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.
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.
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.
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
