(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch (57 page)

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 restless, full of fury and unhappiness 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 trouble-maker. 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 skin. “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 fighting 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.