Shadowmarch

Either Barrick is the world’s greatest liar… or Father is… It was pointless. She had thought she could write to him, but she couldn’t.

Briony was holding the last of the burning parchment to the candle when someone knocked at the door. She immediately dropped the ashes and stub of paper into the candleholder, as though she had been caught doing something wicked. “Who is there?”

“It’s Lord Brone, Your Highness,” said one of her guards through the door. “He wishes…” “Oh, Perin’s bloody red beard, I can tell her myself,” growled the lord constable. “Let me come in, please, Princess. I have urgent business.”

Even this early, with the sky outside still quite dark, Avin Brone was dressed for the daylight hours, although he looked to have accomplished it in a hasty manner. He stared around the room as though searching for enemies but saw only slumbering women.

“We must speak m private,” he told her.

“They are all deep sleepers, but if you fear for their modesty, we can step into the hallway…”

“No. This is not to be discussed in front of the guards. Not yet.” He looked around the bedchamber once more. “Ah, well,” he said at last. “We must speak quietly, then.”

She gestured for him to sit down at the writing desk, but she herself remained standing. Something in his manner had alarmed her; she felt an almost animal urge toward flight. Although Brone seemed his ordinary dour, distracted self, she could sense something deeper was wrong, and she began to wonder how long it would take the guards to respond if she called out for them. Almost without thinking about it, she took a step back from the lord constable, then another; then, a little ashamed, she turned the movement into a search for a thicker wrap. She was conscious for the first time in an hour that her slippers were thin and her feet were cold.

“Gailon Tolly has been found.”

“Where?”

“In a Marrinswalk field In a ditch, to be more precise, covered over with branches.”

“What?” For a moment she had a mad vision of Gailon in a kind of hiding-hole, playing a child’s game. Then she understood. “Oh, merciful Zona, in a ditch’ Is he… ?”

“Dead, yes. Oh, most assuredly dead—along with the men who rode beside him. Half a dozen in all, thrown together into a hasty grave, if you can even call it such.”

She was stunned. “But… how… ?” Briony forced herself to think more carefully. “What happened? Who found him?”

“One of the last musters out of south Marrinswalk, four or five pentecounts, I don’t recall. They came in late last night, an hour or so after the last bell, hurrying to bring in their news. They had been coming up the Silverside Road outside Oscastle and saw a great number of ravens and other birds swarming in a field. When their leader took them closer they saw something shining. It was a buckle.”

Briony s knees suddenly felt weak; she had to take a step to steady herself. Brone came up out of the chair quickly and guided her to it in his stead. “But . how?” she asked. “Who did this? Bandits? Surely the fairy folk have not moved so far south?” Gailon Tolly, dead. Handsome, self-satsified Gailon. She hadn’t liked him, but she had never wanted… never imagined . .

“I can’t say, Princess. Bandits seem the most likely explanation—almost all their money and jewelry had been taken. Horses, too. There are more than a few such bands who range the border between Silverside and Marrinswalk and call theWhitewood their home. The thieves missed a brooch, though, and one of the Marrinswalk men brought it in. That is our only advantage—the discoverers do not know yet whose bodies they found, which has given me enough time to tell you first, before it spreads all through the castle.” He extended his broad fist and uncurled the fingers. A round brooch with a thick pin covered much of his palm, the kind worn at the neck of a riding cloak. The silver was still streaked with mud, but the humped shoulders and horned head of the bull were impossible to mistake.

Briony forced herself to swallow. She felt as though she would be ill. “That’s his. I’ve seen him wear it.” “Or at least it’s one of the Tolly family brooches. But I think we must assume one of the corpses is Gailon.”

“Where are they?” she asked at last, staring at the muddied silver circle as though it were an actual piece of bone. “The bodies?”

“They have been taken to a temple in Oscastle. Until they got there, the soldiers who found them thought the dead were local men, but no one in Oscastle had any idea who they could be. The mantis in that town thought he recognized one corpse as being Gailon Tolly, however, and being a wise man, he put his fears in a letter and entrusted it to the captain of the Marrinswalk pentecounts for secrecy. Still, the rest of the muster are already telling their story to anyone here who will listen. It is only hours at the most until Hendon Tolly hears of it, and he will have no trouble deciding who these mysterious dead really are.”

“Merciful Zonal. As it was, he all but accused us of murdering Gailon— he will trumpet it from the walls now!”

“Yes, and you did not help things with your foolishness at dinner. Go ahead and throw me in the stronghold, but it must be said.”

She waved her hand. The sour taste in her mouth had worsened. “Yes, yes, and I agree, and now you’ve said it. But what do we do? What do we do when Hendon starts up again, claiming I’ve had his brother killed?” “Perhaps he won’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps he won’t. Perhaps it wasn’t bandits, or even these Twilight folk. Maybe it was the Tollys’ southern friends.”

It took her a moment. “The Autarch? Are you suggesting the Autarch would reach all the way into the March Kingdoms to murder one of his allies—one of his only allies, as far as we know?”

“Perhaps they didn’t become allies. Perhaps the Tollys turned him down.”

If what Brone told me in the first place was even true, she reminded herself. Briony put her hands to her head. Now that Barrick was gone, she could fully trust no one. “What a dreadful tangle! I can’t make sense of it—I have to think. Perhaps you’re right, but that still doesn’t help us any. Unless Hendon Tolly also suspects the Autarch’s hand and decides he can’t afford to make too much of a fuss…” She took a long, shuddering breath, trying to calm stomach and spirit. “I only know that it will make matters worse at a time when I believed such a thing wasn’t possible.” As Briony spoke, she picked up the inkwell and moved it back into the drawer, carefully put away the blotter, then the sealing wax.

“What are you doing?” asked Brone. For the first time she noticed the dark, circles under his eyes, the weariness on his pouchy face. He had probably not slept more than an hour or two.

“Just clearing things away. I was going to write a letter to someone, but it’s become clear that there’s not much point to it.” She paused. “Dead— Zoria preserve us! Poor Gailon. I never thought I’d say that.

For a moment she thought Avin Brone was shaking her chair for some reason—that he was angry and had been hiding it—but then she realized he was several steps away and swaying unsteadily too In fact, it seemed the whole world was shaking. A bench hopped on the floor like a skittish horse One of her jewelry chests jittered offa table and smashed on the flagstones. Across the room, Moina sat up and stared around. Wearily. By the time the trembling stopped little Anazona was awake too, frightened and crying loudly. Even heavy-sleeping Rose seemed to have been shaken almost to wakefulness.

“Just a tremor of the earth,” the lord constable said, frowning at his sluggard niece, who had only yawned and turned over, but his leathery face had gone pale. “I felt one like it when I was a boy. It is over now.”

Briony’s heart was beating very fast. “Is it, Lord Brone? Or is it that the world is approaching its end?' “I must say that I have never known it so discomforted in my lifetime,” he admitted.

* * *

The Lord of the Hot Wet Stone had no face, or at least no face that Chert could see, only a murky, red-shot blackness between his gigantic shoulders and his shining crown Big as a mountain, he looked down from his throne but said nothing. The only sound in his immense throne room was the low groan of great stones shifting, the roots of the world still alive and unsettled even all these aeons after the Days of Cooling.

At last Chert could take no more. “Please, Grandfather, do not punish me!”

The groaning continued, but the mighty figure said nothing.

“I meant no harm I trespassed, but I meant no harm!”