Shadowmarch

broken without having to saw at it with a knife, which was a rare pleasure on march. Some of the guardsmen from Kertewall were playing pipes and singing. Despite the mournful Kertish tunes it was a pleasingly ordinary sound, Vansen was glad of it and certain that others felt the same.

He was wandering back toward the fire when he saw a figure standing at the crest of one of the low hills, inside the ring of sentries but not near any of them. He puzzled for a moment before he recognized it as Prince Barrick.Vansen was a little surprised, thinking that the prince would have preferred to be in the midst of Lord Aldritch and the other nobles, drinking and being waited upon, but Vansen knew from his experience with the royal family that the boy had always been odd and solitary.

But he’s a boy no longer, I suppose. In fact, Barrick was the same sort of age Vansen himself had been when he first left home to seek his fortune in the city—an age when he had been certain that he was a man, despite no confirming proof. Watching Barrick, he could not help remembering Princess Briony’s fear for her brother. Certainly the lad should be safe enough—he was scarcely two dozen yards from the nearest carnpfire—and Ferras Vansen had a respect for solitude that many others did not, but he couldn’t help being anxious. After all, Collum Dyer was within my arm’s reach when he was taken. It would be horror enough to have to tell that lovely, sad young woman that her brother had died honorably in battle—he couldn’t imagine telling her the prince had been stolen by fairies right out of camp.

As he strode up the hill, the wet grass slapping at his legs, Vansen suddenly wondered what the Twilight People wanted. Although there had been few true wars during his lifetime, he had ample experience of violence and knew that there were some men who could only be stopped from taking what they wanted by strength, and some who feared that others meant to take what was theirs even when it was not true, that greed and fear lay at the bottom of most fights. But that army he had seen beyond the Shadowline, that array of the sublime and terrible, that ghastly, glorious host—what could they want? Why had they left the safety of their misty lands after two centuries or more, a time in which their original enemies had long since disappeared and new mortals unnumbered had been born, lived, and died again, all without knowing the shadow folk as anything but the stuff of old stories and evil dreams?

He fought a shudder. They were not men, not even animals, but demons, as he knew better than anyone, so how could a mere man hope to understand their reasons?

Young Barrick turned at his approach and watched for a moment before turning back to what he had been gazing at so intently—nothing, so far as Vansen could tell. “Prince Barrick, your pardon. Are you well?”

“Captain Vansen.” The young man continued staring out at the night sky. The wind had herded the clouds away and the stars had come out. Fer-ras Vansen couldn’t help remembering how, as a small child, he had once thought they were the cook fires of people like himself—sky shepherds, perhaps, living on the other side of the great bowl of the heavens, who called the fires of the Vansen family and their neighbors stars in turn.

“It is getting cold, Highness. Perhaps you would be more comfortable back with the others.” The prince didn’t answer immediately. “What was it like?” he finally asked. “What was it like… ?”

“Behind the Shadowline. Did it feel different? Smell different?”

“It was frightening, Highness, as I told you and your sister. Misty and dark. Confusing.” “Yes, but what was it like?” His bad arm was hidden in his cloak, but the other hand pointed at the sky. “Did you see the same stars—Demia’s Ladder, the Horns?”

Vansen shook his head. “I can’t quite remember now. It—it was all very much like a dream Stars? I’m not sure.”

Barrick nodded. “I have dreams about… about the other side. I know that now. I’ve had them all my life. I didn’t really know what they were, but hearing what you said about . .” He turned to fix Vansen with a surprisingly sharp glance. “You say you were frightened. Why? Were you afraid you’d die? Or was it something else?”

Vansen had to stop and think for a moment. “Afraid to die? Of course. The gods give us the fear of death so that we won’t squander their gifts too lightly—so that we will use what is given us to the fullest. But that isn’t what I felt there—that’s not the whole of it, anyway.”

Barrick smiled, although there was something incomplete in it. “So we will use what is given us to the fullest. You are a bit of a poet, Captain Vansen, aren’t you?”

“No, Highness. I just… that is what the village priest taught me.” He stiffened a little. “But I think it’s true. Who knows what will happen to us in Kernios’ cold hands?”

“Yes, who indeed?”

Now the memories of his days in the shadowland were seeping back, as though the lid he had put on them had been kicked loose. “I was afraid because the world there was strange to me. Because I could not trust my own senses. Because it made me feel like a madman.”

“And there is nothing more frightening than that.” Barrick was darkly pleased by something. “No, that is true, Captain Vansen.” He peered at him again. “Do you have a first name?”

“Ferras, Highness. It is a common enough name in the dales.” “But Vansen isn’t.”

“My father was from the Vuttish Isles.”

Barrick had turned back to the stars again. “But he made his home in Daler’s Troth. Was he happy? Is he still alive?”

“He died, Highness, years ago now. He was happy enough. He always said he would trade all the wide ocean for a crofters patch and good weather.”

“Perhaps he was born out of his place,” said Prince Barrick. “That happens, I think. Some of us live our whole lives as if we were dreaming, because we haven’t found where we’re meant to be—stumbling through shadows, terrified, strangers just as you were in the Twilight Lands.” He suddenly tucked his other hand under his cloak. “You’re right, Captain Vansen— it’s getting cold. I think I will have some wine and try to sleep.”

The prince turned and walked down the hill.

He is still a boy, really, for all his philosophy, Vansen decided as he followed several paces behind, alert for any threat, even here among the campfires. A child — clever, angry, and fearful. The gods grant that he lives long enough for some of that knowing to turn into wisdom.

* * *

The murmur of disapproving conversation, which at times threatened to become a roar, had begun the moment Briony walked into the room and had not stopped since she took her place at the head of the table. Meals in the Great Hall were seldom quiet or restful, and on any other day she would have taken something quietly in her chambers, but she had decided on a brave show and she would take what came.

Hierarch Sisel sat on her right. Brone, although a few others at the table outranked him, took the place on her left because he was the lord constable and the castle was at war—or soon to be so. The hierarch, after an initial widening of the eyes and pursing of the lips when he saw her, had made polite conversation just as though she were wearing proper womanly clothing; she was not certain whether she admired this or disliked it. Brone was disgusted, of course, but she had come to know him well enough to feel certain that his annoyance had more to do with her making what he considered an unnecessary spectacle of herself at a delicate time than any particular disapproval of this provocative unsexing. The lord constable had other things on his mind he deemed more important, and he clearly meant to use the stir over the arrival of the main courses to speak to her.

As the chicken carcasses were carried away, and the huge half-bullock sweating in its own juices was carted in, surrounded by what to Briony’s taste was an overly festive array of peacocks roasted and then dressed again in their own feathers, the dogs barked excitedly and snuffled in the rushes for dropped bones. She reached down and scratched a furry head, glad somebody here was deservedly happy, anyway.

“The work on the fortifications is largely done,” Brone told her quietly. “But the strongest walls will not hold if the hearts inside are weak. The nobles are restive. Several have gone already, preferring to take their chances in their own homes, or even to take to the sea lanes if things seem to go badly.”

“I know.” She had granted enough spurious requests in the last days, thin excuses that she felt certain she could pull to tatters m an instant if she chose. “Let them go, Lord Brone. Those are not the folk we’ll want at our sides if things do grow worse rather than merely seem bad, as they do now.” She glanced at Hendon Tolly and his sister-in-law Elan, halfway down the table but in a different world, surrounded by admirers like Durstin Crowel, the Baron of Graylock, all but the girl laughing broadly at one of Tolly’s jokes. “In truth, it’s too bad they do not all leave. Southmarch might be harder to defend, but the waiting would be more pleasant.”

“But that is just the thing…” Brone leaned back and waited for one of the squires to drop a slice of beef onto