from a ceremonial jar; lastly, he set a single white feather atop them. As the gathered nobles spoke the response to Sisel’s words, four guardsman stepped forward and slid two long poles through the coffin’s handles, rucking the embroidered head of the Eddon wolf on the covering cloth so that its snarl seemed to turn to a look of confusion, then lifted the coffin and carried it to the door of the chapel.

Briony, going slowly so Barrick would not fall behind, moved to her place behind the coffin. She reached out a hand and lifted the family banner so she could touch the polished wood. She wanted to say something, but could not make herself believe that the Kendrick she knew was in that box.

It would be too cruel if he was—putting him down under all that stone. He loved to ride, to run . . .

She was weeping again as the coffin was carried out of the chapel behind a ceremonial guard, with all the noble mourners falling into line behind the twins.

The other residents of the palace had been waiting beside the flower-strewn path, the servants and lesser nobility who were now getting their only chance to see the casket that held the prince’s remains. Many were crying and moaning as though Kendrick’s death had just happened, and Briony found herself both moved and yet somehow angered by the noise—quite out of control for a moment, so that she had to fight herself not to turn around and run back into the chapel. She turned to Barrick instead and saw that he hardly seemed to notice the crowd. He was staring at the ground with clench-jawed ferocity, using all his strength just to stay moving behind the coffin. It was too painful for Briony to watch him, almost frightening: he looked like he was still locked in a fever-dream, as though only his body had come back to join the living.

She turned away from her twin and, as her eyes swept the crowd, she glimpsed a small face watching intently from a spot on the wall, a fair-haired boy who had apparently climbed up to get a better vantage point. For a moment she was fearful for the child—he was treetop-high—but he seemed as unconcerned as a squirrel.

Barrick had caught up again, and now he whispered in her ear. “They are all around, you know.”

For a moment she thought he was talking about small boys like the one clinging to the wall. “Who are?”

He put his finger to his lips. “Softly, softly. They do not think I know, but I do. And when I have taken up my birthright, I will make them pay for what they have done.” He fell back a pace and let his gaze drop to the ground once more, his mouth set in a tight, pained smile.

Please let this end soon,
she prayed.
Merciful Zoria, just let us put our brother into the ground and let this day end.

When they reached the graveyard, the procession wound among the slanting shadows of ancient stones until it reached the mouth of the family crypt. Briony and Barrick, Anissa, Merolanna, and a few others followed the guardsmen and their burden down into the ground, leaving the rest of the nobles to stand on the grass at the door of the tomb, deserted and awkward.

The graveyard was full of big folk, all of them in mourning dress. Chert felt like he was lost in a thicket of black trees. There was no sign of the boy anywhere.

All he could do was wait. The funeral had almost ended. In a few moments the royal family would come back out and the crowd would disperse. Maybe then he could find some trace of where the child had gone.

Opal will never forgive me,
he thought.
What could have happened to him? With all these people here, could he have stumbled upon his real family?
Chert thought even Opal could live with that, if they only knew it for certain.

But it’s not just Opal
, he admitted to himself.
I’ll miss the boy, too, mourn the loss of him. Fissure and fracture, listen to me! Talking like it was Flint being put away in the dark instead of the prince. He’s just run off somewhere, is all. . . .

A hand touched his back. He turned to find the boy standing beside him.