worked his way up to the shoulder, sniffing as he went like a dog. At last he climbed to his feet and closed his eyes, stood silent for a moment. “I think I have it,” he said. “Easier it gives itself to me because I have scented the boy upon the rooftop and un has un’s own peculiar tang.” He opened his eyes, looked at Opal and Chert, then shuffled his feet a little on the sleeve. “No wish am I having to shame ‘ee, but to me un smells nothing like tha twain.”
Chert almost laughed. “There is no shame. He is not our blood-child. We found him and took him in.” Beetledown nodded wisely. “Found him in some strange place, thinks I. True?” “Yes,” said Opal a little worriedly. “How did you know?”
“Un smells of Farther Rooftops.” Beetledown turned to Chert. “Is it tha who will carry me now?” “Carry… ?”
“On the track. Too much of un’s scent there is here. Go where there is moving air, we must—even in these danksome caves there must be such a place, methinks.”
Carefully, Chert lifted the little man back up onto his shoulder. He was tired in heart and body, but certainly it was better to be doing something than simply waiting. “Are you coming?” he asked his wife.
“Then who would be here if he comes home?” said Opal indignantly, as though the boy had merely gone to race sowbugs with the neighbor children and would be back any time. “You go, Chert Blue Quartz, and you let this fellow do all the sniffing he has to do. You find that boy.” She turned to look at Beetledown and performed a strange, stiff courtesy, holding her apron up at the hem. She even smiled at him, although she clearly didn’t find it easy, which reminded Chert that he was not the only one who was bone-weary with sleeplessness and dread. “We thank you and your queen,” she said.
He gave Opal a kiss before leaving, wondering how many days it had been since he had remembered to do that. He couldn’t help glancing back as he opened the door, but he wished he hadn’t. In the middle of the room, his wife was rubbing her hands together and looking at the walls as though searching for something. Now that there was no longer a guest in the house, her face had gone slack with grief—it was a stranger’s face, and an old stranger at that. For the first time he could remember, Chert could no longer quite make out the lovely young girl he had courted.
Captain Ferras Vansen came back into the chapel like a condemned prisoner walking bravely to the gallows. His expression, Briony thought, was a little like the idealized face of Perin in the fresco above the door which showed the mighty god giving to his brother Erivor the dominion over the rivers and seas On the sky god the face was frozen in a mask of hard masculine beauty; Vansen, although not an unhandsome man, simply looked frozen.
He kneeled before her, head down. His hair was now almost dry, curling at the ends. She felt something almost like tenderness toward him, touched by the vulnerability of his bent neck. He looked up and she felt caught in some indiscretion, had to fight down a surge of warm anger.
“May I speak, Highness?”
“You may.”
“Whatever you think of me, Princess Briony, I ask you again not to bear ill will toward the men who traveled with me. They are good soldiers tested by things that none of us have seen and felt before. Punish me as you will, but not them, I beg of you.”
“You truly are a bit arrogant, aren’t you, Captain Vansen?” His eyes widened. “Highness?”
“You assume that you have done some great wrong for which you must be punished. You seem to think that, like Kupilas the Lifegiver, your crime is so great that you must be staked on the hillside as an example, to be picked at by the ravens for eternity. Yet, as far as I can see, you have only proved to be a soldier who has muddled a commission.”
“But your brother’s death…”
“It’s true, I haven’t forgiven you for your failures that night. But neither am I so foolish as to think someone else would have prevented it.” She paused, gave him a hard stare. “Do
“No, Highness…!”
“Good. Then we have a starting point. I don’t think I’m foolish either. Now let us move to more important matters. Are you mad, Captain Vansen?”
He was startled and she almost felt ashamed of herself, but these were times when she could not bend, could not be too kind and thus seem weak. There could be no whispering among the castle’s defenders that they would fail because a woman ruled them. “Am I… ?”
“I asked if you are mad, Captain Vansen. Are your wits damaged? It seems a simple enough question.” “No, Princess. No, Highness, I do not think so.”
“Then unless you are a liar or a traitor—fear not, I won’t ask you to deny those possibilities as well, we don’t have the time—what you have seen is real. Our danger is real. So let us talk about why your arrogant wish to be important enough to be punished will not be satisfied.”
“My lady… ?”
“Silence. I didn’t ask you a question. Captain Vansen, from what you’ve told me, it seems that not everyone is the same when it comes to this fairy-magic. You said that some of the men were bewildered, even bewitched, and that others were not. You were one of those who were not. True?”
“Or at least very little, Highness, as far as I could tell.” He was looking at her with something like surprised respect. She liked the respect. She did not like the surprise.
“Then I would be a fool to throw a soldier who seemed armored against such charms and snares into chains at a time when we may need that talent far more than strong arms or even stout hearts… would I not?”
“I… I take your point, Highness.”
“Here is another question. Did you see any reason, any differences in those affected, that might explain why some of you were overwhelmed by the Shadowline magic and some were not?”
“No, Highness. One of my most trusted and sensible men, Collum Dyer, was swept away into a dream very quickly, but a man who is for all purposes his opposite was not touched and, in fact, made it home with me.”
“So we have no way to know who has the weakness until it is revealed.” She frowned, biting her lip. Vansen watched her, clearly masking deeper feelings, but this time more effectively. She wondered briefly what he was hiding from her. Irritation? Fear? “Despite what you think of him, this fellow you mentioned who was not overcome by the fairy-magic must be given a role in preparing to fight this strange enemy. He and all the others who were not poisoned by this strange dreaming. He and your other survivors must all be made captains.”
“Mickael Southstead a captain?' Vansen was chagrined.
“Unless he is the lowest, vilest criminal ever born, his clear head will be worth more to us than if Anglin the Great himself were to come back from the heavens to lead us, then fall into a bewildered nightmare. As we have agreed,Vansen, I am no fool, and I don’t think you are one either. Can you not see this?'
He bowed his head again briefly. “I can, Highness. You are right.”
“Very kind of you to say so, Captain. We do not know where we will be fighting. It could be we will meet them in the hills of Daler’s Troth in an attempt to keep them away from the cities. It could just as easily happen that we cannot stop them until they reach the walls of Southmarch itself You are the only ones who have seen the enemy and returned to tell of it. You must help us prepare for them in any way you can imagine. I am not happy about it, Vansen, but I need you just as much as I need Brone and Nynor and Tyne Aldritch. The matter of my brother’s murder and your failure is not closed, but until better times I will push it from my mind, and so will you. It could be that if you serve me well if you serve Southmarch well then what is in the ledger of that night can be scraped away, or at least inked over.”
“I will do all that you ask, Highness.” This new expression was hard to unriddle, both elevated and miserable, so that for a moment he appeared to have stepped down from a different fresco altogether.
“Yes, Highness.” He rose, but hesitated. “Princess Briony… ?” “Speak.”
“There is a young woman, too—I believe I told you.”
A cold irritation crept over her. “What about her? We cannot let her go either, even if she is mad and
